Sick on the New Cold War with Iran
at our group blog, Columbia U. Political Scientist and former National Security Adviser Gary Sick lays out what he sees as a coherent Bush administration policy of pursuing a new Cold War in the Middle East, with Iran.
Sick's analysis explains everything from the new arms deal being offered Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel to the odd and consistent focus of US military spokesmen in Baghdad on the tiny part of the problems in Iraq that derive from Iran.
Iran replied to the arms deal proposal by observing that US policy in the Middle East was to create bogeymen, make everyone afraid, and then offer to sell them billions in shiny new weapons.
Labels: Iran
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/30/2007 06:35:00 AM
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Dear Professor Cole
I have posted a link to your July 15th 2007 posting to the International Affairs Site
http://www.juancole.com/2007/07/are-we-already-at-war-have-us-enabled.html
Professor Sick says he doesn't know if efforts to "Organize dissident movements in Iran, primarily among ethnic groups along the periphery or other targets of opportunity, to distract and potentially even destabilize the Tehran government [being done?]; "
We can expect the full Mossadeq panopoly.
Not only does the USA supply foreign nations with weapons, leaders in those countries routinely purchase them.
There is no honest government in the world.
Dear Professor Cole
Someone really does need to step back and take a deep breath.
By piling on the pressure on the Iranians they get driven into the arms of the Russians under the SCO banner.
The Iranians are being punished at the monent for stepping out of line and undermining the Russian Gas Sales strategy.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IG28Ak03.html
However they don't want the US taking over in Iran because that gives the US access to the Caspian.
Moscow News gives a round up of how they see the US.
http://mnweekly.rian.ru/columnists/20070726/55263769.html
Russian Grand Strategy has always been to capture Iran because it gives them a warm water port on the Indian Ocean and with Qatar would have control of 58% of the world Gas market.
Gas, though not quite as subject to political risk as oil, is having an equally dramatic, albeit different, effect on the distribution of global economic power. Russia possesses 27 per cent of the world’s known
reserves, Iran 16 per cent and Qatar 15 per cent.
The Russians play some good chess. Tactical win leads to Strategic loss.
Dear Professor Cole
People seem to be seeing Cateline Conspiracies everywhere.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20070720/69340886.html
Couldn't possibly happen, could it? But this was a serious person not an adolescent conspiracy theorist.
Cicero, Cicero wherefore are't thou?
Hmmn
Serious person?
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070718_wakeup.htm
Perhaps I should withdraw the previous posting.
Dumping a billion buncha weapons on Saudi Arabia is nothing new ~ we do it from time -to- time, yes? and usually we're talking top-dollar aircraft and "systems" kinda war-tech and war-making whatnot.
A big part of the price is almost always a princely sum : among the Royal Family, they actually compete with one another for Western Kickbacks...
...this is, in reality "what they do," after all. Most royals don't "go to work" every day, as we think of it, nor do most of the noble families' sons, that layer of sheikhs that sheath them : the Sauds are fraught by frauds, n'est-ce pas?
insofar as their "military" is concerned, there are of course horses in addition to the flying sports; i imagine the latest jet is a damn kick, too ~ akin to running new Ferraris flat out on 1/4-mile dragstrips in the desert ~ whatever, to while away the ennui.
Most of the time the lebenty-seben billion $$ weapons are quietly mothballed in warehouses in the desert, yes? i mean, who would operate all this stuff, anyway? imported labour? i mean, c'mon Professor ~ it's difficult to take any notion of an "armed" Saudi nation seriously ~ that they would somehow "deter" any determined Shi'ite threat from IRAN; or deathwish Qaeda types; or for that matter anyone else in the region ~ including their own cooks & maids, armed with broomsticks.
i mean, the only way anyone would take Saudi Arabia's military seriously would be if they had the push-button BOMB, but that would be M.A.D.
imho, this "arms deal" is in reality an "alms deal"...
...cherchez le ‘quid pro quo’ : ISRAEL ;-)
Robert Fisk reports that plane loads of weapons are coming into Lebanon these days - from the US.
Last summer, we were sending them to Israel. Those US-made cluster bombs killed long after the fighting stopped.
It's a big game of
LET'S YOU AND HIM FIGHT.
"US policy in the Middle East was to create bogeymen, make everyone afraid, and then offer to sell them billions in shiny new weapons."
These words must be very similar to the ones Cheney used when he told Bush what the policy is to be. He probably embelished it a bit with a few F-words.
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