Iran Can Be Trump\u2019s Nemesis<\/p>\n
What a coincidence that a leaked document from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) just exposed that the chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April, 2018 was most likely staged. In security parlance, it was a false flag operation \u2014 stage-managed cunningly to create the alibi for a \u2018humanitarian intervention\u2019 by the West in Syria. In this rogues\u2019 gallery, apart from Israel, there is also Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Bolton, of course, is mentored by Israel and it is an established fact that he has received money for services rendered from the Mojahedin-e Khalq MEK, the anti-Iran terrorist group based in France, which espouses the overthrow of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[90,20],"module":[81],"ctype":[17],"blog":[261],"class_list":["post-9917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mujahedin-khalq-proxy-force","tag-mujahedin-warmongers","tag-third-view-mek","module-article","ctype-story","blog-iranian-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9917","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=9917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9917"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=9917"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=9917"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=9917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAs it happened, the US and France did stage a missile strike at Syrian government targets in July that year, alleging that Damascus was culpable for what happened in Douma, ignoring the protests by Russia.
\nFalse flag operations are not uncommon, but the US holds a PhD on that genre. The most famous one in modern history was the Gulf of Tonkin incident of August 1964 where the US government deliberately misrepresented facts to justify a war against Vietnam.
\nPrima facie, there is enough circumstantial evidence to estimate that the attack on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman on June 13 has been a false flag operation. The attack on the two tankers with cargo heading for Japan took place just as the Japanese PM Shinzo Abe sat down for the meeting yesterday with Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran.
\nThe fact of the matter is that Abe was on a delicate mission to try to kickstart talks between the US and Iran. It is one of those delicate moments when a slight push can derail or even undermine the nascent move for dialogue. True, in the first round, Khamenei rejected talks with the US. But, as Abe said later, more efforts are needed for easing tensions between the US and Iran.
\nTherefore, as regards the incident yesterday in the Gulf of Oman, the question to be asked is: Who stands to gain? Most certainly, it cannot be Iran, which has just laid on the table in plain terms what it takes for negotiations to commence between the US and Iran \u2014 President Trump abandoning what Tehran calls the US\u2019 \u2018economic terrorism\u2019 against it. [Ayatollah]Khamenei told Abe with great frankness that it is futile to negotiate with the US, which keeps resiling from international agreements. No doubt, Trump has been highly erratic by making overtures to Iran on the one hand and tightening the screw on the other hand.
\nSimply put, Iran has no axe to grind by undermining Abe\u2019s mission, especially since Japan is the only western power, which, historically speaking, never ever acted against Iran but on the contrary consistently maintained friendly ties and showed goodwill. (Once in 1953, Japan even ignored the British-American embargo against Iran and went ahead to import Iranian oil.)
\nHowever, this much cannot be said about certain regional states \u2014 which Iran has called the \u2018B Team\u2019 \u2014 that are bent on perpetuating the US-Iran standoff and incrementally degrade Iran to a point that a military confrontation ensues at some point in which American power dispatches that country to the \u201cStone Age\u201d, as the present US National Security Advisor John Bolton once put it.
\nIn this rogues\u2019 gallery, apart from Israel, there is also Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Bolton, of course, is mentored by Israel and it is an established fact that he has received money for services rendered from the Mojahedin-e Khalq, MEK, the anti-Iran terrorist group based in France, which espouses the overthrow of the Islamic regime in Tehran.
\nIran has sounded warnings in recent weeks, including at the level of Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, that this \u2018B Team\u2019 would at some point stage false flag operations to ratchet up tensions and\/ or precipitate a crisis situation, that would in turn prompt Trump to order some sort of military action against Iran.
\nTo be sure, the stakes are very high for Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE if Abe\u2019s mission advances further.and the current tensions begins to ease. An added factor for the \u2018B Team\u2019 is that time is the essence of the matter. It increasingly seems that Bolton\u2019s job as NSA is in danger. Trump has hinted more than once that he does not subscribe to Bolton\u2019s warmongering. The well-known ex-CIA officer and commentator John Kiriakou wrote this week that the White House has \u201cvery quietly and discreetly begun informal meetings with a list of a half-dozen possible replacements for Bolton.\u201d (See the commentary in Consortium News titled JOHN KIRIAKOU: Bolton\u2019s Long Goodbye.) It is crucial for the \u2018B Team\u2019 that Bolton keeps his job in the White House. And there is no better way to hold back Trump from sacking his NSA when a crisis situation looms large in the Middle East.
\nBe that as it may, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced that Iran is responsible for the incident in the Gulf of Oman. He claimed in a statement, \u201cThis assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping, and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication.\u201d
\nNow, doesn\u2019t Israel too have the intelligence capability, weapons and expertise to execute such a false flag operation? Read Pompeo\u2019s statement carefully and its laboured tone gives away that the ex-CIA Director (who recently even bragged openly about the art of lying in diplomacy and politics) was far from convincing.
\nSo, where\u2019s the beef? Pompeo has instructed that the UN Ambassador Jonathan Cohen raised the matter in the UN Security Council. There is an eerie similarity to what once one of Pompeo\u2019s predecessors as state secretary, Colin Powell did \u2014 manufacturing evidence of WMD program by Saddam Hussein to pave the way for the US to invade Iraq.
\nWhat needs to be factored in is that the US anticipates that in another fortnight, Iran\u2019s 60-day deadline for the European countries will expire to come up with concrete steps to fulfil their commitments under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas\u2019s visit to Tehran last week was a calculated attempt to persuade Iran to accept the stark reality that it must unilaterally fulfil its commitments under the nuclear deal while there is little EU can do in practical terms to defy the US sanctions. Maas tried to persuade Iran to accept the US\u2019 demand that non-nuclear issues (such as Iran\u2019s missile programme, regional policies, etc.) also be negotiated under a new pact. Quite obviously, the European powers, despite their bravado (in words), are falling in line with Trump\u2019s strategy of \u2018maximum pressure\u2019 against Iran.
\nIf Iran decides to reject the idea of unilaterally observing the 2015 deal (without any reciprocal acts by the international community), the US and its western allies will want to take the matter to the UN SC to revive the UN\u2019s past (pre-2015) sanctions against Iran. The big question is whether Russia and China would allow such a turn of events. Tehran has categorically denied any involvement in yesterday\u2019s incident. And Iran is playing it cool. President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif left Tehran for Bishkek on June 13, as scheduled previously, to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation summit.
\nMeanwhile, the US has made an additional deployment to the region. But then, the US Central Command has also signalled to Tehran in a statement: \u201cWe have no interest in engaging in a new conflict in the Middle East. We will defend our interests, but a war with Iran is not in our strategic interest, nor in the best interest of the international community.\u201d
\nAt this point, the logical thing to do will be to insist on an impartial investigation by the UN SC on the incident. But, curiously, no country is willing to bell the cat. Russia, which is usually quick on demanding facts before reaching any definitive opinion on such murky situations, is also not in a hurry to demand investigation. Can it be that everyone understands that this was a false flag operation and could only be Bolton\u2019s last waltz with Netanyahu?
\nTrump is walking a fine line. He has blamed Iran, but refrained from saying what he proposed to do. The fact remains that a highly dangerous situation is developing in and around the Straits of Hormuz, which is a choke point for oil tankers.
\nAn entanglement with Iran\u2019s Pasdaran is the last thing Trump would want as he plans to announce shortly his candidacy for the 2020 election. The situation is fraught with grave political risks, if one recalls how the Iran crisis spelt doom for Jimmy Carter\u2019s re-election campaign in 1980.
\nTrump has bitten more than he could chew, as the strong rebuke Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei administered to him underscores. Iran may turn out to be Trump\u2019s nemesis.
\nBy M. K. Bhadrakumar,<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"