WE WANT WAR, AND WE WANT IT NOW

With friends like this.....

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
April 06, 2012

It was deep into the night, somewhere over Siberia, in a Moscow to Beijing flight (BRIC to BRIC?) when the thought, like a lightning bolt, began to take hold.

What the hell is wrong with those Arabs?

Maybe it was the narcotic effect of that perennially dreadful Terminal F at Sheremetyevo airport ~ straight out of a Brejnev gulag. Maybe it was the anticipation of finding more about the Russia-China joint naval exercise scheduled for late April.

Or it was simply another case of "you can take the boy out of the Middle East, but you can't take the Middle East out of the boy".

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE ~

It all had to do with that Friends of Syria (fools for war?) meeting in Istanbul. Picture Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal ~ who seems to have a knack for sending US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton into rapture ~ feverishly arguing that the House of Saud, those paragons of democracy, had "a duty" to weaponize the Syrian "revolutionary" opposition.

And picture al-Faisal ordering an immediate ceasefire by the Bashar al-Assad government, guilty ~ according to the House of Saud ~ not only of cruel repression but crimes against humanity.

No; this was not a Monty Python sketch.

To make sure he was milking the right cow, al-Faisal also said that the Gulf Counter-revolution Club (GCC), also known as Gulf Cooperation Council, wanted to get further into bed with the United States. Translation, if any was needed; the US-GCC tag team, as expressed by the weaponization of the Syrian "rebels", is meant to body slam Iran.

For both the House of Saud and Qatar (the other GCCs are just extras), what's goin' on in Syria is not about Syria; it's always been about Iran.

This especially applies to the Saudi pledge to flood the global oil market with a spare oil production capacity that any self-respecting oil analyst knows they don't have ~ or rather wouldn't use; after all, the House of Saud badly needs high oil prices to bribe its restive eastern province population into not even thinking about that Arab Spring nonsense.

Clinton got the pledge from the House of Saud in person, before landing in Istanbul. Washington's return gift was of the Pentagon kind; the GCC soon will be protected from "evil" Iran by a US-supplied missile shield. That implies that an attack on Iran may have been discarded for 2012 ~ but it's certainly "on the table" for 2013.

ED: Raise your hands if you think Obama is going to run for the presidency on, among many other unpleasant things, an Iran confrontation basis to placate his Zionist owners.

Asian nations ~ especially BRICS members China and India ~ will keep buying oil from Iran; the problem is what the European poodles will do. Other real problems are that the Kurds in northern Iraq are taking their oil off the market until Baghdad pays them the share they had agreed upon. And then there are Syria's 400,000 barrels a day, which have been dwindling over the past few months.

Still, the Saudis will keep playing the make-believe oil scenario as a gift to Washington ~ as the US pressures compliant European Union poodle economies and extremely wary Asians they have no reason to keep buying Iranian oil.

But then into this mess in Istanbul Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ~ whose power is a direct consequence of Washington's invasion and destruction of Iraq ~ steps in with quite a bang.

Here it is, in his own words:

“We reject any arming [of Syrian rebels] and the process to overthrow the [Assad] regime, because this will leave a greater crisis in the region ... The stance of these two states [Qatar and Saudi Arabia] is very strange ... They are calling for sending arms instead of working on putting out the fire, and they will hear our voice, that we are against arming and against foreign interference ... We are against the interference of some countries in Syria's internal affairs, and those countries that are interfering in Syria's internal affairs will interfere in the internal affairs of any country ... It has been one year and the regime did not fall, and it will not fall, and why should it fall?"

Maliki knows very well that the ongoing and already escalating weaponizing of Sunni Syrians ~ many of the Salafi and jihadi kind ~ will inevitably spill over into Iraq itself, and threaten his Shi'ite-majority government. And that, irrespective of the fact that his administration supports the close Iran-Syria relationship.

Maliki, by the way, was back in power in the autumn of 2010 because Tehran deftly intervened to make sure the Sadrists would support him. To add to Maliki's anger, Qatar is refusing to extradite Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, accused of masterminding a pro-Sunni coup d'etat in Baghdad.

HOW GREEN WAS MY JIHAD VALLEY

So Washington is now merrily embarking in a remix of the 1980s Afghan jihad - which, as every grain of sand from the Hindu Kush to Mesopotamia knows, led to that ghostly entity, al-Qaeda, and the subsequent, transformer "war on terror".

The House of Saud and Qatar have institutionalized that motley crew known as the Free Syrian Army as a mercenary outfit; they are now on their payroll, to the tune of $100 million (and counting).

Isn't democracy wonderful ~ when US-allied Persian Gulf monarchies can buy a mercenary army for peanuts?

Isn't it great to be a revolutionary with an assured paycheck?

Not missing a beat, Washington has set up its own fund as well, for "humanitarian" assistance to Syria and "non-lethal" aid to the "rebels"; "non-lethal" as in ultra battle-ready satellite communications equipment, plus night-vision goggles.

Clinton's silky spin was that the equipment would allow the "rebels" to "evade" attacks by the Syrian government. No mention that now they have access to actionable US intelligence via a swarm of drones deployed all over Syria.

Maliki can clearly see the writing on the (Sunni) wall. The House of Saud invaded Shi'ite-majority Bahrain to protect the extremely unpopular Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty in power ~ their "cousins".

Maliki knows that a post-Assad Syria would mean Muslim Brotherhood Sunnis in power ~ sprinkled with Salafi-jihadis. In his worst nightmare, Maliki sees this possible dystopian future as an al-Qaeda in Iraq remix on steroids.

So this is what the Istanbul-based "Friends of Syria" bash turned into; a shameless legitimizing ~ by Arabs allied with the US ~ of civil war in yet another Arab country. The victims will be average Syrians caught in the crossfire.

This US-GCC weaponizing entirely dissolves the United Nations Syria envoy and former secretary general Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan. The plan calls for a ceasefire; for the Syrian government to "cease troop movements" and "begin pullback of military concentrations"; and for a negotiated political settlement.

There will be no ceasefire.

The Assad government accepted the plan.

The weaponized "rebels" rejected it.

Imagine the Syrian government beginning the "pullback of military concentrations" while swarms of weaponized "rebels" and assorted mercenaries (from Libya, Lebanon and Iraq) keep deploying their torture tactics and launching a barrage of improvised explosive devices.

I landed in Beijing eager to learn more about the upcoming joint Russia-China naval exercise in the Yellow Sea, but instead I was stuck with a Henry Kissinger op-ed in the Washington Post. [1] Here it is, in Dr K's own words:

ED: New name: Henry Kiss-of-death-inger

The Arab Spring is widely presented as a regional, youth-led revolution on behalf of liberal democratic principles. Yet Libya is not ruled by such forces; it hardly continues as a state. Neither is Egypt, whose electoral majority (possibly permanent) is overwhelmingly Islamist. Nor do democrats seem to predominate in the Syrian opposition.

The Arab League consensus on Syria is not shaped by countries previously distinguished by the practice or advocacy of democracy. Rather, it largely reflects the millennium-old conflict between Shi'ite and Sunni and an attempt to reclaim Sunni dominance from a Shi'ite minority. It is also precisely why so many minority groups, such as Druzes, Kurds and Christians, are uneasy about regime change in Syria.

Well, China scholar Dr K at least got this one right (and in total agreement with Maliki, no less).

A full-fledged mercenary army paid for by autocrat Arabs to overthrow an Arab government is pure and simple regime change ~ US rhetoric about "democracy" and "freedom" notwithstanding.

It's all about classic, imperial divide and rule, profiting from pitting Sunnis against Shi'ites.

And then my divine roasted duck revealed to me that realpolitik stalwart Dr K is not getting much traction in Washington these days.

NOTE:

 
1. See here.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His most recent book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com

Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings Ltd.

THE MYTH OF “ISOLATED” IRAN FOLLOWING THE MONEY IN THE IRAN CRISIS

 

By Pepe Escobar
"Tom Dispatch"

January 17, 2012

Let's start with red lines.

Here it is, Washington’s ultimate red line, straight from the lion’s mouth. 

Only last week Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said of the Iranians,

“Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us.”

How strange, the way those red lines continue to retreat.  Once upon a time, the red line for Washington was “enrichment” of uranium. Now, it’s evidently an actual nuclear weapon that can be brandished.

Keep in mind that, since 2005, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has stressed that his country is not seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran from the U.S. Intelligence Community has similarly stressed that Iran is not, in fact, developing a nuclear weapon (as opposed to the breakout capacity to build one someday).

What if, however, there is no “red line,”

but something completely different?

Call it the petrodollar line.

BANKING ON SANCTIONS?

Let’s start here: In December 2011, impervious to dire consequences for the global economy, the U.S. Congress ~ under all the usual pressures from the Israel lobby (not that it needs them) ~ foisted a mandatory sanctions package on the Obama administration (100 to 0 in the Senate and with only 12 “no” votes in the House). Starting in June, the U.S. will have to sanction any third-country banks and companies dealing with Iran’s Central Bank, which is meant to cripple that country’s oil sales.  (Congress did allow for some “exemptions.”)

The ultimate target?

Regime change ~ what else? ~ in Tehran.

The proverbial anonymous U.S. official admitted as much in the Washington Post, and that paper printed the comment.  (“The goal of the U.S. and other sanctions against Iran is regime collapse, a senior U.S. intelligence official said, offering the clearest indication yet that the Obama administration is at least as intent on unseating Iran’s government as it is on engaging with it.”) But oops! The newspaper then had to revise the passage to eliminate that embarrassingly on-target quote. Undoubtedly, this “red line” came too close to the truth for comfort.

Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen believed that only a monster shock-and-awe-style event, totally humiliating the leadership in Tehran, would lead to genuine regime change ~ and he was hardly alone. Advocates of actions ranging from air strikes to invasion (whether by the U.S., Israel, or some combination of the two) have been legion in neocon Washington.  (See, for instance, the Brookings Institution’s 2009 report Which Path to Persia.)

Yet anyone remotely familiar with Iran knows that such an attack would rally the population behind Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards.  In those circumstances, the deep aversion of many Iranians to the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat would matter little. 

Besides, even the Iranian opposition supports a peaceful nuclear program.  It’s a matter of national pride.

Iranian intellectuals, far more familiar with Persian smoke and mirrors than ideologues in Washington, totally debunk any war scenarios.  They stress that the Tehran regime, adept in the arts of Persian shadow play, has no intention of provoking an attack that could lead to its obliteration.

On their part, whether correctly or not, Tehran strategists assume that Washington will prove unable to launch yet one more war in the Greater Middle East, especially one that could lead to staggering collateral damage for the world economy.

In the meantime, Washington’s expectations that a harsh sanctions regime might make the Iranians give ground, if not go down, may prove to be a chimera.  Washington spin has been focused on the supposedly disastrous mega-devaluation of the Iranian currency, the rial, in the face of the new sanctions.

Unfortunately for the fans of Iranian economic collapse, Professor Djavad Salehi-Isfahani has laid out in elaborate detail the long-term nature of this process, which Iranian economists have more than welcomed.  After all, it will boost Iran’s non-oil exports and help local industry in competition with cheap Chinese imports. In sum: a devalued rial stands a reasonable chance of actually reducing unemployment in Iran.

MORE CONNECTED THAN GOOGLE

Though few in the U.S. have noticed, Iran is not exactly “isolated,” though Washington might wish it. 

Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani has become a frequent flyer to Tehran. And he’s a Johnny-come-lately compared to Russia’s national security chief Nikolai Patrushev, who only recently warned the Israelis not to push the U.S. to attack Iran.

Add in as well U.S. ally and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.  At a Loya Jirga (grand council) in late 2011, in front of 2,000 tribal leaders, he stressed that Kabul was planning to get even closer to Tehran.

On that crucial Eurasian chessboard, Pipelineistan, the Iran-Pakistan (IP) natural gas pipeline ~ much to Washington’s distress ~ is now a go.

Pakistan badly needs energy and its leadership has clearly decided that it’s unwilling to wait forever and a day for Washington’s eternal pet project ~ the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline ~ to traverse Talibanistan.

Even Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu recently visited Tehran, though his country’s relationship with Iran has grown ever edgier.  After all, energy overrules threats in the region.

NATO member Turkey is already involved in covert ops in Syria, allied with hardcore fundamentalist Sunnis in Iraq, and ~ in a remarkable volte-face in the wake of the Arab Spring(s) ~ has traded in an Ankara-Tehran-Damascus axis for an Ankara-Riyadh-Doha one.  It is even planning on hosting components of Washington’s long-planned missile defense system, targeted at Iran.

All this from a country with a Davutoglu-coined foreign policy of “zero problems with our neighbors.”  Still, the needs of Pipelineistan do set the heart racing. 

Turkey is desperate for access to Iran’s energy resources, and if Iranian natural gas ever reaches Western Europe ~ something the Europeans are desperately eager for ~ Turkey will be the privileged transit country.  Turkey’s leaders have already signaled their rejection of further U.S. sanctions against Iranian oil.

And speaking of connections, last week there was that spectacular diplomatic coup de théâtre, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Latin American tour. U.S. right-wingers may harp on a Tehran-Caracas axis of evil ~ supposedly promoting “terror” across Latin America as a springboard for future attacks on the northern superpower ~ but back in real life, another kind of truth lurks. 

All these years later, Washington is still unable to digest the idea that it has lost control over, or even influence in, those two regional powers over which it once exercised unmitigated imperial hegemony. 

Add to this the wall of mistrust that has only solidified since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.  Mix in a new, mostly sovereign Latin America pushing for integration not only via leftwing governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador but through regional powers Brazil and Argentina.

Stir and you get photo ops like Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez saluting Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. 

Washington continues to push a vision of a world from which Iran has been radically disconnected. 

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland is typical in saying recently,

“Iran can remain in international isolation.” 

As it happens, though, she needs to get her facts straight.

“Isolated” Iran has $4 billion in joint projects with Venezuela including, crucially, a bank (as with Ecuador, it has dozens of planned projects from building power plants to, once again, banking).

That has led the Israel-first crowd in Washington to vociferously demand that sanctions be slapped on Venezuela.  Only problem: how would the U.S. pay for its crucial Venezuelan oil imports then?

Much was made in the U.S. press of the fact that Ahmadinejad did not visit Brazil on this jaunt through Latin America, but diplomatically Tehran and Brasilia remain in sync. When it comes to the nuclear dossier in particular, Brazil’s history leaves its leaders sympathetic.  After all, that country developed ~ and then dropped ~ a nuclear weapons program.

In May 2010, Brazil and Turkey brokered a uranium-swap agreement for Iran that might have cleared the decks on the U.S.-Iranian nuclear imbroglio.  It was, however, immediately sabotaged by Washington.

A key member of the BRICS, the club of top emerging economies, Brasilia is completely opposed to the U.S. sanctions/embargo strategy.

So Iran may be “isolated” from the United States and Western Europe, but from the BRICS to NAM (the 120 member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement), it has the majority of the global South on its side.  And then, of course, there are those staunch Washington allies, Japan and South Korea, now pleading for exemptions from the coming boycott/embargo of Iran’s Central Bank.

No wonder, because these unilateral U.S. sanctions are also aimed at Asia.  After all, China, India, Japan, and South Korea, together, buy no less than 62% of Iran’s oil exports.

With trademark Asian politesse, Japan’s Finance Minister Jun Azumi let Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner know just what a problem Washington is creating for Tokyo, which relies on Iran for 10% of its oil needs. 

It is pledging to at least modestly “reduce” that share “as soon as possible” in order to get a Washington exemption from those sanctions, but don’t hold your breath.

South Korea has already announced that it will buy 10% of its oil needs from Iran in 2012.

SILK ROAD REDUX

Most important of all, “isolated” Iran happens to be a supreme matter of national security for China, which has already rejected the latest Washington sanctions without a blink.

Westerners seem to forget that the Middle Kingdom and Persia have been doing business for almost two millennia. (Does “Silk Road” ring a bell?)

The Chinese have already clinched a juicy deal for the development of Iran’s largest oil field, Yadavaran. There’s also the matter of the delivery of Caspian Sea oil from Iran through a pipeline stretching from Kazakhstan to Western China. In fact, Iran already supplies no less than 15% of China’s oil and natural gas.

Iran is now more crucial to China, energy-wise, than the House of Saud is to the U.S., which imports 11% of its oil from Saudi Arabia.

In fact, China may be the true winner from Washington’s new sanctions, because it is likely to get its oil and gas at a lower price as the Iranians grow ever more dependent on the China market. 

At this moment, in fact, the two countries are in the middle of a complex negotiation on the pricing of Iranian oil, and the Chinese have actually been ratcheting up the pressure by slightly cutting back on energy purchases.  But all this should be concluded by March, at least two months before the latest round of U.S. sanctions go into effect, according to experts in Beijing.

In the end, the Chinese will certainly buy much more Iranian gas than oil, but Iran will still remain its third biggest oil supplier, right after Saudi Arabia and Angola.

As for other effects of the new sanctions on China, don’t count on them.  Chinese businesses in Iran are building cars, fiber optics networks, and expanding the Tehran subway. Two-way trade is at $30 billion now and expected to hit $50 billion in 2015.  Chinese businesses will find a way around the banking problems the new sanctions impose.

Russia is, of course, another key supporter of “isolated” Iran. 

It has opposed stronger sanctions either via the U.N. or through the Washington-approved package that targets Iran’s Central Bank. In fact, it favors a rollback of the existing U.N. sanctions and has also been at work on an alternative plan that could, at least theoretically, lead to a face-saving nuclear deal for everyone.

On the nuclear front, Tehran has expressed a willingness to compromise with Washington along the lines of the plan Brazil and Turkey suggested and Washington deep-sixed in 2010. Since it is now so much clearer that, for Washington ~ certainly for Congress ~ the nuclear issue is secondary to regime change, any new negotiations are bound to prove excruciatingly painful.

This is especially true now that the leaders of the European Union have managed to remove themselves from a future negotiating table by shooting themselves in their Ferragamo-clad feet. 

In typical fashion, they have meekly followed Washington’s lead in implementing an Iranian oil embargo. As a senior EU official told National Iranian American Council President Trita Parsi, and as EU diplomats have assured me in no uncertain terms, they fear this might prove to be the last step short of outright war.

Meanwhile, a team of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors has just visited Iran.  The IAEA is supervising all things nuclear in Iran, including its new uranium-enrichment plant at Fordow, near the holy city of Qom, with full production starting in June.

The IAEA is positive: no bomb-making is involved.  Nonetheless, Washington (and the Israelis) continue to act as though it’s only a matter of time ~ and not much of it at that.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

That Iranian isolation theme only gets weaker when one learns that the country is dumping the dollar in its trade with Russia for rials and rubles ~ a similar move to ones already made in its trade with China and Japan. 

As for India, an economic powerhouse in the neighborhood, its leaders also refuse to stop buying Iranian oil, a trade that, in the long run, is similarly unlikely to be conducted in dollars.

India is already using the yuan with China, as Russia and China have been trading in rubles and yuan for more than a year, as Japan and China are promoting direct trading in yen and yuan. 

As for Iran and China, all new trade and joint investments will be settled in yuan and rial.

Translation, if any was needed: in the near future, with the Europeans out of the mix, virtually none of Iran’s oil will be traded in dollars.

Moreover, three BRICS members (Russia, India, and China) allied with Iran are major holders (and producers) of gold. Their complex trade ties won’t be affected by the whims of a U.S. Congress.  In fact, when the developing world looks at the profound crisis in the Atlanticist West, what they see is massive U.S. debt, the Fed printing money as if there’s no tomorrow, lots of “quantitative easing,” and of course the Eurozone shaking to its very foundations.

Follow the money. Leave aside, for the moment, the new sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank that will go into effect months from now, ignore Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz (especially unlikely given that it’s the main way Iran gets its own oil to market), and perhaps one key reason the crisis in the Persian Gulf is mounting involves this move to torpedo the petrodollar as the all-purpose currency of exchange.

It’s been spearheaded by Iran and it’s bound to translate into an anxious Washington, facing down not only a regional power, but its major strategic competitors China and Russia.  No wonder all those carriers are heading for the Persian Gulf right now, though it’s the strangest of showdowns ~ a case of military power being deployed against economic power.

In this context, it’s worth remembering that in September 2000 Saddam Hussein abandoned the petrodollar as the currency of payment for Iraq’s oil, and moved to the euro.

In March 2003, Iraq was invaded and the inevitable regime change occurred. Libya’s

Muammar Gaddafi proposed a gold dinar both as Africa’s common currency and as the currency of payment for his country’s energy resources. Another intervention and another regime change followed.

Washington/NATO/Tel Aviv, however, offers a different narrative.  Iran’s “threats” are at the heart of the present crisis, even if these are, in fact, that country’s reaction to non-stop US/Israeli covert war and now, of course, economic war as well. 

It’s those “threats,” so the story goes, that are leading to rising oil prices and so fueling the current recession, rather than Wall Street’s casino capitalism or massive U.S. and European debts. The cream of the 1% has nothing against high oil prices, not as long as Iran’s around to be the fall guy for popular anger.

As energy expert Michael Klare pointed out recently, we are now in a new geo-energy era certain to be extremely turbulent in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere.  But consider 2012 the start-up year as well for a possibly massive defection from the dollar as the global currency of choice. As perception is indeed reality, imagine the real world ~ mostly the global South ~ doing the necessary math and, little by little, beginning to do business in their own currencies and investing ever less of any surplus in U.S. Treasury bonds.  

Of course, the U.S. can always count on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) ~ Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates ~ which I prefer to call the Gulf Counterrevolution Club (just look at their performances during the Arab Spring).

For all practical geopolitical purposes, the Gulf monarchies are a U.S. satrapy.

Their decades-old promise to use only the petrodollar translates into them being an appendage of Pentagon power projection across the Middle East.  Centcom, after all, is based in Qatar; the U.S. Fifth Fleet is stationed in Bahrain. In fact, in the immensely energy-wealthy lands that we could label Greater Pipelineistan ~ and that the Pentagon used to call "the arc of instability" ~ extending through Iran all the way to Central Asia, the GCC remains key to a dwindling sense of U.S. hegemony.

If this were an economic rewrite of Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” Iran would be but one cog in an infernal machine slowly shredding the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Still, it’s the cog that Washington is now focused on.  They have regime change on the brain.  All that’s needed is a spark to start the fire (in ~ one hastens to add ~ all sorts of directions that are bound to catch Washington off guard).

Remember Operation Northwoods, that 1962 plan drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to stage terror operations in the U.S. and blame them on Fidel Castro’s Cuba.  (President Kennedy shot the idea down.) 

Or recall the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, used by President Lyndon Johnson as a justification for widening the Vietnam War.  The U.S. accused North Vietnamese torpedo boats of unprovoked attacks on U.S. ships.  Later, it became clear that one of the attacks had never even happened and the president had lied about it.

It’s not at all far-fetched to imagine hardcore Full-Spectrum-Dominance practitioners inside the Pentagon riding a false-flag incident in the Persian Gulf to an attack on Iran (or simply using it to pressure Tehran into a fatal miscalculation).

Consider as well the new U.S. military strategy just unveiled by President Obama in which the focus of Washington’s attention is to move from two failed ground wars in the Greater Middle East to the Pacific (and so to China). Iran happens to be right in the middle, in Southwest Asia, with all that oil heading toward an energy-hungry modern Middle Kingdom over waters guarded by the U.S. Navy.

So yes, this larger-than-life psychodrama we call “Iran” may turn out to be as much about China and the U.S. dollar as it is about the politics of the Persian Gulf or Iran’s nonexistent bomb.  The question is: What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Beijing to be born?

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times, a TomDispatch regular, and a political analyst for al-Jazeera and RT. His latest book is Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

PEPE ESCOBAR: NO WAR WITH IRAN BEFORE 2012 ELECTIONS

Syria then Iran and the Goal is Russia.

America could possibly be the sacrificial lion but then again... so could the Middle East including Israel. 

No matter how you look at it we have trouble ahead. This is an elaboration on some of the points about America and Russia (and don't forget Tel Aviv) that I have been posting about for the past few days.

PEPE ESCOBAR: LIBYA: ALTERNATIVE MEDIA ROUND-UP

 
September 1, 2011

From Infowars.com, journalist Pepe Escobar lays out the reality of the Libyan rebels' Al Qaeda infested leadership, exposing the reckless criminality NATO and its member states have pursued their military operation against Libya.

Considering Escobar's information, and that it has also been confirmed in the London Telegraph and the New York Times, it is safe to say that NATO planners knew for years who these rebels were and were well aware of their ties to Al Qaeda.

A West Point report further reveals that the nature of the Benghazi tribes was one of extremism and fighting worldwide alongside Al Qaeda in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Dr. Webster Tarpley is joined by Pan-African News Wire's Abayomi Azikiwe to refute the mainstream corporate media's narrative, vigorously defended by a Libyan "Democratic Party" member also joining Press TV's line up.

Based on facts conceded by the corporate media itself, both Dr. Tarpley and Mr. Azikiwe point out the egregious premeditated criminality of NATO's operations in Libya. Dr. Tarpley also calls on the media and the public to speak out against the current NATO and rebel encirclement of the Libyan city of Sirte, which is literally being starved into submission.
 

PEPE ESCOBAR: DISASTER CAPITALISM SWOOPS OVER LIBYA

By Pepe Escobar
August 24, 2011

Asia Times

Think of the new Libya as the latest spectacular chapter in the Disaster Capitalism series. Instead of weapons of mass destruction, we had R2P ("responsibility to protect"). Instead of neo-conservatives, we had humanitarian imperialists.

But the target is the same: regime change.

And the project is the same: to completely dismantle and privatize a nation that was not integrated into turbo-capitalism; to open another (profitable) land of opportunity for turbocharged neo-liberalism. The whole thing is especially handy because it is smack in the middle of a nearly global recession.

It will take some time; Libyan oil won't totally return to the market within 18 months.

But there's the reconstruction of everything the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombed (well, not much of what the Pentagon bombed in 2003 was reconstructed in Iraq ...)

Anyway ~ from oil to rebuilding ~ in thesis juicy business opportunities loom. France's neo-Napoleonic Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's David of Arabia Cameron believe they will be especially well positioned to profit from NATO's victory.

Yet there's no guarantee the new Libyan bonanza will be enough to lift both former colonial powers (neo-colonials?) out of recession.

President Sarkozy in particular will milk the business opportunities for French companies for all they're worth ~ part of his ambitious agenda of "strategic redeployment" of France in the Arab world. A compliant French media are gloating that this was "his" war ~ spinning that he decided to arm the rebels on the ground with French weaponry, in close cooperation with Qatar, including a key rebel commando unit that went by sea from Misrata to Tripoli last Saturday, at the start of "Operation Siren".

Well, he certainly saw the opening when Muammar Gaddafi's chief of protocol defected to Paris in October 2010. That's when the whole regime change drama started to be incubated. 

As matters escalate in Libya as rebels comes the closest yet to bringing down the regime of Colonel Gaddafi, what fate does that nation ~ and the rest of the world ~ face in the days to come? 

Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar says that what the US and NATO perceive as a collective victory in the making will just be the next step in expanding their agenda into Libya. He says that “the master plan is to isolate,” and while the United State might call it humanitarian interventionism, he reminds us that that’s what the American ruling elites “rebranded” Bush’s agenda in the Middle East during his administrations.

“People have such short memory,” says Escobar. “This reminds me of the coalition provisional authority in Iraq in 2003. This is the same thing.”

“We’re going to have western boots on the ground and we’re going to open up Libya for hardcore, no holds barred, terrible capitalism,” adds Escobar. “This is completely crazy.”

According to Escobar, the next step is to get American hands on Libyan oil, and, in his words, “if this is the way that US and NATO goes, we’re going to have Iraq 2.0.”

And with Americans in control in place of Gaddafi, Escobar next suggests that Syria will be only next in the stepping stone for American domination.

In the meantime, however, most of America will be in the dark as the mainstream media fails to report on the actual events overseas. Escobar says that forces began “killing everyone in sight and hitting everything in sight” over the weekends, but that the journalists with the mainstream media are held up in hotel rooms safe from harm.

According to Escobar, all the mainstream media is doing is perpetuating the “cover story” that they’ve created for Americans to eat up. From there, he says, they’ll eat whatever they’re fed.

BOMBS FOR OIL

As previously noted (see Welcome to Libya's 'democracy', Asia Times Online, August 24) the vultures are already circling Tripoli to grab (and monopolize) the spoils. And yes ~ most of the action has to do with oil deals, as in this stark assertion by Abdeljalil Mayouf, information manager at the "rebel" Arabian Gulf Oil Company;

"We don't have a problem with Western countries like the Italians, French and UK companies. But we may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil."

These three happen to be crucial members of the BRICS group of emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which are actually growing while the Atlanticist, NATO-bombing economies are either stuck in stagnation or recession.

The top four BRICs also happen to have abstained from approving UN Security Council resolution 1973, the no-fly zone scam that metamorphosed into NATO bringing regime change from above. They saw right through it from the beginning.

To make matters worse (for them), only three days before the Pentagon's Africom launched its first 150-plus Tomahawks over Libya, Colonel Gaddafi gave an interview to German TV stressing that if the country were attacked, all energy contracts would be transferred to Russian, Indian and Chinese companies.

So the winners in the oil bonanza are already designated: NATO members plus Arab monarchies.

Among the companies involved, British Petroleum (BP), France's Total and the Qatar national oil company. For Qatar ~ which dispatched jet fighters and recruiters to the front lines, trained "rebels" in exhaustive combat techniques, and is already managing oil sales in eastern Libya ~ the war will reveal itself to be a very wise investment decision.

Prior to the months-long crisis that is in its end game now with the rebels in the capital, Tripoli, Libya was producing 1.6 million barrels per day. Once resumed, this could reap Tripoli's new rulers some US$50 billion annually. Most estimates place oil reserves at 46.4 billion barrels.

The "rebels" of new Libya better not mess with China. Five months ago, China's official policy was already to call for a ceasefire; if that had happened, Gaddafi would still control more than half of Libya. Yet Beijing ~ never a fan of violent regime change ~ for the moment is exercising extreme restraint.

Wen Zhongliang, the deputy head of the Ministry of Trade, willfully observed,

"Libya will continue to protect the interests and rights of Chinese investors and we hope to continue investment and economic cooperation." Official statements are piling up emphasizing "mutual economic cooperation".

Last week, Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice president of the dodgy Transitional National Council (TNC), told Xinhua that all deals and contracts agreed with the Gaddafi regime would be honored ~ but Beijing is taking no chances.

Libya supplied no more than 3% of China's oil imports in 2010. Angola is a much more crucial supplier. But China is still Libya's top oil customer in Asia. Moreover, China could be very helpful in the infrastructure rebuilding front, or in the technology export ~  no less than 75 Chinese companies with 36,000 employees were already on the ground before the outbreak of the tribal/civil war, swiftly evacuated in less than three days.

The Russians ~ from Gazprom to Tafnet ~ had billions of dollars invested in Libyan projects; Brazilian oil giant Petrobras and the construction company Odebrecht also had intrests there. It's still unclear what will happen to them. The director general of the Russia-Libya Business Council, Aram Shegunts, is extremely worried:

"Our companies will lose everything because NATO will prevent them from doing business in Libya."

Italy seems to have passed the "rebel" version of "you're either with us or without us". Energy giant ENI apparently won't be affected, as Premier Silvio "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi pragmatically dumped his previously very close pal Gaddafi at the start of the Africom/NATO bombing spree.

ENI's directors are confident Libya's oil and gas flows to southern Italy will resume before winter.

And the Libyan ambassador in Italy, Hafed Gaddur, reassured Rome that all Gaddafi-era contracts will be honored. Just in case, Berlusconi will meet the TNC's prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, this Thursday in Milan.

BIN LADEN TO THE RESCUE

Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu ~ of the famed "zero problems with our neighbors" policy ~ has also been gushing praise on the former "rebels" turned powers-that-be. Eyeing the post-Gaddafi business bonanza as well, Ankara ~ as NATO's eastern flank ~ ended up helping to impose a naval blockade on the Gaddafi regime, carefully cultivated the TNC, and in July formally recognized it as the government of Libya. Business "rewards" loom.

Then there's the crucial plot; how the House of Saud is going to profit from having been instrumental in setting up a friendly regime in Libya, possibly peppered with Salafi notables; one of the key reasons for the Saudi onslaught ~ which included a fabricated vote at the Arab League ~ was the extreme bad blood between Gaddafi and King Abdullah since the run-up towards the war on Iraq in 2002.

It's never enough to stress the cosmic hypocrisy of an ultra-regressive absolute monarchy/medieval theocracy ~ which invaded Bahrain and repressed its native Shi'ites ~ saluting what could be construed as a pro-democracy movement in Northern Africa. 

Anyway, it's time to party. Expect the Saudi Bin Laden Group to reconstruct like mad all over Libya ~ eventually turning the (looted) Bab al-Aziziyah into a monster, luxury Mall of Tripolitania. 

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.