Reflections on the NIE on Iran and its consequences

Saker, this seems exactly right. Since the current threat is a Gleiwitz-type incident, the amount of visible news drops. There are a number of ways to stage a false-flag incident–the MEK or Israeli black ops using Farsi speaking immigrants, of which there are thousands in Israel–but these are all going to take place in deep shadow, if they happen. SecDef Gates sure sounded belligerent this weekend in the Gulf. What do you make of that? I can’t tell if he’s been turned by Cheney or is making war noises, knowing that nothing can come of it. Time will tell. New version of blog is splendid, with posts so definitive as to leave me quietly lurking with nothing to add. Way to go!

@John Shreffler: yes, a Gleiwitz type incident is most likely. The fact is that imperialists mostly cloak their aggressions into the pious veil of self-defense or the protection of minorities. The technique is basic: first stir up a minority and then intervene to “protect” it.

With Iran this might prove harder to do, I think that Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich makes a good point when she says that Iran is not Russia or Yugoslavia. A ‘straightforward’ kind of ‘Persian Gulf of Tonkin’ is thus the most likely scenario. Either that, or a brazen Israeli bombing solely aimed at triggering an Iranian response which, in turn, would ‘force’ the USA to intervene in ‘defense’ of ‘our ally and friend’ to ‘prevent another Holocaust’ etc. etc. etc.

@anonyous: Did you notice how upset Bolton was with the NIE?

No, not really, since I avoid the corporate media (TV, radio or print) like the plague. But I heard about Podhoretz’ hysterical rant in Commentary in which he says that the NIE was an anti-Bush conspiracy by the intelligence community.

Now I am just waiting for the first idiot to call the NIE Antisemitic! LOL!

@binh: What about the EFP nonsense as a causus belli

I don’t think that they are ‘big enough’. Americans have gotten used to having US occupation forces EFPed in Iran for a long while already. No, what is needed is something which will trigger an immediate and overwhelming sense of outrage which will then simply switch off any critical thinking. Let me give you an example:

If the Israeli Navy could torpedo and sink a US ship in the Persian Gulf and the Neocons would blame that on “Revolutionary Guard extremists” or on some made up “Quds submarine force” and if many US Navy personnel were killed, burned, maimed or drowned that would do the trick. Placing a bomb on a US aircraft would also work, in particular if some proof is conveniently found showing that the Iranians did it.

Also – remember the USS Liberty or the USS Maine. That’s the kind of stuff we need to prepare for.

“I have to add here that the very fact that such commentaries are aired and that no action has been taken, at least so far, against Olbermann or MSNBC is a powerful illustration that the USA has not become a true Fascist state yet.”

I agree with you that such bold criticism of the President in the MSM is extremely rare, but you may be overlooking one possibility here VS. Bush may be set up to removed from his office for reasons of mental competency. If so, the MSM will soon be abuzz with stories of inconsistency and the inadeqacy of Bush’s reasoning and we are bound to hear more mea culpas from a few outlets of the MSM for not having probed this story deeper and earlier. Whether or not Cheney will be chastened or emboldened should he replace Bush, one cannot say.

But the fact is Olbermann is not quite the maverick he appears. He is loath to speak ill of Isreal or the Lobby, or even to voice harsh criticism of Democrats.

The two real questions that are almost never posed, except by people on the fringes of mainstream political debate, is what was Bush’s real reason for seeking war in Iraq and Iran and why has the mainstream media demonstrated no interest in finding out why. We now know that the WMD charges on Iraq and Iran are nothing more than a canard. Neither country has much to do with Al Qaeda either. So what is this all about? Why won’t the media even ask?

Paul Craig Roberts phrases the question quite eloquently:

” Surely, no one believes that Bush invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, or that Bush and Cheney were working up an attack on Iran because the executive branch did not know of the intelligence findings of its own agencies.

The invasion of Afghanistan also remains unexplained. The Taliban are not Al Qaeda and had nothing to do with 9/11 even in the official version of that event. Bush clearly did not invade Afghanistan in order to capture Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, who escaped scot free. The Bin Laden/Sept. 11 rationale for Bush’s wars has completely disappeared.

Osama and 9/11 were never more than public excuses for a pre-determined agenda.

Why do the US media and the investigative committees of Congress have no interest whatsoever in finding the agenda behind Bush’s wars?

How can Americans be a free people living under a rule of law when the president can commit the country to catastrophic wars on the basis of deception and escape all accountability?”
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts12072007.html

The important point here is that the problem does not begin and end with Bush or even with Bush and the neocons alone. The MSM is highly complicit in enabling the wars to be waged. They held Bush’s father’s feet to the fire for violating his “no new taxes” pledge. The son gets free reign to do whatever the neocons want though.
-AA

Bush may be set up to removed from his office for reasons of mental competency

I never thought about that. But what diagnosis could he be given? “Terminal moron” is hardly a medical term :-))

More seriously, I am getting a feeling that some heads might have to roll to preserve the Neocons in power and actually going after Bush in order to better put Hillary in his seat might be a possible calculation. Still, the mere fact that such a criticism of a US President could be aired (whether that is a tactical move or not) proves that for the time being the USA is not as much a Fascist state as a country going down the road of turning into a Fascist state. Once Fascism is fully established even tactical condemnations of the leaders are not done with such vehemence or openly aired.

But your point is well taken – we should keep an eye for the inevitable blood letting of some to preserve the rest.

@AA – friend, you have yet to post something off topic here, much less so something I would think of as spam! All your posts here are extremely appreciated. Case in point – this interview with Sy Hersh which I saw on Binh’s blog and which I thought was so interesting that I almost posted a link myself – you just saved me the trouble for which I thank you very much!

There can be no doubt that Dubya knew full well, but hoped that he could get enough momentum going before this info would come out (like what the Neocons did with Iraq when they knew perfectly well that there were not WMD there).

We are dealing with a criminal conspiracy here which includes lying to Congress, war crimes, crimes of aggression, corruption and, of course, espionage and treason. This administration is so deep in it that the facade is falling apart on many fronts simultaneously. Dubya speaking of a WWIII or a nuclear holocaust is very much like screaming fire in a crowded theatre, but worse.

I doubt the brainless, spineless and clueless Democrats will do much about all this for the time being, but once the 2008 election is over we might well have some heads rolling to appease an outraged public opinion, in particular with the Neocons succeed in starting a war with Iran.

@Alex: in one word: no. Here is why:

1) Iran supports exactly the same people in Iraq as the USA: Dawa, Al-Maliki, Bard Corps, SIIC & Co. All these ARE THE IRAQ GOVERNMENT. Since Iran fought a horrible and long war with Iraq it is clearly in Iran’s VITAL interest not to have a hostile regime in Iraq. This is so important that it trumps any carrots or sticks the USA might have to try to get Iran out of Iraqi politics. Simply put – Iran does not support any terrorists in Iraq and the people which Iran does support are so important to Iran that nothing, not even the threat of war from the USA, could force the Iranians to withdraw this support.

2) Why would Iran accept any ‘deal’ from the USA when it can just face down the US and tell them “bring it on” and get all its wants. The USA has zero bargaining power left to get the Iranians to deal with them. Right after the invasion the Iranians wanted a deal and the US rejected it. Now the exact opposite it true.

3) The only group which I would call ‘terrorist’ in Iraq is Al-Qaeda which is something like 2% of the resistance. These are the worst enemies of Iran being the Wahabi/Salafi nutcases that they are. Iran would gladly, gladly, kill them all for free.

4) The one group towards which US fingers are pointed is the Sadr Mehdi Army. While they are definitely anti-American patriots and while they had at least two major battles with the occupation forces they are not really actively fighting the USA (or the Brits for that matter). Sure, they have clashes here and there, when the US occupation forces bahave like assholes in Sadr city or the Brits go on false flag operations in Basra, but by and large they represent a minor irritant for the Empire, even though they are the most numerous force in Iran, and a formidable potential threat. Also, the Sadr people are busy fighting other Shia groups in the south, including the governor of Basra and his forces. So they are not an issue yet. Lastly, Iran has sustained but complex relations with this group and it is not of a nature or magnitude which could be described as ‘support’ in anything beyond a political sense.

So no, I don’t believe that there was a deal between the USA and Iran.

Israel and top zionist leaders attack intelligence

“This monumental struggle within the government was not merely about US military policy toward Iran (which is crucial) but also about who rules the US, who commands the US military and who formulates intelligence reports that inform policy, and more basically whose interests are being served. The military command in the Middle East, led by Admiral William Fallon, came out publicly opposing the Israeli-Fifth Column policy to bomb Iran. The active commanders were meekly backed by the rubber-spined Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, and surreptitiously (at first) by the top intelligence chiefs. The Zion-Cons retaliated by launching the White House and Congress in a crusade to escalate economic sanctions and to ‘keep the military option’ on the table. Every major Israel-First academic and propaganda think tank followed up the Israeli war planning with a wave of op-ed articles and interviews throughout the mass media about Iran’s immediate nuclear threat. The President, who does nothing contrary to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (as trumpeted by Olmert himself), pronounced an apocalyptic message to the world in October 2007 (six weeks before the National Intelligence Estimate was finally released) proclaiming the advent of ‘World War Three’ against Iran’s nuclear weapons program and the threat of a nuclear attack (a ‘holocaust’) by Iran against the people of the US and Israel.

The White House was privy to the findings in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran at least 9 months before they were made public, as witnessed by President Cheney’s frequent interventions to alter their content and conclusion and repeated efforts to postpone their publication because it undermined the basis for their push to attack Iran. The Israeli government and its US Fifth Column, well aware of the forthcoming publication of the findings of sixteen top US intelligence agencies, did everything in their power to precipitate a US war with Iran, from issuing hair-raising tales of the ‘existential threats to Israel’s survival’ to encouraging, rousing bellicose speeches by AIPAC, Zionist and Jewish community leaders. Israel went to war with Iran’s ally (Hezbollah) in Lebanon, bombed Syria which has a mutual security pact with Iran, escalated Israeli-trained Kurdish terrorist attacks across the Iranian border in order to provoke Iranian retaliation – to no avail. AIPAC and its Congressional allies led by Israeli-US Senator Lieberman pulled all stops to force a conflict, increasing sanctions against bankers and corporations dealing with Iran and even labeling the Iranian military special force, the ‘Republican Guards’ as an illegal ‘terrorist organization’ and thus an automatic target of US military attacks under the doctrine of the ‘War against Terror’. The hyper-activity, the vicious military attacks, the strident rhetoric against all critics of the military option, and the urgency, with which the Israelis and their US supporters acted, was not due to any imminent Iranian nuclear threat but a desperate effort to precipitate the war before the US NIE became public and undermined their entire war propaganda campaign and military preparations for an attack.

The NIE findings temporarilyclosed the book on the White House-Israeli-Zionist Big Lie that Iran was engaged in developing weapons to launch a nuclear war. The NIE report refuted its own previous conclusions of 2005, which were heavily influenced by the White House and its Zionist-Israeli backers. The reversal of conclusions was not based on ‘new data’ or information techniques as is claimed. The change resulted from a dramatic shift in the balance of forces within the US government and in particular the strengthening of the US military elite versus the pro-war Zionist Power Configuration, a shift shaped by the enormous and unending American losses in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A key factor in pushing the US intelligence agencies to break with their past subjugation to White House manipulation and Israeli-Zionist fabricated intelligence was the repeated failures and incredible stupidity of the Israeli intelligence agencies – leading to a loss of their credibility. Israeli intelligence blundered and miscalculated on Hezbollah’s strength and organization which led to a debacle when Israel invaded Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Israeli estimates on Iraqi capacity to resist invasion and foreign occupation (so eagerly accepted and propagated by top Zionist Pentagon officials in the lead up to the invasion) led to the now 6 years of a US war of attrition in Iraq with no end in sight. Israel’s intelligence totally underestimated Hamas’ electoral strength in the run-up to their electoral victory over the PLO. Israeli intelligence overestimated the PLO’s military capacity to defeat and destroy Hamas in Gaza. Israel’s claim to have detected a nuclear facility in Syria, which it bombed, was an international joke – as even Moses could not have destroyed a (fictional) nuclear facility without producing a speck of radioactive dust! Learning from Israeli intelligence agencies’ tendency to feed disinformation to its clients in the US Government in order to further Greater Israel’s claims to Mid-East hegemony at the expense of Washington’s long term interests, the US national intelligence community asserted its independence and published its report denying each and every Israeli-Zionist-White House assertion concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons program and, in particular, pointing to the end of research into nuclear weapons as far back as the fall of 2003.

Israel Rejects the US NIE

While governments, the United Nations and experts around the world recognized the rigorous, systematic, comprehensive methods used to compile the data leading to the report declaring that Iran was free of nuclear weapons programs, one and only one state objected: The Jewish State of Israel. And in the USA only one nationwide configuration of organizations refused to reconcile itself to the absence of any Iranian military threat to Israel (not to speak of the US, a distant secondary consideration) and that was predictably the Zionist Power Configuration, specifically the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations.

Speaking for the Israeli Government, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, with the predictable arrogance and contempt that Israeli officials treat any US policy analysis or statement that doesn’t pass their editorial approval and toe their line, dismissed the NIE: ‘We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth (sic) even from our greatest friend’. (Guardian of London, December 4, 2007). Though the NIE may weaken the White House drive to war, the fact that Israel rejects the report means that its war preparations will continue and that means that its entire Zionist Power Configuration in the US will continue to pursue Israel’s interest in destroying Iran.

Following Orwellian logic AIPAC twisted the NIE report to fit Israel’s rejectionist lead (as it never fails to do) by arguing that the NIE report bolsters the case for continued confrontation, belligerency and isolation (Jewish Telegraph Agency, December 4, 2007). In fact according to the perverse argument of AIPAC spokesman Josh Block, the absence of any Iranian nuclear weapons threat should result in greater pressure on Iran! ‘All in all, it’s (the NIE) a clarion call for additional and continued (my emphasis) effort to pressure Iran economically and politically to end its illicit nuclear program.’(Jewish Telegraph Agency, December 4, 2007).

Once again the Israel Firsters – embracing all the major Zionist organizations and community councils – defy all logic, and the most comprehensive and in depth empirical intelligence report of the US in favor of the propaganda emanating from the failed Israeli intelligence agencies and the Israeli regime. In a continuous barrage of articles and television interviews, the entire Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) buried the NIE report, refocusing attention on themes like ‘Iran’s nuclear program still a threat’ (Daily Alert, December 7, 2007). During the entire week (December 3-7, 2007) the Presidents of the Major American (sic) Jewish Organizations – covering the entire range of financially powerful Jewish organizations in the USA – published an average of nine articles (nearly 50) propagating the Israeli line. The articles disparaged, distorted and dismissed the NIE and continued to push for the ‘military option’ (euphemism for launching a massive attack on Iran) as well as new economic sanctions to destroy the Iranian economy and the livelihood of its 70 million citizens. The euphoria of anti-war critics who claim the NIE report laid to rest the threat of a new US war with Iran is premature, as is their idea that the ‘Israel Lobby’ was dealt a decisive blow. The ZPC never lost a beat: Israel Firster and Zion-Con fanatic, US Treasury Undersecretary, responsible for terrorism and financial intelligence, Stuart Levey, succeeded in convincing China to tighten trade credit, making trade more difficult and costly for Iran’s private sector. (Financial Times, December 6, 2007, p. 1).

Internationally, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary David Millband – a long-time supporter of Israel with close family ties to the Zionist state – predictably followed the Bush-Israel-ZPC line in all but dismissing the NIE report and emphasizing the need to ‘keep the pressure on Iran’. Millband, who on his recent visit to Israel, refused to even pass a glance at Israel’s shutdown of electricity and fuel to the 1.4 million Palestinians caged up in Gaza, spent an entire evening exchanging pleasantries with his settler relatives in Tel Aviv. He accused the non-nuclear Iran of being a major threat to the international community because it produces what he called ‘fissile material’ and ‘missiles’. Every large and medium size country in the world produces enriched uranium and possesses missiles; to impose a sinister construction on Iran’s civilian and defense projects is laughable. (Financial Times, December 6, 2007) Millband dismisses out of hand their civilian application and parrots word for word his Israeli mentors’ line about ‘hidden programs’ and other such unsubstantiated Zionist propaganda. Recent revelations of large-scale, long-term Zionist financing of the highly indebted Labor Party’s electoral campaigns by millionaire moguls and self-proclaimed ‘Labor Friends of Israel’ (Independent, December 6 2007) suggests that Millband’s rapid rise to head the Foreign Ministry had less to do with his minimal international affairs experience and more to do with the ‘special relations’ between millionaire Zionist fundraisers and past and present Labor Party leaders, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

In France President Sarkozy appointed Zionist zealot Bernard Kouchner, (a fervent supporter of humanitarian intervention including the US invasion of Iraq), to head the Foreign Ministry after ‘consultations’ with leading French Jewish organizations, which had rejected an earlier candidate, deemed not pro-Israel enough. Bernie Kouchner and Nicky Sarkozy immediately picked up the Israeli line, dismissing the NIE Report and calling for new economic sanctions even as the original justification (Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program) was found to be a lie. Nicky and Bernie called for a new UN National Security Council resolution adding greater sanctions against Iran (AFP, December 7, 2007). The Bush-Millband-Kouchner-Israeli logic parallels Stalinist-Nazi logic — the more the intelligence reports demonstrate the absence of a nuclear weapons program, the greater the nuclear threat; the lesser the present threat, the greater the future threat; the lesser the empirically verifiable threat, the greater the secret threat. The NIE report made liars of the White House and Congressional Democrats and the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations who ‘knew’ Iran had a nuclear weapons program. Even more revealingly, it demonstrates that for the same war mongers, Iranian nuclear weapons is not the motivating force for their drive to attack Iran. Leaving out the weapons motive, it is abundantly clear that attacking Iran through sanctions and military threats is deeply rooted in the Israeli priority of destroying Iran as an adversary to its Middle East power grab and its assault and territorial dispossession of Palestinians.

The ZPC, Millband, Kouchner, Olmert, and the White Houses’ efforts to push for a third round of UN sanctions is likely to be rejected. On December 4, China’s UN Ambassador, Wang Guangya, announced that the NIE report called into question the need for new sanctions, ‘I think we all start from the presumption that now things have changed. I think council members will have to consider that.’ (Al Jazeera, December 5, 2007). China, with $17 billion dollars in direct trade with Iran and up to $30 billion via Dubai, and with Iran as a major Middle East oil supplier and with no Zionist lobby to reinforce Israeli diplomatic pressures, is free to pursue its own national interests. The case can be made that Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, will follow China’s lead and object to new sanctions. Nevertheless, the US Congress and in particular its influential Committee chairpersons continue to blindly follow Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s pronouncement post-NIE: ‘It is vital to pursue efforts to prevent Iran from developing a capability like this (sic) in the United States’. Leading Congressional Israeli-American zealot, Thomas Lantos, convoked a congressional hearing on the NIE Report and invited two top ex-government advisers and ultra-Zion zealots, David Wurmser and Martin Indyk to testify.

Conclusion

There is no question that the anti-(Iran) war groups in the US military and intelligence agencies struck a serious blow to the ongoing war plans of the White House, Israel and their agents in the ZPC. The setback includes a temporary defeat of its massive war propaganda and their fabrication of an ‘existential threat’ to the world community (Israel)’. Nevertheless the publication of the NIE hit the headlines for only a few days, followed by a barrage of hostile propaganda in all of the US mass media which called into question the peaceful intentions of Iran and even twisted certain probabilistic phrases to contradict the main findings.

From the vantage point of Americans trying to free their government and the American public of Israeli and ZPC tyrannical monopoly of opinion, the NIE Report struck a blow against the credibility of the White House and Zionist spokespeople in the Congress, National Security Council, Homeland Security and the Justice and Treasury Departments regarding Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program. But the quickness, depth and scope of the Israeli response especially magnified by its representatives in the US, the French and British foreign offices, demonstrates that the pro-war Israel Firsters are still deeply embedded in positions of political power and willing to defy the US intelligence and military establishment. Without shame or substance, with aggressive outbursts and manipulative semantical skills, the ZPC moves forward toward new sanctions, despite the systematic empirical refutation of its principle argument. Only a blind, irrational tribal-ethnic loyalty to Israel can account for the ready denial of the NIE report and automatic embrace of Israel’s continued fabrications. As in the thirties when overseas Nazi sympathizers defended Hitler’s’ lies about Communists torching the Reichstag and Communist fellow travelers defended Stalin’s purges as exemplary judicial processes, our Zionists continue to deny every systematic empirical report (like the NIE) which contradicts Israel’s lies and fabrications about Iran’s nuclear weapons programs.

Beyond the important issue of dual loyalties (very much in evidence in the ZPC’s response to the NIE report) there is the re-emergence of the question of a US-backed Israeli war with Iran. The military option will be buttressed by an Israeli military intelligence propaganda report dismissing the NIE. It will claim secret Iranian nuclear weapons programs buried somewhere near the center of the earth and therefore undetected by US intelligence informants, satellite photos, UN inspectors, defecting (or kidnapped) Iranian Generals or any other US source. Only Israel’s superior intelligence agencies (which failed in Lebanon, Iraq and the Gaza Strip), based on its Chosen People (with their unassailable intelligence hot-line to the ‘Omniscient One’ – the same ‘One’ who does the ‘Choosing’) can be right – even if they have to once again ‘cook the data’ to make the case to the uninitiated.

The NIE and the US Military have struck a blow against the planners of World War III. Will this lift the US Congress off its collective knees to finally address US interests in the Middle East? Will it re-awaken a currently moribund peace movement, terrified to confront the most virulent organized warmongers? Will it allow Congress and the US public to challenge the ZPC’s stranglehold on US-Middle East policy?

Will the British public and peace movement dare to challenge a Labor Government and Foreign Office bought and paid for by the ‘Labor Friends of Israel’? Will the French public and intellectuals of Paris recover their republican credentials and reject its first and foremost Israel First regime?

Two weeks after the Annapolis Meeting, Israeli Housing Minister Zeev Boim gave US Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice the ‘bristly cucumber’ (a Mediterranean style ‘slap in the face’) when she pleaded with the Jewish state to stop building new settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem because, ‘it doesn’t help to build confidence’. Boim went on to say, ‘Secretary of State Rice should be congratulated for her efforts in re-launching the peace process (sic)…but this cannot be constantly linked to the cessation of construction in Jerusalem…There is thus nothing to prevent construction anywhere else in Israel.’ (Al Jazeera, December 8, 2007).

Just as the Jewish state can dismiss its vague promises to the Bush regime on the so-called ‘peace process’ in short order, so does Israel reject the NIE report on the absence of a nuclear weapon program in Iran and prepare for war – backed by the entire ZPC.

Surprisingly it is not liberal or leftist opinion leaders who have raised the relevant issues pertaining to the questions of war and peace in the Middle East, the Israeli-White House threats of starting World War III. It is the spy agencies in the US and their allies in the US military, the paragons of past wars and present destabilization campaigns (read – Venezuela). It is an irony of history. But just the same, this is the real world in which we live, where Western intellectuals and cultural heroes have abdicated their responsibility to challenge the Zionist Power Configuration operating on behalf of an aspiring Middle East colonial power.”

James Petras speaking on the NIE