[THS] Alan Hart: The Folly of the Israeli AND Arab Approach to Iran

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26967.htm

The Folly of the Israeli AND Arab Approach to Iran

Is Wikileaks being manipulated by an intelligence service?

By Alan Hart

December 01, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- The Wikileaks revelation that
some Persian Gulf Arab leaders wanted (and still want?) America to attack Iran is
confirmation of what some of us thought we knew – that Arab leaders are not merely
impotent but as dangerously deluded as their Israeli counterparts.

Netanyahu was absolutely correct when he told a group of editors in Tel Aviv that
“Israel has not been damaged at all by the Wikileaks publications.” A senior Israeli
government official went further in his response to questions from AFP. He said: “We
have come out looking good.” The leaked documents, he added, “confirm that the
whole Middle East is terrified by the prospect of a nuclear Iran
 The Arab countries
are pushing the United States towards military action more forcefully than Israel.”

Actually the assertion that “the whole Middle East is terrified by the prospect of a
nuclear Iran” is nonsense. The Arab regimes which more or less do the bidding of
America-and-Zionism are terrified, but the same cannot be said of many of their
repressed subjects. As Noam Chomsky pointed out in a recent interview with Open
Democracy’s Amy Goodman, a poll of Arab opinion indicates that 80% regard Israel
as the major threat in the region. Iran is seen as a threat by only 10%. The poll also
indicated that 57% believe the region would be a more safe place if Iran had nuclear
weapons. (As with Israel/Palestine, the regimes are effectively on one side – that of
America-and-Israel, and the Arab masses are on the other side – that of the
Palestinians).

The only good news confirmed by the latest Wiki leaked documents is that President
Obama has so far resisted pressure from both Israel and the Arabs. (In fairness it
should not be forgotten that President George “Dubya” Bush also said “No” to an
attack on Iran when Vice President Cheney wanted him to authorize it).

There is no mystery about why any U.S. president who is not completely nuts will
refuse to authorize an American attack on Iran (and do his best to stop Israel going it
alone, no doubt with clearance through Saudi airspace). An American attack on Iran
would have huge and possibly incalculable consequences for American interests. It
would set in motion an escalating and possibly unending counter offensive including
unbridled terrorism against American forces and facilities (civilian and business as
well as military) around the world. And while that was happening, what is left of the
global economy could be wrecked by sustained rises in the price of oil.

If those Arab leaders who pressed America to attack Iran discount the catastrophe
scenario indicated above, they are very, very irresponsible. But there is more to their
folly.

I don’t believe Iran’s ruling mullahs want nuclear weapons, but under pressure from
the Revolutionary Guards (the real power in the country when push comes to
shove?), they may have agreed in principle a while ago that Iran should have at least
the possibility of developing a nuclear bomb for deterrence.

Prior to the publication of Wiki’s latest leaks, the question of how far and how fast
Iran should go to have the possibility of developing a nuclear bomb was still the
subject of debate in the leadership in all of its manifestations. It may be that Wiki’s
revelations will play into the hands of those in Tehran who are insisting that Iran
must have a nuclear bomb for deterrence.

While I was absorbing what the Wiki leaks confirmed about the attitudes of Arab
leaders, I asked myself this question: What would I want if I was an Iranian, even
one who hated the present regime?

My answer?

I would want my government, whatever its composition, to crash ahead with
developing a nuclear bomb for deterrence. I would tell myself that was the only way
to keep Iran safe from Arab-backed Israeli threats. And when challenged in
argument, I would say, “Do you think America and Britain would have invaded Iraq if
Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons?”

My main point?

If Iran does becomes a nuclear-armed state, it will be because of Israeli threats and
Arab leadership’s endorsement of them.

Now to a most controversial question, one at least as controversial as the various 9/11
conspiracy theories.

Is Wikileaks being manipulated by intelligence services – one or several?

There are a number of bloggers – some of them informed writers with credibility,
some of them uninformed, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory nutters – who think the
answer is “Yes”. More to the point is that no less a figure than Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Carter’s National Security Advisor, thinks the answer could be “Yes”. He
said so in an interview with PBS’s Judy Woodruff and also in a subsequent BBC World
Service (Radio) interview. To Judy Woodruff he said:

“The real issue is, who is feeding Wikileaks? They’re getting a lot of information which
seems trivial, inconsequential, but some of it seems surprisingly pointed
 The very
pointed references to Arab leaders could have as their objective undermining their
political credibility at home, because this kind of public identification of their hostility
towards Iran could actually play against them at home
It’s a question of whether
Wikileaks are being manipulated by interested parties that want to either complicate
our relationship with other governments or want to undermine some governments
 I
have no doubt that Wikileaks is getting a lot of the stuff from sort of relatively
unimportant sources, like the one that perhaps is identified on the air. But it may be
getting stuff at the same time from interested intelligence parties who want to
manipulate the process and achieve certain very specific objectives.”

Another way to look at the matter is to ask this question. If a visitor from Outer Space
studied the first two days of Wikileak’s revelations, what preliminary conclusion would
he (or she) come to?

I think it’s entirely possible that he (or she) would say: “The main message is clear.
Iran is the biggest single threat to the peace of the region and the world and not
only because the Israelis say so. Arab leaders agree with them.  The secondary
message is that apart from the Arab leaders who say they share Israel’s assessment,
other Muslim leaders, those in Turkey and Pakistan especially, are not to be trusted.”

And here’s another question. Which party benefited most from the first two days of
Wikileaks revelations? The obvious answer is the Zionist state of Israel.

I must also confess that I have a nagging worry (small but real) about the possibility
that Julian Paul Assange, Wikileaks’ founder, has been compromised in some way
and is open to manipulation. My concern on this account is the fact that he is a 9/11
conspiracy denier. He is firmly on the record as saying: “I’m constantly annoyed that
people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide
evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.”

As I have said on public platforms in America and written in a number of articles for
the worldwide web, I think there is irrefutable evidence that the Twin Towers were
not brought down by the planes and their burning fuel.

My own conclusion at the present time is that I don’t have a conclusion; but I think
the question of whether or not Wikileaks is being manipulated, and if so by whom, is
worthy of  investigation.

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered
wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in
the Middle East. Author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews: The False Messiah
(Zionism, the Real Enemy of the Jews). He blogs on www.alanhart.net