So the US finally attacked Iran, as most of us knew it would, sooner or later; the attack was inevitable. Not only due to pressure from the Israel lobby and the military-industrial complex, but also because the US has every reason to fear that BRICS will undercut US supremacy.
I woke up with a start in the middle of the night 21-22 June, and knew at once that now, just now, it had happened: the US had bombed Iran (even though Trump had stated, just two days earlier, that he would give Iran two weeks to mull their fragile position).
I will not dwell upon the consequences for the USA. I will not speculate about who will be the “winner”.
What is certain, though, is that the winner will not be the US – if for no other reason because the USA hasn’t won a single war since I was born. (Actually, that is not quite true: I urge you to listen to the historian David Gibbs explain how the US “won” the Kosovo War in 1999.)
Israel will not be the winner either. Israelis are roughly 8 million. As we have learnt from Tucker Carlson, Iran has a population of 92 million, lots and lots of mountains and tremendous pride. In fact, Israel has already suffered considerable damage.
We do not know how Israel’s neighbouring states will react, and to what extent authoritarian US-backed regimes will be able to restrain angry pro-Palestinian populations. After all, the Shiite Iranians supported the Sunni Palestinians, which the US-backed Sunni regimes did not. A lot of people must be very angry.
Iran will, of course, suffer more than bears thinking about. Iran has now been subjected to unprovoked attacks by two nuclear powers. Iran is not a nuclear power. I repeat: Iran is not a nuclear power! But pulverising countries is one of the things the US and Israel seem to find particularly enjoyable.
Moreover, World of Warcraft is not the only US forte. Geopolitical analysts tend to forget the tremendous soft power wielded by the US. Decades of Hollywood, jazz, popular music, Microsoft, Google Search, Netflix and HBO, etc., etc. and etc. dampen the sense of outrage that should have brought citizens of the world to the very doorsteps of their presidents’, kings’ and prime ministers’ dwellings. Citizens of the world should be loudly clamouring against the madness of launching the preliminaries of a new world war. We have been drugged into a state of numbness, and are blind and deaf to the mendacity of US narratives. Here, there and almost everywhere, we are under the sticky thumb of the US entertainment industry.
Iran has been coveted by the USA for a very long time. See the brief clip of General Wesley Clark (interviewed on Democracy Now in 2007). Wesley Clark is an extremely charming man, it seems, and he was considering running for president again when this interview took place. You might also listen to his amusing account, from 22 to 25 minutes into the full interview about plans for the invasion of Haiti. An exceptionally charming, I repeat, and dangerous man, with a wonderful sense of humour.
There are those who maintain that Israel is running the USA. There are others who maintain that “defence” of Israel is merely a pretext.
As the economist Michael Hudson puts it:
The motivation for the attack on Iran has nothing to do with any attempt by Iran to protect its national sovereignty by developing an atom bomb. The basic problem is that the United States has taken the initiative in trying to pre-empt Iran and other countries from breaking away from dollar hegemony and U.S. unipolar control.
So if you think that the cessation of hostilities between USA/Israel and Iran is anything but temporary, think again. Israel agreed to the ceasefire only to catch its breath. The war has just barely begun.
Meanwhile, back at base camp, what the EU will do is anybody’s guess. Europe has for some time seemed suicidal. European leaders are determined to engage in military Keynesianism. Nobody quite understands why. True, Chancellor Merz appears to be a perfect idiot. P.M. Starmer also appears to be a perfect idiot. But surely they are surrounded by teams of advisers, highly educated specialists?
I find David Gibbs’ take on the matter very interesting. The EU and Europe, he explains in the conversation referred to above, lost their independence during the Kosovo war of 1989-1990. It is not news to me to learn that most European states, including my own country, are US vassals. And it should not be news to me to learn that in a vassal state, even historians, political (and other) scientists, and journalists must spend much of their professional life genuflecting in the emperor’s anteroom. Confer the recent White House pressure on even the most prestigious US universities. In Debate on the CIA and Academe, David Gibbs offers valuable insight into how and why academia refrains from pointing out cracks in foreign policy narratives, about which there is a wealth of available information for those who have access to the sources.
I decided to check David Gibbs’s sources on the Kosovo War, and have taken a long look at his 2009 book “First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia”, which I recommend. I find his documentation compelling.
I know my compatriots, and maybe your compatriots, too, want to believe that we are on the right side in a battle between good and evil and that NATO is defending us in that battle. I have long suspected that we are being misled and that US foreign policy is not, and has never been about good versus evil.