Intifada Palestine
Jan 3 2012
The American-Iranian Cold War in the Middle East and the Threat of A Broader War
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
A cold war has been ongoing between Tehran and Washington. U.S. spies,
drones, assassinations, and accusations against Tehran have all been a
part of this package. Washington and its minions have been using every
means possible, including international organizations, like the United
Nations, as a battleground against Tehran in this cold war. The
destabilization campaign being waged against Iran, Iraq, Syria, and
Lebanon are also a critical front in this cold war…
The Obama Administration has used 2011 to unleash Washington’s
so-called `Coalition of the Moderate’ against the Resistance Bloc,
which pins together all the countries and forces united by their
opposition to U.S. and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East-North
Africa (MENA) region. The two camps that are becoming more and more
visible in the MENA region are falling along the lines of what
Washington, Tel Aviv, and NATO planned on forming after the 2006
Israeli defeat in Lebanon as a means of tackling Iran and its allies.
In 2007, the United States of America, represented by Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, held a
meeting in Cairo under the `GCC + 2′ formula with the Gulf Cooperation
Council – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the U.A.E., Oman, and
Qatar – plus Egypt and Jordan to form a strategic and all encompassing
front against Iran, Syria, and their regional allies. This `Coalition
of the Moderate’ formed by Washington was a direct extension of NATO
that also included Israel and Turkey as important and central
participants.
The Balance of Power is being played out in Syria and Iraq
While Syria is being targeted for regime change as a means of
re-orienting the balance of power in the Middle East, Iraq is also
being destabilized as a means of catalyzing a sectarian civil war
between Muslim Shia Arabs and Muslim Sunni Arabs. The bombings in both
Iraq and Syria carry all the trademarks of Washington and its network
of allies, as do the murder of civilians by Salvador-style death
squads. For years Iraqi refugees have been reporting that U.S. and
British forces were leading the death squads in Iraq and that they
were the main perpetrators behind the explosions targeting civilians
in Iraq. In regards to Syria, even the press in North America and
Western Europe has been forced to admit that there are `mysterious
death squads’ killing Syrian civilians. One example is the National
Post in Canada, which admitted on December 7, 2011 that unknown death
squads were causing havoc in Syria by killing civilians.
The massive waves of explosions in Iraq targeting civilians are a
means of not only destabilizing Iraq, but igniting sectarianism as the
U.S. pulls out. It is no coincidence that the neighbourhoods in
Baghdad and its galaxy cities were quickly turned into sectarian
enclaves under U.S. administration. It is also worth noting that the
current Vice-President of the United States, Joseph Biden, was the man
that in 2006 authored a plan – or more correctly stamped his name on
the plan – called the `Biden Plan’ to divide or balkanize Iraq into
three sectarian entities. It is in this context that the political
tensions between Prime Minister Nouri Al-Malaki and Vice-President
Tariq Al-Hashimi are being played out and utilized. If a genuine
sectarian civil war occurs in Iraq it could galvanize the region along
the lines of Sunnites and Shiites as Washington, Tel Aviv, NATO, and
the Arab dictatorial families wish. Regional chaos is their goal. Such
chaos and divisions would preoccupy and distract the peoples of the
region with internal fighting and allow the U.S. and Israel to
maintain advantageous positions while the petro-sheikhdom rulers would
be able to maintain their illegitimate hold on power.
Turkey’s Central Role in Syria and the Middle East Spy War
In Libya, while Qatar was designated as the main Arab country, Britain
and France were the NATO members that were outsourced the handling of
the war by Washington (at least publicly). In Syria, the campaign was
outsourced to France, Germany, and Turkey by Washington, while Qatar
and Saudi Arabia, with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to follow in
the future, were designated as the principle Arab players. Berlin was
initially pushing for foreign intervention in the Syrian Arab
Republic, but its role has seemed to have subsided as has the
possibility of direct NATO military intervention in Syria. Focusing
back on Turkey, Ankara is nonetheless the central player in besieging
Syria and without Turkey’s participation the operations against Syria
have a slim chance of success.
>From the end of November to the start of December, the Syrian Army
begun to setup positions near the Syrian-Turkish borders, including
Hatay Province where Alexandretta (Iskenderun) is located. As Syrian
troops positioned themselves near the Turkish border a little after
mid-December, U.S. or NATO aircraft violated Syrian airspace. The
aircraft entered Syria’s airspace via Incirlik Air Base from the
nearby Adana Province of Turkey and dropped off electronic spy devices
near the predominately Kurdish-inhabited vicinity of the town of Afrin
in the Governate of Aleppo.
This is part of the broader electronic monitoring and spy war that has
also gripped Lebanon and Iran. Recently in Lebanon large numbers of
Israeli and U.S. spies were apprehended with direct ties to the U.S.
Embassy in Beirut. In parallel, U.S. spies and spy networks have also
been ensnared in Iran by the Iranian intelligence apparatus. This spy
war is tied to the stepped up efforts by Washington to infiltrate
Iran. With this view, Washington has also augmented its Iranian
special interest office in the United Arab Emirates with a virtual
embassy for Iran.
Playing the Turks; Ankara May Back Down in its Syrian Gambit
Public in-fighting is not new to NATO states and in this respect Paris
and Ankara have begun to squabble over the Armenian Genocide. For
years Nicolas Sarkozy and legislators in Paris have talked about
passing legislature that would outlaw the denial of the Armenian
Genocide in the dying Ottoman Empire. This legislature was recently
passed in France and has been widely analyzed as an elections stunt by
Sarkozy to win Armenian support and votes in France. Nevertheless, it
has to also be noted that Paris has also predicted that the situation
in Iraq after the U.S. military evacuation could radically modify the
stance of the Turkish government towards Syria. This is a key point.
If Iraq becomes an assertive single entity that aligns itself
completely with Tehran and Damascus, then Turkey will be forced to
change its position. Turkish trade could heavily be decelerated and a
contour would be formed around Turkey going from Iran to Iraq to Syria
that could cut Turkey’s land routes to North Africa, Jordan, the
Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, Pakistan, India, and East Asia. Along
with the Republic of Armenia, Tehran, Baghdad, and Damascus could form
a wall around Turkey. The only open borders to Turkey would be Greece,
Bulgaria, and Georgia. The latter of which, Georgia, could be cutoff
too by the Russian Federation.
Hence, the course of events in Iraq will be pivotal to Turkish foreign
policy and to the shape of the balance of power in the Middle East. It
is in this context that creating internal tensions in Iraq is being
used to keep Iraq from asserting itself as a staunch Iranian and
Syrian ally. Should the regime in Syria manage to holdout and should
Iraq manage to maintain stability, Washington’s time in the Middle
East will be over; followed by Israel’s capabilities to launch anymore
wars.
Moreover, the Turks are slated for relatively short-term use. It is
not in the interest of Washington or Israel to allow Turkey to become
a major power. The U.S. and Israel have been working behind Ankara’s
back to also weaken Turkey after it serves it purpose in their
regional strategy. This is one of the reasons they have been
supporting Kurdish separatist movements opposed to Turkey. Turkey
itself is slated to erupt into internal fighting and divisions.
Turkish involvement in Syria or a war with Syria involving the Turks
will ultimately weaken Turkey itself and have disastrous side effects
like Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran did for Iraq. If a war does
erupt between Ankara and Damascus, the war itself will be damaging to
Turkish national unity and could led to a civil war; such a war will
also erupt into a conflict with Syria’s Iranian and Russian allies.
The Demonization of Iran in the International Commons
The international system that was setup after the Second World War is
in increasing decline. The United Nations and other international
bodies have become the scenes of struggles between two emerging global
camps – on the one hand is the U.S. and what has become, since the end
of the Cold War, the expanded Western Bloc and on the other hand are
all those countries that are independent of Washington or that resist
U.S. hegemony. These two camps are increasingly becoming visible on
the basis of their positions in the international arena and how they
vote in global forums. For example, albeit there were key abstentions,
at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva there were two
diametrically opposed positions on Syria that saw countries like
Ecuador, Cuba, Russia, and China siding with Syria against the U.S.,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Poland.
Much earlier, the International Atomic Energy Association (I.A.E.A.)
in the same context of a battle ground also released a grossly
manipulated report. The report took information from the intelligence
services of the U.S. and its allies and old information that was
discarded earlier for being false by the I.A.E.A. and reinvented the
very same information as `potentially’ meaning that the Iranian
nuclear energy program had military applications. Director-General
Yukiya Amano, a former Japanese diplomat, even violated the
regulations of the I.A.E.A. in composing the report and its
clandestine release to a few I.A.E.A. members. Amano’s report also
knowingly released a list of Iranian scientists working on the nuclear
energy program, knowing that it would place their lives in danger with
assassinations attempts.
Washington with the collaboration of the Al-Sauds also tried to rally
international support in October 2011 by claiming that Iran wanted to
assassinate the Saudi envoy to Washington. After changing the
outlandish narrative of the Iranian assassination attempt several
times, the issue was brought to a vote at the U.N. General Assembly by
Saudi Arabia and the U.S. in mid-November. One hundred and six
countries voted in favour of the resolution calling for Iranian
cooperation and condemning the plot. Forty countries abstained and
nine voted against the resolution. The U.S. also took the opportunity
to renew sanctions against Iran and present it as a threat to world
peace.
A month later, a cyber warfare unit of the Iranian Armed Forces
overrode U.S. controls over a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel spy
drone. It was a reenactment of the 1960 U-2 spy plane incident with
the Soviet Union. The Pentagon originally denied that the U.S. had
violated Iranian airspace or that a drone was captured and gave
several conflicting stories, but was faced to admit the truth once the
Iranians unveiled the U.S. spy drone in perfect condition under
Iranian custody. In the process of taking over the controls of the spy
drone when it violated Iranian airspace, U.S. satellites and command
and control facilities were electronically manipulated by the Iranian
military. In the same month a U.S. court in New York declared that
Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah aided Al-Qaeda in the terrorist attacks
on September 11, 2001 (9/11) and found Iran liable for a hundred
billion dollars worth of damages.
The American-Iranian Cold War could lead to a Global Hot War
Now, close to the end of 2011, General Martin Dempsey, the U.S.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said several times that the
U.S. Armed Forces are prepared to attack Iran. The Iranians have
dismissed the ability of the U.S. to wage a war, but have not ruled
out U.S. or Israeli attempts to launch strikes. It is in this context
that Iranian naval forces have conducted naval drills in and around
the Straits of Hormuz and in the waters of the Persian Gulf, Gulf of
Oman, Gulf of Aden, and Arabian Sea.
The term cold war can be very misleading, because many hot events can
take place in the context of such rivalries, as is the case of the
events in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq in regard to the cold war between
Washington and Tehran. The actual Cold War between the Soviet Union
and the United States was actually played out via many hot wars in
different parts of the world like Angola, Vietnam, and the Korean
Peninsula. With this consideration in mind, the cold war in the Middle
East between Tehran and Washington could erupt into a real and
dangerous hot war with global ramifications.
On December 14, 2011, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that Russia is
paying special attention to its military infrastructure in Armenia,
which has greater geo-political importance now in regards to Russian
involvement in the Middle East in the case of a U.S. or NATO war. On
November 28, 2011 it was declared that Dmitry Rogozin, Mowcows’s envoy
to NATO and now one of Russia’s deputy prime ministers (vice-prime
ministers), would visit both Beijing and Tehran in mid-January 2012 to
discuss collectively countering Washington’s missile shield project.
This was after Rogozin speaking in late-September 2011 to the
Rossiya-24 Television Network denied Iranian media reports that
Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing were planning on jointly spearheading a
response to Washington’s global missile project.
In the scenario of a U.S. war with Iran, the frozen conflicts in the
Caucasus between Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh,
Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan would also all be ignited. The
Armenians, which are the allies of both Moscow and Tehran, have also
made it clear that Yerevan would be forced to pick sides. From Central
Asia and the Caucasus to Pakistan and the Middle East there would be
major upheavals.
Neither Russia nor China will be able to stand idly in the case that a
war is launched against Iran. In one way or another, if Russia enters
a war against the U.S. and NATO then countries like Belarus, Ukraine,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Moldova would all be dragged
into the conflict as it broadens. The Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (S.C.O.)
would be collectively involved. Rear-Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong, a
Chinese military official and a director at the National Defence
University of the People’s Republic of China has also acknowledged
this and stated that China would not hesitate in entering a war
against the United States should Washington attack Iran. Rear-Admiral
Zhazhong has also addressed the importance of Pakistan as a bridge to
Iran for Beijing during a possible war and the instability in Pakistan
should also be examined in the context of its value to China. It is in
this respect that the cold war in the Middle East has the dangerous
potential of igniting into a broader war involving the core of Eurasia
that would envelop the globe in disaster.
Article originally posted at Global Research.CA
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Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Sociologist and award-winning author. He
is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization
(CRG) in Montreal, Quebec. He specializes on the Middle East and
Central Asia. He has been a contributor and guest discussing the
broader Middle East on numerous programs and international networks
such as Al Jazeera, Press TV and Russia Today. Nazemroaya was also a
witness to the `Arab Spring’ in action in North Africa. While on the
ground in Libya during the NATO bombing campaign, he reported out of
Tripoli for several media outlets. He sent key field dispatches from
Libya for Global Research and was Special Correspondent for Pacifica’s
syndicated investigative program Flashpoints, broadcast out of
Berkeley, California. His writings have been published in more than
ten languages. He also writes for the Strategic Culture Foundation
(SCF), Moscow.
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2012/01/the-american-iranian-cold-war-in-the-middle-east-and-the-threat-of-a-broader-war/