The U.S. military’s guided bombs brought “shock and awe” to Baghdad in 2003 when American forces invaded Iraq 16 years ago to hunt for weapons of mass destruction. They never found any. Many observers, today, consider that war a failure.
Now, half of all Americans believe the U.S. will go to war with Iran “within the next few years,” according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll released in late May amid increased tensions between the two countries, longtime geopolitical foes.

The escalating Tehran-Washington crisis comes as the White House claims, without providing detail or public evidence, that Iran poses an increased threat to American forces and facilities in the Middle East – one year after Trump withdrew from an accord between Iran and world powers aimed at limiting Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
Trump’s hawks: Bolton amps up Iran sabotage claims, desire for nuclear weapons
Is Iran doomed to be an Iraq redux? This is just one of the questions raised by a crisis that has eerie parallels to the missteps that led to the Iraq War in 2003, where the buildup to conflict was precipitated by faulty intelligence and confrontational foreign policymakers such as John Bolton in President George W. Bush’s administration.

To make sense of what’s happening now, here’s what happened then:

Operation Desert Storm – the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War – came to an end 42 days after a U.S.-led offensive was launched in response to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion of neighboring Kuwait. Iraq’s dictator accused Kuwait and Saudi Arabia of conspiring to keep oil prices artificially low for western consumers. President George H.W. Bush declared a ceasefire on February 28, 1991, as Iraqi forces in Kuwait surrendered or fled back to Iraq. About 700,000 American service members were deployed to the Gulf for the short war; 383 were killed.
When President George W. Bush became president in 2001, Hussein was back on the agenda. “There were a number of people in the Department of Defense who wanted to pursue a certain policy course. I don’t think they ever took their eyes off of Iraq,” former CIA Director John Brennan said in a 2007 National Geographic documentary about the 2003 Iraq War. “There was still a great deal of residual feeling that we should not have stopped the first Persian Gulf War when we did, but rather continue into Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein,” ex-Senator and ex-Florida governor Bob Graham said in the same documentary.
Among the figures Brennan and Graham were referring to: Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Bolton, who had worked as a lawyer for the Bush campaign to block recount efforts in Florida that led to state officials awarding the 2000 election to Bush over Democratic candidate Al Gore.
Bolton was a lifelong staunch conservative with hawkish views on foreign policy. For a start, he abhorred multilateralism. “There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States,” he said of the international organization in 1994, adding: “The secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” Years later, Bolton’s nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to the UN was blocked because of his hardline views. He would also call for the U.S. to make pre-emptive strikes against North Korea.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City and Washington shifted the Bush administration’s focus to hunting Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban had given shelter to the al-Qaeda’s leader, who masterminded the attacks. But Iraq was also on the radar of the Pentagon’s military planners, who feared that Hussein might try to support or orchestrate an equally, or worse, catastrophic assault on U.S. soil “We’re also working to prepare our nation for the next war,” Rumsfeld said at a briefing on Afghanistan in late 2001, referring to Iraq.
In January 2002, Bush branded Iraq part of an “axis of evil” for harboring, financing and aiding terrorists, and for its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Also members of the club: Iran and North Korea. These countries, Bush said, “are threatening the peace of the world.” He cast aside more dovish voices in his cabinet who urged him to pursue a diplomatic path in Iraq, saying “we can’t wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
Around the same time, Bolton, then serving as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs in Bush’s administration, was becoming a key player in pushing for a military confrontation with Iraq, saying in a BBC radio debate that he was “confident” that Iraq had “hidden” weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons and production facilities. “The U.S. has already decided the outcome of this story – Saddam will be left with no weapons of mass destruction – but how that point is reached is up to Saddam Hussein,” Bolton said in the debate in London. He was also making unverified claims about other countries he wanted included in Bush’s “axis of evil,” testifying to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that Cuba was secretly developing a biological weapons program that could be used in warfare against American forces and civilian targets by “rogue states.” Bolton provided no details when questioned. A subsequent Senate investigation found no evidence supporting his assertions.
In the months leading up to the Iraq War in 2003, Cheney appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with a further warning: “The situation, I think, that leads a lot of people to be concerned about Iraq has to do not just with their past activity of harboring terrorists, but also with Saddam Hussein’s behavior over the years and with his aggressive pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.”
Despite not being able to produce clear “smoking gun” evidence of Hussein’s “hidden” program to acquire weapons of mass destruction, Bush, buoyed by key advisors such as Bolton, opted for war with Iraq. When he was not able to get an express United Nations Security Council mandate to do so he pursued a “coalition of the willing” that included Australia, Britain, Japan, Spain and others.
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, Hussein spent nine months on the run before he was found hiding in an eight-foot-deep hole near his hometown of Tikrit. An Iraqi court convicted Hussein of crimes against humanity, for using deadly gas against Iraqi Kurds and other transgressions, and he was later executed by hanging. No evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was found. The war was viewed as a fiasco, not only of intelligence, but because it further destabilized the region, contributed to the formation of the Islamic State terrorist group and led to the violent deaths of more 200,000 Iraqi civilians and at least 4,500 American troops. It added more than $1 trillion to U.S. government debt. Iraq’s economy, security and government remain in a fragile state.
In an opinion article in The Guardian in 2013, Bolton wrote: “Overthrowing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 achieved important American strategic objectives. Our broad international coalition accomplished its military mission with low casualties and great speed, sending an unmistakable signal of power and determination throughout the Middle East and around the world. Despite all the criticism of what happened after Saddam’s defeat, these facts are indisputable.”
Meanwhile, with the failed outcome of the 2003 Iraq War still plain to see, Bolton started ramping up his outspoken criticism of Iran’s Islamic Republic. In 2009, as President Barack Obama’s administration entered into what would turn out to be almost five years of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, Bolton said: “Ultimately, the only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is regime change in Tehran.” As the deal entered its final stages, Bolton advocated in a New York Times opinion piece that the U.S. join forces with Israel: “Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran,” he wrote. The articled was headlined: “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”

Also troubling: The Iranian opposition group Bolton was referring to in his New York Times opinion article is the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a controversial Paris-based political organization also known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK. Along with Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, Bolton is long-time supporter of the exiled opposition group and has been paid to speak at its annual rallies. The MEK is often described by observers of its activities, including by humanitarian groups and even a U.S. government research document from 2012, as displaying “cultlike behavior.” The MEK’s reported abuses – vigorously denied to USA TODAY by its senior leadership who claim they result from a vicious and protracted “disinformation campaign” by Iran’s clerical rulers – range from torture and forced celibacy to holding members against their will, sometimes in solitary confinement. The MEK says its critics are often spies for the Iranian regime. Bolton’s first encounters with the MEK took place in Iraq, where for a period it had aligned itself with Hussein’s government, which was fighting a war with Iran.

When Bolton joined the Trump administration as national security adviser in 2018, replacing seasoned former Army officer Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, he continued his public saber rattling and criticism of Iran by releasing a video on the 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution via the White House’s official Twitter channel. In the video, Bolton calls Iran “the central banker of international terrorism” and accuses Tehran of pursuing nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them and of “tyrannizing its own people and terrorizing the world.” The video ends with a direct threat to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader: “I don’t think you’ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy,” Bolton says.
Iran’s interest in nuclear technology dates to the 1950s, when it received help from a U.S.-backed program promoted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who wanted to share U.S. nuclear expertise with other countries for peaceful purposes, such as energy production. But after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and a U.S. hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran effectively ended relations between the two nations, U.S. intelligence agencies have long suspected, without explicit evidence, that Iran has attempted to use its civilian nuclear program as a cover for clandestine weapons development. Obama’s 2015 nuclear accord was designed to prevent that and the UN’s nuclear watchdog has repeatedly verified through inspections and other safeguards that Iran has been complying with the terms of the agreement, even after the U.S. withdrew from it and Washington re-imposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. Bolton has regularly decried those inspections as ineffectual, believes the nuclear accord was a sham and has advocated for a far bolder Iran policy that aggressively addresses Iran’s support for anti-American shia militias and Tehran’s ballistic missile program.
Most Iran experts, political scientists and many U.S. lawmakers believe that it is this – Bolton’s desire, like in Iraq, to confront Iran – that underpins a still-unexplained decision by the Pentagon to deploy warships, B-52 bombers and missiles to the Persian Gulf earlier this month in response to unspecified threats from Iran in the region. The U.S. also plans to send 900 additional troops to the Middle East and extend the stay of another 600 who are part of tens of thousands of others on the ground there. “The previous administration appeased the Islamic Republic of Iran. So we are pushing back. And when you push back, tension does increase,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, another Iran hawk in the Trump administration, said in response to efforts to get clarity over the moves.
In recent days, Bolton also has accused Iran of being behind a string of incidents in the Persian Gulf, including what officials allege was sabotage of oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and a rocket that landed near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, while Yemen’s Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels launched a string of drone attacks targeting Saudi Arabia. Iran has mostly avoided addressing the allegations, although it has said it doesn’t fear a war with the U.S. It has also signaled that its patience with the nuclear deal is wearing thin and threatened to resume uranium enrichment at levels higher than the accord permits. Speaking in Abu Dhabi, Bolton said Wednesday that there had been a previously unknown attempt to attack the Saudi oil port of Yanbu as well. “Who else would you think is doing it? Somebody from Nepal?” Bolton said that there was “no reason” for Iran to back out of the nuclear deal other than to seek atomic weapons.
As for Trump’s position on Iran, nobody seems to know the president’s mind, not even, perhaps, the president. Trump has oscillated between overtly aggressive rhetoric and seemingly conciliatory statements. “We have no indication that anything’s happened or will happen, but if it does, it will be met obviously with great force,” Trump said last week at the White House. While on a four-day visit to Japan, Trump denied he wants regime change in Iran and said it’s not the goal. Some national security experts believe that Bolton’s role in pushing for war with Iran has been exaggerated, and that his influence on the president has been overstated. Still, there have been few Iran-related denials from Bolton, although just hours after the publication of this story, Bolton told a group of reporters while on a trip to London: “The policy we’re pursuing is not a policy of regime change. That’s the fact and everybody should understand it that way.”
Trump says he doesn’t want war: Is Bolton driving the U.S. into a conflict anyway?
Inside Iran: America’s contentious history in Iran leads to anger, weariness, worry

Kim Hjelmgaard,  USA TODAY

Author’s Note
This article is not ‘journalism’, or pretence at ‘journalism’. The author does not work for the BBC, the Guardian or any other MSM platform that once provided the former, but increasingly delivers the latter. It was not written by an ‘expert’, real or imagined, and the author has no connection with the Council on Foreign Regime-Change or any other ‘stink-tank’. The author is a retired British citizen with neither the resources nor the inclination to lie to you. What follows is ‘opinion’.

Backdrop
“In the coming months, we can expect to witness an increasing number of speeches and articles demonising Iran, along with a growing number of ‘serious incidents’, that will be used to justify reneging on the nuclear deal. The phoney war on Iran has entered a new phase. The Likud party led by Netanyahu, the Trump administration, supported by the Wahhabi backed princeling in Riyadh…have absolutely no interest in collaborative solutions in the Middle East. Their goal is regime change”
The Psychopath, the Puppet and the Princeling
I wrote that six months ago in September 2017. Since then a number of events have played out along the lines expected:
• The nuclear agreement was disowned by President Trump in October, and is now living on ‘borrowed time’. Ostensibly thrown back to Congress to get a better deal, this will not materialise. I see three possibilities: a) Congress will ‘take too long’, b) Congress will not be tough enough to satisfy the WH, or c) Congressional demands will be unacceptable to Iran. Any of these will give Trump the political cover he needs to rip up the agreement and create the conditions for escalation.
• The Iranian protests of December & January were given blanket media coverage in the west, and used by neoconservative ‘intellectuals’ to fuel the regime change agenda. Here’s Frederick Kagan in ‘The National Interest’:
“The protests rocking an unprecedented expanse of Iran do not, and probably will not, immediately threaten the regime’s survival despite the hopes and dreams of many here in Washington”
• The continued destruction of Yemen by Saudi Arabia, with the full support of the US and the UK, has received very little media coverage; in stark contrast to the rare occasions that the Yemenis have been able to strike back, which have been used by Washington as opportunities for the continued demonization of Iran. Here is UN Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley using an ‘Iranian Missile’ as the backdrop for a press conference:
• On December 28th 2017, the Times of Israel reported that the US and Israel have set-up mechanisms for dealing with ‘the Iranian nuclear threat’:
“Israel and the United States have secretly signed a far-reaching joint memorandum of understanding providing for full cooperation to deal with Iran’s nuclear drive, its missile programs and its other threatening activities…Citing both American and Israeli officials, the report said the document is designed to translate into “steps on the ground” the positions set out by US President Donald Trump in his October 13 speech on Iran, in which he decertified the Iran nuclear deal”.
None of this is surprising. Taken in isolation it may seem to be a slow process, but when set within the context of the geo-political landscape, things are moving quickly, especially given Washington’s defeat in Syria – which was supposed to ready for partition by now. The latest regime change operation has failed, due in no small part to the resilience of the Syrian government and its people, the overwhelming majority of whom do not want to live in a fundamental Islamic society, any more than they want to exist in order to serve the strategic interests of US, Israel & Saudi Arabia. However, even with such strong resistance, Syria would undoubtedly have fallen without the support of its three allies, Iran, Hezbollah and most importantly Russia. The survival of Syria as a sovereign independent state is vital to them all.

Latest Development
I am writing this update now because a major piece of the jigsaw has just been put in place, and as a result of that, I suspect that events will accelerate and become more visible to the general public.
On 22nd March 2018, President Trump announced that his new National Security Advisor will beJohn Bolton, former Ambassador to the UN under George W. Bush, ex-Fox News Analyst, leading advocate of the wars in Iraq and Libya; a man who has consistently called for regime change in North Korea and Iran.
To call Bolton a ‘hawk’ would be underestimating his lofty perch in Washington’s raptor house. The only war that he didn’t like was the one that required his own skin in the game: Bolton joined the National Guard to avoid the Vietnam draft. When asked why, this was his comment, as recorded in his 25th Yale Reunion Book: “I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy”
Since then, in common with other reluctant soldiers such as Bush Junior and Dick Cheney, Bolton has been very keen on sending other young people to kill and die overseas, albeit mainly to deserts rather than rice paddies. The following comment summarises his position on North Korea just over a month ago. On 28th February 2018, in the Wall Street Journal, Bolton wrote:
“The threat is imminent, and the case against pre-emption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from pre-nuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times…Given the gaps in US intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute. That would risk striking after the North has deliverable nuclear weapons, a much more dangerous situation. It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current ‘necessity’ posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first”
However, let’s set aside his position on North Korea, and pose the question: what does his appointment tell us about the Trump administration’s plans for Iran?
Firstly, here’s a typical example of Bolton’s utterances on Iran, from the ‘Free Iran Gathering’ in Paris, 1st July 2017:
“So, for the first time in at least 8 years that I have been coming to this event, I can say that we have a President of the United States who is completely and totally opposed to the regime in Tehran…he completely opposes the Iran nuclear deal signed by his predecessor…there is a viable opposition to the rule of the Ayatollahs, and that opposition is centred in this room today…”
But the most disturbing part of his speech was kept for the crescendo:
“I have said for over ten years since coming to these events, that the declared policy of the United States of America should be the overthrow of the Mullah’s regime in Tehran. The behaviour and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and therefore the only solution is to change the regime itself. And that’s why before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran, thank you very much”
Of course, the comments that Bolton has made since his appointment have ‘softened’ to include statements like ‘I’m here to serve the wishes of the President…anything I said before was my personal view as an independent analyst…blah blah blah’. Even if you believe this, it still begs the question: why would a President intent on peace in the Middle-East appoint a guy who can’t wait to park his Cadillac on [Ayatollah]Khamenei’s lawn? He wouldn’t. The goal is regime change.

Bolton’s regime change credentials
Bolton has a long history of direct contact with an Iranian terror group known as Mujahideen-e Khalq, usually referred to by its acronym, MEK. Here is Jason Rezaian writing in the Washington Post on 24th March 2018:

“Bolton’s hawkish views on Iran mirror those of Israel, Saudi Arabia and one of his key ideological partners, the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK)…The MEK is the type of fringe group that sets up camp across the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and hands out fliers filled with unsubstantiated claims…I would never suggest that they be prohibited from doing that. But giving the MEK a voice in the White House is a terrible idea. In John Bolton they have someone who will do it for them…

The MEK was on the State Department’s list of terrorist organisations until 2012, when Bolton and a number of others successfully lobbied to have its designation removed. The group is loathed by the majority of Iranians, irrespective of their political affiliation, because of its role in fighting alongside Saddam’s forces in the Iran-Iraq war. According to Rezaian’s source at the State Department, the group hires prominent US officials to spread its regime change message:

“Very few former U.S. government officials shilled pro bono for the MEK,” said a former State Department official who worked on Iran. Among the long bipartisan list of people who have taken money from the group in exchange for speaking at its events are former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean. Bolton, the former official told me, was also paid”

So…we have Bolton arguing for regime change, taking money from an organisation advocating regime change…a group that was designated a terrorist group until Bolton managed to have it removed from the list.
What could these lovebirds possibly want with each other? Rezaian:

“To those who claim that the nuclear deal isn’t working, regime change remains the only solution. For the MEK, and Bolton, if his words are to be taken at face value, the only path to that could be war. The group has long been prepared to do whatever it takes to see that happen, including presenting fake intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program”

The fake intelligence referred to includes a 2015 ‘incident’ in which the political front for the MEK, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), ‘revealed’ the existence of a phoney underground centrifuge facility in the suburbs of Tehran: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/03/that-secret-iranian-nuclear-facility-you-just-found-not-so-much/
So…now we have Bolton arguing for regime change, working with a re-designated terrorist group that is intent on war & happy to use false flags. Sounds like a perfect fit for Washington doesn’t it?
If you want more on the history of the MEK and its involvement with US military and intelligence, I suggest you read Seymour Hersh’s 2012 article in the New Yorker “Our men in Iran”
What next?
If Washington follows the playbook they have used in Libya and Syria, a ‘popular uprising’ will be fomented using the MEK or a re-branded version – as in Syria where al-Qaeda morphed into al-Nusra. Many of the protestors will have genuine grievances of course, but the violence that will be used to escalate the protests into a ‘revolution’ will be the work of US sponsored terrorist groups.
This will be presented by western media as a spontaneous democratic uprising, and will be reinforced by the twin strategies of demonization and virtue signalling. The neoconservative ‘right’ will go along with it because they always do; the liberal interventionist ‘left’ will go along with it because it will be presented as a ‘democratic revolt’. But let’s be clear: Nothing touched by the hands of the CIA & their proxies is remotely ‘democratic’ – it’s always about resources, money, and power. Uncle Sam is not the sweet, freedom-loving old guy he’d like us all to think. And neither is his handmaiden, Britannia.
If this were not so dangerous it would be truly funny. There is no effective opposition left in the US – ‘Russiagate’ has seen to that. The ‘left’ in America, for all its rhetoric about ‘progressive values’…is easier to play than a tambourine.

Final thought
I started this piece by taking a shot at the media. I make no apology for that. We are being taken to war by sociopaths, and the mainstream media are their collaborators.
I leave you with a quote, and a short film of Harold Pinter speaking on ‘the nature of truth’, from his Nobel acceptance speech in 2005. When you read it and/or view the film, bear in mind that none of this would be possible without collaboration from the media:
“Since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are not interested in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power, it is essential that people remain in ignorance. That they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies upon which we feed. The justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction…We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Qaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. The truth is something entirely different.
The truth is how the United States understands its role in the world, and how it chooses to embody it. I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist; unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies, is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision, we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man”

By MarkGB, Renegadeinc.com