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Obviously, the USA and UK should never have invaded Iraq. They should have launched a short punitive expedition into Afghanistan in 2001, restored the monarchy and then allowed the Taliban to come back. Nation-building was always (a liberal) folly: Afghanistan and Iraq were not post-war Germany, as should have been clear.
But having broken it, as Colin Powell warned, the USA bought Iraq. Leaving it alone led to ISIS. So what is the solution?
I don't know. Unfortunately, the USA may now back the Israeli-Saudi-Sunni alliance against the Shia crescent (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah). I hope Mr. Trump resists this temptation.
Almost all the terrorist atrocities against
Western Europe and the USA are committed by Sunnis, yet we are constantly told that Iran, which
is fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda, is the great threat. Why?
Because Iran is a great threat to Israel?
Because Iran is a great threat to Israel?
I have no animus against Israel but
don't want the UK to fight wars for Israel. Israel is not our business. I don't
see why it's the US's but I get it that the US must be loyal to allies like
Israel and the monstrous Saudi monarchy.
The Saudis created IS to fight the Shias in Iraq and Syria. Al Qaeda, who fight with the Syrian "moderate" rebels whom the Anglo-American back, is a criminal organisation created and financed by Saudis.
The Saudis created IS to fight the Shias in Iraq and Syria. Al Qaeda, who fight with the Syrian "moderate" rebels whom the Anglo-American back, is a criminal organisation created and financed by Saudis.
We are told "Iran finances terrorism
in the Gulf, Syria, and Lebanon" – though the same could be said of the
Saudis. And Syria is a war zone where the Iranians are on the government side, so terrorism is not the mot juste there.
Iran considers herself at war with Israel and is the reason why the Assad regime did not collapse five years ago. A Syrian Christian friend says that 'Iran is the devil'. Still, Iranians do not plant bombs or mow people down in trucks in Europe. I know they bombed Buenos Aires, but that was 25 years ago.
Iran considers herself at war with Israel and is the reason why the Assad regime did not collapse five years ago. A Syrian Christian friend says that 'Iran is the devil'. Still, Iranians do not plant bombs or mow people down in trucks in Europe. I know they bombed Buenos Aires, but that was 25 years ago.
I fear Trump will turn out to be a
traditional Republican with a traditional American foreign policy. I hope I am wrong and bombing Syria was merely a deserved punishment for using chemical weapons.
I hope very much that the US does not start fighting the Assad-Iran axis. I certainly hope that Great Britain, or England as she used to be called, does not take part on the American side.
How paradoxical that, long before Obama's Iranian detente, George W. Bush overthrew Iran's two great enemies, Saddam and the Taliban, and gave Iraq to the Shias, while proclaiming that Iran was part of the Axis of Evil. Having done so much to aid the horrible Iranian regime it seems rather illogical not to try to rub along with the mullahs if possible.
Yet, in an article headlined How Trump Can Help Cripple the Iranian Regime in the Washington Post, neo-cons Reuel Gerecht and Ray Takeyh depressingly claim that
I hope very much that the US does not start fighting the Assad-Iran axis. I certainly hope that Great Britain, or England as she used to be called, does not take part on the American side.
How paradoxical that, long before Obama's Iranian detente, George W. Bush overthrew Iran's two great enemies, Saddam and the Taliban, and gave Iraq to the Shias, while proclaiming that Iran was part of the Axis of Evil. Having done so much to aid the horrible Iranian regime it seems rather illogical not to try to rub along with the mullahs if possible.
Yet, in an article headlined How Trump Can Help Cripple the Iranian Regime in the Washington Post, neo-cons Reuel Gerecht and Ray Takeyh depressingly claim that
a consensus has developed in Washington for some“push back” against the Islamic Republic of Iran
and argue for committing American ground troops to fight Iran in Iraq and Syria:
It is way past time for Washington to stoke the volcano under Tehran and to challenge the regime on the limes of its Shiite empire. This will be costly and will entail the use of more American troops in both Syria and Iraq. But if we don’t do this, we will not see an end to the sectarian warfare that nurtures jihadists. We will be counting down the clock on the nuclear accord, waiting for advanced centrifuges to come on line. As with the Soviet Union vs. Ronald Reagan, to confront American resolution, the mullahs will have to pour money into their foreign ventures or suffer humiliating retreat.
And today the Times [what Americans quaintly call the London Times] reports that Mr. Trump has been told 20,000 troops are needed to beat the Taliban, a war that he rightly said last year was unwinnable.
Neocons like Reuel Gerecht and Ray Takeyh persuaded the US Government to make these mistakes. Do these people never tire of trying to squander lives pointlessly?
The answer to that, of course, is no. More importantly, will Donald Trump be true to his instincts and his words in the campaign about America First or will he be turned?
The answer to that, of course, is no. More importantly, will Donald Trump be true to his instincts and his words in the campaign about America First or will he be turned?
At this point a very traditional pro-Sunni, anti-Iranian foreign policy is emerging.
Donald Trump has announced a review of the Iran nuclear deal.
On Wednesday James Mattis said, speaking of Yemen
On the same day, Rex Tillerson said Iran has
Donald Trump has announced a review of the Iran nuclear deal.
On Wednesday James Mattis said, speaking of Yemen
We will have to overcome Iran’s efforts to destabilize yet another country and create another militia in their image of Lebanese Hezbollah.Yet it is arguably the Saudis who are destabilising Yemen.
On the same day, Rex Tillerson said Iran has
“the potential to travel the same path as North Korea and to take the world along with it.”
You're honing this down to a perfection, where even your punctuation marks are morally and intellectually wrong, Paul. It's impressive. One can simply wait for a pronouncement from you on this subject, then invert it. Simon Jenkins must be jealous, he is only this wrong 75% of the time.
ReplyDeletePeter Risdon
Let them fight their own battles.Interfering in every conflict is not necessary.
ReplyDeleteI think Bush's intention (or that of his masters) was to quickly take over Iraq, get a foothold there and house troops, and contain (or invade) Iran. Allied with the Gulf States, Georgia, and with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Americans had Iran surrounded. Unfortunately for them, they got bogged down in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Sunni resistance inadvertently saving Iran from invasion. I don't know what the end game was supposed to be.
ReplyDeleteThere were lots of possible reasons - in the end people couldn't remember what they were but it had a momentum. Those kind of Republicans should be swept into the sea - which they were last year.
DeleteMy thoughts as well. I felt the nation building aspect of the aftermath of 9/11 was highly suspect. The press was gushing over how foolish the Soviets had been in Afghanistan by not doing so and Bush has always had a Baptist evangelical aspect to his character, post recovery from alcoholism. A devastating punitive attack on the Taliban would have been the logical response to their support of Osama bin Laden — followed by withdrawal and possible future responses. Of course Clinton's missile attacks on his camp were an equal absurdity. Trump's administration is shaping into the standard model. His political base has been rattled, so he seeks support where he can find it. He now has AIPAC, and even Alan Dershowitz, firmly in his court. I regret that Rand Paul was not elected. He had the only sensible world view.
ReplyDeleteThe Saudi town of Awamiya — like so many countless cities across Iraq, Syria and Yemen that are witnessing an unleashing of the ancient hatred of Sunni for Shia — now exists in name only. Last month, days before an assault on its Shia inhabitants by the Saudi regime, the UN designated it a place of unique cultural and religious significance. But under the guise of fighting Iran-backed terror cells, the Saudis then subjected Awamiya’s entire civilian population to the indiscriminate use of fighter jets, rocket-propelled grenades, snipers, heavy artillery, armoured assault vehicles and cold-blooded executions.
ReplyDeleteMore than a dozen Shia, including a three-year-old boy, were killed. Hundreds of young men were rounded up. At least 500 homes were flattened, and 8,000 residents were forcibly removed from those that remained. Saudi soldiers recorded themselves dancing and singing amid the rubble of the town’s once-beautiful old city. They stomped on a poster of a revered Shia cleric from the eastern province, Nimr al-Nimr, beheaded last year for sedition. And they denigrated the town’s ‘cleansed’ local Shia as ‘rejectionists’ and ‘dogs’ — language identical to that of their fanatical Wahhabi brothers in Iraq and Syria, who rejoice in slaughtering Shia in the name of Isis. The mass beheading of 14 local Shia activists, including a severely disabled teenager, is said to be imminent.
In the wake of this sectarian carnage it seems preposterous that Donald Trump stood next to Saudi Arabia’s King Salman in Riyadh in May at the launch of a new centre to combat Islamic extremism. In a keynote speech, Trump had, just as bizarrely, singled out Iran and its Shia proxies as the instigators of terrorism and sectarian bloodshed in the region. In the past, such Saudi duplicity was laughed off in the name of selling the infantile princes billions of dollars in arms (from which they take massive kickbacks) and heightening their borderline-insane obsession with the supposedly existential threat posed by Iran to Israel and the latter’s despotic Sunni allies.
The joke isn’t funny any more. Last month, the former head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, warned that Britain will face an Islamist terror threat for at least 30 years. Only the most blinkered observer would find it difficult to understand his concern. For with the near fall of Isis, thousands of jihadis steeped in the caliphate’s Wahhabi ideology are returning to Britain and Europe, determined to keep alive the dream of massacring infidels. It is our own civilisation that faces the real existential threat. The wave of terror attacks in Spain, Finland, Britain and Belgium has happened in a year in which Europe has witnessed at least one serious jihadist incident every week.
A recent report, suppressed by the UK government, revealed the majority of funding for UK mosques that promote Islamist extremism, and which play a crucial role in radicalising homegrown jihadis, originates from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries that also embrace the odious Wahhabi ideology. These findings tally with other exhaustive studies on the expansion of Islamist extremism, both here and in Europe, which have singled out the spread of Saudi-sponsored Wahhabism as the gravest threat to our security and values. All were similarly ignored by those who rule in our name.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/forget-our-misguided-friendship-with-saudi-arabia-iran-is-our-natural-ally/
Like Saudi Arabia, Shia-dominated Iran is a backward theocracy ruled by vicious old men who wrap themselves in the cloak of religion to limit their people’s freedom and steal their country’s wealth. Both countries are gross human rights abusers. There, though, the similarities end. In Saudi Arabia, non-Muslims are forbidden from practising their religion in public, while Iran’s constitution protects the rights of Christians and Jews. (One of my fondest memories of the region is hanging out with the Jewish communities in Tehran and Isfahan.)
ReplyDeleteLike the Jews, and very much unlike the Wahhabis, the Shias have no interest in converting everyone else to their religion; and the Iranians even have the decency — if that is the right word — to distinguish between Israel and Jews in anti-Zionist government rhetoric. Saudi Arabia promotes the kind of anti-Semitism the Nazis would have been proud of, while damning the Shia as collectively evil. Iran has a democracy and a vibrant press that, while hardly comparable to what we take for granted in the West, puts to shame anything found in Saudi Arabia. Iran has never invaded another country; Saudi Arabia is presently destroying Yemen.
Moreover, when geopolitical pragmatism has dictated, Iran has offered to work closely with the West, while at every turn, by funding its jihadist proxies, the Saudis and their allies in the western intelligence communities have been working against us. After the September 11 attacks, carried out by mostly Saudi nationals, Iran — which of course has no sympathy for al-Qaeda — rounded up hundreds of Arab terrorists and provided intelligence to Washington to aid the war on terror. In 2009, Tehran was publicly offering to help Washington rebuild and stabilise Afghanistan; two years earlier, both countries held (ultimately unproductive) talks on Iraq.
None of that is to mention the elephant in the room. Without the heroic military sacrifices of Iran and its Shia ally, Hezbollah, on the front lines in the crumbling caliphate, Isis would not today be in its final death throes there, and al-Qaeda jihadists (whom we funded, trained and armed) would not be running for their lives. The US has also worked alongside Iranian generals in Iraq in the joint fight there against Isis. Even today, US special forces are working with the Lebanese army as it launches a simultaneous push with Hezbollah against Islamist terrorists created by Saudi and other Sunni countries that are still causing mayhem on the other side of the Syrian border.
Why do we never hear this other side of the story? One reason is that almost all the ‘experts’ on the region, who contribute countless op-eds to US newspapers, brief US intelligence officials and appear as pundits on TV, work for think-tanks funded by the Arab monarchies or Israel. Former British and American diplomats who were based in Riyadh and Jeddah are notorious for retiring on the Saudi gravy train. And our Foreign Office, as always taking its orders from Washington, continues to stand uncritically alongside Israel. The latter fears the mullahs in Tehran are building a nuclear arsenal to make good on its repeated promise to wipe the Jewish state off the map.
But here, again, a pragmatic reassess-ment is in order. Israel, after all, is a nuclear power, and has the best-trained and equipped army in the region. If it cannot fight its own battles now, it will never be able to. And truth be told, the only thing the mullahs really care about is maintaining their rusty grip on power. Even the Iran-hating, Israel-loving White House grudgingly accepts that Tehran is abiding by the internationally brokered nuclear treaty. The bottom line is that Iran poses absolutely no threat to us.
In fact, the only people that Isis foot soldiers are more determined to slaughter than westerners are the Shia. With that knowledge, we should be embracing the maxim that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Let us fully let the Saudis know we have had it with their terror funding by launching a ferocious crackdown on all manifestations of Wahhabism. Let us simultaneously do away with the sanctions imposed against Tehran. In this way, we can build on Iran’s extensive shared intelligence and close military cooperation with the US — the most effective way of convincing the country to abandon any lingering nuclear ambitions it may have. Let Britain finally break free of Washington’s disastrous Middle East military interventions and duplicitous alliances with Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabi proxies. Only by doing so can we face down the real causes of Islamist terror. We would also be in prime position to benefit from post-sanctions Iran’s $600 billion foreign investment opportunities.
ReplyDeleteWritten by
John R. Bradley