There is no doubt in my mind that what we are witnessing today is the biggest strategic psyop campaign since the war in Bosnia. Clearly, the conduct of such a campaign is expensive and very labor intensive, and I don’t think that the USraelian Empire would be wasting such resources just like that. There is definitely a “phase two” coming next.
The more I look at what is happening in Iran, the more I see striking parallels with another war which I had the opportunity to follow, day by day, minute by minute (I was, at the time, a military analyst).
The Serbs in Bosnia were extremely confident that neither the USA nor Europe had the guts to fight them on their own turf. They also could count, or so they thought, on the help of their fellow Serbs from Serbia (Yugoslav Federal Forces). They new that the Bosnian Muslims had a numerical advantage over them, but the counted on their superiority in artillery to offset that disadvantage. The Serbs, who during WWII had successfully resisted against the combined forces of the German Nazis, Croat Ustashe and Bosnian Muslim SS just did not feel really threatened, least of all by the dispersed forces of UNPROFOR. But they did not count with the sophistication of the Empire who, instead of stupidly sending its jarheads into Bosnia, attacked the Serbs with a multi-dimensional strategy.
First, the Serbs were very successfully demonized. The word “Serb” soon began evoking images of concentration camps, torture, rape, executions, baby shooting snipers, etc. A number of false-flag attacks were staged, including at the Markale market in Sarajevo. Any information which deviated from the official line (such as the report of UNPROFOR intelligence section in Sarajevo which concluded that the Serbian forces could not have fired a mortar into that market) was immediately thrown down the memory hole.
Second, pressure was put to essentially co-opt Milosevic. That was done in a very low key, but the basic idea was that he would be allowed to remain in power in Serbia if he agreed to betray the Bosnian Serbs. Needless to say, being the Communist leader which he was, Milosevic agreed. Suddenly, the Serbs faced an embargo in which the Federal Republic had joined in.
Third, the Empire organized, armed, and trained Croat forces (the Empire never really trusted the Muslims in Bosnia) to first seize the so-called “UNPAs” (UN protected areas) in Croatia and then to attack the remaining Serbian forces in Bosnia. For this purpose, all the heavy weapons of the Serbs (yes, the ones they had counted on the offset their numeral disadvantage) were placed in storage which left the Bosnian Serbs with only small arms.
Lastly, when the joint US-Croatian forces attacked, Milosevic pulled back his brigades leaving the Bosnian Serbs to face the combined onslaught of the NATO airforces, the Croat mechanized troops and the Muslim infantry with little more than rifles. At that point, resistance was futile.
The doubleplusgoodthinking world shed very few tears over the Bosnian Serbs. In particular, Muslims worldwide had so thoroughly bought into the Imperial propaganda that they totally failed to see that the only real crime of the Bosnian Serbs (at least in the eyes of the Empire) had been to refuse to comply with the diktats of the Empire. The sole word “Srebrenica” was good enough to stop any fact-based and logic driven analysis of what had really happened when that city fell to the Serbian forces.
As for Milosevic, having outlived his utility for the Empire, he was dumped and immediately attacked through the war in Kosovo (which, by the way, was conducted *exactly* as the war in Bosnia had been). And again – the world bought into the bullshit spewed by the US Psyops.
Now, it is absolutely clear that Iran is next.
Like in the case of the Bosnian Serbs, the Empire has successfully created a political lever INSIDE Iran. Today, Mousavi has been instantly re-branded as a “liberal” (a laughable claim for anybody actually knowing this gentleman’s full biography) and he is used against the Iranian government exactly as Milosevic had been used against Karadzic. Like Milosevic, Mousavi (and his puppeteers Rafsanjani and Montazeri) probably thinks that if he (they) come to power the Empire will let him (them) stay in power.
As for the Ahmadinejad/Khamenei camp, they probably feel that the USraelians will not dare attack Iran. I hope and pray that I am wrong and that they do understand the current psyop campaign for what it is – a first phase for a real war.
The public opinion in the West has learned exactly NOTHING from the previous US Psyop campaign. It is buying into the current propaganda 100%, in particular the Left which just need to be gently nudged into an ideological paradigm to immediately be outraged and condemn some putative “bad guy”.
The one big difference between the Bosnian Serb situation and the one in Iran is that in the former case the lever was far more powerful than its object: Milosevic had far more economic, political and military power than Karadzic. In Iran the lever (Mousavi) is far weaker than the government. Unlike the Serbs who could only count of their own small forces, the Iranian government knows that it can use the Pasdaran to control the situation. So as long as the Empire does not find a lever INSIDE the Pasdaran, I predict that the strategy will fail. But if one such high-level traitor is found inside the IRGC all bets are off.
One thing the US psyop campaign has already achieved: with the demonization of the government it has carefully prepared the world’s public opinion for an military operation overthrow the “regime”. After all, just image that the “Basij thugs” who killed Neda* will do against their “neighbors” (the “I” word will not be used outside the USA) if they are armed with nuclear weapons!!!
I hope that the Iranian government has learned the lessons from the Imperial wars in Bosnia, in Kosovo and in Iraq and that it will fully prepare itself to simultaneously fight on two fronts: external and internal. On the internal front, it needs to make a huge effort to explain to its own population what is happening and externally it must continue to seek deter the Empire by all possible means. Lastly, it must be prepared to face a long war combining internal destabilization, terrorist attacks, economic sabotage, guerrillas and airstrikes.
There is one battle which I think cannot be won: the Western public opinion is clearly too stupidifed by the corporate media to ever get it right. The eagerness with which even presumably intelligent people have bought into the Imperial propaganda clearly proves that whenever the Empire wants to strike it will get a strong majority of its public opinion to believe *any* nonsense needed to demonize the target. As Einstein observed:
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I’m not sure about the former.”
The Saker
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*The image of the poor Neda is now serving the same function as the famous (and faked) image of the emaciated man behind barbed wire in a “concentration camp” in Bosnia (a British TV crew staged that shot in Bosnia. Read “The Picture That Fooled The World” for details). This “icon” of the “resistance” will serve to outrage people even if it turns out that the shooter had nothing to do with the government.
