Week of 04/13/2015

Is Iran Playing Saddam Hussein’s Game?
– by David Matthews 2

Remember when you were a kid and you were told to clean up your room?

You didn’t want to, right?  You liked your mess.  Everything you needed was right there for you to grab.  You knew where it was.  You didn’t care if it looked messy or chaotic.

But your parents would tell you that you needed to clean up your room and you needed to do it right that minute, or else you wouldn’t be allowed to do the things you liked doing.  You couldn’t go see that movie you wanted to see or go play with your friends or go bike-riding like you wanted to do unless you cleaned up your room.

So you did the least amount of “cleaning” that you could in the fastest possible time.  You pushed things aside, you piled things up, and you swept or vacuumed just enough to “look clean”.  You broke land-speed records for cleaning, because you had more important things to do than waste your time doing something you did not want to do in the first place.

Then your parents would make that required inspection, and you would hope that they just took a quick look and give you the okay to go on with your life.  You hoped they wouldn’t look under the bed to see the piles of stuff pushed under it.  You certainly hoped they wouldn’t open up the closet door to see all the stuff you crudely piled up in there and are balancing only on the flimsiest of platforms.  You hoped they wouldn’t notice that your bed wasn’t really made or that you only vacuumed the parts of the carpet that they could see from the door.  You hoped they would just take your word for it.

Except it never would work out that way, would it?  Your deception would eventually be discovered. If not then, then at some later point when things would come crashing down around you.

There’s a part of me that is wondering if the leadership in Iran is playing that same game right now.

America’s longest-running constitutional-theocratic villains are in something of a bind right now.  Once upon a time their biggest export was oil.  Then, after they overthrew the Shah and took Americans hostage, their biggest export was fear and terror.  Then they lost their credibility as the fear-mongers of the world when the extremist sects of Sunni Islam took over from their own Shia Islam craziness in terms of American-hating fear-mongering.

I mean, come on Iranians!  You guys used to own the “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” chants!  Now you’re getting usurped by Syria and Somalia.  That’s like Emenem losing a rap contest to Sheldon from “Big Bang Theory”!

About the only thing Iran has left to stay relevant right now is their hunger for nuclear power.  They want the world to think that it’s for “nuclear power” in terms of electricity and power plants, but there are many that fear that the “nuclear power” Iran truly wants is for nuclear weapons, so they would automatically join the “elite” group of countries with the power to contaminate a whole city or small country.

Yes, having a nuclear weapon is a huge international stick, and the war-mongers and fascists here in America (and “certain other countries”) continually shriek in fear of Iran making and exporting nuclear weapons to every terrorist group around the world, turning the “Cold War” into a radioactive Ice Age of death and destruction that will take untold millenniums to clear.

That’s the image that the fascists and the war-mongers want to stick in our heads when it comes to Iran.  Iran gets “the bomb” and suddenly every terrorist around the world will have one. 

The war-mongers in those “certain other countries” have an even grittier picture to paint.  Iran gets “the bomb” and suddenly those “certain other countries” would become radioactive dead zones.

Here’s the thing: terrorists don’t need to get “the bomb” from Iran to spread fear and radioactive death.  They can accomplish the same thing using waste materials from nuclear plants or hospitals or universities.  There have been plenty of “dirty bomb” scenarios thrown about in the media during the Bush Imperium and their “duct tape and plastic sheeting” fetish to show that it’s not a dirty little secret or an inconceivable scenario. 

But what “the bomb” really represents is political power.  It’s about being able to lord over other countries, acting as the “big bully” for fear that it “might” be used, and to do so would court possible nuclear extinction.  After all, that’s what many nations see America as being.  We are still the only nation in the world that has used nuclear weapons against another country.  Twice.  And don’t assume for a moment that America’s cons and neo-cons don’t have that in the back of their minds as a positive.

It’s an image, and the one thing that fascists and war-mongers understand is how to use images to manipulate the masses.

Which has me wondering about the recent events concerning Iran and their strange talks with America about their nuclear ambitions.

America wants Iran to abandon any dreams of getting nuclear weapons.  Iran wants to have the crippling economic sanctions lifted.  It seems to be a simple enough of a barter, right?  Get rid of the nuclear weapons development in exchange for the lifting of those sanctions.

So why isn’t it that simple?

Maybe it’s because Iran doesn’t really want to deal with America.  They just want to mess with all of our heads.

Let’s see if you guys can keep up.

President Barack Obama would like a deal with Iran to cement his place in history (as if he doesn’t have enough of those little cemented places).  Jimmy Carter got Israel and Egypt to the table.  Bush Junior got Mommar Qadaffi to behave... for a little while anyway.  Even Richard Nixon managed to go to China.  So why not get Iran to behave?

Iranian leaders know that talks with the so-called “Great Satan” would shove a wedge between America and Israel.  Israeli leaders don’t want Iran to have any kind of nuclear technology, never mind a bomb, because the Iranian extremists don’t believe Israel should exist.  Israel depends on American support, so if they feel they’re not being “loved” in Washington, they’ll throw a temper tantrum until they get their way.

Plus the Iranian extremists know that America’s own political extremists are obsessively in love with Israel and with the idea of war, and also with their seething hatred of Obama, so much so that they’ll do anything in the world to sabotage the talks just to spite Obama.

So Iran goes into talks with America, and just in time for their artificially-imposed “deadline”, they have a supposed “framework” for a possible future deal that would satisfy everything that America is looking for, and would result in ending the economic sanctions, which is what Iran is looking for.  Nothing is set in stone, of course, never mind on paper.  But it’s enough to give the pretense that there is a deal in the works.

Right on cue, the Israelis throw their temper tantrums, and the GOP throw their temper tantrums.  And, as an added bonus, the price of gasoline and the price of oil start sinking at a time when they should be going in the opposite direction.  Big Oil is in deathly fear that Iran will flood the market with their crude, so they’re preparing now for the supposed “shock”.

But then... that country’s supreme leader throws in a new curve that is certain to sabotage any talk of a deal.  He demands that any deal include the immediate removal of all sanctions instead of using them as an eventual reward for compliance.

This should sound a little familiar.  This was the same trick used by Saddam Hussein in the months prior to the launch of the Iraq War.  He kept on demanding that sanctions be lifted for simply allowing weapons inspectors to be there, never mind validate that there were no weapons of mass destruction. 

But why throw this curve ball?  The framework was set, the political wedges were in place, political fear was rampant, and the economic fear had taken hold.  It would seem stupid to go through all of that effort only to hose it at the last minute.

Unless it was by design.

Let’s get brutally honest here... I strongly suspect that all of this is just one big game.  Like the kind Saddam Hussein used to play for Iraq, and like the kind that North Korea has been playing all this time.

The leaders of Iran don’t really need the sanctions lifted.  They have everything they want.  They’re still in power.  They are still able to continue their quest for nuclear power.  Hell, they can still ship drugs around the world all they want to.  The sanctions only hurt their people.  And those people won’t do anything to hurt them.  After all, to go against the religious leaders there is like going against God.

So they can play these games to keep themselves relevant, to keep themselves in the news.  To keep the other nations interested in them.  And, of course, to piss off the war-mongers and fascists in America and Israel.

The childish Iran says they’re cleaning their room.  Just don’t try to look under the bed or open up the closet door.