By Tony Cartalucci - BLN Contributing Writer
Federal entrapment snares another dupe and brings hundreds of millions to the brink of war.
"...it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)
This suggests that this option might benefit from being held in abeyance until such time as the Iranians made an appropriately provocative move, as they do from time to time. In that case, it would be less a determined policy to employ airstrikes and instead more of an opportunistic hope that Iran would provide the United States with the kind of provocation that would justify airstrikes. However, that would mean that the use of airstrikes could not be the primary U.S. policy toward Iran (even if it were Washington’s fervent preference), but merely an ancillary contingency to another option that would be the primary policy unless and until Iran provided the necessary pretext." -page 84-85 of "Which Path to Persia?" Brookings Institution, 2009.
Apparently, manufacturing such a "necessary pretext" to unilaterally bomb a nation of 70 million is now also a part of US foreign policy toward Iran. An oafish fabrication announced this week by Attorney General Eric Holder, consisted of an Iranian-American used-car salesman that "allegedly" attempted to hire an undercover US DEA agent, posing as a Mexican Los Zetas gangster, to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would add "nobody could make that up, right?" Wrong.
The Fortune 500-funded US policy think-tank, Brookings Institution, in 2009 made it quite clear that the US would pursue its interests across the Middle East and would not tolerate a strong, assertive Iran standing in the way. Brookings would acknowledge in their report, however, that Iran sought neither to confront the United States militarily, nor desired to provoke the West into attacking the Islamic Republic, and even declared that Iran's nuclear threat was more the deterrence it would present toward future US acts of aggression rather than hyped claims of proliferation or unilateral first-strikes.
Many of the enumerated options explored in the Brookings report for destabilizing and overthrowing the Iranian government had already been in the process of being carried out even before the report was published in 2009. This included funding, arming, and training US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization (#28 on the list), Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK.) To date, covert support, weapons and funding have already made it into MEK's hands, and select members of the terrorist organization have even received specialized training on US soil. US policy makers, after admitting MEK had the blood of US soldiers and civilians on its hands and that it has "undeniably" conducted terrorist attacks, shockingly wants to remove it from the US foreign terrorist organization list so that it can be worked with more closely in toppling the Iranian government.
Below, Brookings clearly authored this policy now being fully executed:
"Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.
In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.
Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.
Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations." page 117-118 of "Which Path to Persia?" Brookings Institution, 2009
While Attorney General Eric Holder feigns outrage over Iran's "alleged" role in an "alleged" bombing plot, and its violation of "international norms," it turns out that the US has been in reality, carrying out just such a campaign of armed terror on Iranian soil for years. Adding insult to injury, Eric Holder is currently under investigation for his role in running thousands of military-grade weapons over the US-Mexican border, where they were used by mass-murdering drug gangs to terrorize people across Mexico and even to kill US agents. One might wonder how many "international norms" that has violated.
That the current "alleged" plot pinned on Iran revolves around yet another undercover federal agency conducting a long-term sting operation defies belief. That we are expected to believe one of Iran's most elite military forces left such a sensitive, potentially war-starting operation to a used-car salesman and a drug gang reported in the papers daily for its involvement with US government agencies (and who turns out to actually be undercover DEA agents) is so ridiculous it can only be "made up" as Secretary Clinton puts it. More accurately, it is the result of an impotent US intelligence community incapable of contriving anything more convincing in the face of an ever awakening American public, to bolster its morally destitute agenda. The cartoonish nature of the plot and the arms' length even its proponents treat it with to maintain plausible deniability is indicative of a dangerously out of control ruling elite and an utterly incompetent, criminally insane government.
It might be noted that this is yet another example of a "terrorist plot" conjured up by federal agencies, hyped by politicians and the media, and leveraged to propel foreign and domestic policy the public and the world at large have already soundly rejected. Two other notable examples include the Portland "Christmas Tree Bomber" used to terrorize the city into rejoining the FBI's Joint Terror Task Force, and the more recent "RC Plane Bomber" who was entrapped by FBI agents in order to keep the fraud that is the "War on Terror" alive.
For a more in-depth look at this latest hoax, please see, "Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake" at Anti-War.com.
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