It was Rahm Emmanuel who said the state should never let a “good crisis go to waste.”
In regard to Iran, the neocons will not let the COVID-19 “crisis” go to waste. It is a perfect cover for escalating tension with the Islamic Republic.
It is more than obvious the geopolitical ignoramus Donald Trump is under the influence of a gaggle of neocons chomping at the bit to kill tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Iranians.
Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq. If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 1, 2020
“Trump, who did not detail the plot, made the threat less than an hour after receiving a foreign intelligence briefing at the White House,” reported USA Today. “Later at a briefing, Trump said the intelligence indicating an attack was sound.”
Iranian-backed militias in Iraq continually threaten to attack U.S. and allied forces, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. Threats arrive in a daily stream.
Some of the more visible threats have been issued by the Kataib Hezbollah militia, the group responsible for rocket attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq that have killed American troops and contractors.
Iraqis have repeatedly and overwhelmingly demanded the US occupation forces leave the country, a demand rejected by Trump and his neocon foreign policy controllers.
From FRN:
Iraq’s parliament last month [January, 2020] voted to have the US troops removed from the country, heeding a call from former Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi to take urgent measures and end the presence of the foreign forces as soon as possible.
The Iraqi Parliament passed a resolution to work to end the foreign troop presence in the Arab country in the wake of a US targeted assassination of a top Iranian general and a commander of Iraqi popular forces.
“U.S. intelligence out of the Middle East suggests that Iran or Iran-backed forces are planning a potentially serious attack against U.S. military personnel in Iraq, said officials monitoring the information,” The War Street Journal reported on April Fools Day.
The late CIA whistleblower Victor Marchetti documented how the agency has specialized in lies and deception since its inception in the late 1940s.As a special assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA,Marchetti knew a thing or two about the role played by US intelligence, its pathological lies, and obsessive-compulsive secrecy.
The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA’s euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing—for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy—so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to you about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it.
Due to an avalanche of lies and distortions issued by the state and the corporate media’s dutiful stenographic repetition of war propaganda, omission of facts, distortions of reality, and endless demonization of official enemies, many Americans are unable to see what should be more than obvious—the rocket attacks on illegal US bases in Iraq following a lawful order by the Iraqi government demanding US troops leave the country are a completely justified and warranted response to a never-ending occupation.
Ignored is the historical fact Shi’as in Iran and Iraq share religious and cultural ties and have done so for centuries, well before the region was carved up by Britain and France following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
Iran’s Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri told The Tehran Times the rocket attacks on US bases are a “normal reaction by the Iraqi people and resistance forces against U.S. ‘satanic measures’… Americans are well aware that the people of the region and the dear people of Iraq are opposed to their military presence in these countries and it is their normal reaction.”
Now that the American people are consumed with fear and loathing of an overblown virus “pandemic,” the neocons around Trump see a chance to finally and decisively deal with Iran—not simply by blocking humanitarian aid but also piling on more sanctions and, possibly within a matter of days or weeks, attacking Shi’a militias in Iraq and possibly launching a long-promised direct military attack on Iran proper.
