In announcing to the American public and the world at large the failure of the mission, Carter -- according to the dictates of the unofficial Truman 'doctrine' viz a viz where the 'buck' stops -- took responsibility for the disaster, and even used eerily similar wording to that of JFK when he publicly revealed the outcome of the BOP fiasco. From then on, The Gipper had Carter by the presidential short'n'curlies. In the view of many pundits at the time and later, the election was 'all over Rover' well before a single vote was cast.
And though the Shah's ar*e was no more with his death in a US hospital in mid-1980, it was 'all over Rover' for anyone else still standing. The Embassy 'squatters' in Teheran effectively held hostage Carter's attempt to seek a second term, an outcome facilitated by Ronald Reagan's campaign team engaging in treasonous back channel finagling with the new Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini's henchmen to withhold release of the hostages until after the November presidential election. The objective herein was to preclude an "October Surprise" (an early release of the hostages) that would've guaranteed Carter's re-election. The rest, as they say, is history.
-- Burning Down the House (How to Roast a Pig) --
With the Gipper's inevitable victory then, it was one where not just America, but the world was never to be the same again. None of this is to suggest it ever is in these situations, of which there were few in this case anyway. The Iranian Revolution was more than a revolution then; it was a geopolitical tsunami that swamped a sh*t-load of people and nations in its wake. In so many respects, the waves are still rippling. And even at this point, one imagines the CIA struggled to understand that blowback of this kind was bad for business, and might continue to undermine its credibility, effectiveness, and morale if it persevered down this path.
As history would have it, this idea never really caught on though. For their part, the Islamic Revolutionaries and their ilk may or may not have had their own version of jihadist karma; if they did they doubtless weren't averse to providing karma some earthly assistance in order for it to work its magic. The Hostage Crisis was ample evidence of that. And they (or at least their heirs apparent such as ISIS, Al Nusra, Boko Harum et. al.) still are apparently. That is, keen to give karma a helping hand where and whenever possible. Depending very much of course on who their paymasters are. Inshallah of course!
In rounding things up herein, it is perhaps best to return to William Engdahl for some insight into the contemporary significance of the preceding narrative. In a recent interview wherein he addressed the developments taking place within and across the Greater Middle East, for him Donald Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel wasn't just about arms sales, shoring up their respective alliances, and reasserting America's influence in the region. It was about:
'...setting events into motion in order to fundamentally alter the present balance of power in the entire Middle East to the greater advantage of the United States and US energy geopolitics.'
By any measure that's a big call, and not just because it would seem that the U.S. has forfeited much of its prestige, influence, and power over the past decades of its political interventions, its wars of proxy, hybrid or direct aggression, and its unequivocal support of Israel, something that would be required in spades in order to achieve such lofty goals. For Engdahl, Washington has already bitten off more than it can chew, without considering the ructions taking place between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in their Mexican standoff with Qatar.
This latter development clearly resulted from discussions during Trump's visit and is one whose significance few observers should underestimate, at least without some understanding of the real backstory, an "understanding" which should include first and foremost a simple question: Which country did Trump visit right after Saudi Arabia? And with Turkey lining up with Iran -- the latter already an ally of Syria, the former a key player in the efforts to relieve Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of the burdens of power during the past five years -- on the side of Qatar, the standoff is creating some very strange geopolitical bedfellows.
None of us should be fooled by the rhetoric, because at the heart of these machinations and maneuvers is energy -- oil of course, and now especially, gas -- as it always has been. It's certainly not, nor has it ever been, about freedom, democracy, liberty or any of the usual bromides trotted out for the unthinking masses, or the U.S.'s oft-cited "responsibility to protect". In terms of the geopolitical actors involved in the Great Game du jour, Engdahl notes,
'...no political power has been more responsible for launching the recent undeclared gas wars than the corrupt Washington cabal that makes policy on behalf of the so-called deep state interests. The Trump Administration policy in the Middle East--and there is a clear policy, rest assured--might be compared to that of the ancient Chinese fable about the farmer who burnt down his house in order to roast a pig. In order to control the emerging world energy market around "low-CO2"- natural gas, Washington has targeted not only the world's largest gas reserve country, Russia. She is now targeting Iran and Qatar.'
Nor is the "Game" about combatting terrorism per se, as terrorism has always served the interests of the major power players, an observation one will never hear mentioned in the mainstream media or political discourse. Of course one of the official pretexts for the demands being placed on Doha by the Saudis and the other Gulf states is Qatar's support for terrorism, accusations which emanating from either country are as fatuous and hypocritical as it gets.
'We must keep in mind that all serious terrorist organizations are state-sponsored. All [of them]. Whether DAESH or Al Nusra or Mujahideen in Afghanistan or Maute Group in [the] Philippines. The relevant question is which states sponsor which terrorists[?] Today NATO is the one most complicit in sponsoring terrorism as a weapon of their geopolitical designs. And within NATO the United States is sponsor number one, often using Saudi money and until recently, ironically, Qatari funds.'
There should be no surprises here for students of Deep History. These factors have been the driving forces of 'full spectrum dominance' geopolitics and geoeconomics forever and a day, with the 1953 Iran narrative as we've seen providing hard-core evidence of this reality. It is also about the Regime Renovators pressing on regardless, which in this instance translates to isolating and then destroying Iran (a la Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria et. al.), Washington's, Riyadh's, and Tel Aviv's common be'te noir.
Now these considerations are not mutually exclusive by any means. On the Saudi-Qatari standoff, Engdahl had the following to say: 'Washington wanted to punish Qatar for seeking natural gas sales with China priced not in US dollars but in Renminbi. That apparently alarmed Washington, as Qatar is the world's largest LNG exporter and most to Asia.'
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