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The Real Aim of Israel’s Bomb Iran Campaign
Israel Mission Attack Iran
- The idea of waging a U.S. war of destruction against Iran is obvious lunacy, which is why U.S. military leaders have strongly resisted it both during the Bush and Obama administrations. -
by Gareth Porter in Commondreams
Reuel Marc Gerecht’s screed justifying an Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening of the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction of House Resolution 1553 expressing full support for such an Israeli attack.
What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.
That has long been the Israeli strategy for Iran, because Israel cannot fight a war with Iran without full U.S. involvement. Israel needs to know that the United States will finish the war that Israel wants to start.
Gerecht openly expresses the hope that any Iranian response to the Israeli attack would trigger full-scale U.S. war against Iran. “If Khamenei has a death-wish, he’ll let the Revolutionary Guards mine the strait, the entrance to the Persian Gulf,” writes Gerecht. “It might be the only thing that would push President Obama to strike Iran militarily….” Gerecht suggest that the same logic would apply to any Iranian “terrorism against the United States after an Israeli strike,” by which we really means any attack on a U.S. target in the Middle East. Gerecht writes that Obama might be “obliged” to threaten major retaliation “immediately after an Israeli surprise attack.”
That’s the key sentence in this very long Gerecht argument. Obama is not going to be “obliged” to join Israeli aggression against Iran unless he feels that domestic political pressures to do so are too strong to resist. That’s why the Israelis are determined to line up a strong majority in Congress and public opinion for war to foreclose Obama’s options.
In the absence of confidence that Obama would be ready to come into the war fully behind Israel, there cannot be an Israeli strike.
Gerecht’s argument for war relies on a fanciful nightmare scenario of Iran doling out nuclear weapons to Islamic extremists all over the Middle East. But the real concern of the Israelis and their lobbyists, as Gerecht’s past writing has explicitly stated, is to destroy Iran’s Islamic regime in a paroxysm of U.S. military violence.
Gerecht first revealed this Israeli-neocon fantasy as early as 2000, before the Iranian nuclear program was even taken seriously, in an essay written for a book published by the Project for a New American Century. Gerecht argued that, if Iran could be caught in a “terrorist act,” the U.S. Navy should “retaliate with fury”. The purpose of such a military response, he wrote, should be to “strike with truly devastating effect against the ruling mullahs and the repressive institutions that maintain them.”
And lest anyone fail to understand what he meant by that, Gerecht was more explicit: “That is, no cruise missiles at midnight to minimize the body count. The clerics will almost certainly strike back unless Washington uses overwhelming, paralyzing force.”
In 2006-07, the Israeli war party had reason to believed that it could hijack U.S. policy long enough to get the war it wanted, because it had placed one of its most militant agents, David Wurmser, in a strategic position to influence that policy.
We now know that Wurmser, formerly a close adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu and during that period Vice President Dick Cheney’s main adviser on the Middle East, urged a policy of overwhelming U.S. military force against Iran. After leaving the administration in 2007, Wurmser revealed that he had advocated a U.S. war on Iran, not to set back the nuclear program but to achieve regime change.
“Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among ordinary Iranians,” Wurmser told The Telegraph. The U.S. attack was not to be limited to nuclear targets but was to be quite thorough and massively destructive. “If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don’t shoot a bear if you’re not going to kill it.”
Of course, that kind of war could not be launched out of the blue. It would have required a casus belli to justify a limited initial attack that would then allow a rapid escalation of U.S. military force. In 2007, Cheney acted on Wurmser’s advice and tried to get Bush to provoke a war with Iran over Iraq, but it was foiled by the Pentagon.
As Wurmser was beginning to whisper that advice in Cheney’s ear in 2006, Gerecht was making the same argument in The Weekly Standard:
Bombing the nuclear facilities once would mean we were declaring war on the clerical regime. We shouldn’t have any illusions about that. We could not stand idly by and watch the mullahs build other sites. If the ruling mullahs were to go forward with rebuilding what they’d lost–and it would be surprising to discover the clerical regime knuckling after an initial bombing run–we’d have to strike until they stopped. And if we had any doubt about where their new facilities were (and it’s a good bet the clerical regime would try to bury new sites deep under heavily populated areas), and we were reasonably suspicious they were building again, we’d have to consider, at a minimum, using special-operations forces to penetrate suspected sites.
The idea of waging a U.S. war of destruction against Iran is obvious lunacy, which is why U.S. military leaders have strongly resisted it both during the Bush and Obama administrations. But Gerecht makes it clear that Israel believes it can use its control of Congress to pound Obama into submission. Democrats in Congress, he boasts, “are mentally in a different galaxy than they were under President Bush.” Even though Israel has increasingly been regarded around the world as a rogue state after its Gaza atrocities and the commando killings of unarmed civilians on board the Mavi Marmara, its grip on the U.S. Congress appears as strong as ever. Moreover, polling data for 2010 show that a majority of Americans have already been manipulated into supporting war against Iran – in large part because more than two-thirds of those polled have gotten the impression that Iran already has nuclear weapons. The Israelis are apparently hoping to exploit that advantage. “If the Israelis bomb now, American public opinion will probably be with them,” writes Gerecht. “Perhaps decisively so.” Netanyahu must be feeling good about the prospects for pressuring Barack Obama to join an Israeli war of aggression against Iran. It was Netanyahu, after all, who declared in 2001, “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.
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Posted by Yanira Farray on Jul 31 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Israel, WarZone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Sadly Michael in the long run and a perverse way maybe it would be good to have Iran attacked. If Iran is attacked the economy of the United States and the world will be brought to it’s knees. The dollar would hit bottom, Israel would cease to exists, Jesus would not come again, and the whole Zionist cabal Christian and Jew crazy people would be exposed for what they are— evil crazy people.
Bullseye.
Thank you mr zionist jew. or are you one of their useless idiots?
Michael if you are referring to my statement about bombing Iran I was thinking if Israel is so intent on bombing Iran what is the worst thing that can happen to us
If they bomb Iran oil will stop to flow. If the flow of oil stops so does the worlds economy. Wall Street will crash, Zionists will lose all or most of their money and born again Christians will find out Jesus is not coming.
Ultimately christian Zionists will find find out after looking into the mirror they will find their anti Christ!
Strange some terrible things can at times end up doing good.
Sadly Bill, the kingpin Zionists wont lose any money, since they know full well that worthless fiat paper isn’t “money”. They know this because they also made it a point to confiscate the lion’s share of our true wealth in Gold and Silver (and made sure to buy up control of the industries that mine the stuff).
No, the goyim will crash, many relatively prosperous Jews may also crash (along with many not so prosperous) – which is also intended as a catalyst to force the ‘lesser brethren’ to embrace fully the Zionist shelter and ideology once and for all – but the top dogs will be sitting pretty with hyper inflated hard currency reserves well stashed away in offshore vaults. Bank on it.
No doubt most of the money scammed in the USA in the last years has been converted to gold and will be the medium of exchange in buying up the USA for a song after World War Three.
mike
The world’s largest gold producer, Barrick Gold, a Canadian company, is a spawn of the Rothschild banking empire. One of those strange things, it just happens, that some two-bit manufacturer of cheap electronics goods ends up corralling the largest collection of gold mines.
World War Three is not an acceptable option for any sane person. Sorry Bill.
Mike
Frankly I do think there will be a World War Three. To have a World War you need all parties involved. I do not believe the whole world is this stupid.
We have been led to believe in the US and pushed by American protestants and the born again christian fundamentalist concept of end of times as defined by people like John Hagee with the world coming to an end with a nuclear conflict.
I do not believe this. I do not hold that a nuclear exchange if it happens will destroy the world. I think there will be only suffering people, and a depopulated world.
I do think there is real truth in the belief Jews controlling wealth and power through the art of bribes and manipulation of the stock markets of all types, like commodity exchanges. Gold being one of them. They are busy in Latin America now at the moment bribing people, and manipulating commodities.
In Poland a non religious Jew told me that in Poland before World War 2 it was said that Jews joked that houses were for Jews and the streets were for Poles. It seems to me the anger directed at Jews did not happen in a vacuum.
Who said anything about World War 3? Not me. What I said was this. If Israel bombs Iran thinking it will help their cause they are wrong. It will destroy them! The bombing of Iran if bombed would be with conventional bombs.
Israel arrogant as they are are not that stupid to use nuclear bombs. However if conventional bombs were used it would still mean and end to mid east oil supply. Even the Saudi at some point will say enough is enough after have their oil production capabilities destroyed. This means a destruction of western economics.
As for Gold. I am not so sure Gold is this important as it was in the past. What is important is food and water. Who controls the food and water controls the world.
Bill has said it all. Hoo Rah!
Fighting an all out nuclear war against Israhell’s endless enemies is not an acceptable option for sane people.
The jews are already out saying the attack on Iran will be a “cake walk” as the psychopathic ignoramus Ken Addelman said about the attack on Iraq in 2003.
Mike
Thank God the US Military brass know better about the “cake walk”. The US mainstream press is is not incompetent but rather complicit in illegal war and murder by not making the American people fully aware of what is really going on here which is the purpose of Gareth porter’s article.
Mike
http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=15
~ And just who owns the Federal Reserve Bank? I will tell you: 1. The Rothschilds of London and Berlin; 2. Lazard Brothers of Paris; 3. Israel Moses Seif of Italy; 4. Kuhn Loeb and Warburg of Germany; 5. Lehman Brothers, Goldman, Sachs; 6. The Rothschild-controlled Rockefeller interests of New York.
The Zionist War For World Domination
Welcome To “REAL ZIONIST NEWS!”
My Name Is Brother Nathanael Kapner.
I Am A “Street Evangelist.”
I Grew Up As A Jew.
I Am Now An Orthodox Christian.
I Wish To Warn How Zionist Jews
Are Destroying Christianity Throughout The World
THE JEWISH HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD CONTROLS THE ECONOMY & POLITICS OF AMERICA!
~ Brother Nathanael Kapner, having grown up as a Jew with a grasp of the inner-workings and mind-set of World Jewry, expands upon last week’s The Jewish House of Rothschild Controls Our Lives:
~ ON JUNE 4 1963, President John F. Kennedy Signed Executive Order #11110, stripping the privately-owned Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest. With the stroke of a pen, President Kennedy declared that the privately-owned Federal Reserve Bank would soon be out of business.
~ When President Kennedy signed this Order, it returned to the Treasury Department the Constitutional power to create and issue money without going through the privately- owned Federal Reserve Bank. United States Notes were then issued as an interest-free currency.
~ President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22 1963 and the United States Notes he had issued were immediately taken out of circulation.
SEE: http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/JFK.html
# Br Nathanael: This is scary stuff. I am not so keen on “conspiracy theories” but this has a ring of truth to it — owing to the circumstances leading up to President Kennedy’s assassination and subsequent events as well. Why did President Lyndon Baines Johnson not continue President Kennedy’s Executive order? Was he afraid for his own life?
~ And just who owns the Federal Reserve Bank? I will tell you: 1. The Rothschilds of London and Berlin; 2. Lazard Brothers of Paris; 3. Israel Moses Seif of Italy; 4. Kuhn Loeb and Warburg of Germany; 5. Lehman Brothers, Goldman, Sachs; 6. The Rothschild-controlled Rockefeller interests of New York.
~ These are all Jewish names. Keep on peeling the onion and the Jewish House of Rothschild with their International Jewish Banking connections manifest their control over America’s society. This is scary stuff!
Kapner really nails it on the head and pulls no punches!
Mike
Just looked at an article on Yahoo news about Admiral McMullen’s saying the US has a plan in place to bomb Iran. Nothing new there, of course, but skimming over the latest of thousands and thousands of comments left me thinking it’s hopeless, Americans so thoroughly brainwashed that they’d call for bombing Iran without a moment’s thought to the moral depravity of thinking it’s there patriotic duty to demand the incineration of countless thousands of innocent men, women, and little children to suit an alien culture that will ultimately deal with them and their families in a similar fashion.
Because Dan,
If there is one thing my many years outside the shores of this country allowed me to see most clearly (and never more than upon my return to this insulated vacuum of controlled public awareness) it’s that the vast majority of Americans have no true morals, only a narcissistic sense of self entitlement.
In order for their to be true morality there must be an appreciation of what I personally refer to as “consistency of principle”. It is as simple as the age old injunction of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. A concept which falls flat on its face when expressed to the many glazed eyed sheep who sleep walk through daily life to the pulse of our “information as entertainment” culture.
It is, moreover, such a deeply internalized failure of our public psyche that even many otherwise “educated” or dare say “intelligent” individuals fail to recognize how often they themselves stop short of consistent application principle.
I’ll give you an easy “for instance”.
In the 80′s, you may recall, much ado was made by the MSM against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. No condemnation was spared and the notion of the “Evil Empire” was on everyone’s minds. Fast forward to post-911 only a little more than a generation later, and OUR invasion of Afghanistan was hailed by the same MSM as “the Good War”.
Notwithstanding the attempts of a goodly number of rational voices across cyber space to point out the cognitive dissonance at work, most folks simply refused to see the fundamental inconsistency of principle between “Soviet Invasion=bad, imperialistic” and “US Invasion = good, patriotic, humanitarian”.
We can of course cite many repeat examples both preceding that period and following, but one which remains constant within the country that truly drives me up a wall is the finger pointing at Iran. Here is a country which HAD a thriving and popular (L)iberal democratic tradition which brought a truly populist leader to the fore in the person of Mossedegh in the 1950s. So of course, because he chose to side with the interests of his people over those of British corporate hegemonists by nationalizing the oil production, we covertly removed him and set up a vicious tin pot dictator (who made Saddam look like a cub leaguer) whom the people naturally overthrew – after great suffering – in typically reactionistic favour of a religious tyranny.
Then of course, Washington demonstrates its patented adherence to the “rule of law” by denying the Iranian public normative justice when it offered the Shah sanctuary and refused to extradite him back to stand trial for his crimes against humanity. Not a peep from the US public on that score, yet 30 odd years later that same public is cheering gangbusters for our occupational kangaroo trial and execution of Saddam (illegally to boot) for his crimes. Once again, no popular cognizance of the complete inconsistency of principle in their attitudes.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg of thought I have been ruminating over for the past decade or more, but I trust you get my point.