John Bolton gets my vote to star in a remake of Poe's Fall of the
House of Usher. He is one sick dude.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/2/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Appointments of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo in the US Bring Us Closer
to
War in the Middle East
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent
01 April 18
If we are on the edge of a fresh crisis, centring on Iran, then the US is
in
a much weaker position than it was pre-Trump
Armed conflict between the US and Iran is becoming more probable by the day
as super-hawks replace hawks in the Trump administration. The new National
Security Adviser, John Bolton, has called for the US to withdraw from the
Iran nuclear deal of 2015 and advocated immediate regime change in Tehran.
The new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has said the agreement, which
Trump
may withdraw from on 12 May, is "a disaster". Trump has told Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will not accept a deal with "cosmetic
changes" as advocated by European states, according to Israeli reporters.
If
this is so, then the deal is effectively dead.
The escalating US-Iran confrontation is causing menacing ripples that could
soon become waves across the Middle East. The price of crude oil is up
because of fears of disruption of supply from the Gulf. In Iran, the value
of the rial is at its lowest ever, having fallen by a quarter in the last
six months. In Iraq, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi admits his greatest
fear
is a confrontation between the US and Iran fought out in Iraq.
A dangerous aspect of the super-hawk approach to Iran is similar to that of
the Bush administration in the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In
both cases, those calling for use of armed force had, or have, lethally
little knowledge of what they were/are getting into. Pompeo had a simple
solution to the Iranian problem when he was still a congressman, telling
reporters it would take "under 2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear
capacity".
Optimists, though these have become fewer on the ground in Washington in
the
last few weeks, are dismissive of such bellicose rhetoric. But whatever
Trump and his lieutenants think they are doing, their words have
consequences. Governments have to take threats seriously and devise
counter-measures to meet them in case the worst comes to the worst. In the
wake of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, American neo-conservatives
boastfully proclaimed it would be "Baghdad today, Tehran and Damascus
tomorrow". These slogans were enough to ensure the Syrian and Iranian
governments did everything in their power to make sure that the US could
not
stay in Iraq.
Looking back, the invasion of Iraq marked the turning point for the
hegemony
of the Anglo-Saxon powers - the US and the UK - on the world stage. The
fraudulent justification for the war and the failure of those who launched
it to get their way against relatively puny opponents turned a conflict
which was meant to be a show of strength into a demonstration of weakness.
Foreign intervention in Libya and Syria in 2011 produced similar
calamities.
If we are on the edge of a fresh crisis in the Middle East, centring on
Iran, then the US is in a much weaker position than it was pre-Trump.
Domestically divided and short of allies, it can no longer control the
rules
of the game as it once did. Over the last year there are two examples of
this: in May, Trump visited Saudi Arabia giving unequivocal backing to its
rulers and blaming the troubles of the region on Iran. But it turned out
that the prime target of Saudi Arabia and UAE was not Iran but tiny Qatar.
All Trump had achieved was to break the previously united front of Gulf
monarchies against Iran.
In another major misjudgement by the US in January, the supposedly moderate
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that the US would be keeping its
forces in Syria after the defeat of Isis, and intended to get rid of
President Bashar al-Assad and roll back Iranian influence. This ambition
was
largely fantasy, but the Russian and Turkish reaction was real. Four days
after Tillerson's arrogant declaration, the Turkish army poured into
northern Syria with Russian permission and within two months had eliminated
the enclave of Afrin, inhabited by Kurds who are the only US ally in Syria.
The Kurds are now rather desperately hoping they will not be left in the
lurch by the US in the event of a Turkish military assault on the main
Kurdish-held territory in north-east Syria.
I was in the Kurdish-held zone in Syria earlier this month and wondered
what
the US will do if the Turks did decide to advance further. The north Syrian
plain east of the Euphrates is dead flat with little cover, while the main
Kurdish cities are right on the Turkish border and highly vulnerable. The
US
only has 2,000 troops there, and their effectiveness depends on their
ability to call in devastating airstrikes by the US air force. This is a
powerful option, but would the US really use it in defence of the Kurds
against Nato ally Turkey?
What Trump claims was President Obama's weakness of will and poor
negotiating skills was in reality an astute ability to match US means to US
interests and avoid being sucked into unwinnable wars. This was never
really
understood by the Washington foreign policy establishment, which is stuck
in
the pre-2003 era when US strength was at its height in the years after the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Still less is it grasped by super-hawks like
Bolton and Pompeo, with no idea of the political and military minefields
into which they are about to stumble.
The US establishment and its allies may be aghast at Trump withdrawing from
the nuclear deal, but it looks more than likely he is going to do it.
Sanctions on Iran may be reimposed, but these are never quite the winning
card that those imposing them imagine, whatever the suffering inflicted on
the general population. Sanctions unilaterally imposed by Trump may damage
Iran, but they will also isolate the US.
Whatever the outcome of a confrontation between the US and Iran, it is not
going to "Make America Great Again". The northern corridor of the Middle
East, south of Turkey and north of Saudi Arabia, has always been the
graveyard of US interventionism: this was true of Lebanon in the 1980s when
the US embassy was blown up, and when 241 US services personnel (including
220 marines) were killed by a truck bomb in Beirut. This was true in Iraq
between 2003 and 2011, and Syria from 2011 to the present day. The US has
commonly blamed Iran for these frustrations, an explanation that has some
validity, but the real reason is that the US has been fighting a sect
rather
than a single state. All these countries where the US has failed either
have
a Shia majority, as in the case of Iran and Iraq, a plurality, as in
Lebanon, or are a ruling minority, as in Syria. As the most powerful Shia
state, Iran has an immense advantage when it comes to fighting its enemies
in such a sympathetic religious terrain.
The new line-up in Washington is being described as "a war cabinet" and it
may turn out to be just that. But looking at ignorant, arrogant men like
Bolton and Pompeo, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that it will all
end
in disaster.
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