NYT Magazine: The Secret History of the Push to Strike Iran

An excellent piece in the New York Times Magazine feature story.

While it tells only the US and Israeli sides of the story, it tell that story well -- and without allowing too much of the usual propaganda to get in the way of the story either. Almost all the main players are interviewed, whether in Israel or in the US, to tell this story. It is long but for anyone with an interest in the "realities" as perceived by the US and Israeli side regarding Iran, this is probably as authoritative a piece as any you will find. I recommend it even though it is written from the perspective of the side(s) that have been working feverishly to deny Iran a capability that I believe it should have.

If you don't assume anything, and just read it all, you will see all sides to the story (all the relevant ones in the US and Israel) are treated as fairly as the facts of the case would allow. Which shouldn't be surprising since pretty much all of them are ultimately interviewed and their comments and viewpoints reflected in this piece as well.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/magazine/iran-strike-israel-america.html

 

And I am more than ready to see Iran have nukes so such ideas never come to pass. But, unfortunately, many of the Israeli maneuvers covered in that article, threatening to start a war it couldn't finish and which have dragged the US and many others into the fight at the end, led many voices and forces to combine to find a so-called "middle-ground" and pursue pressures and policies which are intended to make sure only Israel has nukes in the region. This is one reason, but not the only or primary one, that I was opposed to the JCPOA from the beginning. First, it robbed Iran of a surge capacity (the capacity to build nukes in quick order if so required) Iran had already developed. Second, it robbed Iran of this capacity (built at huge costs, financially and otherwise) on the basis of predictably fraudulent promises -- promises that were never kept even before Trump scrapped the deal. Third, because it established the wrong precedent: the idea that pressure on Iran will eventually pay off, creating an atmosphere which provided incentives for such pressures to be maintained and even added to them.

Anyway, at the moment, we have an uneasy stalemate in the region. After Hezbollah finally retaliated in response to Israel's latest acts of aggression, this time bringing them to attack a target in Lebanon, Israel blinked and showed it realizes that an actual war with Hezbollah isn't going to be something it would want to see start. Similarly, when the US sent the USS Abraham Lincoln to the region in May, it had promised a "devastating response" to any action by Iran against the interests of the US or US allies. After several incidents that involved such attacks by Iran, the US position on the issue has changed. It has changed because war with Iran isn't something anyone with any familiarity with the issues would want. If you read the article, you will see that the strongest voices against any war with Iran (whether in the US or Israel) have always been the military leaders who would be tasked to conduct such a war. The ones flaming these sentiments, on the other hand, are ideologues acting as arm chair generals: people like Bibi Netanyahu in Israel and John Bolton in the US (and the figures behind them, such as nut cakes like Sheldon Adelson).

 

Reports about Iranian "nut-cakes", while not entirely false, are highly exaggerated. Everyone in the world, and not just Iranians, need to worry about the real nut-cakes (with nukes, money and all the trappings of power that a superpower has at its disposal) who try to stroke fears of such 'nut-cakes' in Iran.

In the meantime, talking about 'nut-cakes', this article in Israel's Haartez poses an interesting question -- albeit, as always, covered by a lot of nonsense and propaganda. But before I post it, let me also say this: regardless of what 'reformist' or 'moderate' or simply corrupted politicians in Iran might wish, the chances that Iran would agree to any talks with the US aren't all that high these days. Until America fixes its problems internally, there is no deal with the US that can prove any more lasting and reliable than the one the Trump (like the rest of the Republicans and even many Democrats at the time) promised to scrap and then proceeded to do so.

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.pr...and-still-keep-evangelicals-onboard-1.7802698
Can Trump Change Course on Iran and Still Keep Evangelicals Onboard?
Contradictory signs have started to emerge from the White House about its Iran policy, but evangelicals are confident the U.S. president will not do anything to jeopardize Israel’s security

So, basically, it all goes back to the same folks. The ones who have been plotting against Iran and who will never be satisfied until they get the "implosion" they are looking for. My preference, however, if these are our only choices, is for an "explosion" and not an "implosion". I have gotten to the point that I think the US/Israel and Iran/Hezbollah might just have to ultimately fight this out in the open, in a real war. I am sure the former imagine they hold all the cards, but not everything they think will prove true.

 

If the choice is between "implosion" (i.e., an Iranian version of what transpired in Syria) and an "explosion" (i.e., war) my preference is the latter. But not the kind of war that the neocons hope, which is for it to be merely some 'sanction enhancers" to further weaken the regime. An all-out of war, with Iran/Hezbollah retaliating in force to any American/Israeli attack, which will then force the US to commit its troops to taking over Iran and have the responsibility to at least try to fix the mess they have created. Or, alternatively, admit defeat and stop their attempts at strangulating Iran.

To be sure, nothing in what I said should be taken to suggest the US/Israeli "implosion plan" for Iran is going to work or succeed. In fact, Iran looks like it has successfully weathered the early storm and is quite prepared to handle what the US is throwing its way. But if at any point it looks like an "implosion" is likely, I prefer war as mentioned above.

 

I am certainly thrilled with anyone with Bolton's dispositions is left for now with twitter as his most potent tool. But there are plenty of other Boltons all around the US and its politics, including certainly in and around the Trump administration. A real change in the dynamics that were charted, even if only superficially, in the NYT article above, will not come until America first fixes its own issues internally.

In the meantime, while Bolton was Israel's most reliable spokesman in Washington, and even if Trump is a bit annoyed with the Israelis who have been trying to force on a road he isn't all that thrilled to follow, ultimately the dozens of figures within the Trump administration whose job is to carry the brief for Israel, the hundreds of paid lobbyists who will try to steer him in that direction, the thousands who sit in various think tanks, media organizations and other places meant to manufacture consent for their policies, and even some in-laws and other voices who have befriended Trump in the past, are all going to be telling him what he may not to hear, but unfortunately will not be able to resist either.

https://thehill.com/opinion/interna...clear-breakout-easily-could-become-a-sneakout
How Iran's nuclear breakout easily could become a 'sneakout'

 

I guess the US is too embarrassed to admit that the expensive junk it has been selling to the Saudis couldn't pick up an attack by the Houthis on one of the best protected installations in Saudi Arabia. And who better to blame for it than Iran?

As I mentioned, Bolton or no Bolton, there is little that I see changing in the dynamics in the relationship between Iran and the US. At least none anytime soon.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/14/us-blames-iran-for-drone-strikes-on-saudi-oilfield.html
US blames Iran for strikes on Saudi oil sites: ‘Unprecedented attack on world’s energy supply’

• Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Iran is responsible for the drone attacks on important facilities in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province that reportedly forced the kingdom to shut down half of its oil production on Saturday.
• Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the attacks, which created a huge fire at a processor essential to global energy supplies.
• “We call on all nations to publicly and unequivocally condemn Iran’s attacks,” Pompeo said.

p.s.
How is the Houthis taking out 50% of the Saudi oil supplies for a few days an "unprecedented attack on the world's energy supply", but the US imposing what amounts to a world-wide boycott on the sale and purchase of Iranian oil, taking as much as 80%+ of Iran's oil exports out of the 'world energy supply', not an issue!

 

I don't think there was much of a chance that lran would agree to the meeting, even if some of the sanctions were lifted or the French proposal for a $15 billion pre-purchase of oil, was accepted, but the chances of it now are even lower.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-dampens-faint-chance-of-a-trump-iran-meeting
Saudi attack dampens faint chance of a Trump-Iran meeting

 

As the situation has heated up considerably, and is dominating the news, I would have expected more attention to this issue by the gossip columnists on this forum

 

Your views on the dynamics of war with Iran are totally uninformed. Even America's military leaders, those who have been trying to educate Trump what war would Iran would really entail as he faces enormous pressures from the usual suspects and hates being portrayed as "weak", recognize that would you say is simply reposting a lot of propaganda you have been exposed to. Not much more.

As for Iran's "Islamic regime", while it is a work in progress and there is still work to be done to make what I say as evident to you as it might have otherwise, let I will simply post what I wrote elsewhere in a slightly different context:
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I like to bring to close my views on all of this, saying things that will be difficult to explain here and now. But I will say it anyway.

Iran is a nation with a conscious and continuous connection to its past. None of its struggles now are new; they represent struggles that it has always faced, going back to the mists of time. To when recorded history was mixed in with a lot of myths and legends, in some ways just like now.

At its core, Iranian ideology - derived from its Zoroastrian heritage - sees the world as a place for a cosmic battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Unlike in the monotheistic tradition of the Abrahamic religions, the result of this battle isn't foreordained. We have a choice and purpose in life: each of our individual decisions to side with good or evil affects which side of the battle may ultimately prevail.

Although Norouz is a holiday predating Islam, one which traces its root to Iran's Zoroastrian tradition, even in the Islamic Republic of Iran, this is Iran's most important holiday. The first day in the calendar, and the most important festival of the year, the celebration of the ancient Persian new year, called Norouz, still sees our clerics join the feast and pay homage to this holiday, marking the beginning of the year with the coming of Spring at the stroke of the March equinox. And thereafter, until the 13th day after Norouz, when Iranians go out to picnic and discard evil during a festival called Sizdah bedar, most Iranians will be on holiday during these 14 days.

When we aren't celebrating, however, we do have a very important holiday from our Shia Islamic calendar that brings most Iranians together. That holiday, known as Ashura, is when Iranians mourn. Above all, what they mourn is the victory of the forces of evil over the forces of good, in an ancient battle which took place near Karbala in present day Iraq. The site of that battle, where the forces of Imam Hussein fell to the tyrant Yazid, is not far from the site of the battle that saw the armies of Sassanid Iran be defeated at the hands of the armies of Islam.

It is not just in the festivals we celebrate, and the ones we mourn, that the footprints of Iran's ancient traditions are felt in the consciousness of modern Iran. The Persian renaissance of the 9th and 10th century, spurred above all by the wide popularity of Iran's epic, the Shahnameh (or Book of Kings) -- complied in 60,000 couplets by Iran's national poet, Ferdowsi -- didn't simply keep the Persian language alive for that language to then become, thanks to some of the greatest works in world literature by poets and writers like Rumi, Hafez, Sa'adi and many others, the lingua franca of a large swath of territory in the Muslim world. It also gave an alternative account of history, one mixed in with its own myths and legends, but one that did what Ferdowsi had promised to do when he said: I brought to life the Ajam (the derogatory term used by Arabs to refer to mainly Persians) with my Persian and when he said: If IRAN ceases, so shall I.

From Ferdowi afterwards, just like it was before the conquest of Iran by the Arabs, whoever wanted to establish legitimate rule over IRAN, needed to first know and pay true homage to that tradition and history. Nor was it enough for someone to celebrate that history, like the Shah did in his grand celebration of 2,500 years of Persian history in 1971 bringing together foreign heads of state and dignitaries from all over the world, only to have them served by cuisine flown by Maxim in Paris and copying the fashion in vogue in Paris or in London or in Rome. And, certainly not, if the person claiming such mantle, is mainly seeking just a privileged position for himself and his nation, in a table set by those who are feasting on evil, not anything good. Evil being above all, the forces of ugliness, darkness, ignorance and above all lies. And good being beauty and light and above all the truth.

The Mantle of the Prophet in Iran is a much more profound mantle than anything that can be found in any of the scriptures or ideologies that some of you want to peddle in Iran. Indeed, when a pig like Trump promises the "end of Iran", he has no clue that the "end of Iran" will only come with the end of history.

 

War with Iran will have nothing in common with the propaganda show you were exposed to as "shock and awe". That propaganda show was meant to bury the ghosts of Vietnam, building on some fortunate and some irrelevant or misunderstood lessons from Desert Storm, to paint air power as something it has never been to pave the way for PNAC. The fact that there have been numerous air wars since then, be it the won waging against the Houthis by Saudi Arabia, or Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006, or the facts that you could have easily picked up if you bothered to look beyond the images carefully implanted into your mind by shock and awe, makes your failure to understand this less excusable.

First, on the facts regarding Desert Storm and then "shock and awe" in 2003. Desert Storm did not do much of any serious damage to anything of military significance, be it Iraq's forces, or even Iraq's command and control. Even easier targets such as airfields and Iraq's air force, were not sufficiently damages to prevent a mass escape of Iraqi planes to Iran 3 days into the air campaign with a total of 130+ of Iraq's best planes flow from airfields supposedly decimated, by planes and pilots that shouldn't have been able to fly anymore much less coordinate such a mass flight. In the meantime, Iraq's Scuds continued to fire from the rather small area their range required they be fired from, despite numerous attempts by the US to take them out. And even though those were liquid fueled missiles which required up to 24 hours to be prepared and fueled, making their detection much easier than trying to detect solid fueled missiles. Desert Storm didn't take out Iraq's generals, nor Saddam, nor much of anything. Even Saddam's WMD was destroyed afterwards by Saddam under the terms of the ceasefire, not by American air power. Instead, various factors led to Saddam's forces being routed so easily afterwards, the most important one being his own decision (under Russian guidance) to withdraw his troops from Kuwait on the eve of the ground invasion. Those forces then being massacred in the so-called highway of death. By 2003, on the other hand, Saddam was mostly something akin to the mayor Baghdad and yet, even his defenses around the city were compromised long before any troops moved into Baghdad. Most of his generals, who had been contacted by the CIA, had already cut deals and left their posts when the American forces came to take Baghdad. At the end, it wasn't shock and awe that did anything. Even Saddam was ultimately plucked from his hole by a tip in return for rewards offered, not by American technical intelligence or air power.

In any case case, war with Iran would not have much in common with war with Iraq. For one thing, it will involve many different theaters of operation: American naval forces and bases in the region will be easy targets for Iran. Various installations in places like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, along with US forces in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, along with missiles and rockets being fired by Hezbollah into Israel, will bring many states in the region into war. And will burn most of them in the process. American casualties, in the meantime, will be high, simply because much of what you have in the region right now are not a threat to Iran -- simply targets.

War with Iran was never a serious option for anyone, unless Iran could be cowed to not retaliate and lash out in force. Even when Iran downed the US drone, and the US wanted to respond so Trump wouldn't look "weak", the US contacted Iran and asked that Iran allow the US to hit something it could evacuate and agree would be sufficiently worthless to avoid a war between the two sides. Iran refused the offer and told the US: attack Iran and you will have a full blown war on your hands.