“Reports that the Bush administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: It's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months.” — Robert Baer, a former high-ranking CIA field officer in the Middle East. [1]
It was early in 2006 when the first stories about an ‘imminent’ hit on Iran surfaced with everybody from Seymour Hersh to Michel Chossudovsky wading in with the ‘inside dope’ on the impending attack. So was it just their timing that was out?
Those of you who have read any of my ruminations on the topic will know how sceptical I felt, and still do feel about an ‘impending’ strike, not because it’s not on the cards, along no doubt with any other country that gets in the way of the US, but is this right time for it and, are other things afoot, and what if anything, can we do about it?
Look, whether viewed from a Left perspective or no perspective at all, the general feeling about US intentions and actions is akin to how anybody would feel if you woke up and found a 500 pound gorilla in your bed; there’s not much you can do about it.
What differs are the reasons why, which is the really crucial aspect.
But I digress (somewhat), for one has to ask why, at very specific times these rumours of war surface? Where do they come from? And why are certain kinds of stories picked up by the MSM and others ignored?
Of course the ‘credibility’ of the source has something to do with it, but much more important is the context, the setting for the story. It’s worth comparing the two sets of rumours’ timing: the last time, early in 2007 ‘coincided’ with a massive propaganda campaign around Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions and the US used the UN (via the International Atomic Energy Agency over which it had significant control) as its major propaganda vehicle.
The latest one by contrast, is a ‘home-grown’ affair and comes at a time when US control of the IAEA is not what is was, added to which there are deep divisions within the US ruling elite about how best to achieve their objectives (see PNAC etc).
“In August … the Senate unanimously passed a resolution sponsored by Sen. Lieberman, I-Conn., accusing Iran of acts of war against the United States” [3]
Add the debacle of Iraq, where even the simplest of objectives; getting hold of the oil, seems even further away now than ever (this in spite of the fact that when the US invaded Iraq, it spared the oil ministry whilst deliberately dismantling the rest of the machinery of state).
The principle ‘hook’ on which the latest campaign is based, is not new (Iran’s alleged interference in Iraq) but now it takes centre stage as the nuclear weapons excuse no longer works.
"We have in front of us an agreed work
plan. We agreed on modalities on how to implement it. We have a
timeline for the implementation." — Olli Heinonen, deputy director of
the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s compliance with the
IAEA.[4]
And of course a compliant media responds just
like Pavlov’s dogs; after months of propaganda about the Iranian
‘nuclear threat’, the ‘threat’ has disappeared from public view to be
replaced by Iran’s “murderous intent”. Whenever the US goes on a
propaganda offensive, stories that ‘surface’ about imminent invasion,
are part and parcel of the propaganda war, made all the more believable
by the fact that all the pieces are in place (eg the 7th Fleet in the
Gulf etc) for just such a scenario.
For example, one of the current crop of stories ‘doing the rounds’
concerns itself with details about targetting sites in Iran and another
with US war preparations for the US Fleet in the Gulf. Both proved to
be false, that is to say, be assured that the US has long had war plans
for Iran, so why do these stories appear just now? (One was picked up
by the Daily Kos and eventually denounced as a fake).[5]
One of the tactics used in Psy-ops (psychological warfare operations)
is planting a story in an out-of-the-way place and wait for it to be
‘discovered’. This lends credence to the story as it appears to come
from the ‘horses mouth’. The ‘Niger Yellowcake’ fake is a perfect
example of how such stories get spread: ‘originating’ from within the
Italian secret service, the story actually came from Ahmed Chalabi’s
CIA-backed organisation, who fed it to the Italians, who in turn fed it
to both the UK and US intelligence agencies and thus on to the IAEA,
who promptly dismissed it as a crude fake. But the damage has been
done; retractions never
make the headlines. Timing is everything, the Niger Yellowcake fake
appeared just before Colin Powell’s outrageous Powerpoint performance
at the UN, which was so awful even Powell called it “shit”.
But nothing just ‘happens’, forces have to be set in motion. There are
fears to be created; rationales developed and importantly, ‘feelers’
sent out via a complicit media to test the waters, gage public
reactions to the idea. Lately, we’ve had a rash of them appear [links],
some plainly false, the rest? Well given all the firepower the US has
in the Gulf (enough to take out the entire planet), it’s not difficult
to see all kinds of scenarios which could serve to unleash it.
“[This]
administration or the next will likely face a terrible choice: appease
a nuclear Iran, or bomb it before their atomic weapons are ready to
go.” — Michael Ledeen, [6]
Thus as the situation in Iraq
goes from just plain bad to disastrous for the US, with its major
‘ally’ the UK, turning tail, it is necessary to create a diversion,
thus ominous threats emerge in the form of ‘eyewitness accounts’ of war
preparations. Meanwhile, the BBC has been assailing us with endless
accounts of ‘our boys over there’ which is now being described in the
following manner,
‘Since
the end of the war in April 2003, troops have been helping to restore
essential infrastructure and services and provide security.’ — ‘Where are British troops and why?
This is called cleaning up the mess left behind by these latter-day
pirates of capital, turning the illegal invasion into a foreign aid
exercise gone wrong and to add insult to injury, when read in the
context of the article it’s the fault of the Iraqis that it has all
gone wrong! ‘Those ungrateful Iraqis, here we are, laying down our
lives just for your benefit and this is how you treat us!’, but this is
what imperial hubris is all about. US War Plans Are Nothing New
The US ruling class
have spelt out their objectives many times in many official and
quasi-official documents (eg, the Project for the New American Century)
and the latest, published by the American Enterprise Institute titled
‘The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction’ and
authored by one of the ‘brains’ behind the invasion of Iraq, Michael
Ledeen, former Iran-Contra player and convicted felon.[7]
“[T]he
White House decision to designate at least elements of Iran's
Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization, using the
president's authority under a September 2001 executive order.” [8]
But such projects are years in the making and there are alternate
scenarios to be developed because of course, reality intrudes, often in
the most unwelcome manner, for example, Iraq and even though the
occupation and its aftermath ranks as a crime ‘up there’ with the very
worst of the crimes committed by the ‘usual suspects’ over the
centuries, the public have begrudgingly accepted it, mostly out of
sheer ignorance of the facts (thanks to a lying mass media in cahoots
with the state) and that anyway, there didn’t appear to be any way of
stopping it. Logic dictated that the invasion of 2003 would happen
(short of a revolution aka the 1974 Portugese ‘Revolution of the
Flowers’); you don’t move an army of a quarter of a million all the way
to the top of the hill and then turn around and march all them down
just for the hell of it.
But the old adage, ‘once bitten, twice shy’ would seem to be applicable
here. Given what an obvious disaster the occupation of Iraq is,
especially from a propaganda perspective with all the lies that got
exposed in the run-up and after, to the invasion, that selling yet
another obvious disaster is proving to be extremely difficult, added to
which there are divisions in the ranks, both literally and
figuratively, as to the best way to ‘take out’ those damn Iranians and
their dumb idea that they should be left alone to conduct their own
affairs.
3. See ‘We Are Going To Hit Iran. Bigtime’
by Maccabee, Sat Sep 01, 2007. The story was then picked up by the
Daily Kos who in turn published retractions and explanations, here and here
Highly relevant link: What happened to the "instructions to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day?
OK, it was PsyOps, that's a relief. It wasn't our at-the-drop-of-a-tinfoil-hat world view that led us to make a testable prediction that was wrongo wrongo wrongo, we were manipulated into making that prediction so it doesn't count and we don't have to re-examine any of our assumptions. Whew! That was a close one.
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September 11, 2007
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It was early in 2006 when the first stories about an ‘imminent’ hit on Iran surfaced with everybody from Seymour Hersh to Michel Chossudovsky wading in with the ‘inside dope’ on the impending attack. So was it just their timing that was out? 
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