On July 29 2017, Iran's Revolutionary Guard accused the US Fifth Fleet ship USS Nimitz of firing warning shots at a rocket bearing vessel in the Persian Gulf near the Resalat oil and gas platform. During the US election, Trump had vowed that any Iranian ships that harass the US navy would be 'shot out of the water'.
While a military exchange in the Gulf has not yet broken out, a state of hostilities between the US and Iran has been developing amidst an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and paranoia-'War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known'.
Hobbes' view of war applies directly to the circumstances of the Greater Middle East in 2017, where there is no US diplomacy with Iran going on to deal with their growing distrust of each other and where there is a zone of instability and war stretching from the Eastern Mediterranean right through to the Persian Gulf region.
A US War with Iran has been on the cards from the start of 2017. From Trump's campaign rhetoric about the nuclear deal 2015 being a bad one to Michael Flynn's statement in January 2017 that 'Iran was being put on notice', the President has taken an increasingly aggressive stance towards Iran using threatening language.
Throughout the summer of 2017 the Trump administration has demonised Iran for playing a 'destabilising' role in the region as a consequence of the expansion of its military role, through proxy forces, in Syria, Iraq, Southern Lebanon and Yemen. This is seen as part of a revolutionary Islamist threat replacing IS.
IS is a Sunni jihadist group, which was formed in 2013 from splinter groups from the Gulf State backed FSA and jihadi groups in northern Iraq-and that required Iranian assistance in defeating-is being downplayed as the Caliphate was destroyed. In its place, Iranian backed militias are gaining ground and seen as 'the new threat'.
The danger is President Trump could use any clash between Iranian and US forces, or proxies, at any time, as a pretext to launch a war. It's an ominous possibility for a leader beleaguered at home by accusations of collaboration between his election campaign team and Russia. His presidency has been a lame duck one.
For a President who came to power promising to 'Make America Great Again', the temptation to start a war to make good on his determination to restore both his own image as strongman and ramp up his executive powers, as well as to force a hostile media to align patriotically behind the nation, is bound to be tempting.
Domestic policy is one area where US politicians can circumvent the President and get on with things without him. On foreign policy, this is not at all possible as the President has imperial powers. Trump is so unpredictable that there is basically no attempt at diplomacy going on with the regional powers in the Middle East
So US influence is not being used to balance power between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The end of the Caliphate has depended on Iranian backed militias in Iraq and Syria, but in eastern Syria there are clashes between them and US backed forces. Iranian drones and a Syrian air force fighter were shot down in June 2017.
To the east, in the Persian Gulf, the spat with Qatar has been interpreted by some US leaders as the fault of Iran trying to split the GCC countries, the better to expand its regional power. Trump simply doesn't have the diplomatic skill to keep Saudis under check while engaging with Iran to bring about a regional peace.
That makes clashes leading to a direct confrontation possible, rather like the US and Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War, with the difference that there is no diplomacy in place as there was after Nazi Germany was defeated. With no common enemy to unite the otherwise hostile rivals, a collision is inevitable.
This is making for a hot war, as both sides in the Greater Middle East, the Gulf States and Iran, are polarised into two competing power alliances with Great Power backers beyond the region, though Russia is not formally allied to Iran in the Syria war. Russia's interests in the Middle East overlap with Iran but don't coinicide
Trump is impetuous. While dealing with Russia by diplomacy over Syria as this would be one way to 'escape forwards' from domestic criticism and a way to defeat 'Iranian expansionism' in the region, a threat to the dominance of the Gulf States. This has nothing to do with 'humanitarian intervention' and is about geopolitics.
The Saudi lobby is an important influence in Washington among even Democrat politicians. A war with Iran would win them over and dampen down the focus on Russia and force them to align behind the President 'in the national interest', with dissenters portrayed as traitors and 'anti-American' by White House figures.
Just as the war on Iraq in 2003, the temptation is to fight a war for geopolitical supremacy against Iran, a regional power whose influence extended westwards precisely because the Iraq War overthrew a Sunni minority dictator and created a sectarian war in which the Iraqi Shia became dominant in the new democracy.
However, the problem in a democracy such as the US, is that there has to be an ennobling justification for war with Iran in 'public diplomacy' beyond the obvious one that its about defending the dominance of the Gulf States, in particular Saudi Arabia, because of lucrative arms deals and the GCC hosting Western military bases.
Iran and 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'.
On June 27, Iran was accused of being responsible for any chemical weapons attack carried out by Assad. It had knowledge of a 'planned attack' that would be responded to by force. The White House provided no evidence Assad 'planned' a chemical weapons attack but its threat was assumed to have deterred their use.
The alleged use of chemical weapons by Assad in April provided a much needed opportunity to be use the image of gassed civilians, especially children, to justify the US repositioning itself on the regional chessboard as a decisive heavyweight player after Russia and Iran had gained the upper hand in the Syria War.
The missile strikes against an Assad air base had insignificant military value. But it signalled Donald Trump's determination to set his stamp on global politics as a 'tough' President prepared to act against a Russian and Iranian backed dictator and in defence of its interests in the region and credibility as a Great Power.
The humanitarian pretext was invoked as a means to ensure the US remained a credible actor in Syria's endgame as its military to the east in Iraq set about using a combination of air power and native ground troops to crush IS there and in Mosul. This was achieved by July 2017 with around 40,000 civilian believed dead.
Trump 'let the generals of the leash' to get faster results in defeating it in order to rival Putin's use of air power to defeat Sunni jihadists in east Aleppo in December 2016, one that would restore the US image of being a military superpower and to prepare for the next stage of the struggle against Iranian regional domination.
The crushing of the Sunni rebels in east Aleppo was the decisive defeat of the Sunni revolutionary threat to Assad's administration in Damascus. It was a global humiliation for the US and its attempt to preside over an alliance of powers that had been intent since 2012 on the line that 'Assad must go': this needed to be avenged.
In actual fact, there are few differences between the Russian defeat of Sunni jihadist groups in east Aleppo and the US led defeat of IS in Mosul. This is one reason a pliant media in the US and Britain has generally failed to give any media coverage to the fall of Mosul at all with the honourable exception of Patrick Cockburn.
While the UN hand Amnesty International have accused the US and Iraq forces of indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, even of war crimes, with the US using banned white phosphorus munitions on IS held Raqqa, the media has screened out these brutal realities whereas Russian brutality was given saturation coverage.
As Russia is a Great Power with nuclear capabilities, the revenge target for US and Sunni rebel defeat in Syria would have to be Iran. The fear in Tehran that the US could target Iran because it did not have nuclear weapons could be a fear worth provoking further by Trump indicating he wanted to end the nuclear deal.
Shredding the 2015 Nuclear Deal with Iran.
The problem with the nuclear deal has lain in the fact Iran is complying with the terms of the deal in which Iran would allow inspectors in to validate that Tehran was not pursuing a nuclear missile programme. This has led Trump to shift to the 'post-truth' claim that Iran is not complying 'in spirit' rather than fact.
Trump issued a veiled threat against Iran on Tuesday, warning Tehran to stick to the terms of a nuclear deal with world powers or else face "big, big problems." A week after certifying Iran as complying with the 2015 agreement Trump made clear to thousands of frenzied supporters that he did not believe it was complying.
White House officials claimed new economic sanctions against Iran were being prepared over its ballistic missile program. Trump devoted part of his speech in Youngstown, Ohio, to Iran and is whipping up nationalist enmity to it as part of an ongoing political campaign that has not ended since he became President.
"If that deal doesn’t conform to what it’s supposed to conform to, it's going to be big, big problems for them. That I can tell you. Believe me. You would have thought they would have said 'thank you United States. We really love you very much. Instead, they've become emboldened. That won’t take place much longer"
To that end, Trump reacted to the defeat of his reform of healthcare bill in Congress with a round of firings. There is, as yet, flux in Trump's administration and a sense he doesn't know in which way to take his administration. The drive towards war could well provide that sense of 'clarity of purpose' that's otherwise been absent.
The Chief of White House Staff, who has been appointed in his place, is General John F Kelly, formerly of Southcom and a paranoid believer in the cosmic threat of Iran and Hizbollah not only in the Middle East but also even from Latin America and towards the USA's southern borders with in partnership with 'rogue states'.
Trump has also downgraded the role of the State Department and quarrelled with Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, over its validation of Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal. Trump has wanted to open up suspicions that Iran is not being held in compliance in order to deliberately create the impression he wants to ditch it.
Foreign Policy Journal reported on 22 July 2017,
'The president assigned White House staffers with the task of preparing for the possibility of decertification for the 90-day review period that ends in October — a task he had previously given to Secretary Tillerson and the State Department,” a source close to the White House told Foreign Policy......On Monday morning, work was on track for the administration to again certify that Iran was meeting the necessary conditions, but the president expressed second thoughts around midday. A meeting between Trump and Tillerson that afternoon quickly turned into a meltdown. A third source with intimate knowledge of that meeting said Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist, and Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president, were particularly vocal, repeatedly asking Tillerson to explain the U.S. national security benefits of certification. “They repeatedly questioned Rex about why recertifying would be good for U.S. national security, and Rex was unable to answer,” the source said.“The president kept demanding why he should certify, and the answers Tillerson gave him infuriated him,” the source added.'
The sum purpose of Trump's condemnation of the deal could well be to create a self fulfilling prophecy, in which Tehran will be so convinced it's going to be under attack anyway that it would encourage the Iranian hardliners to advocate restarting the nuclear programme. Trump's 'madman act' is partly a means to that end.
Trita Parsi states 'If this path is continued down, we risk having a scenario where Iran ignites its nuclear weapons program and once again risks putting the U.S. and Iran at war. That's what we're gambling with here. It would be a very different conversation if the Iranians were in violation, if the Iranians were cheating'
Parsi concludes "this only leaves the impression Trump is seeking confrontation regardless of what Iran does or doesn't do." Indeed, Trump told The Wall Street Journal ,as regards whether Iran would be certified compliant in October, "I think they'll be noncompliant. I think they're taking advantage of this country".
Projecting Iranian Non-Compliance.
Given that most Republicans in Congress opposed Obama's nuclear deal and Trump wants to reassert his authority as a 'real' President, as opposed to a blundering reality television star, the task then would shift towards trying to 'prove' Iran was not complying, despite all the IAEA inspector's factual evidence that it is doing so.
David Sanger reported in The New York Times ,
'..the US has begun raising with inspectors in Vienna the possibility of demanding access to military sites in Iran where there is reasonable suspicion of nuclear research or development. If the Iranians balk, as seems likely, their refusal could enable Washington to declare Tehran in violation of the two-year-old deal'.
Parsi outlines, in more detail, what that would mean,
'Use the spot-inspections mechanism of the nuclear deal,to demand access to a whole set of military sites in Iran. Once Iran balks—which it will since the mechanism is only supposed to be used if tangible evidence exists that those sites are being used for illicit nuclear activities—Trump can claim that Iran is in violation'
The aim would be to destroy the nuclear deal while projecting responsibility for that and the aggression that followed on to Tehran. Instead of restraining Trump and counselling caution both Tillerson and H R McMasters have tried to advise the President on how to bust the deal while making it appear as though Iran was guilty.
Senate Foreign Relations Chair. Bob Corker, ( Republican ) forthrightly terms this strategic approach as "radical enforcement" of the deal. He claims, gleefully, that "If they don’t let us in "boom." You want the breakup of this deal to be about Iran. You don’t want it to be about the US, because we want our allies with us."
The problem is not 'if' the deal ought to be abandoned and war pursued, but more the way to stage and choreograph the fall out so that the other Western nations that want the nuclear deal are brought onside with the US instead of hoping to pursue diplomacy to keep it. The EU nations could well object-apart from Britain.
Parsi puts it square in continuity with the neoconservative's case for the war against Saddam: 'This is a charade, a rerun of the machinations that resulted in the Iraq war. ..The administration is committed to finding a way to claim Iran has violated the accord, regardless of the facts—just as George W. Bush did with Iraq'.
Making the Case for Regime Change.
“I think there is broad view and broad consensus among all in the region, all Arab nations, among Israel, and among others of Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region”- Secretary of State Tillerson.
Parsi believes Trump would have far more of a difficulty selling the war on Iran because of the way the American public were 'played' the last time when the Bush administration conflated the global Islamist terrorist threat after September 11 2001 to make the case for war against Saddam on the basis he would use WMD.
This presumes most Americans are 'anti-war' because of the way the Iraq conflict destabilised the entire Middle East and then made possible the growing sectarian enmity between Sunni and Shia Islamist forces that played out in Iraq and then Syria after the Sunni Arab Uprising failed to remove Assad and caused a civil war.
However, the new case for war on Iran would involve blaming the failure of the first American War on it, the reason a second is necessary as IS is defeated. For the destruction of IS was partly needed to protect the Sunni monarchies from facing a threat they helped conjure up by bankrolling Sunni jihadists in Syria after 2011.
As IS posed a threat to control of Iraqi oil reserves, one major reason the Iraq War was fought, though this was derided as a 'conspiracy theory' by propagandists at the time. With IS rolled back and crushed the next threat to that oil would be Iranian control over Iraq, an exaggerated claim but one US politicians fear.
However, the fact the US war of 2003 ended up enabling Iranian influence to spread westwards into Iraq, a geopolitical feat that even the revolutionary war of 1980-1988 was unable to achieve, has infuriated the remnants of the neoconservative right and the right wing nationalists that were first to align behind Trump in 2016.
This includes Newt Gingrich and John Bolton who in July 2017 attended a conference in Paris held by the NCRI, a popular front organisation for opponents of Tehran at which Gingrich ranted 'Iran must be free. The dictatorship must be destroyed. Containment is appeasement and appeasement is surrender.'
Bolton, who almost became Secretary of State, said 'Tehran is not merely a nuclear weapons threat, it is not merely a terrorist threat, it is a conventional threat to everybody in the region". As a consequence, the declared policy of the United States of America should be the overthrow of the mullahs' regime in Tehran.'
To complete both the defeat of IS and the Shia Islamists in Iraq and to knock them out as a regional force of 'terrorism' and 'extremism', certain ideologues have looked towards dissident groups such as MeK. The plan to destabilise Iran had been mooted as far back as 2002 when Bush placed Iran on the sinister 'Axis of Evil'.
That Iran is being accused of regional destabilisation is Orwellian doublethink and ideological schizophrenia. For the most part the majority of the funding for 'terrorism' and 'extremism' comes from the Gulf States, but in accordance with these facts being true, the alternative must be believed that Iran is doing so.
Trump's administration has made a case for 'alternative facts' through spokespeople as Kellyanne Conway The big question is whether the US media would hold a Trump case for war with Iran to account or whether it would simply recycle government claims as 'facts' in the way it did with the Bush administration.
But the deeper reason for the case for 'regime change' is the toxic and corrupting role of Saudi Arabia in Washington. MeK is supported by the Saudis. Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior member of the Saudi royal family and former head of that nation’s intelligence service, was present at the NCRI meeting to offer support.
In Riyadh in May 2017, Trump helped destabilise the Gulf region by aligning firmly with the Saudi Crown Prince and his calls for the creation of a new 'Arab NATO' to check Iran. Trump was gulled into supporting this by the Saudis flattering him as a great leader at the same time as he clinched a $100b arms deal.
If the Iran-Saudi enmity over the Persian Gulf and the growing polarisation between them could lead the US into war on behalf of the Saudis, the main check on this in late 2017 would appear to be the tilt of Turkey and Qatar towards Iran and Russia over determining the diplomatic and territorial endgame in Syria.
The End of the Sunni Anti-Assad Alliance.
While a military exchange in the Gulf has not yet broken out, a state of hostilities between the US and Iran has been developing amidst an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and paranoia-'War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known'.
Hobbes' view of war applies directly to the circumstances of the Greater Middle East in 2017, where there is no US diplomacy with Iran going on to deal with their growing distrust of each other and where there is a zone of instability and war stretching from the Eastern Mediterranean right through to the Persian Gulf region.
A US War with Iran has been on the cards from the start of 2017. From Trump's campaign rhetoric about the nuclear deal 2015 being a bad one to Michael Flynn's statement in January 2017 that 'Iran was being put on notice', the President has taken an increasingly aggressive stance towards Iran using threatening language.
Throughout the summer of 2017 the Trump administration has demonised Iran for playing a 'destabilising' role in the region as a consequence of the expansion of its military role, through proxy forces, in Syria, Iraq, Southern Lebanon and Yemen. This is seen as part of a revolutionary Islamist threat replacing IS.
IS is a Sunni jihadist group, which was formed in 2013 from splinter groups from the Gulf State backed FSA and jihadi groups in northern Iraq-and that required Iranian assistance in defeating-is being downplayed as the Caliphate was destroyed. In its place, Iranian backed militias are gaining ground and seen as 'the new threat'.
The danger is President Trump could use any clash between Iranian and US forces, or proxies, at any time, as a pretext to launch a war. It's an ominous possibility for a leader beleaguered at home by accusations of collaboration between his election campaign team and Russia. His presidency has been a lame duck one.
For a President who came to power promising to 'Make America Great Again', the temptation to start a war to make good on his determination to restore both his own image as strongman and ramp up his executive powers, as well as to force a hostile media to align patriotically behind the nation, is bound to be tempting.
Domestic policy is one area where US politicians can circumvent the President and get on with things without him. On foreign policy, this is not at all possible as the President has imperial powers. Trump is so unpredictable that there is basically no attempt at diplomacy going on with the regional powers in the Middle East
So US influence is not being used to balance power between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The end of the Caliphate has depended on Iranian backed militias in Iraq and Syria, but in eastern Syria there are clashes between them and US backed forces. Iranian drones and a Syrian air force fighter were shot down in June 2017.
To the east, in the Persian Gulf, the spat with Qatar has been interpreted by some US leaders as the fault of Iran trying to split the GCC countries, the better to expand its regional power. Trump simply doesn't have the diplomatic skill to keep Saudis under check while engaging with Iran to bring about a regional peace.
That makes clashes leading to a direct confrontation possible, rather like the US and Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War, with the difference that there is no diplomacy in place as there was after Nazi Germany was defeated. With no common enemy to unite the otherwise hostile rivals, a collision is inevitable.
This is making for a hot war, as both sides in the Greater Middle East, the Gulf States and Iran, are polarised into two competing power alliances with Great Power backers beyond the region, though Russia is not formally allied to Iran in the Syria war. Russia's interests in the Middle East overlap with Iran but don't coinicide
Trump is impetuous. While dealing with Russia by diplomacy over Syria as this would be one way to 'escape forwards' from domestic criticism and a way to defeat 'Iranian expansionism' in the region, a threat to the dominance of the Gulf States. This has nothing to do with 'humanitarian intervention' and is about geopolitics.
The Saudi lobby is an important influence in Washington among even Democrat politicians. A war with Iran would win them over and dampen down the focus on Russia and force them to align behind the President 'in the national interest', with dissenters portrayed as traitors and 'anti-American' by White House figures.
Just as the war on Iraq in 2003, the temptation is to fight a war for geopolitical supremacy against Iran, a regional power whose influence extended westwards precisely because the Iraq War overthrew a Sunni minority dictator and created a sectarian war in which the Iraqi Shia became dominant in the new democracy.
However, the problem in a democracy such as the US, is that there has to be an ennobling justification for war with Iran in 'public diplomacy' beyond the obvious one that its about defending the dominance of the Gulf States, in particular Saudi Arabia, because of lucrative arms deals and the GCC hosting Western military bases.
Iran and 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'.
On June 27, Iran was accused of being responsible for any chemical weapons attack carried out by Assad. It had knowledge of a 'planned attack' that would be responded to by force. The White House provided no evidence Assad 'planned' a chemical weapons attack but its threat was assumed to have deterred their use.
The alleged use of chemical weapons by Assad in April provided a much needed opportunity to be use the image of gassed civilians, especially children, to justify the US repositioning itself on the regional chessboard as a decisive heavyweight player after Russia and Iran had gained the upper hand in the Syria War.
The missile strikes against an Assad air base had insignificant military value. But it signalled Donald Trump's determination to set his stamp on global politics as a 'tough' President prepared to act against a Russian and Iranian backed dictator and in defence of its interests in the region and credibility as a Great Power.
The humanitarian pretext was invoked as a means to ensure the US remained a credible actor in Syria's endgame as its military to the east in Iraq set about using a combination of air power and native ground troops to crush IS there and in Mosul. This was achieved by July 2017 with around 40,000 civilian believed dead.
Trump 'let the generals of the leash' to get faster results in defeating it in order to rival Putin's use of air power to defeat Sunni jihadists in east Aleppo in December 2016, one that would restore the US image of being a military superpower and to prepare for the next stage of the struggle against Iranian regional domination.
The crushing of the Sunni rebels in east Aleppo was the decisive defeat of the Sunni revolutionary threat to Assad's administration in Damascus. It was a global humiliation for the US and its attempt to preside over an alliance of powers that had been intent since 2012 on the line that 'Assad must go': this needed to be avenged.
In actual fact, there are few differences between the Russian defeat of Sunni jihadist groups in east Aleppo and the US led defeat of IS in Mosul. This is one reason a pliant media in the US and Britain has generally failed to give any media coverage to the fall of Mosul at all with the honourable exception of Patrick Cockburn.
While the UN hand Amnesty International have accused the US and Iraq forces of indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, even of war crimes, with the US using banned white phosphorus munitions on IS held Raqqa, the media has screened out these brutal realities whereas Russian brutality was given saturation coverage.
As Russia is a Great Power with nuclear capabilities, the revenge target for US and Sunni rebel defeat in Syria would have to be Iran. The fear in Tehran that the US could target Iran because it did not have nuclear weapons could be a fear worth provoking further by Trump indicating he wanted to end the nuclear deal.
Shredding the 2015 Nuclear Deal with Iran.
The problem with the nuclear deal has lain in the fact Iran is complying with the terms of the deal in which Iran would allow inspectors in to validate that Tehran was not pursuing a nuclear missile programme. This has led Trump to shift to the 'post-truth' claim that Iran is not complying 'in spirit' rather than fact.
Trump issued a veiled threat against Iran on Tuesday, warning Tehran to stick to the terms of a nuclear deal with world powers or else face "big, big problems." A week after certifying Iran as complying with the 2015 agreement Trump made clear to thousands of frenzied supporters that he did not believe it was complying.
White House officials claimed new economic sanctions against Iran were being prepared over its ballistic missile program. Trump devoted part of his speech in Youngstown, Ohio, to Iran and is whipping up nationalist enmity to it as part of an ongoing political campaign that has not ended since he became President.
"If that deal doesn’t conform to what it’s supposed to conform to, it's going to be big, big problems for them. That I can tell you. Believe me. You would have thought they would have said 'thank you United States. We really love you very much. Instead, they've become emboldened. That won’t take place much longer"
To that end, Trump reacted to the defeat of his reform of healthcare bill in Congress with a round of firings. There is, as yet, flux in Trump's administration and a sense he doesn't know in which way to take his administration. The drive towards war could well provide that sense of 'clarity of purpose' that's otherwise been absent.
The Chief of White House Staff, who has been appointed in his place, is General John F Kelly, formerly of Southcom and a paranoid believer in the cosmic threat of Iran and Hizbollah not only in the Middle East but also even from Latin America and towards the USA's southern borders with in partnership with 'rogue states'.
Trump has also downgraded the role of the State Department and quarrelled with Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, over its validation of Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal. Trump has wanted to open up suspicions that Iran is not being held in compliance in order to deliberately create the impression he wants to ditch it.
Foreign Policy Journal reported on 22 July 2017,
'The president assigned White House staffers with the task of preparing for the possibility of decertification for the 90-day review period that ends in October — a task he had previously given to Secretary Tillerson and the State Department,” a source close to the White House told Foreign Policy......On Monday morning, work was on track for the administration to again certify that Iran was meeting the necessary conditions, but the president expressed second thoughts around midday. A meeting between Trump and Tillerson that afternoon quickly turned into a meltdown. A third source with intimate knowledge of that meeting said Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist, and Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president, were particularly vocal, repeatedly asking Tillerson to explain the U.S. national security benefits of certification. “They repeatedly questioned Rex about why recertifying would be good for U.S. national security, and Rex was unable to answer,” the source said.“The president kept demanding why he should certify, and the answers Tillerson gave him infuriated him,” the source added.'
The sum purpose of Trump's condemnation of the deal could well be to create a self fulfilling prophecy, in which Tehran will be so convinced it's going to be under attack anyway that it would encourage the Iranian hardliners to advocate restarting the nuclear programme. Trump's 'madman act' is partly a means to that end.
Trita Parsi states 'If this path is continued down, we risk having a scenario where Iran ignites its nuclear weapons program and once again risks putting the U.S. and Iran at war. That's what we're gambling with here. It would be a very different conversation if the Iranians were in violation, if the Iranians were cheating'
Parsi concludes "this only leaves the impression Trump is seeking confrontation regardless of what Iran does or doesn't do." Indeed, Trump told The Wall Street Journal ,as regards whether Iran would be certified compliant in October, "I think they'll be noncompliant. I think they're taking advantage of this country".
Projecting Iranian Non-Compliance.
Given that most Republicans in Congress opposed Obama's nuclear deal and Trump wants to reassert his authority as a 'real' President, as opposed to a blundering reality television star, the task then would shift towards trying to 'prove' Iran was not complying, despite all the IAEA inspector's factual evidence that it is doing so.
David Sanger reported in The New York Times ,
'..the US has begun raising with inspectors in Vienna the possibility of demanding access to military sites in Iran where there is reasonable suspicion of nuclear research or development. If the Iranians balk, as seems likely, their refusal could enable Washington to declare Tehran in violation of the two-year-old deal'.
Parsi outlines, in more detail, what that would mean,
'Use the spot-inspections mechanism of the nuclear deal,to demand access to a whole set of military sites in Iran. Once Iran balks—which it will since the mechanism is only supposed to be used if tangible evidence exists that those sites are being used for illicit nuclear activities—Trump can claim that Iran is in violation'
The aim would be to destroy the nuclear deal while projecting responsibility for that and the aggression that followed on to Tehran. Instead of restraining Trump and counselling caution both Tillerson and H R McMasters have tried to advise the President on how to bust the deal while making it appear as though Iran was guilty.
Senate Foreign Relations Chair. Bob Corker, ( Republican ) forthrightly terms this strategic approach as "radical enforcement" of the deal. He claims, gleefully, that "If they don’t let us in "boom." You want the breakup of this deal to be about Iran. You don’t want it to be about the US, because we want our allies with us."
The problem is not 'if' the deal ought to be abandoned and war pursued, but more the way to stage and choreograph the fall out so that the other Western nations that want the nuclear deal are brought onside with the US instead of hoping to pursue diplomacy to keep it. The EU nations could well object-apart from Britain.
Parsi puts it square in continuity with the neoconservative's case for the war against Saddam: 'This is a charade, a rerun of the machinations that resulted in the Iraq war. ..The administration is committed to finding a way to claim Iran has violated the accord, regardless of the facts—just as George W. Bush did with Iraq'.
Making the Case for Regime Change.
“I think there is broad view and broad consensus among all in the region, all Arab nations, among Israel, and among others of Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region”- Secretary of State Tillerson.
Parsi believes Trump would have far more of a difficulty selling the war on Iran because of the way the American public were 'played' the last time when the Bush administration conflated the global Islamist terrorist threat after September 11 2001 to make the case for war against Saddam on the basis he would use WMD.
This presumes most Americans are 'anti-war' because of the way the Iraq conflict destabilised the entire Middle East and then made possible the growing sectarian enmity between Sunni and Shia Islamist forces that played out in Iraq and then Syria after the Sunni Arab Uprising failed to remove Assad and caused a civil war.
However, the new case for war on Iran would involve blaming the failure of the first American War on it, the reason a second is necessary as IS is defeated. For the destruction of IS was partly needed to protect the Sunni monarchies from facing a threat they helped conjure up by bankrolling Sunni jihadists in Syria after 2011.
As IS posed a threat to control of Iraqi oil reserves, one major reason the Iraq War was fought, though this was derided as a 'conspiracy theory' by propagandists at the time. With IS rolled back and crushed the next threat to that oil would be Iranian control over Iraq, an exaggerated claim but one US politicians fear.
However, the fact the US war of 2003 ended up enabling Iranian influence to spread westwards into Iraq, a geopolitical feat that even the revolutionary war of 1980-1988 was unable to achieve, has infuriated the remnants of the neoconservative right and the right wing nationalists that were first to align behind Trump in 2016.
This includes Newt Gingrich and John Bolton who in July 2017 attended a conference in Paris held by the NCRI, a popular front organisation for opponents of Tehran at which Gingrich ranted 'Iran must be free. The dictatorship must be destroyed. Containment is appeasement and appeasement is surrender.'
Bolton, who almost became Secretary of State, said 'Tehran is not merely a nuclear weapons threat, it is not merely a terrorist threat, it is a conventional threat to everybody in the region". As a consequence, the declared policy of the United States of America should be the overthrow of the mullahs' regime in Tehran.'
To complete both the defeat of IS and the Shia Islamists in Iraq and to knock them out as a regional force of 'terrorism' and 'extremism', certain ideologues have looked towards dissident groups such as MeK. The plan to destabilise Iran had been mooted as far back as 2002 when Bush placed Iran on the sinister 'Axis of Evil'.
That Iran is being accused of regional destabilisation is Orwellian doublethink and ideological schizophrenia. For the most part the majority of the funding for 'terrorism' and 'extremism' comes from the Gulf States, but in accordance with these facts being true, the alternative must be believed that Iran is doing so.
Trump's administration has made a case for 'alternative facts' through spokespeople as Kellyanne Conway The big question is whether the US media would hold a Trump case for war with Iran to account or whether it would simply recycle government claims as 'facts' in the way it did with the Bush administration.
But the deeper reason for the case for 'regime change' is the toxic and corrupting role of Saudi Arabia in Washington. MeK is supported by the Saudis. Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior member of the Saudi royal family and former head of that nation’s intelligence service, was present at the NCRI meeting to offer support.
In Riyadh in May 2017, Trump helped destabilise the Gulf region by aligning firmly with the Saudi Crown Prince and his calls for the creation of a new 'Arab NATO' to check Iran. Trump was gulled into supporting this by the Saudis flattering him as a great leader at the same time as he clinched a $100b arms deal.
If the Iran-Saudi enmity over the Persian Gulf and the growing polarisation between them could lead the US into war on behalf of the Saudis, the main check on this in late 2017 would appear to be the tilt of Turkey and Qatar towards Iran and Russia over determining the diplomatic and territorial endgame in Syria.
The End of the Sunni Anti-Assad Alliance.
The fragmentation of the anti-Assad alliance was consolidated by a Russo-Turkish realignment in early 2017 and the construction of Turkstream pipeline being agreed upon. Previously, after the 2011 'Arab Spring', the Sunni powers of the Greater Middle East had been seen to be in alignment under the aegis of the Western powers.
The complete lack of realism underlying Western grand strategy was demonstrated both by the belief that there was a 'third force' between IS and Assad in Syria that would provide the basis for a Sunni democratic state out of a revolution and war. Even before IS became a power in 2014, the FSA had been hijacked by jihadi militants.
The Sunni powers were never totally aligned with each other. Within Syria, the FSA fragmented partly because Saudi Arabia and Qatar were fighting a 'proxy war within a proxy war' between themselves in trying to bankroll and give financial favour to the faction most likely to win out and serve its geopolitical interests.
The carving up of North and West Syria into spheres of interest and protection between Ankara and Moscow and the gas pipeline from southern Russia under the Black Sea to European Turkey, has put an end to the rival geostrategy of a 'Sunni pipeline' via Turkey and Syria from Qatar, thus refocusing their strategies.
That gas pipeline would have been a major source of gas towards the EU which would reduce its dependence upon Russian energy and to diversify supplies, as would have Iran's rival 'Shia' pipeline from the South Pars gas field it shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf. This was one reason the EU favoured the nuclear deal.
Russia's decisive military intervention in 2015 prevented both possibilities. But it led Qatar and Turkey back towards realigning with Iran to develop previously undeveloped parts of their respective Persian Gulf gas fields in April 2017. In August 2017 Russia and Turkey agreed to jointly develop new land based reserves.
Saudi Arabia and GCC states have felt humiliated by Sunni defeats in Syria and Shia ascendancy in Iraq. In Syria, the destruction of the non-IS jihadi forces, their abandonment by Turkey and Qatar and the shift towards balancing their regional interests with those of Iran as a counter to the Gulf States has been resented.
While Qatar and Turkey have shifted away from supporting Sunni jihadist forces, Trump aligned firmly behind Riyadh against Doha in the diplomatic war and against Iran which he schizophrenically accuses of 'promoting terrorism'. The word 'terrorism' has largely become a meaningless cant term for militias opposing 'our interests'.
The Saudi ultimatum to Qatar is of a piece with the scaling up of US military action in eastern Syria throughout June 2017 against Iranian backed forces and those of Assad. As the SDF forces contain a large contingent of Kurdish militiamen, Turkey had all the more reason to tilt towards Tehran to prevent irredentism.
The complete lack of realism underlying Western grand strategy was demonstrated both by the belief that there was a 'third force' between IS and Assad in Syria that would provide the basis for a Sunni democratic state out of a revolution and war. Even before IS became a power in 2014, the FSA had been hijacked by jihadi militants.
The Sunni powers were never totally aligned with each other. Within Syria, the FSA fragmented partly because Saudi Arabia and Qatar were fighting a 'proxy war within a proxy war' between themselves in trying to bankroll and give financial favour to the faction most likely to win out and serve its geopolitical interests.
The carving up of North and West Syria into spheres of interest and protection between Ankara and Moscow and the gas pipeline from southern Russia under the Black Sea to European Turkey, has put an end to the rival geostrategy of a 'Sunni pipeline' via Turkey and Syria from Qatar, thus refocusing their strategies.
That gas pipeline would have been a major source of gas towards the EU which would reduce its dependence upon Russian energy and to diversify supplies, as would have Iran's rival 'Shia' pipeline from the South Pars gas field it shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf. This was one reason the EU favoured the nuclear deal.
Russia's decisive military intervention in 2015 prevented both possibilities. But it led Qatar and Turkey back towards realigning with Iran to develop previously undeveloped parts of their respective Persian Gulf gas fields in April 2017. In August 2017 Russia and Turkey agreed to jointly develop new land based reserves.
Saudi Arabia and GCC states have felt humiliated by Sunni defeats in Syria and Shia ascendancy in Iraq. In Syria, the destruction of the non-IS jihadi forces, their abandonment by Turkey and Qatar and the shift towards balancing their regional interests with those of Iran as a counter to the Gulf States has been resented.
While Qatar and Turkey have shifted away from supporting Sunni jihadist forces, Trump aligned firmly behind Riyadh against Doha in the diplomatic war and against Iran which he schizophrenically accuses of 'promoting terrorism'. The word 'terrorism' has largely become a meaningless cant term for militias opposing 'our interests'.
The Saudi ultimatum to Qatar is of a piece with the scaling up of US military action in eastern Syria throughout June 2017 against Iranian backed forces and those of Assad. As the SDF forces contain a large contingent of Kurdish militiamen, Turkey had all the more reason to tilt towards Tehran to prevent irredentism.
The Saudis had an interest in ratcheting up the pressure on Qatar as the crisis broke after Doha and Tehran both agreed to develop their Gulf gas reserves. It was resented because Qatar had previously agreed not top develop them and the assumption was , if it were to do so, they would pass on price concessions.
The fear is Qatar and is cooperating with Iran to set up a rival Sunni power axis in the Middle East between the GCC and Iran. Qatar's support for Islamist groups in the region could lead to disaffected Shias rising up, as was clear in Bahrain back in 2012 after the Arab Spring broke out and Saudi tanks rolled in to crush it.
Already, the Saudis are crushing a Shia uprising within in August 2017. The greatest nightmare of the Saudis is that, in a state increasingly unable to stave off social discontent by diverting dwindling oil revenues towards social projects, with oil prices consistently down, is a Shia uprising in its main oil producing regions.
The Saudis have also failed to contain Houthi forces in Yemen since 2015 which they regards as an Iranian front to divert its energies to the south west and to exert control not only over the strategic chokepoint of the Straits of Hormuz but also over the equally vital oil tanker traffic routes via the Bab El-Mandeb Straits.
Israel and Iran .
Hizbollah has been active in Yemen and in the clashes in eastern Syria. Nasrallah has already boasted that after defeating ISIS it could send 'hundreds of thousands' of Shia Islamist fighters to Southern Lebanon if war were to break out between it and Israel. A Third Lebanon War still could break out in the course of 2017.
The immediate threat of a war between Hizbollah and Israel was defused by US and American negotiations with Jordan after the G20 Meeting which created a buffer zone between it and Syria. But the Iranian 'threat' to Israel is still a card the US has to play in justifying war with Iran as the Syria war comes to an end.
One factor in this is the end of the war in Syria also has meant Hamas has been able to come out of the cold after it was left isolated by the coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt in 2013 and deteriorating relations with Shia Hizbollah and Iran. Tehran and Qatar are restablishing ties with the group in Gaza.
The Hizbollah 'threat' to Israel and Yemen, in addition to the US fear of a land bridge between eastern Syria, Iraq and Iran, is a factor behind the escalation of US backed forces and fighters in that region. The Caliphate is crumbling and hence the Saudis are more concerned with Iranian and Qatari regional 'terrorism'.
The defeat of the Sunni jihadist groups in Syria in east Aleppo in December 2016 was a blow for Saudi prestige. The GCC alliance is feeling humiliated and has every interest in the US being lulled into a clash with Iran. Trump has failed to offset Saudi aggression by tilting towards Tehran as Obama did in order to defeat ISIS.
Trump's support for the Saudis saw him fall right into the trap they set for him in placing his credibility solely on support for an Arab NATO, leaning towards them and Egypt rather than the rival Turkey-Qatar axis. As Qatar leant towards Iran, and with Assad ascendant in Syria, Trump's administration refocused on Iran.
Despite the contradictory statements emanating from Tillerson and Mattis in their determination to balance support for Riyadh with acting as honest brokers over its unfortunate diplomatic war with Doha, the Trump administration is unified in regarding the degrading of Iranian regional power as major ambition.
At present, American foreign policy looks in disarray. But Trump's administration is not prepared to have Iran determine any post-ISIS political settlement and, more disturbing, it seems utterly uninterested in engaging in diplomacy with Iran. This has led Iranian diplomats to question whether the nuclear agreement would last.
A US War with Iran in late 2017 or early 2018 is a developing prospect. Russia remains a power it can do nothing about in Syria. However, it would be in a stronger position vis-à-vis Moscow if Tehran's regional power was diminished and it could try military strikes as means to do so, promote 'regime change' and 'knock out' Iran.
August 2017: The War Clouds Gather.
In August 2017, the issue of chemical weapons use in Syria by Assad is being reasserted as the OPCW is criticised by unnamed 'sources' for not doing enough to assign blame on Damascus. The OPCW is led by a Turk and Turkey is seen as no longer being trusted in coming up with the politically correct verdict on Assad's guilt.
The disturbing aspect about the Iran question is how so many Republicans and Democrat hawks would prefer to risk war rather than keep the nuclear deal of 2015. Trump prefers to shred it entirely, others such as Tillerson as a means to renegotiate it at a time when the real fear is of the decline of the US and its allies as hegemons.
Some might prefer to ditch it to get a better and more forceful one as the reality is that the hostility of the US against Iran is more about its ability to counter the power of the US and its allies in the region than simply about the issue of nuclear weapons. Iran is resented too for having extended its influence in Iraq.
The idea is that if Iran acts as a 'conventional threat', then it cannot 'hold the world to ransom' in other ways just because of the fear it might have developed nuclear weapons had it not been for the deal. Now that IS is finished, the 'new threat' is of Iran moving in to the vacuum and being able to determine Syria's fate.
This is why Nikki Haley was emitting lines about how Iran was not being held properly account by the atomic agency inspectors on Friday ( i.e. they keep telling the truth and certifying Iran is in compliance ). The Trump administration, far more so than that of Bush, is far more keen on the new 'post-truth politics'.
The pattern is similar to the run up to war with Iraq in 2003. It's also why there are renewed stories of unnamed sources being reported in the media, such as Reuters, that the OPCW is not doing enough to assign clear blame to Assad for chemical weapon attacks the US has already decided both Syria and Iran is responsible for.
This is useful when trying to justify why US backed proxy forces could make a territorial claim in Syria and retain a future stake for the US. But all the evidence is that these forces are not dominant in eastern Syria outside Kurdish enclaves such as Rojava. It's unclear whether Trump would be play the Kurdish independence card.
For President Erdogan has realigned with Russia and with Iran to bring an end to the war by carving out spheres of territorial interest. Turkey is in NATO, so Ankara is free from threats from the US. But such long term initiatives as the development of Iran's gas reserves, along with France's Total, undermine US sanctions.
The US has had its nose pushed out of Syria. Hence the reason for the increased sanctions which are largely about using punitive economic measures as a tool of power and leverage. Basically, the US has very few pieces left on the chessboard with the Turkey-Qatar axis aligning towards Iran to bring about a new balance of power.
It would be better if the US tried to accept it and work with the situation as it is. But it might try to upset the chessboard by attacking Iran and its militias in the region so it could open up the game for it and the regional players aligned with it once more. The cost of this would be to reignite a regional conflagration and destabilisation.
It's unclear whether the Trump administration is aware of the dangers of a war on Iran. The emphasis might well be on renegotiating the nuclear deal rather than scrapping it altogether, not least as the EU powers, especially France and Germany, are adamantly for retaining it. It's not clear if Trump actually cares about this.
The fear is Qatar and is cooperating with Iran to set up a rival Sunni power axis in the Middle East between the GCC and Iran. Qatar's support for Islamist groups in the region could lead to disaffected Shias rising up, as was clear in Bahrain back in 2012 after the Arab Spring broke out and Saudi tanks rolled in to crush it.
Already, the Saudis are crushing a Shia uprising within in August 2017. The greatest nightmare of the Saudis is that, in a state increasingly unable to stave off social discontent by diverting dwindling oil revenues towards social projects, with oil prices consistently down, is a Shia uprising in its main oil producing regions.
The Saudis have also failed to contain Houthi forces in Yemen since 2015 which they regards as an Iranian front to divert its energies to the south west and to exert control not only over the strategic chokepoint of the Straits of Hormuz but also over the equally vital oil tanker traffic routes via the Bab El-Mandeb Straits.
Israel and Iran .
Hizbollah has been active in Yemen and in the clashes in eastern Syria. Nasrallah has already boasted that after defeating ISIS it could send 'hundreds of thousands' of Shia Islamist fighters to Southern Lebanon if war were to break out between it and Israel. A Third Lebanon War still could break out in the course of 2017.
The immediate threat of a war between Hizbollah and Israel was defused by US and American negotiations with Jordan after the G20 Meeting which created a buffer zone between it and Syria. But the Iranian 'threat' to Israel is still a card the US has to play in justifying war with Iran as the Syria war comes to an end.
One factor in this is the end of the war in Syria also has meant Hamas has been able to come out of the cold after it was left isolated by the coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt in 2013 and deteriorating relations with Shia Hizbollah and Iran. Tehran and Qatar are restablishing ties with the group in Gaza.
The Hizbollah 'threat' to Israel and Yemen, in addition to the US fear of a land bridge between eastern Syria, Iraq and Iran, is a factor behind the escalation of US backed forces and fighters in that region. The Caliphate is crumbling and hence the Saudis are more concerned with Iranian and Qatari regional 'terrorism'.
The defeat of the Sunni jihadist groups in Syria in east Aleppo in December 2016 was a blow for Saudi prestige. The GCC alliance is feeling humiliated and has every interest in the US being lulled into a clash with Iran. Trump has failed to offset Saudi aggression by tilting towards Tehran as Obama did in order to defeat ISIS.
Trump's support for the Saudis saw him fall right into the trap they set for him in placing his credibility solely on support for an Arab NATO, leaning towards them and Egypt rather than the rival Turkey-Qatar axis. As Qatar leant towards Iran, and with Assad ascendant in Syria, Trump's administration refocused on Iran.
Despite the contradictory statements emanating from Tillerson and Mattis in their determination to balance support for Riyadh with acting as honest brokers over its unfortunate diplomatic war with Doha, the Trump administration is unified in regarding the degrading of Iranian regional power as major ambition.
At present, American foreign policy looks in disarray. But Trump's administration is not prepared to have Iran determine any post-ISIS political settlement and, more disturbing, it seems utterly uninterested in engaging in diplomacy with Iran. This has led Iranian diplomats to question whether the nuclear agreement would last.
A US War with Iran in late 2017 or early 2018 is a developing prospect. Russia remains a power it can do nothing about in Syria. However, it would be in a stronger position vis-à-vis Moscow if Tehran's regional power was diminished and it could try military strikes as means to do so, promote 'regime change' and 'knock out' Iran.
August 2017: The War Clouds Gather.
In August 2017, the issue of chemical weapons use in Syria by Assad is being reasserted as the OPCW is criticised by unnamed 'sources' for not doing enough to assign blame on Damascus. The OPCW is led by a Turk and Turkey is seen as no longer being trusted in coming up with the politically correct verdict on Assad's guilt.
The disturbing aspect about the Iran question is how so many Republicans and Democrat hawks would prefer to risk war rather than keep the nuclear deal of 2015. Trump prefers to shred it entirely, others such as Tillerson as a means to renegotiate it at a time when the real fear is of the decline of the US and its allies as hegemons.
Some might prefer to ditch it to get a better and more forceful one as the reality is that the hostility of the US against Iran is more about its ability to counter the power of the US and its allies in the region than simply about the issue of nuclear weapons. Iran is resented too for having extended its influence in Iraq.
The idea is that if Iran acts as a 'conventional threat', then it cannot 'hold the world to ransom' in other ways just because of the fear it might have developed nuclear weapons had it not been for the deal. Now that IS is finished, the 'new threat' is of Iran moving in to the vacuum and being able to determine Syria's fate.
This is why Nikki Haley was emitting lines about how Iran was not being held properly account by the atomic agency inspectors on Friday ( i.e. they keep telling the truth and certifying Iran is in compliance ). The Trump administration, far more so than that of Bush, is far more keen on the new 'post-truth politics'.
The pattern is similar to the run up to war with Iraq in 2003. It's also why there are renewed stories of unnamed sources being reported in the media, such as Reuters, that the OPCW is not doing enough to assign clear blame to Assad for chemical weapon attacks the US has already decided both Syria and Iran is responsible for.
This is useful when trying to justify why US backed proxy forces could make a territorial claim in Syria and retain a future stake for the US. But all the evidence is that these forces are not dominant in eastern Syria outside Kurdish enclaves such as Rojava. It's unclear whether Trump would be play the Kurdish independence card.
For President Erdogan has realigned with Russia and with Iran to bring an end to the war by carving out spheres of territorial interest. Turkey is in NATO, so Ankara is free from threats from the US. But such long term initiatives as the development of Iran's gas reserves, along with France's Total, undermine US sanctions.
The US has had its nose pushed out of Syria. Hence the reason for the increased sanctions which are largely about using punitive economic measures as a tool of power and leverage. Basically, the US has very few pieces left on the chessboard with the Turkey-Qatar axis aligning towards Iran to bring about a new balance of power.
It would be better if the US tried to accept it and work with the situation as it is. But it might try to upset the chessboard by attacking Iran and its militias in the region so it could open up the game for it and the regional players aligned with it once more. The cost of this would be to reignite a regional conflagration and destabilisation.
It's unclear whether the Trump administration is aware of the dangers of a war on Iran. The emphasis might well be on renegotiating the nuclear deal rather than scrapping it altogether, not least as the EU powers, especially France and Germany, are adamantly for retaining it. It's not clear if Trump actually cares about this.
