Twenty-five plus years ago, I began a quest to find the answer to a rather straightforward question – “Why is it seemingly impossible to have peace in the Middle East?” For some the answer is deceptively simple, for others deceptively complex. For me it proved problematic, a bittersweet oxymoron that appeared to lead to an everlasting infinity, an impossible peace. Research took me to the four corners of the globe, spanning centuries, covering the rise and fall of empires, cultures and religions. I relied on some of the best experts in their respective areas, historians, theologians, political and military mindsets, and radical thinkers from the left and right, from Zionist, Jihadist and proponents of End Times eschatology. The journey helped to frame my thinking, not as an expert who sees the trees, but as someone with a more generalist viewpoint of the forest.
One always has to be especially careful when making judgments and pronouncements about different historical eras, nationalities, races, cultural or religious differences. I hope that is not to say unless one can speak with absolute certainty they should remain silent. Yogi Berra once upon a time said, “You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” In trying to understand the world around us, we often do not know where we may end up. This is certainly true of my journey that I hope to share with you.
Certainly one needs to be careful and open to self-reflection and correction by others, to be sure, but anything more required of us means our knowledge and understanding of the world would not have progressed beyond the Neanderthal. Remaining silent is no longer an honorable option when much-needed voices are required, more so when so much human suffering in our midst is, by and large caused by other human beings. This article crosses many taboo boundaries, no doubt stepping on some sensitive toes.
While it is nigh impossible to summarize a quarter century’s research into one article, I will attempt to present one area in the overall picture, a necessary ingredient of the heart and soul to any answer that makes any sense. The Alpha and Omega have to start and end with the Persians, today’s Iran, the world’s oldest continuous civilization, dating back to 4000 BC/BCE. Without which everything else in the middle is but a house built upon sifting sand, leaving one devoid of the proper foundation needed in order to grasp the intricacies that abound in the travails, trials and tribulations found in the Middle East. Taken together, hopefully this article and a follow-on article will provide us with the Key to unraveling the proverbial Gordian Knot. The Great Middle to which I speak of refers but is not limited to European Colonialism, oil/gas, weapons wealth creation, U.S. Hegemonic Empire, the Globalist Financial cartel, Palestinians, Islam, Zionism, Talmudicism, Wahhabism and End of Days Eschatology.
The Persian/Iran and Jewish connection will be the main thrust of this article but areas in the great middle foreshadowed, as appropriate for clarification. Obviously Persia, its historical roots as a proud ancient civilization, including modern day Iran has every right to exist quite apart of its relationship with the Jews or modern day Israel but the linkage cannot be divorced from our attempt to find Peace in the Middle East. Had, for instance, there been no Persia/Iran, the Jews would have long ago become extinct.
Pinocchio Politicians
Most of what you read here you will not have heard arising from the lips of American politicians or expressed by any of the major news outlets. ‘We the People’ too often feed upon Fool’s Gold dressed up to look like the real thing, sometimes presented as eloquent silence, repetitive omittance or the twisting of a phrase to fit the occasion. Known also to occur to the point of overflowing subterfuge mixed with chicanery or if all else fails, out and out fakery; inconvenient facts expunged, put on the back burner if you will. Comfortable lies are preferred over uncomfortable truths! These prevaricators of falsities deserve ‘Four Pinocchio’s’.
Unfortunately the story of the Middle East, as told in America, is woven from one cloth, where most with ears to hear take at face value what they are told and those with eyes to see wear the same rose-colored glasses. ‘We the people in the wee sweet land of liberty’, oft time prior to declaring an opinion, fail to walk the mile in someone else’s shoes, leaving us with a self-inflicted bias of looking at that part of our world. Exposed to only one side of an issue guarantees a certain amount of ignorance. Paradoxically, while the mainstream corporate media is left wanting, a ‘few chosen ones’, mainly in the alternative or independent media, are generally more truthful and informative. When it comes to scholarly research and reporting on the events in the Middle East, although relatively small in number and far and few between, a greater degree of balance can be found among secular Jewish scholars, many residing in the United States, than generally found among their Goy, a.k.a., Gentile, counterparts, especially in today’s world. Seekers of the truth owe a great deal of gratitude to BraveHearts such as Israel Shahak, Stephen Cohen, Ron Unz, Noam Chomsky Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté, to name but a few. I’m afraid in part the explanation for the scarcity of truth-telling among my fellow Gentiles lies in the fear that to speak out in such a manner ends up with one being ‘tarred and feathered’ as an anti-Semite. To paraphrase Voltaire, ‘To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?’
Whenever US-backed Israel takes a military action against anyone, be it Iranians, Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Hezbollah or Iraqis, the press presents it as a defensive reaction by Israel, where Israel is viewed always as a victim, never as a victimizer or an unprovoked aggressor. This is the case even against America itself, as the press and Israel presented regarding the U.S.S. Liberty (an excellent video of the incident – The Day Israel Attacked America).
The political class in America marches in lockstep with a media fully sympathetic to Israel. In polite circles, what is usually referred to as the U.S. Congress is otherwise known as the American Knesset. Try hard as you may, it is rarer than rare to find anyone among its 535 members willing to stand up in defiance of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby – (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and if you do in all likelihood, they will soon be out of a job. AIPAC gets the US government’s representatives to act outside its own national interest. Congressional leaders failed to explain how Israel’s Netanyahu recently received an invite to speak in the People’s House, more than any other foreign leader, a place many now feel has been overtaken by madmen, to a joint session of Congress, when Israel stands accused of the Crime of Genocide by the International Court of Justice. Unfortunately, 95 percent of Congress gives the other 5 percent a bad name. Congress washed Netanyahu’s soiled laundry, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He was in his element! In less than an hour, Netanyahu referred to Iran 27 times, in one form or fashion as the world’s greatest terrorist nation, receiving 58 hooting and hollering, clapping like seals standing ovations from a room filled with perpetual liars. Kim Jong Un, speaking before the Eighth Party Congress received less adoration! Even Germany’s Nazi elites gave the Esteemed Fuhrer less devotion. One has to wonder how such a thing is possible when in a recent Gallup poll, 53 percent of American citizens favor the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, something Israel has refused to do for three quarters of a century. One can’t help but imagine how much greater that poll percentage may have been had the public been exposed to truly ‘fair and balanced’ reporting. On May 10, 2024, 143 of the 193 member states supported a UN resolution that called to make Palestine a full member, where just 5 % of the global population, the United States, Israel and seven small countries opposed the measure, standing against the Overwhelming 95 % Majority of the planet. Since 1970, the U.S. has used its veto power on the Security Council more than any other permanent member, most frequently to block decisions that it regarded as detrimental to the interests of Israel.
When to the best of memory have you witnessed a serious contender for President or Vice President critical of Israel or favorably disposed to the genocidal plight of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories or for those speaking up for them, like for instance, Iran? On the state level, thus far and counting, 38 states have passed bills and executive orders designed to discourage boycotts of Israel. The world boycotted Apartheid South Africa but American citizens exercising their Constitutional right of expression are ‘discouraged’ from boycotting Apartheid Israel. Government contractors wishing to do business with their state government are required to certify their anti-boycott compliance. Please permit me to paraphrase a thought expressed by a person whose name I am unable to recall: ‘There is a growing number who harbor a smoldering resentment and contempt for a System that will not allow them to articulate forbidden thoughts or disseminate banned information, without risking loss of reputation, employment, career or business.’ Institutionalized cowardice in the face of incontrovertible fact has created a nation of Americans who dare not think lest they violate a taboo.
Norm Chomsky warned us in Manufacturing Consent, of the tragedy our country would face when the Mass Media is willing to serve as a vehicle for government propaganda. Even if the American Media fail to inform us or the politicians fail to represent us, there is another perspective, one that I hope the reader will afford me a little time to present! This is not to say that I personally agree with all or even most of what these writers believe or claim. However, sometimes the most valuable insights are obtained by reading opinions sharply divergent from one’s own. This I hope to do! Then if appropriate, place what I say herein at the bottom of the birdcage.
Without the Persians/Iranians there would be no Jews
Were it not for Cyrus the Great and his Persians/Iranian descendents, the Jews would have become extinct.
Zoroastrianism, the world’s first monotheistic religion predates Ancient Judaism by as much as a millennium, where for ten centuries it remained the primary faith of Cyrus the Great and the Persians and the Iranians until Islam came on the scene in early seventh century AD. Zoroastrianism had a profound effect on Cyrus and Persian history. According to Stephen Kinzer in All the Shah’s Men, it captured the hearts of many believers over the course of many centuries. The duty of the faithful was not simply to obey wise kings but also to rise up against those who are wicked; humanity locked in an eternal struggle between good and evil. Their leaders deserved allegiance so long as they had divine blessing, a blessing earned by moral behavior.
Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire, and his Persians were true to the precepts of their faith that taught that every human being is to work toward establishing social justice on earth. In doing so, they saved the Jews from disappearing as a people after King Nebuchadnezzar laid waste to Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, also known as the First Temple, in 570 BC/BCE. Jews of rank or substance carted off into captivity in Babylon languished for thirty years until the Great Cyrus subdued Nebuchadnezzar’s Chaldean Empire. He freed the Jews, where some of the exiles and their offspring repatriated to Jerusalem, providing them the resources and protection necessary to begin the restoration of Herod’s Temple, also known as the Second Temple. Cyrus is referred to in the book of Isaiah 45: as God’s anointed one.
According to Shlomo Sand, a contemporary historian who teaches at the University of Tel Aviv, in his book The Invention of the Jewish People, a book originally written in Hebrew, ‘the founders of Talmudic Judaism made their home in Babylon. Rabbinical schools were set up in Sura, Nehardea and Pumbedita, principal laboratories where their new religion was refined’. Their exposure in their Rabbinical schools to Zoroastrianism in Babylonia and Persia helped solidify basic elements of Talmudic Jewish belief, including an afterlife and final judgment. The origin of the word ‘paradise’ is Persian. As an aside, one of the non-canonical Christian sources, the Syriac Infancy Gospel, cites Zoroaster as the source of the prophecy that motivated the Magi to follow a miraculous guiding star to Bethlehem to seek the infant Jesus.
The Jews’ indebtedness to the Persians may have begun with Cyrus the Great pulling their chestnuts out of the fire but it did not end there. The Persians did a repeat performance in AD 70 CE when the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed Herod’s Temple. Worship ceased in a Temple that no longer existed, hence there was no need of the Sadducee priestly class, who like the mystic Essenes soon disappeared from the historical record after the first century AD/CE. The Pharisees were the only ancient sect, the only organized group of pre-Rabbinic Judaism to survive the destruction of the Second Temple. According to Flavius Josephus, the Roman-Jewish historian, the Pharisees numbered around 6,000 in AD 70 CE, a portion taking flight to Babylon. Although be forewarned, Josephus shares the faults of many ancient writers who tended to exaggerate his facts and declarations, especially population figures. Once again, the Jews were under the protection of the Persians.
It is while in Babylon the Jewish Pharisees flourished, where unmolested for the next five centuries they were able to create the Babylon Talmud, a compilation of rabbinical analyses and Commentaries (Gemara) and Oral Traditions (Mishnah) of the scribes and Pharisees. The Talmud was to become the central religious text and primary source of Jewish religious law of Rabbinic Judaism. According to Robert Goldenberg, Professor of Judaic Studies at the State University of New York:
“The Talmud was Torah… the Talmud was Oral Torah in written form, and as such it became the clearest statement the Jew could hear of God’s very word. “…The Talmud provided the means of determining how God wanted all Jews to live, in all places, at all times. Even if the details of the law had to be altered to suit newly arisen conditions, the proper way to perform such adaptation could itself be learned from the Talmud and its commentaries… The Talmud revealed God speaking to Israel, and so the Talmud became Israel’s way to God.” (pp 6-7, Judaism’s Strange Gods, Michael A. Hoffman ii)
The Babylon Talmud was composed between AD 200 CE in AD 500 CE when it was codified but was edited even up through the eighth century AD/CE (There is also a less authoritative Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi) edition produced in Palestine that predates the Babylon Talmud about a century).
Three monotheistic religions are commonly acknowledged to have arisen out of the Abrahamic faith tradition: ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Pharisaic Rabbinic Judaism, however, might well be considered a distinct fourth religion, arising in the early sixth century AD/CE with the codification of the Talmud, five centuries after the rise of Christianity. I have yet to see a poll on the number of Christians who have heard of the Talmud. Islam came upon the scene about a century later, in AD 610 CE. All four faiths find common ground originating with the Tanak or Hebrew Bible but with the exception of ancient Judaism, the other three have their own primary religious text that take precedence – the New Testament for Christians, the Qur’an for Islam and the Talmud for Rabbinic Pharisaic Judaism. For what it’s worth, I could probably count on two hands the number of Christians I came across who had an inkling or vague notion about the Talmud; although to be magnanimous, I would say tops, perhaps 3 or 4 percent.
Were it not for the Persians and Cyrus the Great the ancient Abrahamic Jews of old would have disappeared in 586 BC/BCE with the fall of Solomon’s Temple. Were it not for the Persians, after the destruction of Herod’s Temple in AD 70 CE, Rabbinic Pharisaic Judaism and its holy book, the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli), would not have lived to see the day of its creation five centuries later.
Jews’ disappearance or just another cult?
Islam also played a central role in keeping Jewry alive and well during the Middle Ages. David J Wasserstein, the Eugene Greener Jr Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University, expounded in the Jewish Chronicle an article titled, “So, What Did the Muslims Do for the Jews?” the following:
“By the fourth century, Christianity had become the dominant religion in the Roman empire. One aspect of this success was opposition to rival faiths, including Judaism, along with massive conversion of members of such faiths, sometimes by force, to Christianity.
…Jewish cultural prosperity in the middle ages operated in large part as a function of Muslim, Arabic cultural (and to some degree political) prosperity: when Muslim Arabic culture thrived, so did that of the Jews; when Muslim Arabic culture declined, so did that of the Jews.
…the cultural capital thus created also served as the seed-bed of further growth elsewhere – in Christian Spain and in the Christian world more generally.
…Had Islam not come along, Jewry in the west would have declined to disappearance and Jewry in the east would have become just another oriental cult.”
Churchill, Eisenhower & BP overthrow a Democracy
‘We the People’ played a central, critical role in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953. That US-backed coup cast Iran’s fate to be dramatically different from what had been the expressed wishes of its people. After the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) refused to open its books to the newly elected Iranian government and renegotiate the contract they made with the Shah, the Iranian parliament nationalized the oil company in 1951. The parliament suspected — a fact that was later admitted to by the CIA — that very little of the revenue was going to the Iranian people. The Iranian people received but a pittance, with a somewhat larger yet still small percentage ending up in the Shah’s coffers but sufficient to pay for mansions, planes, cars and other such needs worthy of his position. The remainder went to the oil company’s stockholders. In 1951, AIOC shared with Iran £7 million out of a profit of £47 million.
The board of directors of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company asked Winston Churchill, once again Britian’s Prime Minister from 1951 to 1955, to intervene. Churchill could not persuade Truman to assist in a coup. The CIA’s wheels were greased and put into action, however, once his ole pal from WWII days, Dwight David Eisenhower, took over the office of the President of these United States. CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of former President Theodore Roosevelt, carried out the American side of the operation, MI6 taking the lead for the British. The coup or what is now referred to as a ‘Color Revolution’, was a great success, like several others carried out against democratically elected governments by the ‘Sweet Land of Liberty’ over the years, a smattering of which include such sovereign states as Vietnam, Chile, Brazil, Egypt, Greece, Ecuador, Panama, Iraq and more recently Ukraine.
The Shah returned to power. Savak, the Shah’s Secret Police, was formed and its officers trained by Mossad to deal with any future democratic minded troublemakers. SAVAK has been described as Iran’s “most hated and feared institution”, where tens of thousands of its citizens were imprisoned, tortured, maimed and killed until 1979, when the Shah was overthrown by the Iranian Revolution, led by the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In all likelihood, had it not been for the secret shenanigans of a coup orchestrated by those acting on behalf of the ‘Authors of Liberty’, the old bearded Khomeini would likely as not have spent his last days twiddling his thumbs in a Paris suburb instead of Tehran. Shortly after the coup, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was renamed The British Petroleum Company or BP for short. The Shah quickly signed over 40 percent of Iran’s oil fields to U.S. companies.
The Shah, the Ayatollah & the Embassy…
Who can forget November 4, 1979, when Iranian students took over the American Embassy in Tehran, where 52 American diplomats were held hostage for 444 days, accompanied by non-stop media coverage? Left unspoken but never forgotten is the need for Iran to pay dearly, repeatedly, for the public embarrassment it caused ‘America the Beautiful’, from sea to shining sea. Costly sanctions against Iran commenced shortly after the Embassy takeover, growing over the years to include Iran’s internal and external affairs – financial/banking, oil exports, trade, asset freezes, travel bans and weapons development. Total estimated costs to Iran range from one to four plus trillion dollars. The secondary sanctions cost, health, medicine, food, education and general quality of life is difficult to estimate. As always is the case, the misery to the average citizen is who feels the pain most.
Eight American servicemen were killed in the accident to rescue the hostages. According to Iran they took over the Embassy after the U.S. refused to turn over the Shah of Iran to them. Khomeini was hoping for an exchange of the Shah for the hostages in order to have him stand trial for crimes he committed against the Iranian people during his reign of terror. (The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, Robert Fisk, 2005) The U.S. could hardly turn over Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the Iranians; given it was the U.S. and Great Britain who placed him on the throne after the successful led coup against their democratically elected government. One will never know with any certitude how many Iranians were jailed, tortured and/or executed during his reign although the numbers were in the thousands, millions if we include those whose fledging democracy and resultant freedom was taken from them. One Iranian who wished to remain nameless expressed it as follows:
“The conflict is not between our nations. Our anger is not directed at Americans because they are Americans. We have no genes for anti-Americanism in us. Our anger is directed at those in power who installed and maintained the Shah for 25 years..”
The U.S., Saddam’s friend and accomplice
Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist party was not always our sworn enemy. In fact when America was not trying to kill him and his cohorts toward the end of his rein, ‘Our Country tis of thee’ was Saddam’s trusted ally, alongside global oil and companies like Halliburton and Bechtel who found Saddam’s friendship most rewarding. While it is true Saddam killed, maimed, tortured and otherwise suppressed for decades the Shia of Iraq who made up 75% of its population, Ronald Reagan’s special representative, Donald Rumsfield, perhaps said it best when he declared America and Saddam’s Iraq shared many common interests. Saddam Hussein proved useful to the United States in 1980 when he initiated a war on Iran, with “We the People’s” blessing.
One could still make the case that early on Iraq did indeed have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD’s), chemical and biological but not nuclear. We know this for the simple reason that the United States, along with the Germans, French and British, never in short supply of the accouterments and weapons of war, especially when well compensated by the likes of Saddam, provided him with the chemicals and production equipment to produce sarin and mustard gas for their use in the war against Iran, the same deadly mixture the Germans used in WWI. Twenty-four U.S. firms were involved in exporting materials to Baghdad. We provided Saddam with essential intelligence on Iranian troop positions and weather conditions, along with crop dusting helicopters that gave him the ability to fly over the Iranian troops, spraying them as if they were no more than weeds, killing 100,000 of the unprotected Iranians. According to retired Army Colonel W. Patrick Lang, senior defense intelligence officer for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency at the time, “the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern” to Reagan and his aides, because they “were desperate to make sure that US-backed Iraq did not lose. In 1982, one veteran involved with the program shrugged that “it was just another way of killing people—whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn’t make any difference.” Iraq was added to the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism on December 29, 1979, but was removed in February 1982 to allow US aid to Iraq while it was fighting Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. The Reagan administration, realized Iraq was “the only thing standing between revolutionary Iran and the Persian Gulf oil fields”. Sanctions were later reinstated on September 13, 1990, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Given the on and off again fluctuations it is difficult to ascertain Iraq’s current status as a member of the terrorist nations of the world.
Current Affairs stated that a number of abandoned stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons from before 1991 were uncovered but the Bush administration actually worked to conceal the discovery, because these “filthy, rusty, or corroded” weapons were clearly “long-abandoned.” The New York Times reported that, “In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by the cleaning up of chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies.” In addition to gassing the Iranians, in 39 separate gas attacks, these same banned weapons were used against the Kurds “Anfal” to kill an estimated 5,000 of their own citizens (50,000-100,000 Kurds were killed by Iraqi forces from all causes). All told over one million lives were lost, many more made homeless, in eight years of war from 1980-1988, between Iraq and Iran, the majority of casualties Iranian.
If one is willing to do a bit of digging for the information, information seldom found referenced even in footnotes, a treasure trove of the past deeds of those that represented ‘America’, often hidden just out of sight, will enlighten all but those choosing to keep their head buried in the sand. One such gold nugget snippet was retrieved from an article found in London’s Sunday Times 11-15-98 edition, titled, “Israel planning ‘‘ethnic’ bomb as Saddam caves in”
Israel is working on a biological weapon that would harm Arabs but not Jews, according to Israeli military and western intelligence source … In developing their “ethno-bomb,” Israeli scientists are trying to exploit medical advances by identifying genes carried by some Arabs…
[Uzi Mahnaimi (born in 1952) is an Israeli-born journalist. He is a Middle East correspondent for the London-based The Sunday Times; Marie Colvin (1956) is an American-born prominent war correspondent]
Not an apologize-for-America kind of guy…
As an aside, lest we forget, on July 3, 1988, an Airbus A300 was blown out of the sky by two SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles fired by USS Vincennes, a guided-missile cruiser of the United States Navy. The Airbus was flying over Iranian territorial waters when the airliner disintegrated in flight, killing all 290 people aboard, including 66 infants and children. When given the opportunity to express contrition for the calamity, while campaigning for President, George H.W. ‘Daddy’ Bush said instead: “I will never apologize for the United States. I don’t care what the facts are… I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.”
Mission Accomplished, WMD’s and the Shia/Sunni Civil War
Some find it the Irony of Ironies that George W. ‘Son’ Bush would use Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) as the major pretext to invade Iraq in 2003, weapons that not only we provided but also assisted in their use of in the American-backed Iraq war against Iran a decade and a half earlier. This pretext for invasion was later revised, to include the building of Democracy in the ancient land of Mesopotamia, that and Bush reportedly admitting that it was after all, “Saddam who tried to kill my dad.” One report, known as the Duelfer Report, in 2004, a year after the invasion of Iraq, acknowledged that only small stockpiles of chemical WMDs were found, the numbers being inadequate to pose a militarily significant threat.
The American-sponsored ‘Mission-Accomplished’ invasion of Iraq under George W Bush declared the task complete after 26 days of combat operations, seven months before Saddam’s arrest. Unfortunately, the invasion soon turned into a civil war between Shia Muslims who made up 75 percent of the population and Sunni Muslims, 20 percent. The armed conflict in Iraq lasted from 2003 to 2011 but the U.S. is still in residence. Iraqi’s Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi on January 10, 2020, asked the United States to begin the process of planning the withdrawal of its troops from the country, five days after the Iraqi Parliament voted to end the long-standing American military presence. The U.S. has yet to leave what some euphemistically refer to as a “sovereign nation.” Such also holds true in Syria, where American troops were never invited and asked to leave.
Just recently, on January 6th, 2024, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani promised to expel international coalition forces from the country after a U.S. air strike killed a high ranking Iraqi militia commander in Baghdad. Iraqi’s Prime Minister accused Washington of routinely violating Iraq’s sovereignty, recalling another “heinous act” committed by the U.S. four years earlier assassinated Iranian General Soleimani, the Iraqi Prime Minister at the time, Adil Abdul-Mahdi addressed his country’s parliament regarding his planned meeting with Soleimani on the morning the general was killed. He was to discuss a diplomatic rapprochement that Iraq was brokering between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The below Twitter Post is from Mustafa Salim, a reporter for the Washington Post Baghdad Bureau:
Unfortunately, a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia did not occur until three years later, brokered by China in Beijing on March 10, 2023, an agreement signed to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Upon liberation from the oppression of Sunni strongman Saddam’s despotism, Shia Muslims thought it reasonable to take control of their country, not unlike what we proposed after defeating English King George III in America’s Revolution eons ago, but the Sunnis, with Saudi support, had other ideas. The West condemned Iran after it was suspected of supplying their Shia religious brothers in Iraq. American troops found themselves caught in the middle of a civil war, between Shia and Sunni, which meant they did suffer causalities, from both sides of the conflagration. According to a ABC News analysis of data released from the Defense Department in October, 2006 – more than 80 percent – of American military deaths in Iraq were caused by Sunni insurgents funded with weapons and money from Saudi Arabia. You may find it of some interest to note ‘fair and balanced reporting’ in the following:
The Military Times reported how many Americans were killed by Iran-backed militants (Shia) came to 17 percent of all deaths from 2003-2011. No mention of the percentage of Americans killed by Saudi-backed militants (Sunni) but it is reasonable to assume it was around 83 percent of all deaths. The article mentions lawsuits filed in U.S District Court in the U.S. against Shia Iranians but no mention of lawsuits filed against Sunni Saudis…
The Saudi’s also provided funding for over 200 radical Pakistan Madrassas religious schools, breeding grounds for Al-Quaeda and Isis in addition to funding Al-Qaeda with wherewithal to fight the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. As an added sweetener if you will, many weapons used by both sides in the civil war originated in the United States.
Iran, the World’s Greatest Terrorist Nation
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” is a phrase used ad infinitum to differentiate the use of violence against oppressor’s vs innocent victims. Terrorists terrorize those with whom we agree or are partial to. Freedom fighters are anyone engaged in resistance against those with whom we vehemently disagree. It seems some “terrorists” depicted by the media as “freedom fighters” have better press….
The White Helmets in Syria, founded by a former British Army officer in 2014, is one example of the Terrorist/Freedom Fighter dichotomy of the ancient splitting of hairs proverb: One man’s meat is another man’s poison. ‘Our Country Tis of Thee’ and Israeli-backed White Helmets are anti-Assad Freedom Fighters par excellence, fighting to overthrow, by most any means short of anything goes, the government of Syria, who is now a full-fledged member in good stead with most of the nations of the world, including the Arab League. ABC News has declared the White Helmets to be ‘A group of ordinary Syrians doing the extraordinary…”, humanitarians who provide assistance and support to the civilian population. On occasion Israel provides these ‘do-gooders’ food, shelter and patching up of their wounded as needed. Others, including investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley, see the White Helmets to be primarily a NATO and US funded organization embedded in Al Nusra and ISIS held areas exclusively. One Documentary by Steve Ezzedine says the White Helmets is Al-Qaeda with a facelift.
As an aside, Western ‘Main Street Media’ often refer to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as their primary source when reporting on events in the Middle East. Mr. Abdul Rahman is a Syrian Sunni Muslim who owns a clothing shop and reports from his semidetached red-brick house in Coventry, England. According to the New York Times the Syrian Observatory is virtually a one-man band. One might be amazed to learn, as often as not, his Syrian Observatory is the only source listed for a story.
Lest we forget our history, which is an easy thing to do, especially the ugly part, the U.S., the U.K and Israel once supported apartheid South Africa, where our fearless leaders courageously branded Nelson Mandela and his ANC terrorists. The African National Congress was indeed involved in sabotage and a few other vicious acts against the Apartheid government but as Fox News has been known to expressed it, to be ‘Fair and Balanced’, we should also not forget how long and intensive the Afrikaners barbarized the black majority! The Israeli government had extremely warm relations with Apartheid South Africa. The Anti-Defamation League in the U.S. spied on American anti-Apartheid activists on behalf of the Apartheid state. Secret South African documents reveal that Tel Aviv even offered the Afrikaners nuclear weapons.
Assuming one believes what fills the airwaves ad infinitum about Iran, how could they not find themselves in agreement with the statement, ‘Iran is the world’s greatest terrorist nation’? Also drilled into our brain cells is the Ayatollah’s wish that ‘Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth’. To paraphrase Al Gore, ‘Has the zebra really changed its spots?’ Has Cyrus the Great and his descendants, who prevented the extinction of Jews, now been transformed into the world’s greatest terrorist nation that now calls for the destruction of present day Jews?
Are the Jews of today biting the hand that fed and nurtured them? Netanyahu’s Israeli Likud party, political, religious and social Zionists, including Christian Zionists found, not exclusively but overwhelmingly in the “Bible Belt” in the United States, have been calling for decades, for regime change in Iran with the more radical of the bunch advocating, as if it were no more than a walk in the park, the nuking of its people. The cheaper and safer way for Israel to ‘de-fang’ Iran’s Ayatollah is through prodding the neo-Con and pro-Zionist elite in the United States to initiate an overwhelming conventional war against Iran. By the time this article finds its way to you such a theoretical idea may have indeed become a reality.
One cannot easily bomb Iran back to the Stone Age without first selling to the world its culpability as ‘The World’s Greatest Sponsor of State Terrorism’, terrorists who are about to unleash nukes upon mankind. America’s corporate media and Pinocchio politicians push this narrative, pointing their crooked fingers at Iran to promote their agenda, knowing full well they have it wrong on both accounts. Iran is not the terrorist nation for which it stands accused and the evidence supports this.
Shia and Sunni Muslims Terrorists…
For centuries, Iranian Shia and Saudi Sunni Muslims have been on the opposite side of friendly. Ironically, America and Israel have chosen to befriend the Sunni side, from whence cometh the very same folks who gave birth and continue to provide nourishment to Isis and Al-Qaeda. On occasion America’s leaders forget who are the ‘good guys’. Senator John McCain, three times in two days, while running for President of the United States, associated Iran with Al-Qaeda. Only after Senator Lieberman whispered in his ear that Al-Qaeda was not Iranian or even Shia Muslim but Sunni did the good Senator correct himself. A dangerous ‘mistake’, given he was holding Iran responsible for supporting most of the radical Islamic terrorism at the time, something that simply was not true. Iran was and is the archenemy of Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, McCain was not alone making a faux pas among American politicians, cultivated out of ignorance or a more malicious intent in mind I cannot say.
Twenty-three years ago, Iranian president Mohammad Khatami and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei condemned and denounced the attacks and the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks. During a soccer match in Tehran two days after 9/11 the Iranians observed a moment of silence as a gesture of respect. Iranian President Mohammed Khatami condemned the September 11 attack in the following words:
Terror and terrorization is not a new phenomenon. But regretfully, what has saddened us more is that the machine of war and terror did not stop in the year 2001, which was designated as the year for the dialogue among civilizations. The September 11 attack was the ugliest form of terrorism ever seen.
I expressed my deepest sorrow to the people of America right after the tragedy, and I’d like to say how sorry I am, and express my sorrow. I would also like to say that the Americans were not only ones who suffered. Just today we had a ceremony where the flags of all nationalities present in that — who were victims of the terrorist attack — were raised. As you know, there were Iranians among them as well. Therefore, that was a tragedy, and a terrible one. And terrorism in general is.
Osama bin Laden was a Saudi-born Sunni Muslim and founder of Al-Qaeda. Our first real contact with Osama goes back to the days of our $20 billion support of Afghan’s Mujahideen fight against the Soviets. Strange as it may appear, George W. Bush, however inadvertent at the time it may have been, provided nourishment to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, from infancy to full fledge adulthood. One perhaps would be remiss if they failed to mention that Isis, a less tolerant, meaner version of Al-Qaeda, grew rapidly in Iraq during Obama’s reign.
On several occasions, Iran offered to assist the United States in fighting Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan have been longtime enemies but according to Foreign Policy Magazine the Taliban and the Iranians joined to fight a common enemy, Isis, in Afghanistan.
What country is most deserving of Time Magazine’s ‘The World’s Greatest Nation of State Terrorism’? While neither Isis or Al-Qaeda are nation states in the strictest sense of the word they certainly could be considered supporting actors. That said, the nation that is NOT deserving of Time Magazine’s award is Iran. Iran is the fall guy the United States and Israel chose to play this leading role, for political, economic, theistic and eschatological reasons.
Few Western leaders, political entities, oil and weapons manufacturing companies and media conglomerates have clean hands when it comes to deciding the guilt or innocence of nations qualifying for the list of greatest terrorist’s nations. A few choice nations have been given a ‘Get out of Jail Free card’ who are ‘free-er’ than others from consideration, but it is not the intent of this article to expose the dastardly deeds of all the guilty parties.
Radical Islamic terrorist’s attacks in the West received 24/7 publicity. Comparatively speaking, such attacks have now subsided to a trickle since the U.S. and Israel befriended many of these same players under more agreeable circumstance. In their heyday, most attacks occurred in the Middle East, primarily against fellow Muslims, mainly against Shia Muslims, seldom make the headlines in the West. Many more Muslims, Shia and Sunni, die from the hands of Radical Islamic terrorists than everyone else combined. For the sake of brevity, a short list of a few of the more publicized attacks in the West that most everyone is familiar are included below:
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Sunni terrorist attacks
Paris Charlie Hebdo, St-Denis, Nice Bastille Day truck attack, Berlin truck attack, U.S.S. Cole, Kenya embassy, Tanzania embassy, Brussels airport, Manchester UK suicide bombing, UK London Bridge attack, 1993 World Trade bombing, 9/11, Moscow metro, Dagestan bombing, Orlando, Ft. Hood, Boston, San Bernardino, Boston Marathon, Copenhagen shootings, Bosnia, Brussels bombing, Pentagon, Ottawa Canada Parliament shooting, Orlando night club mass shooting, London underground bombing…
Shia terrorist attacks
None
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The Islamic attacks listed above scratch only the surface of those occurring all over the world. Radical Sunni Muslims carried out most of the Islamic attacks we read about or watched on TV, mainly members of Isis and Al-Qaeda. By far the majority of Mosques attacked are Shia places of worship. On May 20, 2023, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin met with U.S. officials and visited an FBI training facility as France was scheduled to host the Summer Olympics in Paris in August. He said that “Sunni Islamic terrorism” is the most prominent threat to his country and Europe. I emphasize this point to counter the pronouncements purporting to show Shia Iran as the main culprit supporting terrorism. The evidence, or to put it more succinctly, the lack thereof just does not hold water.
Larry Johnson (Sonar21.com), former veteran of the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism and someone who describes himself as a bona fide Son of American Revolutionaries, reviewed the lists of terrorist incidents for 2016-2018. Here are some of his findings for 2018:
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The U.S. Government and almost all of the media continue to declare that Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism. That is not true. That is a lie. Iran is fighting and killing Al Qaeda forces inside Syria. They have no ideological affinity with Al Qaeda.
No Hezbollah and no Hamas. If a country is going to “sponsor” terrorism then we should expect to see terrorist attacks. The attacks that are taking place are predominantly from Sunni affiliated groups that have ties to Saudi Arabia, not Iran.
It was the United States, along with the U.K., Saudi Arabia and Turkey, that helped ignite and escalate the civil war in Syria.
In 2016 there were a total of 1,753 terrorist attacks and at least 15,993 deaths, all terrorist attacks were attributed to ISIL, aka the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. NOT ONE was linked to Iran or any group receiving financial support from Iran.
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While most Radical Islamic Muslims are Sunnis, supported by Saudi Arabia, it would be preposterous to think that most of the two billion Muslims on our fair planet, be they Sunni or Shia, are terrorists. As a point of interest, most acts of terrorism carried out in the U.S., irrespective of what one might view on the ‘telly’ or difficult as it may be to believe, are NON-Muslim. The Centre for Research on Globalization provides food-for-thought worthy of anyone interested in the subject of terrorism.
Based on our review of the approximately 2,400 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil contained within the START database, we determined that approximately 60 were carried out by Muslims.
In other words, approximately 2.5% of all terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1970 and 2012 were carried out by Muslims.* This is a tiny proportion of all attacks.
(We determined that approximately 118 of the terror attacks – or 4.9% – were carried out by Jewish groups such as Jewish Armed Resistance, the Jewish Defense League, Jewish Action Movement, United Jewish Underground and Thunder of Zion. This is almost twice the percentage of Islamic attacks within the United States. If we look at worldwide attacks – instead of just attacks on U.S. soil – Sunni Muslims are the main perpetrators of terrorism. However: 1. Muslims are also the main victims of terror attacks worldwide; and 2. the U.S. backs the most radical types of Sunnis over more moderate Muslims and Arab secularists.)
Iranian nukes
This section covers three decades of Iranian ‘nuclear weapons development’ or as the case may be, ‘non-nuclear weapons development’. One definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy is “a psychological phenomenon where a person’s expectations or beliefs about a situation cause their actions to make those expectations come true. Britannica defines it, as “a process through which an originally false expectation leads to it own confirmation”. Iran has up until today developed no nuclear weapons. Iran, sanctioned to the hilt, its very existence threatened, for 32 years stood accused by Israel and the United States of developing nuclear weapons. Netanyahu and the U.S. Congress have done their very level best to convince ‘one and all’ Iran was just around the corner from having the bomb sitting atop an ICBM, even if it meant ignoring what their own intelligence agencies were telling them. In 2012 both the Mossad and sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA were not attempting to produce nuclear weapons. Will the day come, however, when Iran grows tired of paying such a heavy price resulting from false accusations that it ultimately leads to its own confirmation? Will the Mother of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies become a reality? We can only hope not but to date and backed by no evidence to the contrary, Iran has not developed nuclear weapons
A few note-worthies discovered early on, speaking with a forked-tongue helped to achieve their hidden agenda of keeping Iran in line through exhaustive sanctions and the threat of war. Painting Iran to be the greatest supporter of State Terrorism in the World, as someone developing nuclear weapons, with a stated purpose of eliminating Israel off the face of the earth, provided sufficient justification to make for a weakened Iran and at the same time pleased both Israel and Saudi Arabia, in one fell swoop. Western media, seldom varying from script, like puppets on a string doing the bidding of a Master Puppeteer, repeatedly pronounced their government’s official declared position – Iran was close to building a nuclear bomb. Pictures of centrifuges plastered across the TV; while Iran claimed ostensibly, it was for peaceful purposes but the headlines said otherwise. Israel has got it down to a fine art, of it’s own making, accusing Iran’s since 1992 – 32 years and counting – that it was just around the corner to building a nuclear bomb, declaring it was as much as three to five years away, then other times on the cusp, just weeks away. If Iran wanted nukes it would have nukes. It has the technology. Iran just showed it’s technological capabilities when in retaliation it fired hypersonic missiles into Israel, missiles no one in the West either has after billions spent nor the capability to defend against. Thus far Iran has does not have nukes because it lacks the will to develop them nor the capability to do so.
Seldom discussed in the media is a U.S. intelligence assessment, representing 16 U.S. intelligence agencies who painted a completely different picture. Two highly classified assessments, five years apart, concluded that Iran was not ‘actively’ seeking to build a nuke or sought to do so nor was any evidence found to cause them to conclude otherwise. The U.S. government apparently did not trust its own agencies; leastwise they chose to ignore them, agencies with a combined budget of over seventy-five billion dollars. To do so would go against a secret agenda. The Guardian reported in an article in 2012 that “Senior U.S. officials say Israel does not dispute the basic intelligence or analysis.” In 2012 Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb. However, Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, like America’s sixteen intelligence agencies, contradicted their top political leaders.
According to a Mossad secret report, which was part of a cache of hundreds of dossiers, files and cables, all from one of the biggest spy leaks ever occurring, “Iran was not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons”. The Guardian said the leaked documents were a selective leak and independently authenticated that involved the spy agencies of Israel, South Africa, Britain, France, Jordan, Russia and the United States. One of the biggest hauls is from Mossad, where documents reveal a stark contrast to Netanyahu’s alarmist, unsubstantiated claims.
Iran has the technical ability to build a nuclear bomb. So far it has chosen to forego doing so. So why hasn’t Iran crossed the nuclear threshold aready? One possibility is the threat made by the United States and Israel of dire consequences. Another possibility is that Iran’s Supreme Leader genuinely believes nuclear weapons are contrary to Islam. So far Iran has stayed on the sideline in building a nuclear weapon. Threats from the U.S. and Israel are as they are, for ill or good but assurances from both that Iran won’t be attacked if it continues to eschew a weapons capability seem to be low down on the totem pole.
Regarding Iran’s ambition on nuclear weapons, according to Foreignpolicy.com :
The Islamic Republic’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against chemical weapons, even though American-backed Saddam’s Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iran during the eight-year war, gassing 100,000 Iranians. Details of the fatwa was not made public, ignored by the West for decades, but the fatwa also included a ban against nuclear weapons. Mohsen Rafighdoost, who served as minister of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) throughout the eight-year war, revealed that he had proposed to Khomeini that Iran begin working on both nuclear and chemical weapons — but was told in two separate meetings that weapons of mass destruction are forbidden by Islam.
There has been some confusion regarding fatwas issued by any qualified Muslim scholar with fatwas issued by the supreme leader on matters of state policy. The former are only relevant to those who follow the scholar’s views; the latter, however, are binding on the state as a whole in Iran’s Shiite Islam-based political system, holding a legal status above mere legislation.
Netanyahu openly tried to sabotage the Obama administration’s successful nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, an agreement signed by China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, United Kingdom, European Union and last but not least, the United States. Netanyahu’s efforts to subvert proved successful with Donald Trump when he made an abrupt decision to end the agreement 3 years later, resulting in the agreement to become null and void. During the three years it was in effect the overseeing agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declared Iran to be in compliance. Two weeks after Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear program found that Iran was implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA. President Trump had every intention to pivot to Netyanyahu’s position.
From the day the U.S., at Israel’s insistence, pulled out of the JCPOA agreement that Iran was in full compliance, making it null and void, Netanyahu has threatened to go to war with Iran. Netanyahu’s constant complaining to the world court of opinion about Iran, the World’s Greatest Terrorist, is apropos to Chicken Little trying to convenience Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky and Turkey Lurkey the sky is falling. In both cases the stories are alarmist and needlessly stoke fear in others. Of course, when it comes to Chicken Little the story is a fairy tale and no harm is done. When, however, it comes to Netanyahu the story is blatantly untrue, a bald face lie if you will, told by the Big Bad Wolf himself, that if believed has world shattering repercussions. ‘Bibi” Netanyahu’s habitual pathology reminds me of a quote about hypocrisy that is on occasion attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “The man who murdered his parents and then pleaded to the court for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan”.
Iran producing a nuclear weapon was never in reality the fear that caused President Trump’s pull out from the JCPOA agreement. JCPOA failed to address to Trump and Netyanyahu’s satisfaction Iran’s ballistic missile programme. In 2015, Iran produced 233,695 Engineer graduates, 4,000 less than the U.S., 65,000 more than Japan, 85,000 more than South Korea. Iran has the ability to sink the USS. Gerald R. Ford and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, the world’s two largest aircraft carriers and there is nothing the U.S. can do about it, except maybe to keep them out of the Middle East! Iran’s ‘potential’, non-existing nukes was never the real issue. Repeatedly the evidence has proved otherwise. It was a smoke screen, a smoking mirror if you will, to provide cover for an American pre-emptive attack.
Just recently Israel targeted the Iranian consulate in Baghdad, assassinated a high-level dignitary in Tehran and Beriut. Several hundred Targeted killings and other unprovoked terrorists attacks spread over decades were instigated by Israel throughout the Middle East. The main aim was/is to get an Iranian reaction that brings in the United States to do the dirty work while Israel sits on the sidelines. Israel’s defensive and offensive weapons, including nukes, have no limits once Iran is left ‘neutered’. One might find of some interest US General Wesley Clark’s expose of a classified document prepared by Sec. of Defnese Donald Rumsfield and Paul Wolfowitz, on not Iran’s but America’s plan to invade Seven Muslim Countries in five years, not counting Afghanistan or the Palestinian territories.
Israel is reputed to have between 200 and 300 nukes and Iran zilch, nada. Even if, and so far that’s a gigantic ‘IF’ with no supporting evidence to back it up, in ten years the Iranians were to accomplish building 20 nukes they would be far outgunned, especially when the US super duper power throws in its 5,200 + ‘backup’ nukes. Iran would be assured a destruction so complete, so massive that it would mean the total elimination of its population of eighty million. To use these imaginary weapons of mass destruction would mean the world’s oldest continuous civilization, the ancient Persians of Cyrus the Great, going back 6,000 years, had lost its collective mind, the same civilization that twice prevented the eradication and annihilation of the ancient Jews…
Marine barracks, Lebanon, Hezbollah & Israel’s annihilation
A list of terrorist acts attributed to Iran would most certainly include the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, resulting in the deaths of 241 Americans. Iran’s ‘proxy’ ally, Hezbollah stood accused of being the mastermind of the attack, an organization not formed until two years later in 1985, three years after Israel’s third invasion of Lebanon. Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak put the matter succinctly: “When we entered Lebanon… there was no Hezbollah. We were accepted with perfumed rice and flowers by the Shia in the south. It was our presence there that created Hezbollah… Israel wore out its welcome and provided a context for Hezbollah to grow.” (Hezbollah, p33, Augustus Norton). Hezbollah purports to be a legitimate political and military entity in Lebanon that claims the right to resist any outside military force invading its country. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, 1982, in 1985 occupying the Southern part of the country until 2000 and in 2006, a conflict that Hezbollah claimed as a victory and Israel considered a failure and a missed opportunity.
Iran denies its involvement in the attack against the Marine barracks. Whatever the case may be, the U.S. accuses, rightly or wrongly, Iran to be culpable in the bombing of the Marine barracks. A few excerpts of General John W. Vessy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on November 6, 1983:
Mr. Halloran: General, let me turn your attention to Lebanon, if I could. Has the United States been able to discover who caused the truck bombing that took so many Marine lives two weeks ago? Can you tell us who did it?
General Vessey: No, I can’t tell you who did it. As you probably know, several different outfits have claimed credit for it. I really don’t know who did it. I wish I did. “
Mr. Kraft: If we did take action in Lebanon, would you favor cooperating with the Israelis?
General Vessey: The Israelis are in Lebanon in a different position than we are. The Israelis are at war with the Syrians. We came in as a peacekeeping force to try and help re-establish Lebanon and get both the Israelis and the Syrians out. Their retaliation comes from a different background than our own does. We need to find the perpetrators. We don’t need to be siding with either the Israelis or the Syrians in trying to re-establish Lebanon.
Mr. Reynolds: General, in terms of intelligence, both in the case of Beirut and also in the case of Grenada, is there a review going on of the kind of intelligence that is available to us in terms of human intelligence?
General Vessey: Well, there’s a constant review of intelligence in Beirut and in Lebanon. That’s a very difficult intelligence target and there are all sorts of reports that come out of Lebanon. Certainly, one has to look at the reports and also look at the source of the report.
Mr. Kraft: What lessons, General, would you draw so far? Would it be fair to say that we should think very, very hard about putting American troops in that kind of a situation, that, in general, the bias should be against it, strongly against it?
General Vessey: I think one has to think through very carefully putting American troops in any kind of an operation where we’re using them as a political lever. And certainly, I would urge caution in any such operation.
http://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/Monographs/Vessey.pdf
Mossad – A few dead Americans is not our worry…
Victor Ostrovsky, a former field intelligence officer (katsa) for the Israeli Mossad who authored two books about his service with the Mossad, raises the following point regarding the bombing of the Marine barracks:
“… the Mossad knew that … there were only a few logical targets, one of which must be the U.S. compound. The question then was whether or not to warn the Americans to be on particular alert for a truck matching the description.
“The decision was too important to be taken in the Beirut station, so it was passed along to Tel Aviv, where Nahum Admony, then head of Mossad, decided they would simply give the Americans the usual general warning, a vague notice that they had reason to believe someone might be planning an operation against them. But this was so general, and so commonplace, it was … unlikely to raise any particular alarm or prompt increased security precautions. … One more would not heighten U.S. concerns or surveillance.
“Admony, in refusing to give the Americans specific information on the truck, said, ‘… we’re not there to protect Americans. They’re a big country. Send only the regular information.’ “At the same time, however, all Israeli installations were given the specific details and warned to watch for a truck matching the description of the Mercedes.” (By Way of Deception by Victor Ostrovsky)
There is no shortage of volumes written as it pertains to Lebanon and the Palestinians. Unfortunately, such elaboration is not within the purview of this article. Rachelle Marshall, however, provides a good overview describing The Real Reason for Israel’s Wars on Gaza and Lebanon. Israel turned Lebanon from a modern country that was still rebuilding from past Israeli invasions, into a place of desolation and death. As with the current destruction and genocide now in progress in today’s GAZA, the WEST BANK and LEBANON none of it would have been possible without the wholehearted help from the United States. When the American-backed Israelis began running out of munitions, the Bush and now Biden administration rushed them a shipment of 2,000 dumb bombs that killed everything in its densely populated path, and 5,000-pound laser-guided bombs designed to penetrate deep into the ground; the missiles dropped on their targets from American-made warplanes. As an aside, according to the USA Today, more than 100 sea shipments and the 500th flight carrying U.S. military equipment to Israel since the Israel-Hamas war began has landed. Netanyahu is in harmony with Biden, Trump and most members of the U.S. Congress when he considers Israel, God’s Chosen, to be like the United States, exclusive, a special nation with the right to spill oceans of blood in conflicts with lesser adversaries!
Israel to be WIPED OFF the MAP…
Iran stands accused of threatening to annihilate Israel from existence, to wipe it off the map. Former President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly said in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Sep, 21, 2011, that ‘Israel will be wiped off the face of the map.” While parroted ad Infinitum by the Western press, repeated without checking their source or a need to understand what they spouted, it is debatable that he actually said what is claimed. According to Ahmadinejad, he said peace could not be had until Israel had a regime change, a change from the current Likud party to a party more open to living with Iran without their disappearance off the face of the earth.
Specialists such as Juan Cole of the University of Michigan and Arash Norouzi of the Mossadegh Project stated that the original statement in Persian did not say that Israel should be wiped from the map, but instead Ahmadinejad articulated that Israel’s policies would lead to its “vanishing from the pages of time… that it would collapse on its own.” He and his associates in the Iranian government compared Israel’s ‘Zionist regime’ in various metaphorical terms, comparing its fate to the Pharaohs of Egypt and the former apartheid regime in South Africa (which they also did not recognize), but they never threatened to start a war with any country. Regime change among nations or blowing a country back to the Stone Age, both of which it appear addicted, is more the bailiwick of the USofA than Iran.
The majority of Presidential candidates in both parties in the U.S. have repeatedly mentioned the alleged threat in speeches and interviews, obviously influenced by the superficial reporting from the media. It is doubtful a neo-Con or Likud interpretation of Ahmadinejad’s speech before the UN holds any certitude beyond a few diehards in the Globalist West.
Modern day Israel, a poisonous concoction for most outsiders…
It is at this point in our story that I had hoped to expand upon the Great Middle area we spoke of at the beginning. Length, however, has become a restraining factor but more importantly, the current explosive ongoings evolving in the Middle East compel me to send it to the publisher as currently written. Much of the Mid East is already in a HOT WAR, a powder keg that could, I think most likely will, engulf the whole region in a voracious inferno, a self-fulfilling Armageddon! Between Israel’s assassinations, the Iranian consulate bombing, the effective closing of the Red Sea, an ongoing genocide in GAZA that has now spread to the West Bank and the bombing and fourth invasion of Lebanon, all told two hundred thousand deaths and counting, twice or three times that number wounded, mainly Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, the conflagration is now upon us. Add to that the three million souls displaced and made homeless, tens of thousands on the cusp of slowly dying from disease or starvation; we are one ‘misstep’ away from WWIII. Perhaps it will stop there but I doubt it. Iran once again made out to be the BIG BAD WOLF, this time backed into a corner, not of its own making I might add, with Israel doing everything possible to bring the United States into a war with the 6000-year-old Persian/Iranian Civilization. The United States doesn’t want war with the Iran, at least until after the election, which is now behind us but Netanyahu needs the U.S. to jump in feet first, to keep the conflict going or face a coup in his own government and possible imprisonment he faces for autocracy and corruption. In addition, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor has also requested arrest warrants for the Israeli PM and his defense minister for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Of course I have no intention to drop you off a cliff without a parachute mid-way through it all so I will conclude by foreshadowing on a summary level a transition to Article II. Hopefully, upon conclusion we should have in our possession the KEY to unraveling the Gordon Knot to the question I first posed to you at the beginning of our journey.
Think of modern day Israel as a bowl filled with a mixture of ingredients, a few complementary, like salt and pepper. Other ingredients, however, like the intermingling of Zionism and Talmudic Judaism, while favorable to many family members who grew up among its ranks, it proves unpalatable for most outsiders. Mixed together, the concoction grows tentacles intertwined with the curse of Medusa, a vicious monster sporting writhing serpents in place of hair, fanged teeth and a face so hideous that the mere sight of her was sufficient to turn a man to stone.
Edward Said, in his Forward to Israel Shahak’s, book, Jewish History – Jewish Religion, (Shahak was a Holocaust victim and survivor himself) conveyed the following:
The difference between him and most other Israelis was that he made the connections between Zionism, Judaism, and repressive practices against ‘non-Jews’; and of course he drew the conclusions…unlike most others he does not allow the horrors of the Holocaust to manipulate the truth of what in the name of the Jewish people Israel has done to the Palestinians. For him, suffering is not the exclusive possession of one group of victims; it should instead be, but rarely is the basis for humanizing the victims, making it incumbent on them not to cause suffering of the kind that they suffered.
Trying honestly to acquire a fair amount of understanding on the workings and complexities of modern day Israel, how it views itself and the world around it, and how the world perceives it requires less ideology and more knowledge and yes also a boatload of courage to stand up to anti-semantic tar and feathering that is a certain to occur.
One cannot understand how and when the world will end, especially if originating in the Middle East, unless they have an inkling of fundamentalist Christian and Jewish Etiological End-of-Days thinking. Will it be the Talmudic First Coming or the Christian Second Coming of the Messiah, but whichever one it is, their Messiah, when all is said and done, rule over the world. Either way, the End of the World as we currently know it climaxes with the Jewish fundamentalist and Christian fundamentalist Gog and Magog or Armageddon.
Intermingled in the same mixing bowl – politics, economics, war, profits and power grabs thrown into the jumbled blend makes for an unhealthy amalgamation of self-igniting glue, tying it all into a big wall of conflicting ideas, faiths and ideologies. Viewed by those that think of themselves as the ‘Chosen Few’, some perhaps see themselves on parallel to the Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey where beautiful mythical women of the sea, goddesses to be sure, sing songs that hypnotize or lure and trick men into shipwrecking their boats on rocky shores because they follow irresistible songs. In the end, based on this scenario, the Pharisees or Christian Messiah will rule over the world with each side doing everything it can to make sure it’s their Guy who wins out in the End of Times! Everyone else on God’s green earth is to be lured by their irresistible songs.
