The Iran Gambit II

By Peter Koenig

August 14, 2015 "Information Clearing House" -  Gambit I was the start of false accusations by the then Bush Administration in 2007 that Iran was preparing a nuclear weapon, when in fact Iran had no such ambitions at all, but a plan to open an Iranian Oil Bourse (IOB) in Teheran, an international hydrocarbon exchange, where all countries, hydrocarbon producers or not, could trade this (still) principal energy source in euros, as an alternative to the US dollar. This would have devastated the dollar as a hegemonic fiat currency – still used on false trust as the main world reserve currency.

When Saddam Hussein had a similar plan in 2000, to sell Iraq’s hydrocarbons in euros as soon as the illegal US imposed UN oil embargo ended, Iraq was bombed to ashes. After the Shock and Awe attack in March 2003, Iraq was turned into a gigantic, chaotic mess of CIA and US military guided civil strife, mass suicide bombings and a battlefield without frontiers that to this day claimed more than one and a half million lives – and mounting. Shock and Awe is a military doctrine, written in 1996 by Harlan Ullman and James Wade, two military strategists, as a tool to achieving rapid dominance, the product of the National Defense University – applicable at any time again, if and when the Pentagon pressed by the military industrial complex deems it necessary. Shock and Awe is also the leading strategy for a ‘preventive first strike attack’, a euphemism to justify any Washington / Pentagon aggression.

But Iran is not Iraq. As a prelude to full dominance, both countries were terribly weakened by the Washington instigated Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988, the longest conventional war of the 20th Century, where the US participated on both sides through proxies and weapon deliveries, as usual when universal destruction of both sides is sought. US funded militias of Kurdistan were siding with Iran, and Iranian Mujahidins also supported by Washington, were fighting with Ba’athist Iraq. More than a million people died in that war – and countless more were injured and made homeless. While the borders of the two countries remained intact, both countries’ infrastructure and military capacity was devastated. Exactly the way Washington wanted it. Because Pax Americana, the precursor to the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century), both thought out, written and strategized on behalf of the US State Department, by Washington Zionist think-tanks (sic), already then foresaw that both states had to fall in order to allow the tandem, the wagging tail – Israel – and the barking dog – the US of A – to become the hegemon of the Middle East, stealing its resources and destroying Israel’s imaginary enemies, the Islamic nations that surrounded it.

Iran’s fake and invented ‘nuclear threat’ was a perfect pretext for the US succumbing to Israel’s pressure in 2007, pressure exerted by the all-powerful AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) in the US Congress. This was then; I call it Gambit I. 

In the meantime, most of the same US intelligence agencies that assured the US government in 2003 that Iraq had no WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction), declared also that Iran had no intentions to develop nuclear weapons. Under pressure from Israel, these intelligence reports were ignored by the Zionist owned and directed Anglo-Saxon mass media covering 90% of news propagated to the west. Instead, the world was manipulated to believe that Iran is a threat not only to Israel and the Middle East, but to the world at large.

At the initiative of the US, the UN Security Council in 2006 passed Resolution 1936 imposing sanctions affecting mostly Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemical sectors, other commercial dealings and confiscation of Iranian assets abroad. The pretense was that Iran refused to suspend its uranium enrichment program which the West was made to believe would serve in developing nuclear arms. Iran assured they wanted to use enriched uranium for energetic and medical purposes.

Initially even the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that there was no evidence that Iran pursued manufacturing an atomic bomb. In fact, the IAEA asserted that Iran’s enrichment process reached a mere 20%, far from the 97% necessary for a nuclear bomb, for which at least another 7-10 years were needed. But as all international agencies have to bend to the bidding of the naked emperor, the IAEA also changed its discourse. 

Under a barrage of propaganda and lies, Iran had to be made a pariah state. The so-called leaders of the West (sic) know of course better. They know that the only threats to the Middle East and the world are the two rogue states, Israel with more than 200 nuclear warheads and the US with a nuclear power that could destroy the planet several times over. But nobody dares talking about it. Especially Israel can never be critically mentioned. Faced with Israeli-Zionist atrocities, the public has to shut-up, lest it will be accused of anti-Semitism.

To the detriment of the Iranian population, their country was put under a strict sanctions program in the hope that people would stage a coup, overturning their elected government, so that yet again, Washington could place its puppet at the helm of this proud and impressive Islamic nation, like in 1953, after the CIA overdrew and assassinated the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Only in 2013 – 60 years later – the CIA admitted their involvement in the coup. 

As a coup did not happen – enters Gambit II. By now the western world is convinced that Iran has to be put on her knees; that she constitutes a nuclear threat to the world. So-called negotiations of the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, UK and the US + Germany) for the elimination of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, took place several times in Geneva. On each occasion Iran was utterly humiliated by John Kerry, the personification of US arrogance. Finally on 2 April 2015, meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, the P5+1 and Iran reached a provisional framework agreement which was expected to lead eventually lifting most of the sanctions, against severe limits to Iran’s nuclear agenda. In fact so severe, that Iran’s peaceful nuclear research program is devastated. While the agreement is hailed as an Iranian success – it represents loss and humiliation – in return for the lifting of western sanctions – maybe.

Now that the deal is ready to be voted on by Congress in September 2015, Netanyahu is all out viciously campaigning in the US Congress – yes you read correctly, in the Congress of another sovereign state – against the deal – a deal which as it stands is a mere slap in the face of Iran. AIPAC is spending millions in propaganda and lie campaigns – and in literally buying US Congressmen to vote against the pact.

In a recent Huffpost, David Bromwich wrote “Benjamin Netanyahu is laying siege to the Congress of the United States, not for the first time. He has thrown his voice and channeled his influence into the arena of American legislative politics, to abort the P5+1 nuclear settlement with Iran…” – Bromwich goes on referring to a strategic document called a “Clean Break”, written largely by Zionist neocon war-monger Richard Perle. The memorandum calls for Israel to break free from diplomacy, once and for all; i.e. no more negotiations with Palestine – not even the resemblance of negotiations – towards the creation of a separate state. The memorandum propagates the idea of Israel, with the help of Washington, becoming the dominant power of the Middle East. That means that three countries had to fall or to be messed up into chaos – Iraq, Syria and Iran. They also happen to be countries singled out for destruction by the PNAC – and so far the plan is by and large on schedule.

Israel / AIPAC bullying goes even further. AIPAC has fully financed a trip to Israel for 58 members of the US Congress from 4 – 10 August. These lawmakers were commanded by Netanyahu directly – if they wanted to continue receiving (financial) support in the future of prominent Jewish donors. The servile Congressmen accepted to fly to Israel, rather than to visit their home constituency, as is tradition in Congress’s summer break. 

There is hardly anything that beats such stark corruption – openly committed by the state of Israel and obviously in full consent with the Charter of the US Congress. Corruption is rampant and there seems to be no US law against it. And the US public, the constituents of the corruptees? – They close their eyes, or don’t even know what’s happening. 

Now Obama, a lame duck, in his last year of Presidency, is coming out accusing Netanyahu and his gang that they are intending to derail the Iran deal. Obama appears to be angry at Israel’s influencing the US Congress. He says “Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it's resolved through force, through war. Those are -- those are the options.”

As if Obama didn’t know before that his make-believe nemesis, Netanyahu, would never approve of any deal with Iran, no matter how devastating and humiliating it is for Iran. Netanyahu wants the outright destruction of the Islamic Republic of Iran, hence it was written in the PNAC and in Richard Perle’s “Clean Break”.

If Obama, who boasts of being involved in 7 (seven) wars around the world, was serious about reigning in Israel, he could have done that years ago and could still do it today. How? – by simply withholding the US$ 3 billion annual US tax payers ‘grant’ Israel receives from Washington in the form of budget subsidies and weapons – still as a result of the Camp David accord between Israel and Egypt, brokered in 1978 by then President Carter.

The Gambit II is crystal clear; Obama attempts to make the world believe that he laments Israel’s boycotting the P5+1 Iran agreements, when in fact he knew from the very beginning that Israel strives, as does Washington, for regional and world subjugation. He would have the power to control Israel through many different means, including withholding of the US$ 3 billion US tax payers allocation, as well as declaring Israel / AIPC’s corrupting of the US Congress as illegal. But with the US-Israeli joint objective of world dominance in mind, countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria are not allowed to regain their national sovereignty. To achieve this any means are accepted. These countries have to be subdued under whatever pretext. So – Netanyahu is doing Obama a great favor. – Never mind the brainwashed European and American public, Russia and China, both interested in a free and peaceful Middle East will surely not fall for this latest abject Washingtonian scam.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution – Essays from the Resistance.