How the coming war on Syria and Iran will unfold

The supposed "missile test" of 3 September offers an insight into the strategy of egregious provocation that will, sooner or later, trigger the calamity that the war-hawks in Israel and Washington have been clamoring for.

In the event, the provocation passed, but the tensions remain. The evil Assad has gassed his own people, just like Saddam Hussein did. We didn't stand for it then, and we won't now.

How or why it has become the duty of the US to impose Israel's agenda on the Middle East is not a topic that our mainstream media dwell on. It's taken for granted. They are "the only democracy in the Middle East" after all.

The fiction that a limited cruise missile strike on Syria will not result in a massive and immediate escalation is just that; a fiction. If "missile tests" fail to attract a response from Syria, an actual missile attack surely will, and that will serve up the excuse for the US/Likud axis to go big.

Once that happens, and it will take mere minutes, we'll find out just how many Syrian, Iranian, and Hezbollah missiles are pointed at Israel. IAF strikes may take out some of them, a lot of them, even most of them.

They won't take out all of them, not by a long shot. Nor will the vaunted Iron Dome offer any protection after the first few barrages of incoming. The damage to civil society in Israel will be catastrophic. This will be the first war in Israel's history wherein its civilian population will bear the brunt of the retaliation.

That will prompt desperate politicians to take desperate measures. This conflict that Netanyahu and Obama are toying with has the potential to go nuclear. Then what?

Even after devastating attacks on every Israeli city, the IDF will have the capability of visiting annihilation on every Arab capital deemed hostile. Once that happens, whatever doubts may linger about US/Israeli policy constituting a "war on Islam" will be gone. It should be kept in mind that the Islamic world has nuclear weapons too.

There is no possible way to avoid the conclusion that the coming war will be a lose-lose scenario for all concerned. What then is driving events to the brink?

In Israel, the messianic elements have been emboldened by 65 years of easy victories over weak enemies. In America, the toxic combination of the military-industrial-financial war profiteers coupled with the Israel lobby have long held a strangle-hold on foreign policy.

Two out of the last three interventions that the US has undertaken have ended in disaster for America. The third has been a disaster only for the Libyan people, the imagined beneficiaries of America's benevolent intervention. Irregardless, those disasters allowed a clique of insiders in war profiteer circles to profit mightily. Since they cannot conceive of a downside and have never experienced one, they assume the possibility does not exist.

The PR lever that John Kerry has been flogging has utterly no basis in reality. Even if we assume for a brief moment, absent any evidence, that Assad bears responsibility for the gas attack of two weeks ago, by what logic would that entitle the bully on the world stage to "intervene?"

Regime change in Syria has been on the wish list of the usual suspects for at least ten years, and this phony gas attack issue is simply a tool for manipulating public opinion; Saddam's WMDs all over again.

The latest polls show that it's not working this time around. That's not enough. Concerned citizens in the US and especially in Israel have to make it clear to their leaders that under no circumstances will an attack on Syria be countenanced.

Questions of war and peace are too important to be left in the hands of politicians and war profiteers.

IRAN TERROR BIN LADEN IRAN AL-QAEDA

You'll have to look long and hard to find any media mention of Sulaiman Abu Graith before he showed up on the front page of every American newspaper a week ago.

Since then he's morphed into a Senior Bin Laden Adviser, Terror Mastermind, Al Qaeda Mastermind... but mostly, he's become the most useful device ever for putting Al-Qaeda and Iran in the same story.

After all, it's nice to have some terrorists to pin on the Iranian terrorism sponsors, and evidence for that is notably lacking.

That's useful because the Bomb Iran crowd needs to keep alive the fiction that Al-Qaeda is a creation of the Iranian terror apparatus. It helps if you can produce headlines that make that link, even if the content of the story fails to substantiate it.

Hence, in the past week, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and innumerable others have all provided their eager readers with fanciful speculation about the links between the Saudi-sponsored Al Qaeda, and Saudi Arabia's number one enemy, Iran.

Here's a Reuters story from a year ago that describes the Al Qaeda-Iran relationship as "fractious at best and antagonistic at worst." They even have a reference to Abu Graith in the third and forth paragraphs from the bottom. He was such a non-entity he wasn't even mentioned by name, simply referred to as "the husband of one of Bin Laden's daughters."

He is a non-entity no more. He has since become a useful pawn in the anti-Iran propaganda campaign. He gives the media big boys an excuse to print headlines that imply linkages that don't exist.

You can be sure we'll be seeing lots of those in the months to come.

Syrians take to streets in show of support for al Qaeda

The mis-handling of the Syrian "spring" has to be one of the greatest US foreign policy debacles of our times. Or is it?

It's been clear that American policy has been to lead from behind the scenes as proxies Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia took the lead in importing and arming the anti-Assad forces. And it's been clear to most of the world for well over a year that the "foreign fighters" who have been converging on Syria have what might delicately be termed "al Qaeda affiliations."

Recently there have been indications that Washington too is aware of this. First the charade of re-jigging the "Syrian National Council" into the "Syrian National Coalition" to make it more "representative". When the Syrians duly jumped through Hillary's hoops on that count, the US suddenly realized that the single most effective fighting force in Syria was in fact the Jabhat al-Nusra, aka al Qaeda, and promptly added them to their official list of terror groups.

This is all in the context of explaining why the US cannot directly arm the  "rebels", and the people of Syria took to the streets to make known their displeasure.

In terms of a Syrian spring, a Syrian liberalization, a democratic Syria, etc, none of this makes any sense.

Can American foreign policy really be that inept and self-defeating?

But what if this entire Syria exercise is just preparing the ground for an invasion of Iran? Suddenly a Syria in ruins is not such a bad thing. Plenty of good excuses to drop tens of thousands of American and/or NATO troops in to restore order/ deliver humanitarian aid / secure the weapons of mass destruction / etc etc.

And those tens of thousands of Sunni fundamentalist fighters on the ground in Syria? I'm guessing that America will permit herself just enough of an accommodation with "al Qaeda" to hand those lads maps to Tehran.

Suddenly it all makes sense!

CNN unleashes Syria-hysteria propaganda attack

Yup, must be true; saw it right there on Anderson Cooper just a minute ago.

We are in the midst of the latest attempt to play that WMD card we were talking about earlier

At this very moment Syrian troops are busy mixing sarin gas. And we all know what the evil blood-thirsty monster Assad is going to do with that, don't we?

That's right. Kill the rest of his own people.

American boots might be on the ground well before spring if this PR onslaught keeps up.

Pot-addled blogger predicts mainstream media's demonization of Turkey

Yes, while I blush to admit it, I knew Erdogan was going to be the odd man out, and I said so at least six weeks ago.

Here's the Chicago Sun-Times fulminating about how Erdogan has stabbed the Nations of Virtue in the back with his endorsement of Hamas in Gaza.

Nevermind how the Nations of Virtue have stabbed Erdogan in the back by letting him take the heat for their failed Syria adventure.

Arming and housing and financing the Syria "rebels" wasn't an idea that sprung fully-formed from the minds of Erdogan and his cabinet. Assad was for many years a trusted ally of the Turkish state. You can bet it took a lot of arm-twisting and cajoling to get the Turks to see the error of their ways.

But now that it has become overwhelmingly obvious that Assad isn't following the NATO script, we can blame our failure on Erdogan?

And of course we want to castigate the Erdogan regime for not falling into line with the usual "Israel has the right to defend itself" red herring that has the Nations of Virtue desperately covering their virtuous parts this past week.

Once you wrap your mind around the concept that the Guardian put out this week, namely that the Palestinians have that right too, the claim on virtue that has traditionally been claimed by the Nations of Virtue begins to look a bit grubby.

Expect this Chicago Sun-Times salvo to be just the opening shot in a barrage of dark stories designed to diminish Turkey and the Erdogan government.

If you step back a pace or two and ponder the big picture for a few moments, you will realize that Erdogan is on the right side of history and it is the Nations of Virtue who are in the dark.

Canada closes Iran embassy in anticipation of Israeli nuke attack

There can be no doubt that Canada's Foreign Minister John Baird and his personal Rabbi are very very tight with the Netanyahu gang.

Out of the blue, Baird pulls all Canadian diplomats out of Iran and shuts down the embassy.

Yes, he made some noises about human rights etc.

This is from the FM of a country that signed free trade agreements with both Honduras and Colombia in the last year, so obviously anything the Canadians say about human rights vis-a-vis Iran is just a smoke screen.

What does Baird know that you and I don't?

Iran calls for nuke-free planet by 2025

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi opened the 16th summit of non-aligned nations by calling for a world-wide ban on nuclear weapons.

Sounds fair to me. His is by no means the first voice to make such a plea, a plea that is routinely ignored by those countries that already have nuclear weapons.

If you look at who is attending the Tehran conference you'll find at least three countries who already posses them and a lengthy list of countries that have "civilian" nuclear programs that could conceivably be weaponized in short order. That's how India and Pakistan joined the nuclear club.

Insofar as we can believe the fear-mongering, that's the path that Iran is taking too, which is why we have been treated to an endless stream of "all options on the table" rhetoric for the last twenty years. If we hypothesize an actual strike on Iran to prevent this, what do we suppose will happen afterward?

Regardless of whether such a strike sets back Iran's nuclear ambitions by two years or twenty, there are at least a dozen other countries who will take away the lesson that they'd better have the ultimate trump card in their decks sooner rather than later. Nuclear proliferation will proliferate as never before.

What kind of a world will we have then?

US warship runs into oil tanker off Iran coast

Yup! The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter ran into a Japanese oil tanker!

How is such a thing even possible? After all, the forces of good are there to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. Trouble is, the good guys have so many warships putting around over there it was only a matter of time before they ran into something.

And it was dark. That explains it. They couldn't see that tanker, even though every tanker I've ever seen is lit up pretty good.

But think about it. Oil tanker + guided missile destroyer could equal one hell of a big bang. I think they had what's known as a "close call."

Far from keeping the Strait open, they almost achieved the opposite.

Oh well, maybe next time.

Obamageddon

Just a few days ago I was waxing wise on how Obama is going to stall any action on Syria till after the election. Syria, as anyone who seriously follows these matters well knows, is the segue into the long anticipated war with Iran.

Events may be overtaking Obama. Suddenly the provenance of his birth certificate and the hoo-ha over Mitt's tax returns seem to be fading into the background.

A couple of days ago there was a story floating around about Assad's chemical warfare capabilities. The usual (highly suspect) sources had info that Assad's troops were accessing stockpiles of nerve gas. Echoes of Saddam's WMD all over that one. The story failed to gain serious traction at the time.

Yesterday Major General Aviv Kochavi, Israel's military intel boss, made some public statements to the effect that if Assad falls, the northern border is in play. Kochavi does not harbor any illusions about the nature of the Syrian uprising. These are not secular democracy-loving liberals calling the shots in the revolution, no matter what the Syrian expats in London and Washington want us to believe.

Today a busload of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria were targeted by a terrorist bomb. It took Netanyahu about fifteen seconds to announce that Iran was behind it. Suddenly the faltering coalition and the protests in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are relegated to the back burner.

Also today, a bodyguard with access to the highest levels of the Assad regime took out a good slice of Assad's senior leadership with a suicide bomb, that time-honored tactic of secular oppositions everywhere.

Connect the dots. It's not hard to see where things are going.

And I no longer believe matters will wait till November.

Netanyahu pulls one out of the hat

Or perhaps out of his ass.

This new Likud-Kadima coalition certainly doesn't fool anyone in Israel.

Shaul Mofaz is seen everywhere as the Netanyahu toady. There is no question who is in charge of this so-called coalition.

But it will fly in America. And America, after all, is Netanyahu's base.

Get ready for the Iran-bashing to ramp up exponentially.

And faced with a Prime Minister who can claim a majority, who knows how Obama will react as we close in on those November elections?

New York Times signals thumbs up for Iran war

The national newspaper of record has given the green light to an attack on Iran.

Israel's last chance to attack Iran by Amos Yadlin is a grotesque plea for an American attack on Iran. If America does not attack Iran really really soon, it may be too late.

Yadlin makes the point that America is the only nation that could pull of such an attack. On paper, that may be true. Remember what a cakewalk Iraq was going to be? And our victory in Afghanistan took years to turn into defeat.

In the event that there is such an attack, several results are guaranteed.

In the first place, the Iranian people will be united as never before, behind the ayatollahs.

Secondly, the Islamic world generally will be united as never before, behind Iran.

Next, while there is no doubting the short-term outcome of such an attack, the price to be paid by anyone allied with America who lives within range of Iranian missiles will be horrendous. This includes Israel as well as most of the Gulf caliphates.

Finally, the results of America's various foreign adventures in the Islamic world over the past generation do not bode well for any action in Iran. How disabused of common sense must one be to not realize that if you can't put the run to the Talibs in Afghanistan over the course of eleven years, you don't stand a chance against Iran?

Iran could plunge Middle East into new cold war

If you've been checking out the international news sites this weekend you've seen some variation of that headline.

It's a quote from British Foreign Minister William Hague. Does serve to catch the eye, doesn't it? When you see "Iran" and "plunge into war" you want to say oh-oh!

Or maybe not.

Could Hague really be saying that some options are now off the table? After all, given a choice, it's not a hard one to make between a "hot" and a "cold" war. Is the "hot" option off the table?

Hague has been right up there with Hillary and some of the GOP candidates in making bellicose statements about Iran. I read this as a ratcheting down by several large degrees.

Similarly, the anti-Assad rhetoric seems to be calming just a bit. Is it possible that the NATO/Pentagon brain trust doesn't have the stomach to go another round in the Middle East at this time?

Or with a number of NATO political leaders facing difficult election campaigns, have they decided that boots on the ground in Syria or an attack on Iran would be prejudicial to their chances of re-election?

Either way, looks like we're seeing  a subtle ramping down of the war talk.

Or maybe it's just the calm before the storm.

Iran warships dock in Syria

Why?

Because they can.

They can roam the Mediterranean at will now that our Egyptian Islamist Springtimers have handed them the keys to the Suez canal. Heck, I suppose they could dock in Haifa if they wanted!

Wouldn't that be a great shore leave for the Sailors of the Towel?

A few days of r&r in the Holy Land! They could stock up on all the stuff that's hard to find in the Islamic Republic. Like Justin Bieber CD's. Tylenol. Madonna videos. Yankees ball caps.

Maybe tour some of the holy places. God knows the Holy Land is desperate for tourist dollars.

And maybe the Israeli Navy could reciprocate with shore leave for it's sailors in Iran.

Before long, you'd have two peoples trading with one another and visiting back and forth.

Heck, they could even swap tips on the secret development of a nuclear program!

Venezuela ships oil to Syria in violation of sanctions

I'm riffing off a Reuters exclusive here, and it's got to be just about the fishiest story of the day.

Yes, there's lots of oil in Venezuela, and most of it gets shipped to the US, but because Chavez is a bit of an independent thinker and likes to call American leaders nasty names, we don't like him. Therefore our independent Western media seldom misses a chance for an anti-Chavez smear.

So of course, the evil Chavez would violate sanctions that are intended to bring the despotic and freedom-hating al-Assad regime to its knees.

Never mind that Syria is herself an oil exporting country. Never mind that its next-door neighbor Iran, also rumored to have some oil reserves, maintains friendly relations with the al-Assad government. Never mind that Venezuela is not a party to any international embargo of trade with Syria.

It's just such a darn good story!

And Reuters manages to juice it up even more with speculation that Assad needs the oil to fuel the tanks and heavy artillery that have been busy firing on unarmed protesters these past eleven months!

War on Shia Islam makes strange bedfellows

Holy jumpin' Jehova, does it ever!

This brouhaha in Syria has got Likud Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut singing from the same page in the hymnal as Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. Who can even imagine such a thing?

"It's time to help the brave Syrian freedom fighters" Lieberman declared today on CNN.

"Amen", declared Ayman. In fact al-Zawahiri has got his boys in country already. Seems Bashir al-Assad isn't kidding when he says he's fighting Al Qaeda. The smart money says the suicide bombs in Aelpo the other day were Al Qaeda handiwork.

But wait a minute here... Assad is fighting Al Qaeda, we're fighting Al Qaeda, but we're going to support Al Qaeda in their fight against Assad? Does this mean that al-Assad is a greater evil than Al Qaeda?

Not at all. What it means is that yet again contradictory streams in American foreign policy are rising up to bite us on the ass.

As everyone knows, except apparently the toadying Canadian Foreign Minister who last week made an embarrasing attempt to upstage the toadying US congress on his bag-licking mission to the Holy Land, Israel has no greater friend than the US.

We tolerate Assad because he does a pretty good job of keeping things cool on Syria's border with Israel, in spite of the ongoing open sore that is the Golan heights. Do we care about "unarmed protesters" being slaughtered in their thousands? Of course not.

What we care about is that the last couple of generations of stability on that border might be threatened. If Assad goes, we want to have a hand in deciding who is going to replace him.

To that end, the US has been busy busy busy coordinating the "Free Syrian Army" from an American base in Turkey. This is not a secret and has been written up extensively in major media outside the US. Only in America is it deemed un-newsworthy.

Oddly enough, al-Zawahiri and Al Qaeda have precisely the same motivations as we do. If Assad is doomed, they and their Saudi paymasters want to have a say in what happens next.

Which brings us to the real reason we're so concerned about those "unarmed protesters" in Syria; Iran.

The ill-fated debacle of the US invasion of Iraq didn't just destroy that country, it greatly enhanced Iran's influence within it. Have you noticed that the Shia-dominated government in Iraq is not participating in the embargoes on either Syria or Iran?

The war cheer-leaders in Congress and beyond want to make sure that whatever we do in Syria, it doesn't ultimately enhance Iran's influence in the region even more.

Syria is just another front in our war on Iran.

And if that means we have to arm Al Qaeda fighters, we're willing to do it.

American news networks prep for Israel's attack on Iran

I'm not making this up. According to one of the big dogs at Counterpunch the major news networks are prepping their graphics and their on-air "personalities" for the coming war.

If that's true, my guess is that they'll be emptying their Tel Aviv offices at the same time.

In the event that there is an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program, look for massive Iranian retaliation. This won't be home-made rockets flying out of Gaza and landing harmlessly in the desert. This will be the real deal.

There will be no safe place in Israel.

Iranians ratchet mid-east tensions to new heights

Within hours of banning the Bart and Homer Simpson dolls Iran's Ministry of Toys and Holy War announced two new Ayatollah-approved dolls for the Iranian market.

According to Deputy Ayatollla Rabidad Nabobidad the new dolls are in no way inspired by or derived from the Homer and Bart Simpson dolls that raised the regimes hackles just hours ago.

I'm guessing that there's a whole bunch of patent attorneys and copyright lawyers all over Manhattan who might disagree.

Iran ups ante, bans Bart and Homer dolls

Iran’s Ministry of Vigilance Against Satanic Decadence and Vice has issued a Fatwa prohibiting the sale and import of Bart and Homer Simpson dolls.

Ministry spokesman Farjoo Turbanijan announced the Fatwa at a news conference at the Tehran Holiday Inn last Thursday.

“Bart and Homer are emissaries for the Great Satan. This is spoken in the Holy Koran. It is the duty of every believer to strike down the evil likenesses wherever they may be found.”

Shortly after Friday prayers enraged mobs descended on the Tehran Walmart and scoured the toy department for Bart and Homer dolls, which were summarily decapitated.

Speaking for the Ministry of Toys and Holy War, Deputy Ayatollah Rabidad Nabobidad confirmed the Fatwa.

“The Dogs of Satanic Imperialism and Zionist Expansionism must be taught a lesson” he said, “they cannot be allowed to threaten our great Republic with impunity. From this day forward Bart and Homer must die!”

Lisa, Maggie and Marge dolls may still be imported and offered for sale on the condition that they are clothed in full Burqa.

Time for Iran attack is now!

This years Herzliya Conference was more than anything an opportunity to bash Iran.

All the top guns from the IDF/Likud nexus tried to outdo one another with scary stories about the Iranian threat.

On Tuesday President Shimon Peres used his time at the microphone to remind the world that “evil and nuclear weapons must never be allowed to come together.”

On Wednesday IDF Chief Benny Gantz claimed that the Iran threat is now more threatening than ever.

Not to be outdone, Military Intelligence Chief Aviv Kochavi followed up with the claim that at any given moment more than 200,000 missiles are pointed at Israel, which explains why the folks at the conference are so skittish.

Kochavi went on to state that Iran already has enough material for not one, not two, but four nuclear weapons! Now that’s some serious threatening  threat. If we don’t act now, that number will be even higher next year!

And today, Deputy PM Moshe Yaalon revealed that Iran was developing missiles that could hit the continental USA! That’s just to spread the fear around a little bit. It’s not just Haifa and Tel Aviv that are vulnerable to the Persian peril, it’s Washington and Los Angeles and Houston too! If we wait too long they might even be able to hit Chicago and New Orleans.

So the message is clear; if we don’t attack Iran now, tomorrow could be too late.

Most Orwellian headline of the 21st century so far: Iran 'ever more willing to attack US attack'

That's off the Guardian UK website today.

Whoa! They're going to do what?

They're going to attack a US attack?

Isn't that more commonly referred to as defending oneself?

Check it out:

Iran 'ever more willing to attack US attack'

James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, also says Tehran is keeping its options open to develop nuclear weapons