Hillary Clinton is on record as having said (during her unsuccessful bid for the White House), "we would be able to totally obliterate" Iranians should they threaten our ally Israel. There was a widespread understanding of the word "obliteration" as having meant the use of "tactical/surgical" nuclear bombs against Iran. Parroting the AIPAC claim that Iran represents an "existential danger to Israel," Hillary Clinton recently described a potentially nuclear Iran as an "extraordinary threat."10
President Obama's appointment of Dennis Ross as the point man in dealing with Iran is equally ominous. Ross is known as having developed a strategy of dealing with Iran that is called "engagement with pressure," which means projecting or pretending negotiation with Iran in order to garner broader international support for the US-sponsored economic pressure on that country. Here is how Flynt and Hillary Leverett, former National Security Council staff members, relate a conversation they had with Ross about his cynical strategy of engagement-with-pressure:
"In conversations with Mr. Ross before Mr. Obama's election, we asked him if he really believed that engagement-with-pressure would bring concessions from Iran. He forthrightly acknowledged that this was unlikely. Why, then, was he advocating a diplomatic course that, in his judgment, would probably fail? Because, he told us, if Iran continued to expand its nuclear fuel program, at some point in the next couple of years President Bush's successor would need to order military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets. Citing past 'diplomacy' would be necessary for that president to claim any military action was legitimate."11
It is no secret that AIPAC strongly favored Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential race for the White House. Although they failed in this bid, they succeeded in filling key foreign policy positions in the Obama administration with their favorites: Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State and Dennis Ross as the point man in dealing with Iran. Perhaps more importantly, they also succeeded in having Rahm Emmanuel, who served in the Israel Defense Forces, appointed as Obama's chief-of-staff.
Considering this team of advisors, who are not much different in their approach to Iran than their Neo-conservative counterparts of the Bush days, it stands to reason to argue that, at least in the context of the Middle East, President Obama works essentially from within the same metaphorical box of policy options as did his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
Nor is it surprising to see Mr. Obama use the same political toolbox in his approach to Iran as did Mr. Bush: the same narrative, the same premises, the same assumptions, and the same faulty intelligence or distorted information. These dubious assumptions and premises include,
(a) Iran's nuclear program is not a peaceful technological pursuit, as attested by both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), but a pursuit of nuclear weapons.
(b) Hamas is not a democratically elected government, but a terrorist organization; Hezbollah is not a major political party in Lebanon, but a terrorist organization; therefore, Iran's support of these two organizations is tantamount to supporting terrorism.
This spurious, obstructionist narrative -- borrowed without reservations from the Bush administration and its Neoconservative handlers -- are bound to render President Obama's rhetoric of "a new beginning with Iran" meaningless. It is hypocritical -- as well as offensive -- to talk about "a new beginning" while carrying out old policies of lies, demonization, threats, and subversion.
Iran poses no military threat to the United States or Israel -- or, for that matter, any other country in the world. The shrill noises coming out of Washington and Jerusalem, however, continue to relentlessly portray Iran as a menace to the national interests of the United States and an "existential threat" to Israel. Why? What accounts for this need of Iran as a boogeyman?
A widely shred view blames Iranian leaders, especially President Ahmadinejad, for the US-Israeli hostility toward Iran. What the proponents of this view overlook, however, is the fact that Iran's nuclear issue or Ahmadinejad's controversial statements about Israel are no more than distractions and excuses -- distractions from land grabbing, and excuses for war profiteering. The US-Israeli hostility toward Iran did not start with Ahmadinejad; nor will it end after him. The military-industrial-Likud alliance is certain to quickly find other distractions and boogeymen soon after Ahmadinejad is replaced by another president, whenever that maybe.
Just as a reliable prognosis of a disease requires a sound diagnosis, so too a sensible solution to the plague of war and militarism in the Middle East requires an objective identification of the root causes of the continued cycle of violence and bloodshed.
As I have briefly argued in this essay, two nasty viruses lie at the root of war and geopolitical convulsion in the Middle East. These are (a) the beneficiaries of war dividends (the military-industrial complex and associated businesses that benefit from war and military spending), and (b) partisans of territorial expansion in Palestine, that is, militant Zionism, as reflected, for example, in the policies of the Likud Party in Israel and those of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the United States. 12
These two powerful groups view Iran as a threat to their nefarious interests not because of its military power but because Iran exposes these two interest groups for what they are: real sources of war and mischief in the Middle East, driven by a thirst for more profits and more land.
It follows that efforts to end war and geopolitical turbulence in the Middle East require removing or reducing the destructive influences of these two extremely powerful interest groups in the shaping of the policies of the Middle East. This is admittedly a suggestion that is not easily realized. Some might even say it is altogether impractical. But there is simply no other way to achieve peace and stability in the region. It requires two major steps.
First, as the late General Smedley D. Butler pointed out long ago, it requires "taking profits out of war and arms production."13 This means greatly downsizing the military-industrial complex, closing down the nearly 800 US military bases overseas, and nationalizing the war/defense industry. In suggesting this drastic overhaul, I am not unmindful of the fact that millions of jobs, hundreds of thousands of businesses, and thousands of communities have become dependent on military spending. My suggestion is therefore to reallocate a major portion of military to non-military public spending so that the overall public spending would not diminish. This is, by the way, a suggestion that is sometimes referred to as substituting "peace dividends" for "war dividends."
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