{"id":9403,"date":"2019-01-16T12:13:14","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T08:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/?p=9403"},"modified":"2021-01-21T19:26:59","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T15:56:59","slug":"boltons-plan-for-mideast-included-strikes-on-iran-syria-and-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/posts\/9403","title":{"rendered":"Bolton\u2019s Plan for Mideast Included Strikes on Iran, Syria, and Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bolton\u2019s Radical Reshaping Plan for Mideast Included \u201cMind Boggling\u201d Strikes on Iran, Syria, and Iraq<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bolton\u2019s willingness to bring Syria and Iraq into the fray along with Iran betrays the fact that he is not just seeking regime change in individual countries but seeking to remake the Middle East as a whole.
\nIn 2017, less than a year before he became national security advisor, John Bolton promised a gathering of the Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK) that:<\/p>\n

In 2017, less than a year before he became national security advisor, John Bolton promised a gathering of the Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK) that:<\/p>\n

The declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs\u2019 regime in Tehran. \u2026 The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself. \u2026 And that\u2019s why, before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While some may have thought Bolton\u2019s statements of regime change in Iran before 2019 were just more bellicose rhetoric from a well-known Iran hawk, a report published Sunday in the Wall Street Journal has revealed that Bolton did everything within his power to push for President Donald Trump to launch a military attack on Iran.
\nAccording to the Journal, Trump\u2019s national security team \u2013 which is led by Bolton \u2013 requested that the Pentagon develop \u201cfar-reaching military options to strike Iran\u201d last September after Shia militias in Iraq fired three mortars at the U.S. embassy and diplomatic compound in Baghdad. As the report noted, the shells \u201clanded in an open lot and harmed no one,\u201d but the group that fired them is alleged to have ties with Iran.
\nThis incident, though minor, notably took place amid considerable unrest in the Iraqi city of Basra and during competing efforts by the U.S. and Iran to influence the formation of Iraq\u2019s next national government.
\nNevertheless, the minor nature of the incident was apparently the perfect pretext for Bolton and others on the national security team \u2013 which Bolton has been stocking with war hawks for much of the past year \u2013 to push for a military strike on Iran, something Bolton himself has long sought, as evidenced by his numerous speeches and editorials calling for preemptive bombing of the Islamic Republic.
\nFor instance, in one meeting, Mira Ricardel \u2013 then serving as Bolton\u2019s ultra-hawkish deputy national security advisor \u2013 described the attacks in Iraq as \u201can act of war\u201d and said the U.S. had to respond decisively. Ricardel is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and aformer executive of U.S. weapons-maker Boeing but left her post last November as result of friction with First Lady Melania Trump.<\/p>\n

In addition, during those meetings, the Journal noted that Bolton did not even attempt to hide his real motivations, as he \u201cmade it clear that he personally supports regime change in Iran, a position he aggressively championed before joining the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the discussions.\u201d
\nAs a result of those meetings, the Bolton-led National Security Council pushed for an attack plan on Iran so brazen that it deeply concerned Pentagon and State Department officials. One former senior U.S. administration official told the Journal that the request \u201cdefinitely rattled people\u201d and added that \u201cpeople were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.\u201d
\nIn other words, using a remarkably minor incident as a pretext, the Bolton-led group of hawks that compose the majority of Trump\u2019s National Security Council (NSC) was preparing to launch a full-scale regime-change war on Iran. To make matter worse, the Journal also reported that the Pentagon had \u201ccomplied with the NSC\u2019s request to develop options for striking Iran,\u201d meaning that Bolton and his team now have a range of Pentagon-developed strategies for bombing Iran at their fingertips.<\/p>\n

Bolton\u2019s obsession and unkept promise<\/strong>
\nBolton \u2018s push to bomb Iran last September over such a minor incident may seem strange, but Bolton\u2019s history makes it clear that he has long sought any excuse \u2013 from the minor to the non-existent \u2013 to justify waging war against Iran\u2019s current government.
\nAs MintPress reported last year, Bolton\u2019s past indicates a near obsession with clearing the way for U.S. military action against Iran. As journalist Gareth Porter has noted, while Bolton was the Bush administration\u2019s key policymaker on Iran, he \u2014 by flouting State Department protocol and taking several unannounced trips to Israel \u2014 \u201cactively conspired \u2026 to establish the political conditions necessary for the administration to carry out military action\u201d against Iran.
\nNot only that, but Bolton\u2019s behind-the-scenes dealings \u2014 using fabricated evidence, provided to him by an Iranian terrorist group that Bolton still openly supports, to convince the United Nations that Iran was secretly developing a nuclear weapon \u2014 led Iran\u2019s nuclear program to become a matter overseen by the United Nations Security Council, as opposed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Since becoming national security advisor, Bolton has continued to make this claim \u2014 as recently as last week \u2014 despite its having been rejected by the U.S. intelligence community repeatedly since 2007.
\nThe terror group relied on by Bolton, Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK), was listed as a \u201cForeign Terrorist Organization\u201d by the United States government from 1997 and 2012 and, in the past, has conducted terror acts to accomplish its goals, killing Iranians as well as Americans in the process.<\/p>\n

More recently, MEK has worked with Israeli Intelligence to murder Iranian scientists. Since its removal from the government\u2019s terror group list after an extensive lobbying effort that targeted prominent U.S. politicians, MEK has sought to reinvent itself as a \u201cmoderate\u201d Iranian opposition group even though it has next to no support within Iran and has consistently been characterized as both \u201ccultish\u201d and \u201cauthoritarian.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was to this very group that Bolton had promised regime change in Tehran in 2019, a promise he ultimately failed to keep, but not for lack of trying.
\n\u201cSunni-stan,\u201d partition, and a Middle East rebuilt to suit
\nAnother highly significant revelation of the Journal\u2019s report, which has been largely overlooked, is that the plans for \u201cmilitary options\u201d that Bolton and his team requested from the Pentagon also included strategies for launching strikes, not just in Iran, but in Syria and Iraq. As the report noted, \u201cthe National Security Council asked the Pentagon to provide the White House with options to respond with strikes in Iraq and Syria as well, according to people familiar with the talks.\u201d
\nBolton\u2019s willingness to bring Syria and Iraq into the fray betrays the fact that he is not just seeking regime change in individual countries but seeking to remake the Middle East as a whole. Indeed, both Syria and Iraq have long been in Bolton\u2019s crosshairs, as evidenced by his 2015 editorial in the New York Times where he calls for the partition of both countries in order to benefit the United States, Israel and \u201cfriendly Arab\u201d states like Saudi Arabia.
\nBolton\u2019s partition plan involves the creation of a Sunni state out of northeastern Syria and western Iraq, which he nicknames \u201cSunni-stan.\u201d He asserts that such a country has \u201ceconomic potential\u201d as an oil producer, would be a \u201cbulwark\u201d against the Syrian government and \u201cIran-allied Baghdad,\u201d and would help defeat Daesh (ISIS).
\nBolton\u2019s mention of oil is notable, as the proposed area for this Sunni state sits on key oil fields that U.S. oil interests, such as ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers, have sought to control if the partition of Iraq and Syria comes to pass. Also notable is the fact that the area of Syria Bolton mentions is the area currently being illegally occupied by the United States. This could well be a driving factor in Bolton\u2019s desire to delay or prevent the U.S. troop withdrawal in northeastern Syria.
\nHowever, the most notable part of the Bolton\u2019s editorial calling for the creation of \u201cSunni-stan\u201d is that he mentions exactly who would benefit from this partition, and it certainly isn\u2019t the Syrians or the Iraqis. \u201cRestoring Iraqi and Syrian governments to their former borders,\u201d Bolton writes, \u201cis a goal fundamentally contrary to American, Israeli and friendly Arab state interests.\u201d In other words, allowing the Syrian government to return to its former borders is \u201ccontrary\u201d to the interests of the nations that Bolton supports and that he seeks to make the dominant powers in the Middle East through his aggressive policy for the region.
\nWith Bolton and his team on the National Security Council armed with the tools to bomb both Syria and Iran, it\u2019s only a matter of time before Bolton finds the perfect pretext to begin enacting his vision for a \u201cnew\u201d Middle East, most likely starting with Iran.
\nWhitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann\u2019s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
\nWhitney Webb, Mint Press Newsfmek<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK), was listed as a \u201cForeign Terrorist Organization\u201d by the United States government from 1997 and 2012 and, in the past, has conducted terror acts to accomplish its goals, killing Iranians as well as Americans in the process. More recently, MEK has worked with Israeli Intelligence to murder Iranian scientists. Since its removal from the government\u2019s terror group list \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[90,642,178,20],"module":[81],"ctype":[17],"blog":[109],"class_list":["post-9403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mujahedin-khalq-proxy-force","tag-mujahedin-warmongers","tag-paid-advocacy-for-mko","tag-pmoi-iran-people","tag-third-view-mek","module-article","ctype-story","blog-western-bloggers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9403"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=9403"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=9403"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=9403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}