Exclusive: Now that the neocons have housebroken President Trump, they are ready for a resumption of their “regime change” agenda, with Iran next in their crosshairs, reports Jonathan Marshall.
By Jonathan Marshall
The Trump administration’s growing use of military force in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen has neoconservative hawks rooting for armed confrontation with what they view as the root of all evil in the Middle East: Iran.
Iranian women attending a speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (Iranian government photo)
Many of these armchair warriors recently cheered President Trump’s decision to take on the Assad regime — and Moscow — by firing 59 Tomahawk cruise missile at a Syrian air base alleged to be the source of a chemical weapons attack. But they urged him to do more.
Weekly Standard editor William Kristol tweeted, “Punishing Assad for use of chemical weapons is good. Regime change in Iran is the prize.”
Kristol co-founded the infamous Project on the New American Century in 1997 to promote American “global hegemony” and “challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values.” It began lobbying for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as early as 1998, but always kept Iran in its sights as well.
With Saddam dead and Syria’s Assad stripped of much of his power, Iran is now at the center of neocon crosshairs. Kristol linked his recent tweet to a Washington Post column by two stalwart advocates of ousting the mullahs in Tehran: Reuel Gerecht and Ray Takeyh.
Titled “How Trump Can Help Cripple the Iranian Regime,” their article called for putting the nuclear arms deal with Iran at risk in order to “stoke the volcano under Tehran and to challenge the regime.” The centerpiece of their bizarre argument was that the Iranian people would gratefully welcome the United States imposing “crippling sanctions” to destroy their economy in the name of “human rights.”
The authors were vague as to the details, but suggested that Iran’s ruling clerics would quickly succumb to a “popular rebellion” by “Iranian dissidents,” particularly if the United States sent “more American troops [to] both Syria and Iraq” to reinforce its message.
Gerecht, a died-in-the-wool neocon, was a former director of the Project for a New American Century’s Middle East Initiative. In 2001, he wrote, “Only a war against Saddam Hussein will decisively restore the awe that protects American interests abroad and citizens at home.”
In 2002, he further touted a U.S. invasion of Iraq as a way to “provoke riots in Iran — simultaneous uprisings in major cities that would simply be beyond the scope of regime-loyal specialized riot-control units.” Instead, the subsequent U.S. invasion backfired by putting a pro-Iran regime into power in Baghdad.
Iran in the Crosshairs
Today Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neocon think tank dedicated to waging war against “militant Islam,” with a focus on Iran. Heavily funded by gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson, the Foundation was originally created to promote the agenda of hardline Israeli hawks.
An Iranian child holding a photo of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at one of his public appearances. (Iranian government photo)
The Foundation fought bitterly against the Iran nuclear deal, lest it open the door to a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. Gerecht in particular demanded that the United States attack Iran rather than pursue diplomacy. “I’ve written about 25,000 words about bombing Iran,” he boasted in 2010. “Even my mom thinks I’ve gone too far.”
Gerecht’s side-kick, Ray Tayekh, is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and was (briefly) an Iran adviser to Dennis Ross in Hillary Clinton’s State Department. A fierce critic of the nuclear deal, Tayekh joined the Iran Task Force of the right-wing Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which considers itself “the most influential group on the issue of U.S.-Israel military relations.” Tayekh has advocated covert support to Iranian dissidents, as well as to “Kurdish, Baluch, Arab, and other opposition groups fighting the regime.”
Regime change in Iran is the open goal of Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli rightists. That’s why they consistently rejected findings by Israel’s intelligence community about the benefits to Israel’s security from the nuclear deal with Iran. By stoking opposition to the deal among their supporters in Congress, they aimed to kill any chance of cooperation between the United States and Iran.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, said candidly, “the goal of our policy must be clear: regime change in Iran.”
Today the hardline Israeli/neocon agenda is still being pursued by hawks in Congress, who have introduced bills in both houses to ratchet up economic sanctions against Iran and designate a major branch of the country’s armed forces as a terrorist organization. If enacted — against the wishes of other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal — such measures could put the United States and Iran on a war footing.
Trump’s Team of Hawks
President Trump is unlikely to stand in their way. Ignoring the role of major Arab states in supporting such terrorist groups as al-Qaeda and ISIS, Trump named Iran “the number one terrorist state” and warned during his campaign that if Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf continue to “make gestures that our people — that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water.”
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis welcomes Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman to the Pentagon, March 16, 2017. (DoD photo by Sgt. Amber I. Smith)
Trump has surrounded himself with anti-Iran hardliners who may be only too eager to give war a chance. His first national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, co-authored a 2016 book with Michael Ledeen, a confidant of Israeli hawks and colleague of Gerecht at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, on “How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies.” Iran, of course, was their enemy number one.
Even with Flynn’s ouster, plenty of hawks remain. In recent congressional testimony, Army Gen. Joseph Votel, Commander of the U.S. Central Command, called Iran “the greatest long-term threat to stability” in the Middle East. He declared, “We need to look at opportunities where we can disrupt [Iran] through military means or other means their activities.”
Defense Secretary General James Mattis told a conference at the conservative Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington last year, “Iran is not a nation-state; it’s a revolutionary cause devoted to mayhem.” The New York Times reported that Mattis “was so hawkish on Iran as head of United States Central Command from 2010 to 2013 that the Obama administration cut short his tour.”
Mattis reportedly came close to ordering an act of war against Iran in early February — the boarding of an Iranian ship to look for weapons headed for Houthi rebels in Yemen. Such an incident could escalate rapidly out of control if Iran chose to retaliate against U.S. vessels in the Persian Gulf.
Alternatives to Conflict
The United States has better policy options than continuing to treat Iran as part of the Axis of Evil. A report issued last fall by the National Iranian American Council recommended that Washington build on the success of the Iran nuclear deal by drawing Iran into regional peace settlements, deescalating our military presence in the Persian Gulf, and encouraging Iran and Saudi Arabia to resolve their differences without superpower intervention.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani celebrates the completion of an interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program on Nov. 24, 2013, by kissing the head of the daughter of an assassinated Iranian nuclear engineer. (Iranian government photo)
The report echoed the advice of a prominent neocon heretic, Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. ambassador to both Afghanistan and Iraq.
“As someone who has negotiated with Iran over the years perhaps more than any other U.S. diplomat,” he observed last year, “I disagree with those who argue that talks with Iran are akin to capitulation. I have seen little evidence that isolation has or will alter Tehran’s behavior in the right direction. Nor do I share the view that it is impossible to negotiate win-win deals with the Iranians.”
Noting Iran’s cooperation with the United States against Al Qaeda after 9/11, and its help brokering political compromises in Afghanistan and Iraq until the Bush administration refused further engagement, Khalilzad wrote, “Under the right conditions, which must include a hard-headed approach and tough actions to check Iran’s ambitions, Washington can benefit from bringing Iran into multilateral forums where the United States and its partners have the opportunity to narrow differences, create rules of the road and solve problems. Moreover, today we have little choice but to engage Iran on these broader issues, because no factor is shaping the order of the Middle East as much as the rivalry between Iran and its Sunni Arab neighbors.”
“If we do not undertake this work,” he warned, “the problems of the region — extremism, terrorism and regional conflict — will continue to bleed over into our part of the world, particularly if the Westphalian state system disintegrates even further into sectarian morass.”
Jonathan Marshall is author of “Neocons Want ‘Regime Change’ in Iran,” and “Escalating the Anti-Iran Propaganda,” for ConsortiumNews.com.
The MIC monster is licking it’s chops over the prospect of more weapons contracts and blood from war with Iran. The God of War that neocons serve is exulting over prospects of more destruction and suffering to come. Who said evil was an outmoded reality? It’s alive and well in America, and ready to spread it’s dark wings over the entire world. The much longed for World War Three seems just in the offing now. The Dark Lords of War are pushing us faster and faster to the precipice of their dreamed of final solution: Nuclear War!
These so-called neo cons are super criminals or super predators. Like the banksters, they continue to run unbridled for no prosecutions were ever brought against either.
The neo-cons are fascists within and without the US government They must be held responsible under the Nuremburg laws, UN laws and the world court.
Many of them have passports from Israel for they understand they might have to flee. There, they can be taken under the wing of Netanyahu and the fascists that control Zionist Israel.
Either we find solutions that stop the march to global war, my friends, or we are finished.
It really is that simple
That god forsaken country, the US, is a depraved, sick, rogue state that is the gravest danger to security & stability in the Middle East, as well as in the rest of the world. The progressives in the US bear a part of the responsibility for not having acted decisively enough, and for letting a complete psychopath win the White House. War with Iran and North Korea will end in failure & a very high price to pay for all, including the US. War with Russia, which is on the cards too, will finish us all off.
There a few ‘progressives’ in the US and less leftists.
So let me get this straight, so if the U.S. bombs the bejesus out of Tehran, it will have been because a certain tv star celebrity couldn’t handle a few insult jokes at a White House Correspondence Dinner, and there for this poor little handed rich guy with the strange hairdo hired every Iran hater his predecessor fired, and there in lies his strategy? Now I ask you, is this anyway to run a country’s military?
All Americans should read George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address, before they read Eisenhower’s 1/17/61 MIC warning, and then they should start too question America’s current foreign entanglements. Don’t get me wrong I’d stand alongside any ethnic or religious group if I thought they were being harassed or threaten in a unfair way, but I’m at a loss to why apartheid Israel and Wahabi inspired Saudi Arabia are of such great importance that so many lives and national treasures have been squandered and put to risk over their welfare.
Like I have said before on this comment board of how I fear that Iran and N Korea are being eyeballed up by some in our military complex as their becoming the new Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To give reference to this fear, I watch and hear on this tv screen many retired generals and diplomats speak to this ‘peace through strength’ ideology. I get it that these generals are paid to think about destabilizing and destroying the enemy, but what about the diplomats, are these envoys of ours not suppose to be diplomatic? Does America only have two ways of settling difficult matters of state, one being punishing a sovereign society with harsh economic sanctions, and the other being the ultimate price of having a bomb wipe out every living thing in its path?
Since Trump discovered America’s bomb arsenal his favorability ratings have gone up. Talk about a perfect storm.
How dumb can people be? You can’t achieve hegemony by creating chaos. You can only achieve chaos by creating chaos, and that’s exactly what the U.S. has done in every country it has invaded. Vietnam never recovered from chaos until the U.S. pulled out completely and then it took many years to recover. Afghanistan is still in chaos after nearly 40 years of U.S. meddling. Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya and Ukraine are all in chaos with the help of U.S. interference. (And I won’t even begin to count the African countries and South and Central American countries that have been victimized by U.S. foreign policy.)
I challenge anyone to name one single true victory since WWII. One might be tempted to name Korea, but was that really a victory? We achieved a stalemate and have kept it only by maintaining an immense U.S. military presence and making a huge capital investment in South Korea, the cost of which we cannot begin to afford if we want to achieve stability in every country we invade.
The only people who benefit from chaos are the policy makers who see war as a means of rallying the public behind them, the military who use war to build empires, the weapons makers who profit from the sale of weapons and munitions, the myriad of organizations that provide logistic support for the military and the media for which war increases the sales of subscriptions and advertising. Everyone else loses.
The US has not won a conflict since WW2. Where they exerted themselves they have left a trial of misery and destruction. They are the most despised nation worldwide. One has to wonder how much longer the population
in America can tolerate it. While it is often quoted that the Americans are dumb, and that maybe true, the hardship which increases due to social neglect and with it ever increasing poverty will become a factor in many ways. How such dispirited people can than believe in the righteousness of Americas cause is hard to fathom. And yet to fight for it
is even harder to comprehend..
Earth is readying herself to write the sapiens epitaph and nature will breathe a sigh of relief as the last of the greedy, hubristic, warring humans fade into her distant memory. I don’t know of any way to stop this madness that infects the psychopaths of the beltway, I don’t. These vain fools will end things for everything else that is good about Earth, humans not included. We, meaning humans, are facing not one but three converging paths; global nuclear annihilation, global poisoning, global warming, in that order. This is the end result of capitalism left in the hands of the capitalists. They control the state, not state restrains the capitalists. Karl Polanyi wrote a book on the great transformation of the industrial revolution, the next transformation, most likely, will be the last one. If anyone knows anyway, at all, of how to stop this madness, it’s high time to start or sapiens are doomed.
I don’t know your age Ol’ Hippy, but I am 86, and I still have the ideals I imbibed in the 60’s. I still believe in the possibility of a better world for all beings, but like you I can’t say I’m sure it will happen. But I’m not going to stop truckin’ along in my own way to do what I can to wake people up so they can come together right now! And make something good happen for all of us….