« Home

The Road to Tehran Part II

I wanted to excerpt some passages from a Robert Parry column from yesterday that seem to fit with my previous post about a possible plot between Israel and the Bush administration to draw the US into a confrontation with Iran.

Parry writes:
Much of what happened appeared in the U.S. news media as simply Israel retaliating against provocations from Islamic militants. But, on another level, the events of July were not that spontaneous.

At a White House meeting on May 23, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Bush agreed on a strategy for escalating tensions in the Middle East with the goal of neutralizing Syria and forcing Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

The two leaders reportedly signed off on a timetable that made 2006 the year to deal with Iran’s nuclear program and 2007 the year to set new Israeli borders, either with the acquiescence of a more compliant Palestinian leadership or by Israel acting unilaterally.

Under the Bush-Olmert timetable, the Israeli government was less interested in winning immediate concessions from the Palestinians than it was in delivering powerful blows against Hamas and Hezbollah, which are supported by Syria and Iran.

As Israel attacked, the Bush administration provided diplomatic cover by resisting calls for a Lebanese cease-fire. Over the next few months, the United States intends to step up diplomatic, economic and, if necessary, military pressure on Iran.

Of course, in order for the neo-con goal of tranforming the Middle East to be implemented, Israel needed a leader who views were more akin to those of BushCo. Ariel Sharon wasn't turning out to be a likely candidate. Luckily he's out of the picture, replaced with someone more to Bush and friend's liking. Coincidence?

Now in Olmert, Bush has a new Israeli ally who shares a taste for “shock and awe” military tactics. Olmert took over the government’s reins after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon collapsed with a stroke in January 2006.

Ironically, Sharon, who had been an architect of earlier hard-line Israeli strategies including the 1982 Lebanon invasion and putting Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands in the West Bank, had decided to move in a different direction, away from confrontation with the Palestinians.

Many Israelis voted for Olmert because they thought he would carry out Sharon’s vision. Instead, Olmert came to share Bush’s strategy of using military force to shatter the old political structures in the Middle East and replace them with institutions more amenable to U.S. and Israeli interests.

Parry finishes with a warning about the limits (and consquences) of the reliance on force.

While this violence might be satisfying to Americans and Israelis eager to fight “World War III” or simply those who wish to inflict pain on Arabs, there is at least a reasonable argument that reliance on force won’t solve the region’s complex problems.

Indeed, there’s a very good chance that the bloodshed will just make everything a whole lot worse.