This long and detailed essay is an obligatory read for
strategists for it provides a point-by-point analysis of
America’s stand in relation to Iran and through it to
Russia, the Middle East, Europe. Basing on great factual
material and dozens of footnotes, Bob Finch proves that Iran
is the pivot of Eurasian Geopolitics; friendship with Iran
is the paramount interest of America, while hostility to
Iran is in Israel’s interests and is achieved by efforts of
American Jewish elite. Finch provides an answer to the long
polemics with Chomsky, standing squarely on the position of
Mearsheimer and Watts: Jewish elites carry anti-American
policy and undermine America’s standing in the world. His
main points are:
·
who benefits from
American hostility towards Iran? Certainly not America nor
Iran. The only beneficiary is the Jewish state. The primary
reason America has never adopted a pragmatic course of
action towards Iran based on its own national interests is
because America’s ruling Jewish elite has continually
demonized Iran to deter Americans from abandoning Israel as
America’s main ally in the Middle East.
·
America did not
become a hyperpower because Israel was America’s strategic
asset in the Middle East. On the contrary, it became a
hyperpower in spite of its alliance with Israel. Israel has
been ruining American interests in the region on an
increasingly catastrophic scale. Israel’s manipulation of
America into demonizing Iran will provoke a regional war
that will be so catastrophic as to bring about the collapse
of America’s hyperpower status. The Jewish state, and its
Jewish fifth columnists in America, will have inflicted
their last catastrophe upon America.
·
America’s
belligerence towards Russia does not make the slightest
economic or political sense. It should be cultivating good
terms with Russia to enable its energy companies to make
vast profits from exploiting Russia’s fossil fuel resources.
It has to be suggested that the primary reason for America’s
belligerence towards Putin is that America’s Jewish neocons
are outraged that Putin managed to prevent Russia’s Jewish
oligarchs from ransacking the country’s resources. They are
far more intent on effecting regime change in Russia than
they are with developing good relationships with him to
exploit Russia’s natural resources. Here then is a clear
difference in the political objectives of America’s wasp
elite and America’s ruling Jewish elite.
·
These
American-Russian events are almost an exact replica of
events transpiring between America and Iran. The same Jewish
neocons pursuing the same regime-change policy towards both
Iran and Russia. These Jewish policies are doing severe, and
perhaps even irreparable, damage to America’s gigantic
energy companies. The greater the Jewish neocons’ lies and
denunciations of the Iranian/Russian governments, the more
Iranians/Russians resist regime-change.
·
Liberal and left
wing political commentators, despite all the evidence to the
contrary, continually insist that America’s foreign policies
are concerned with the interests of its energy corporations.
This fantasy is also promoted by the Jewish state’s
political agents throughout the western world who seek to
provide a smokescreen for the power of America’s Jewish
elite which implements foreign policies boosting the
interests of the Jewish state rather than America. It is not
just a coincidence that so many of the liberal and left wing
commentators promoting this fantasy are Jewish. The belief
that America is pursuing an oil based foreign policy is an
illusion conjured up by neo-liberals and neo-lefties who
refuse to confront the reality of Jewish power in America
and around the world.
·
America’s
treatment of Iran is self destructive – driving the country
into the camp of its biggest rivals, Russia and China – both
of whom America is also antagonizing! It is bizarre, and
highly revealing, that the only country in the world which
America is not going out of its way to antagonize and abuse
is the Jewish state. America’s hostility towards virtually
every country around the world is in stark contrast to its
grovelling subservience to the Jewish state.
·
America’s
threatened invasion of Iran runs counter to America’s
national interests and, if it proceeds, will have a
catastrophic impact on these interests. It will also have a
catastrophic impact on Europe’s national interests. And yet
neither America nor Europe are powerful enough to dismiss
the twaddle of Jewish propaganda and insist that their
interests would be better served by an alliance with Iran
rather than with Israel. Jewish elites around the world must
have some colossal global power if they can force America
and Europe to undermine their own national interests for the
greater good of the Jewish state and the global Jewish
empire. The modern day parable of the cave is that the
Jewish dominated media and Jewish dominated think tanks have
replaced reality with a Hollywood fantasy which serves
Jewish interests and all those intellectually entrapped in
this Jewish spectacle are unable to perceive their own true
interest.
·
George Bush likes
to compare himself with Churchill but in many respects he’s
quite similar to Boris Yeltsin. Both were elected president
with the help of their country’s Jewish neocons, part of a
global Jewish network of neocons throughout the world. Both
were imbecilic front men for Jewish interests – the only
difference being that Bush seems to have managed to overcome
his addiction to alcohol during his presidency.
Iran - the Pivot of Geopolitics.
“In a similar fashion, but in an even more fundamental
sense, US diplomacy in Central Asia is seriously hobbled by
Washington's alienation from Iran. Ten years have gone by
since the famous article by Zbigniew Brzezinski in Foreign
Affairs magazine calling for unconditional abandonment of
the US policy of containment of Iran. Brzezinski had
brilliantly argued the case (which most US career diplomats
assigned to the region then also believed) that for US
regional diplomacy to be anywhere near optimal in the
Caucasus, in the Caspian region and in Central Asia, it must
befriend Tehran. But Washington's mental block over Iran
persists.
Least of all, Iran remains the wild card in the pack.
Depending on which way the Iran nuclear issue develops in
2007, Iran can impact on the energy map of China, Central
Asia, the Caspian, the Caucasus, Russia and Europe - and,
conceivably, the United States itself.”
(M K Bhadrakumar ‘The Great Game on a razor's edge’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HL23Ag01.html
December 23, 2006).
1.
Pahlavi as America’s Primary Geostrategic Asset in the
Middle East and Central Asia 1953-1979.
In 1953 Iran’s
democratically elected prime
minister Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized the country’s oil
industry. The CIA promptly organized a coup to overthrow him
and replaced the country’s democracy with a dictatorship run
by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi –
yet another example in America’s long history of snuffing
out democracy in the Islamic greater Middle East. Over the
following twenty five years America showered the newly
installed Pahlavi, the so-called Shah of Iran, with the
weapons needed to maintain his regime against the wishes of
his own people in return for allowing America’s
multi-national energy corporations to exploit the country’s
vast fossil fuel reserves. Pahlavi never enjoyed popular
support. As time went by he lost most of the support he had
and was forced to rely increasingly on the brutality of his
security services to survive in power.
During the Pahlavi’s reign, America looked upon Iran as a
critical geostrategic asset for a number of reasons.
* its possession of vast quantities of fossil fuels;
* its possession of large deposits of uranium;
* its position next to the oilfields of the Middle East and
Central Asia;
* its proximity to the straits of Hormuz through which
passed a major proportion of the world's oil supply – today
estimated at a fifth;
* its geographic position surrounded by 15 countries many of
which contain fossil fuel deposits; and,
* its geographical position squeezed between Russia and
China. “A look at the map will reveal how geopolitically
strategic Iran is for Russia, as well as for Israel and the
US. Iran controls the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the choke
point for oil from the Persian Gulf to Japan and the rest of
the world. Iran borders the oil-rich Caspian Sea.” (F
William Engdahl ‘A
high-risk game of nuclear chicken’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA31Ak02.html
Jan 31, 2006).
During Pahlavi’s reign America looked upon Iran as a far
more important geostrategic asset than the Jews-only state
in Palestine (JOS). Israel had little in the way of any
geostrategic value since it had no fossil fuels and was
located on the fringe of the Middle East, well away from
Middle Eastern oil countries and even further away from
Central Asian oil countries. The Americans enhanced Iran’s
geostrategic value by arming Pahlavi to become a major
military power in the region. This gave the shah another
major geostrategic advantage over Israel: whilst Iran could
use its military might to control most Moslem countries, the
Jewish state could not do so without triggering a regional
conflagration. Iran is surrounded by 15 countries in the
Middle East and Central Asia and could easily and directly
take military action against neighbouring countries, whilst
the Jewish state couldn’t even reach most of these countries
without trespassing on the sovereignty of other countries
thereby triggering a regional conflagration. Pahlavi, then,
was America’s policeman on the Middle Eastern beat.
It was only after the Jewish defeat of Arab armies in the
1967 war that American politicians began to look upon the
Jewish state as a possible military asset in the greater
Middle East.
“The idea that Israel was the «strategic asset» of the
United States in the Middle East, or America's «unsinkable
aircraft in the Eastern Mediterranean,» was popularized by
the intellectual predecessors of today's neoconservatives in
the aftermath of the Israel's military victory in the 1967
Middle East War. The relationship between the United States
and Israel was promoted as a «strategic alliance» in order
to mobilize support for the Jewish state (after all, Israel
had defeated Egypt, a military ally of the Soviet Union) and
strengthen the political backing by disaffected liberal Jews
of an unpopular war in Southeast Asia.” (Leon Hadar ‘Neocons
Amid Lebanon’s Rubble: A Challenge to Krauthammer's
Israel-as-Strategic-Asset Argument’
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=12062
September 14, 2006).
Although after 1967 American politicians began to perceive
the Jewish state as a military ally, it wasn’t until
Pahlavi’s fall in 1979 that Israel emerged as one of
America’s major military assets in the region – despite the
fact that its military was strategically unusable. During
this period 1967-1979, the primary reason for America’s
increasing approval of Israel was because Jewish propaganda
in America fabricated Israel’s supposed value as a military
ally. Any objective assessment would have concluded the
Jewish state was a gross military liability: it couldn’t act
militarily on America’s behalf without causing a regional
conflagration. “I do not recall a single instance where any
administration saw the need for Israel's military power to
advance U.S. Imperial interests. In fact, as we saw in the
Gulf War, Israel's involvement was detrimental to what Bush,
Sr. wanted to accomplish in that war. They had, as you
might remember, to suppress any Israeli assistance so that
the coalition would not be destroyed by their involvement.”
(James Abourezk ‘Letter to Jeff Blankfort’
jablankfort@earthlink.net
December 03, 2006).
Even worse was that some Jewish politicians let it be known
they would never act on America’s behalf unless it was also
in Israel’s own interests. As it has turned out, the Jewish
state has never gone to war on America’s behalf.[1]
So whilst the Jewish state was unwilling to sacrifice itself
for America, Jewish propagandists in America were insisting
that America sacrifice itself for the Jewish state. During
the October 1974 war America’s military intervention on
behalf of Israel was a catastrophic disaster provoking an
Arab oil boycott which triggered a decade long global,
economic recession. And yet Jewish propaganda in America was
so powerful it succeeded not merely in sweeping the Jewish
state’s catastrophic impact on America’s interests under the
carpet but in presenting the Jewish state as an
indispensable, unwaveringly loyal, military asset willing to
do America any favours it might ask. Jewish propagandists
succeeded in elevating the Jewish state as America’s ally by
pushing out of sight America’s national interests. In
contrast, even after its Islamic revolution, Iran was still,
objectively, a far more important geostrategic asset in the
region than Israel. As will be seen, the same is true even
today. America cannot get a better geostrategic asset in the
greater Middle East than Iran. And, conversely, it cannot
get a more catastrophic ally than Israel.
2. America’s Fruitless, Twenty-Seven year, Policy of Regime
Change in Iran, 1979-2006.
Pahlavi’s brutal suppression of his own people gradually
undermined what little support he had within the country. In
turn, America relied too much upon Pahlavi and his security
services to maintain its dominance over the country’s oil
industry instead of fostering a prosperous,
western-oriented, middle class in a stable democratic system
which would have been a much more solid and reliable source
of support.[2]
In 1979, Pahlavi was overthrown by a popular revolt, an
Islamic revolution – the first in history. Although America
lost a vital asset in the Middle East, Iran’s geostrategic
value was too significant to be ignored. The Americans were
faced by the choice of either wooing the new Islamic regime,
and forgiving it for the relatively minor diplomatic offense
of holding Americans hostage, or trying to bring about
regime change. Under intense pressure from America’s Jewish
elite, American politicians chose the latter option. Since
then, American Jews have continually stimulated virtually
all American politicians into a knee-jerk, loathing of
Iranian politicians no matter what their political
objectives.
America’s choice of tactic towards Iran should have been
decided on pragmatic considerations i.e. the most fruitful
means for benefiting from Iran’s geostrategic importance and
its huge military potential. Seeking reconciliation with
Iran would have been the easiest and quickest option and,
given Iran’s considerable geostrategic assets, it would also
have been the most sensible. But a succession of American
presidents continued to froth belligerently at Iran – even
though there was not at any time the slightest prospect of
their effecting regime change in Iran. Indeed, the greater
the hostility that America has shown towards Iran, the
greater the resistance it has generated amongst Iranians,
thereby diminishing the prospects of regime change. To date,
this tactic has lasted twenty seven years – an appallingly
low rate of return for any foreign policy. America has had a
number of chances to negotiate with Iranian leaders who have
signalled they wanted better relationships with America -
but each time they were rebuffed. Given Iran’s vast
geostrategic importance and its military potential, America
should have swallowed its petty grievances in order to reap
the vast economic and political benefits of an alliance with
Iran.
3. Jews scupper Iran’s efforts to Negotiate with America.
The question that needs to be asked is who benefits from
American hostility towards Iran? Certainly not America nor
Iran. The only beneficiary is Israel. The primary reason
America has never adopted a pragmatic course of action
towards Iran based on its own national interests is because
America’s ruling Jewish elite has continually demonized Iran
to deter Americans from abandoning the Jewish state as
America’s main ally in the Middle East. The more that
Jewish propagandists could persuade American politicians to
distrust Iran, the more likely was it that America would
continue to support the Jewish state – even though it was in
America’s interests to dump Israel and support Iran. That
American politicians have failed to realize their country’s
national interests is due partly to bribes they were given
by the Jewish lobby to support Israel. But it is also due to
the virtual monopoly of Jewish propaganda in America.
Americans are subjected to a constant flood of Jewish
propaganda pumped out by the Jewish dominated American
media, the Jewish lobby, Jewish think tanks, Jewish
politicians in the democratic/republican parties, and Jewish
politicians in a succession of presidential administrations.
In the 1980s any desire by American politicians to develop a
rapprochement with Iran were undermined by continual Jewish
denunciations about alleged Iranian terrorism. “For example,
in the fall of 1985 there was an abrupt departure from CIA's
analytical line that Iran was supporting terrorism. On Nov.
22, 1985, the agency reported that Iranian-sponsored
terrorism had «dropped off substantially» in 1985, but no
evidence was adduced to support that key judgment. Oddly, a
few months later CIA's analysis reverted back to
pre-November 1985 with no further mention of any drop-off in
Iranian support for terrorism.” (Ray McGovern ‘The
Cheney-Gates Cabal’
http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=9988
November 10, 2006).
In 1995 under pressure from America’s Jewish lobby and the
Jewish dominated American media, America once again
sacrificed its own geostrategic interests by banning its
gigantic multi-national oil corporations from investing in
Iran’s fossil fuel industry. “Under Executive Order 12959,
signed by President Clinton in 1995 and renewed by President
Bush, all U.S. companies are barred from operating in Iran.”
(Michael T. Klare ‘Putting Iran in Great Power Context’
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=9150
June 16, 2006). The ban was opposed by Richard Cheney and
by members of Clinton’s own administration.
“Mr. Indyk criticized the
Iran-Libya Sanctions Act signed by President Clinton as
«counterproductive.» He said it had split America from its
allies in Europe. The bill had been championed by the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee.” (Ira Stoll ‘‘Israel
Lobby' Caused War in Iraq, September 11 Attacks, Professor
Says’
http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=40629 September
29, 2006).
After the Pentagon and New York (P-NY) bombings, America
suddenly discovered Iran could help it over the invasion and
occupation of Afghanistan. Iranian politicians offered to
help America in a number of vital ways in the hope of
reversing two decades of Jewish induced, American animosity
towards Iran. Firstly, Iran used its armed allies in
Afghanistan to help the American military overthrow the
Taliban. Secondly, it rounded up Al Qaeda suspects fleeing
Afghanistan and offered to exchange them for anti-Iranian
terrorists held by the United States. And, thirdly, Iran
helped America to stabilize the post Taliban regime. “After
the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. officials responsible for
preparing for war in Afghanistan needed Iran's help to
unseat the Taliban and establish a stable government in
Kabul. Iran had organized resistance by the Northern
Alliance and had provided arms and funding at a time when
the United States had been unwilling to do so. It was thanks
to the Northern Alliance Afghan troops, which were supported
primarily by the Iranians, that the Taliban was driven out
of Kabul in mid-November. Two weeks later, the Afghan
opposition groups were convened in Bonn under United Nations
auspices to agree on a successor regime. At that meeting,
the Northern Alliance was demanding 60 percent of the
portfolios in an interim government, which was blocking
agreement by other opposition groups. According to U.S.
special envoy to Afghanistan James Dobbins, Iran played a
«decisive role» in persuading the Northern Alliance delegate
to compromise. But the cooperation against al-Qaeda was not
the priority for the anti-Iranian interests in the White
House and the Pentagon.” (Gareth Porter ‘How
Neocons Sabotaged Iran's Help on al-Qaeda’
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=8590
February 23, 2006).[3]
Despite this invaluable assistance, in January 2002 the
Jewish fundamentalists and their Jew-ish allies within the
Bush regime manipulated their imbecilic president into
denouncing Iran as part of an entirely fictitious ‘axis of
evil’. “Only weeks after the Bonn Conference in December
2001 where Tehran's assistance was crucial in finding a
compromise among Afghanistan's many warlords, Bush put Iran
into the «axis of evil», along with Iraq and North Korea.
Tehran's goodwill gestures were for naught.” (Trita Parsi
‘Iran the key in US change on Iraq’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HK11Ak04.html
November 11, 2006). There were no connections
between Iraq, Iran, and north Korea except in the paranoid
fantasies of Jewish fundamentalists but the fiction
succeeded in bringing the Bush administration into line with
Israel’s foreign policies.
[4]
The prime advocate for a war against Iraq was the Jewish
lobby. The Jewish lobby was so effective in bringing about
this policy it can be suggested America embarked on a proxy
Zionist invasion of Iraq. Jewish propagandists lied to the
American public that Saddam was going to attack America with
weapons of mass destruction and that the Iraqi people would
greet American troops as liberators. However, if America’s
occupation of Afghanistan had produced a raft of common
interests between America and Iran, the same was true after
America’s occupation of Iraq. As time has gone by, the more
the occupation has disintegrated into a military and
economic catastrophe for America, the greater has become the
Bush regime’s need for Iranian help in curbing the
multifarious conflicts in Iraq.
Both countries have a common political interest in
stabilizing Iraq. “The fact is that the United States needs
Iran for maintaining regional stability and there is a
growing chorus of ex-diplomats, such as James Baker, and
policy analysts in Washington advising the US to engage Iran
in bilateral talks.” (Kaveh L Afrasiabi ‘Iran
and the US: Fork in the road’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ14Ak02.html
October 14, 2006).[5]
In may 2003, despite being demonized as part of the Jewish
fantasy of an axis of evil, Iran offered the Bush regime yet
another chance for an improvement in their relationship.
“The Iranian negotiating offer, transmitted to the State
Department in early May 2003 by the Swiss ambassador in
Tehran, acknowledged that Iran would have to address U.S.
concerns about its nuclear program, although it made no
specific concession in advance of the talks, according to
Flynt Leverett, then the National Security Council's senior
director for Middle East Affairs. Realists, led by Powell
and his deputy, Richard Armitage, were inclined to respond
positively to the Iranian offer. Nevertheless, within a few
days of its receipt, the State Department had rebuked the
Swiss ambassador for having passed on the offer.” (Gareth
Porter ‘Neocons Blocked 2003 Nuclear Talks With Iran’
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=8778
March 29, 2006); “Within two weeks, the administration had
spurned an unprecedented offer from Iran to negotiate all
outstanding differences between the two nations, including
its nuclear program and its support for armed anti-Israel
groups, in exchange for security guarantees. The Bush
administration also broke off all diplomatic contacts with
Tehran, including until-then fruitful talks on stabilizing
Afghanistan, after accusing Iran of harbouring al-Qaeda
militants allegedly linked to a series of bombings in Saudi
Arabia. The neo-conservatives were euphoric; their agenda
had not only become policy, but their vision of a «new
American Century» seemed well on its way to becoming
reality.” (Jim Lobe and Michael Flynn ‘The rise and decline
of the neo-cons’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HK22Aa01.html
November 22, 2006). As a
result of pressure from the Jewish extremists in the Bush
administration, this offer was also rejected.
At present Iran is playing a critical role in stabilizing
western Afghanistan and could do something similar for the
rest of the country if Bush gave the go ahead.
“Equally important, Iran has
played a major stabilizing role in Western Afghanistan,
especially in Herat, severely limiting Taliban influence.
Iran works closely with Italian and ISAF reconstruction
teams in rebuilding the region. The Financial Times
(November 18, 2006 p.11) reports: “The main factor holding
the west of Afghanistan together is the positive influence
of neighbouring Iran which is ‘pumping a lot of money into
the reconstruction of the west’, says a senior US
administration official in Washington”.” (James Petras ‘The
US and the Middle East: A “Grand Settlement” Versus the
Jewish Lobby’ December 2006).
In 2006, the United States’ ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay
Khalilzad
recognizing the common interests between America and Iran,
tried to break the Jews’ death
grip over the Bush administration by insisting the
administration should hold talks with Iran about combating
Iraq’s civil war. But, after agreeing to such talks, the
Bush administration eventually allowed Iran’s offer to
lapse. Even though direct talks with Iran were in
America’s best interests because of
its military and financial
catastrophe in Iraq, the Jewish lobby and the Jewish neocons
in the Bush regime succeeded in skippering any
meeting.
Despite these rejections, Iranians continue to seek
negotiations with America in the hope of resolving their
differences. “Najmeh Bozorgmehr, an Iranian journalist now
at the Brookings Institution as a visiting scholar, agrees.
Based on several years of covering Iran's national security
policy, she says, «Iran wants to bargain with the United
States on Iran's regional role,» as well as on removal of
sanctions and assurances against U.S. attack. Tehran has
been looking for any source of leverage with which to
bargain with the United States on those issues, she says,
and «enrichment has become a big bargaining chip.» (Gareth
Porter Iran Nuclear Conflict Is About US Dominance’
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=8982
May 12, 2006). The Jewish state and the Jewish lobby in
America are at the forefront of the pressure to deter Bush
from taking the advice of James Baker’s Iraq Study Group to
talk to Iran. The day after Bush was presented with the
ISG’s report he was back to fantasizing over an American
victory over Iraq, ““You saw that the president used the
word ‘victory’ again the next day,” said one of Mr. Bush’s
aides. “Believe me, that was no accident.”” (Quoted in Jim
Rutenberg and David E. Sanger ‘Bush Aides Seek Alternatives
to Iraq Study Group’s Proposals, Calling Them Impractical’
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/nyt706.html
December 10, 2006); Asked about his comment to The
Washington Post this week that the United States is neither
winning nor losing the war, Bush pivoted forward. «Victory
in Iraq is achievable,» he said.” (Peter Baker ‘President
Confronts Dissent on Troop Levels’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/20/AR2006122000308_pf.html
December 21, 2006).
4. Russia’s Dramatic Rise as the World’s Fossil Fuel
Superpower.
Iran’s geostrategic value cannot be appreciated without an
understanding of Russia’s dramatic
rise as the world’s fossil fuel superpower.
Vladimir Putin has brought about an almost miraculous
transformation of Russia’s fortunes since the collapse of
the soviet empire and the ransacking of the country’s major
industries by Jewish criminals – known in the Jewish
dominated western media merely as ‘the oligarchs’. From a
point where Russia’s Jewish neocons had been on the verge of
selling off the country’s vast fossil fuel wealth to
American energy companies, Putin has not merely
re-established state control over the country’s resources,
he has transformed the country into the world’s premier
fossil fuel broker. “Lavrov
used an end-of-year press conference to declare Russia's
return to «leading power» status. In a dig at critics,
Lavrov said: «We understand that such a rapid recovery of
Russia seems a surprise. For some it may be an unpleasant
surprise.»” (Sebastian Smith ‘Russia hits back at Western
criticism, Iran’
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061220/wl_mideast_afp/russiapolitics_061220182159
December 20, 2006).
The wealth from Russia’s fossil fuels is financing the
rebuilding of the country’s economy and society. “It was a
matter of time before geopolitics made its entry into the
debate, insofar as energy sales contribute as much as a
quarter of Russia's GDP and hydrocarbon exports provide the
base for the country's economic recovery, and, in turn, act
as the strategic underpinning for Russia's return to the
international stage as a major power.” (M K Bhadrakumar ‘The
G8 summit: A chronicle of wasted time’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HG06Dj01.html
July 6, 2006). Putin is
without doubt the world’s greatest political strategist of
our time. His dazzling global oil strategy consists of six
main components.
Russia’s Fossil Fuel Pipeline Network: An Empire of
Pipelines.
Russia is gaining increasing dominance of the Eurasian
fossil fuel pipeline network. Before Putin became president,
Russia had constructed nearly two hundred thousand miles of
pipelines. Since becoming president he has ordered the
construction of a massive extension of the network and is
attempting to buy up more pipelines to control the flow of
fossil fuels across the planet’s largest landmass.[6]
The political implications of this tactic alone are
significant as the following examples attest. China is
highly dependent on oil imports from the Middle East,
particularly Iran. It
“depends heavily on Iranian oil to satisfy its growing
hunger for energy.” (Elias Akleh ‘War on Iran: Unleashing
Armageddon in the Middle East’
http://www.countercurrents.org/Iran-akleh091106.htm
November 09, 2006). Because this
oil is transported via oil supertankers, China is highly
vulnerable to American control of the high seas. In a
confrontation between America and China, the American navy
could block oil shipments to China. “Zbigniew Brzezinski
wrote in January 2005 in Foreign Policy: «Forty years after
acquiring nuclear-weapons technology, China has just 24
ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States.
Even beyond the realm of strategic warfare, a country must
have the capacity to attain its political objectives before
it will engage in limited war. It is hard to envisage how
China could promote its objectives when it is acutely
vulnerable to a blockade and isolation enforced by the
United States. In a conflict, Chinese maritime trade would
stop entirely. The flow of oil would cease, and the Chinese
economy would be paralyzed.» This is the basis of China's
bending backward to avoid a military confrontation with the
United States, the danger for which comes entirely from US
pre-emptive strategy.” (Quoted in Henry C K Liu ‘The
lame duck and the greenhorn’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HF23Ad02.html
June 23, 2006); “China has repeatedly expressed its
concerns that in a potential regional conflict, the US Navy
would likely attempt to choke Chinese fuel shipments from
the Middle East in the narrow Strait of Malacca, through
which an estimated 80% of China's energy imports now flow.
Indonesia, which represents one of the strait's land
barriers, would be crucial in that hypothetical strategic
scenario.” (Bill Guerin ‘Indonesia-Russia: Arms, atoms and
oil’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/HL12Ae02.html
December 12, 2006).
However, Russia is in the process of constructing oil
pipelines to China which will dramatically reduce the threat
posed by an American blockade of oil supplies to China
during a crisis.
For many years America looked upon Kazakhstan as an
important geostrategic ally in Central Asia. “Washington had
based its strategy on Kazakhstan being its key partner in
Central Asia.” (F William Engdahl ‘The
US's geopolitical nightmare’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HE09Ad01.html
May 9, 2006). American energy
companies had made significant investments in the country’s
fossil fuel industry and yet their success has been limited
by Russia’s ownership of the area’s pipelines. “In 1994,
Cheney was a member of Kazakhstan's Oil Advisory Board. He
helped broker a deal between Kazakhstan and Chevron, a
company where Secretary Condoleezza Rice served on the
Board. Today, US oil companies have large stakes in
Kazakhstan's oil fields. But most of the oil being pumped
goes through Transneft lines out of the Russian port in
Novorossiysk. America has been battling with Russia to get
Kazakhstan to pump its oil through an alternate pipeline,
the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, that goes through Azerbaijan,
Georgia and Turkey.” (Mark Ames ‘How Dick Cheney Got
His Cold War On A Cold War Timetable’
http://www.exile.ru/2006-May-19/the_cold_war_timeline.html
May19, 2006). Putin worked hard to consolidate
Russia’s economic, political, and cultural, links with
Kazakhstan to ensure it is not
lured into a deeper alliance with America.
“The US wants to expand its
physical control over Kazakhstan's oil reserves and
formalize Kazakh oil transportation via the Baku-Ceyhan
pipeline, as well as creating the dominant US role in
Caspian Sea security. But Kazakhstan isn't playing ball.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev went to Moscow on April 3 to
reaffirm his continued dependence on Russian oil pipelines.”
(F William Engdahl ‘The US's geopolitical nightmare’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HE09Ad01.html
May 9, 2006).
Russia’s control over Eurasia’s pipelines also gives it
considerable advantages in negotiations to supply fossil
fuels to India. “Russia's increasing influence in Central
Asia and its dominant control of the pipeline routes implies
that only a well-crafted energy partnership will enable
India to access those oil and gas reserves.” (Zorawar Daulet
Singh ‘Reviving the India-Russia partnership’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HK14Df01.html
November 14, 2006).
Russian pipelines also provide fossil fuels to virtually all
European countries and some Middle Eastern countries. The
political implications this has for Europe are discussed
below.
Long term, State to State, Fossil
Fuel Contracts.
The second component of Putin’s energy strategy has been
drawing up long term, fossil fuel contracts with other
states rather than supplying fossil fuels for the global
market.
In effect, what Putin has been
doing is reducing the importance of global oil markets where
American wealth predominates. “The US-backed liberal,
open global oil market order is beset by an accelerating
proliferation of private, state-to-state long-term
agreements and contracts concluded within the circle Russia
and its partners are defining.” (W Joseph Stroupe ‘Russia
spins global energy spider's web’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH25Dj01.html
August 25, 2006).
The political implications of this tactic are considerable.
“Putin explicitly stated that Russia and other suppliers
want long-term supply contracts with consuming nations so
that suppliers know there will be a «stable demand» for
their exports. The long-term supply contract tends, of
course, to lock the West's consumer states into deeper and
longer-term dependence on Russia, thwarting moves toward
diversification of supply. There is also the distinct
likelihood that as such long-term contracts multiply, the
world's energy supply and even its reserves will become
progressively «locked up» into private pools for consumption
only by the states that are party to such contracts, thereby
robbing oil and gas from the virtual global pool sustained
by the traditional liberal global energy market order. The
implications could include the development that unless
you're inside the circle defined by such long-term
agreements, then you're outside the circle of energy
security. That implication could develop as a full-fledged
concern much more quickly than is generally recognized,
because by and large it is the economies of the East, whose
rise is meteoric and whose energy appetite is ravenous, that
are far ahead in the concluding of such agreements with
suppliers to secure their own growing private pools of oil
and gas. The West is already far behind that curve.” (W
Joseph Stroupe ‘Part
4: The West's thorny crown’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HI28Ag01.html
September 28, 2006).
Putin’s adoption of long term contracts is also being copied
by other oil producing nations – doubtlessly under his
prompting since synchronizing these contracts will yield
further benefits to the contracting countries. “Instead, the
world's producing regimes are increasingly entering key
joint ventures between themselves and in very close
cooperation with the powerhouse economies of the rising
East, such as China.” (W Joseph Stroupe ‘Russia spins global
energy spider's web’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH25Dj01.html
August 25, 2006); “To varying yet alarming degrees,
the resource-rich regimes around the globe are copying the
Russian model. Resources-based corporate states with a
profound political affinity for one another and a
simultaneous collective disdain and even a hatred for US-led
unipolar dominance are proliferating around the globe.” (W
Joseph Stroupe ‘Russia spins global energy spider's web’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH25Dj01.html
Aug 25, 2006).
Another major political/financial consequence of long term
contracts is that
fossil fuels do not have to be bought with petro-dollars.
Such contracts lend themselves to bartering arrangements.
Petro-dollars are one of the
pillars propping up the American economy. Bartering
arrangements considerably reduce the colossal financial
benefits that America receives from the use of its currency
for oil sales around the world.
Russia’s Fossil Fuel Market.
Although Putin has focused on drawing up long term fossil
fuel contracts, he has not totally abandoned oil markets
altogether. He is also aiming to create a new Russian market
where fossil fuels can be bought and sold in roubles not
dollars. “Russia's new St Petersburg exchange, slated to
come online next year, will settle transactions in the
rouble. According to Russian Economy Minister German Gref,
Russian products will be offered on the New York exchange
until the St Petersburg exchange is operational, at which
time Russian products will be shifted out of the New York
exchange to the Russian exchange.” (W
Joseph Stroupe ‘The New World Oil Order. Part 2:
Russia tips the balance’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HK23Ag01.html
November 23, 2006).[7]
Whatever trade is done on this new market will undermine the
power of the petro-dollar.
Breaking into Consumers’ Fossil Fuel Markets.
Another component of Putin’s fossil fuel strategy has been
his insistence that if Russia is to provide countries with a
reliable, long term, supply of fossil fuels, then Russian
fossil fuel companies must be permitted to sell fossil fuel
related goods and services in those countries. Thus,
although Putin might sell fossil fuels at a cheaper price
through long term contracts than he could get for them on
oil markets, the
financial gains he can make by persuading oil consuming
nations to allow Russian energy companies to enter their
domestic energy markets, enables Russian firms to increase
their long term profits. In the
past, many western countries refused to allow Russian fossil
fuel companies to play any role in their domestic markets
but now these companies can make significant profits all
along the fossil fuel chain from production to consumption.
“What Gazprom wants is to control
the whole chain - from production to the final consumer in
Europe. What the EU wants is for Gazprom to bring gas to the
EU's external borders, where the gas will be bought by EU
partners who will then distribute it inside Europe. This
would mean the end of long-term Gazprom contracts with
European energy giants - a no-no for Putin.” (Pepe Escobar ‘The
Gazprom Nation’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HE26Ag01.html
May 26, 2006). Putin is pushing the same tactic
elsewhere, “Indian policymakers should discern that Russia's
long-term energy strategy, evidenced by its public
pronouncements and dealings with the European Union, China,
East Asia and North Africa, is based on the idea of
comprehensive energy cooperation with all its partners
rather than the traditional paradigm of import-export
relationships. In commercial terms this would amount to the
buyer nation opening its downstream energy markets (such as
refining, petrochemicals, electricity) for Russian
investment in return for assured supplies and reciprocal
access to upstream Russian assets.” (Zorawar Daulet Singh
‘Reviving the India-Russia partnership’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HK14Df01.html
November 14, 2006).
Energy hungry countries are offering other fossil fuel
exporting countries similar package deals to obtain long
term supplies of fossil fuels.
“The lucrative economic, financial, political and diplomatic
package of enticements being offered to producers around the
globe by China, India and the other economies of the East
far outweigh what the US can offer - the US simply cannot
compete.” (W Joseph Stroupe ‘The
New World Oil Order. Part 1: Russia tips the balance’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HK23Ag01.html
November 23, 2006).
Co-ordinating Fossil Fuel Strategies.
Russia is also drawing up agreements with other fossil fuel
producing countries that will protect their mutual interests
rather than allowing competition on global markets to
undermine their interests. “Stronger economic ties could
translate into new philosophies surrounding Indonesia's
management of its bountiful natural resources. Noting that
Indonesia is currently the biggest supplier of energy to
Asia, Putin said: «We believe it is extremely important to
coordinate our actions on world energy markets so that there
is no damage but instead to boost cooperation.» Indonesia
and Russia are now set to sign an agreement for Russian
energy giants Gazprom and Lukoil to take part in oil and gas
projects in Kalimantan, the Indonesian section of Borneo
island. That could open the way for Russian companies to
secure more lucrative natural-resource deals, which until
now has long been the domain of US and other Western
resource giants such as Texaco, Exxon Mobil, Unocal and
Conoco.”
(Bill Guerin ‘Indonesia-Russia: Arms, atoms and oil’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/HL12Ae02.html
December 12, 2006).[8]
Excluding America’s Energy Companies from Exploiting
Russia’s Resources.
The final component of Putin’s
fossil fuel strategy has been to exclude American
energy companies from exploiting Russia’s fossil fuel
resources. When Putin first became president of Russia he
was willing to allow American energy companies to continue
with the one-sided contracts they’d drawn up during Boris
Yeltsin’s presidency. Putin built a seemingly trusting
relationship with George Bush who looked into Putin’s soul
and liked what he saw. The two leaders’ grew even closer in
the aftermath of the Pentagon and New York (P-NY) bombings -
Russia providing help for America’s invasion of Afghanistan.
But, only a matter of months later, Bush repudiated the
anti-ballistic missile treaty in the belief that America
could develop the technology for winning a nuclear war. This
posed a huge strategic threat to Russia.[9]
As Stephen F Cohen has outlined, since 1991 successive
American administrations, including the Bush regime, have
pursued a twofold policy towards Russia - publicly
encouraging it whilst actually undermining it. “The real US
policy has been very different - a relentless,
winner-take-all exploitation of Russia's post-1991 weakness.
Accompanied by broken American promises, condescending
lectures and demands for unilateral concessions, it has been
even more aggressive and uncompromising than was
Washington's approach to Soviet Communist Russia.” (Stephen
F. Cohen ‘The New American Cold War’
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060710/cohen July 10,
2006). It has already been noted that Bush willingly
received Iran’s help during the invasion and occupation of
Afghanistan but almost immediately afterwards showed little
gratitude for what it had done. The same was also true of
the way Bush treated Putin. Bush’s withdrawal from the ABM
treaty not merely posed an existential threat to Russia but
was almost a betrayal of the trust that Putin had put in
him. This led to Putin’s disenchantment with America.[10]
Eventually he seems to have decided that every time America
transgressed against Russian interests he would retaliate by
stopping another American company from exploiting Russian
resources.[11]
Even in July 2006 it looked as if Putin was willing to give
American energy companies the chance to invest in Russia’s
fossil fuel industry. “Equally, the Bush administration had
been pressing for a mega-deal for Chevron and ConocoPhillips
- the US oil majors that have bid for Russia's Shtokman gas
fields. Meanwhile, getting a share of the Shtokman fields
for the US companies would be a major score for Bush (and
Vice President Dick Cheney). From the Russian point of view,
it is yet another instance of having to appease Washington.
Interestingly, Russia's Gazprom announced over the weekend
that the successful bidder for the giant Shtokman gas
deposits off the Arctic coast would be made known next
month. The short-listing of competing companies - Norway's
Statoil, France's Total and America's Chevron and
ConocoPhillips - was completed last September.” (M K
Bhadrakumar ‘The
G8 summit: A chronicle of wasted time’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HG06Dj01.html
July 6, 2006). Putin’s rejection of their bids must have
been a shock to America’s energy companies.
“Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, announced that it would
develop on its own without foreign companies the fabulous
Shtokman deposit, holding an estimated 3.2 trillion cubic
meters of natural gas and 31 million tonnes of gas
condensate in the Barents Sea, 360 kilometres off the coast,
at a depth of 320 meters. And most significant, Gazprom also
said it would send most of the gas from the giant Arctic
Shtokman field to Europe, rather than to the United States.
Western commentators have rightly analyzed that the Gazprom
decision on Shtokman ought to be viewed against the
background of the broader increase in perceived US hostility
toward Russia. The point is, Gazprom's decision hits US
interests hard. There cannot be two opinions about that.” (M
K Bhadrakumar ‘Russian energy: Europe's pride, US's
envy’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HJ14Ag01.html
October 14, 2006). Putin is shutting the Americans
out of Russia’s vast energy business,
“Plainly speaking, Gazprom's
decision on Shtokman implies that as of today there are no
major plans on the anvil in the Russian energy sector aimed
at the US market. This is a dismal legacy for the Bush
administration, which is supposed to be tied to the US oil
industry by the umbilical cord. More to the point, this
comes at a juncture when, flush with funds, Moscow is
embarking on several new gas-production projects in the Far
East, the Yamal Peninsula, the Arctic Shelf and other areas.
US oil majors are simply being kept at arm's length from
Russia's massive oil and gas reserves.” (M K Bhadrakumar ‘Russian
energy: Europe's pride, US's envy’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HJ14Ag01.html
October 14, 2006).
Putin is also moving to renegotiate or revoke the licenses
of a number of American energy companies which had
negotiated deals during Yeltsin’s administrations under
conditions far too favourable to these companies.
“Russian finance officials accuse
Shell, principal shareholder of the Sakhalin Energy
Investment Co (SEIC), and operator of the Sakhalin-2
project, of fabricating costs, which have jumped since last
year by almost 125% to $22 billion. According to the terms
of their production sharing agreement (PSA), signed by
corrupt officials of former president Boris Yeltsin's
administration when Russia's Treasury was close to
bankruptcy, oil production declining, and Russian corporates
desperately short of investment capital, Shell (and Exxon
Mobil at Sakhalin-1, an oil-export project) would not have
to pay profit taxes until they had cleared their project
costs. The cost overruns have significantly postponed these
tax payments. «If costs continue to rise without control,
Russia will be left with only 6% of royalties, while all
profit will go to repaying costs,» Sergey Fyodorov, head of
geological and subsoil use policies at the Natural Resources
Ministry, said in September.” (John Helmer ‘Sakhalin
gas: Shell loses, whales win’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HL15Ag01.html
December 15, 2006).[12]
Putin’s action against Shell seems all too justifiable given
the way the company seems to have been milking Russia’s
natural resources. “The Russian authorities have already
attacked Shell, TNK-BP and Exxon Mobil over their
environmental records. The news comes after Shell, BP and
Exxon Mobil were challenged by Mr Mitvol. The environmental
watchdog has threatened to revoke Shell's Sakhalin-2 project
licence on ecological grounds. TNK-BP, the Anglo-Russian oil
venture, has been threatened with licence withdrawal and a
new investigation is set to be launched into Exxon Mobil's
Sakhalin-1.” (Marianne Barriaux ‘Russia wipes £130m from
gold miner by threatening to revoke licences’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,1960249,00.html
November 30, 2006).
Putin is also intent on renegotiating or revoking licenses
held by non-fossil fuel companies obtained during Yeltsin’s
terms in office. “Russia said it was looking at revoking the
licences of Peter Hambro, the gold mining company, in a
fresh challenge yesterday to western businesses operating in
the country.” (Marianne Barriaux ‘Russia wipes £130m from
gold miner by threatening to revoke licences’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,1960249,00.html
November 30, 2006).
Conclusions.
Putin’s radical fossil fuel strategy means that Russia will
benefit not merely economically but politically in being
able to promote Russia’s political objectives. What adds to
Russia’s strategic influence over the world’s fossil fuel
resources is that it has recently overtaken Saudi Arabia as
the world’s biggest oil exporter, “Russia,
which has now surpassed Saudi Arabia as the world's largest
exporter of oil ..” (W Joseph Stroupe ‘Russia spins global
energy spider's web’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH25Dj01.html
August 25, 2006). In order
to appreciate Russia’s domination of the fossil fuel
industry, it should be noted that Russia not merely exports
more oil than Saudi Arabia, it also exports vast amounts of
gas. Gazprom, which is on course to become the world’s
biggest company, produces about as much gas as Saudi Arabia
does oil. “Gazprom had a gas output of 547.2 billion cubic
meters in 2005. This is equivalent to 9.42 million barrels
of oil a day, or the daily extraction output in Saudi
Arabia, the world's biggest oil supplier.” (Pepe Escobar ‘The
Gazprom Nation’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HE26Ag01.html
May 26, 2006).[13]
Since the early 1970s America has had a strategic
relationship with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis agreed to sell
their oil only in dollars in return for American military
protection. The use of the dollar as the world’s reserve
currency has brought immense financial benefits to America.
However, as a result of Putin’s fossil fuel strategy, Russia
has gained greater strategic influence over the world’s
fossil fuels than Saudi Arabia.
Russia is now the world’s energy superpower not Saudi Arabia
nor even Saudi Arabian dominated OPEC.
“Resource-rich Russia's mounting global leverage with
the world's other producing states and with the powerhouse
economies of the East, and its profound political affinity
with such producers and key consumer states, far outweighs
the influence of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC).” (W Joseph Stroupe ‘Russia spins global
energy spider's web’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH25Dj01.html
August 25, 2006). In the
future, Russia’s influence over the world’s fossil fuels is
due to become even more pronounced.
Russia’s dramatic rise as the world’s most powerful fossil
fuel, power broker is leading to a resurgence in its global
political power - much of which has been obtained
unobtrusively at America’s expense. Whilst America’s Jewish
elite have forced America into an almost exclusive
preoccupation with the Middle East to boost the Jewish
state’s regional supremacy, Putin has been busy implementing
a highly productive fossil fuel strategy around the world to
regain Russia’s global influence. Whereas the Bush regime
has been squandering vast amounts of financial, and human,
resources on military catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq,
almost as if it believes its supply of dollar is limitless,
Putin has been carefully husbanding his country’s resources
to maximize their economic and political potential. Whilst
the Bush regime has been belligerently challenging, if not
attacking, virtually all the world’s major military powers
from Russia to China and Iran, Putin has been using his
country’s fossil fuels to nurture alliances with many
countries in order to promote Russia’s national interests.
America’s belligerence towards Russia does not make the
slightest economic or political sense. It should be
cultivating good terms with Russia to enable its energy
companies to make vast profits from exploiting Russia’s
fossil fuel resources. It is impossible to believe that a
co-operative relationship between the two governments would
not have benefited both countries enormously. It has to be
suggested that the primary reason for America’s belligerence
towards Putin is that America’s Jewish neocons are outraged
that Putin managed to prevent Russia’s Jewish oligarchs from
ransacking the country’s resources. They are far more intent
on effecting regime change in Russia than they are with
developing good relationships with him to exploit Russia’s
natural resources. Here then is a clear difference in the
political objectives of America’s wasp elite and America’s
ruling Jewish elite. America’s Jewish rulers aren’t in the
slightest bit bothered about American fossil fuel companies
losing out on vast profits in Russia as long as they are
able to continue attacking the Putin regime in the hope of
restoring to power their ethnic criminal colleagues who once
controlled Russia’s resources. If there was a chance that
America’s Jewish oligarchs might succeed in helping their
Russian counterparts back into power then such belligerence
might make sense but Putin is so popular in Russia that
there is virtually no chance of this happening. All that the
Jewish neocons’ criticisms of Putin achieve in Russia is to
remind the Russian people of the intolerable conditions they
had to endure whilst Russia’s Jewish criminals were
ransacking their country. The vast majority of the Russian
people do not want these criminals back in their country but
America’s Jewish oligarchs seem to have a compulsive need to
continue supporting their Russian counterparts even though
they will never regain power and are dramatically damaging
America’s fossil fuel companies. And the longer America’s
neocon oligarchs persist with their outrageous accusations
against Putin – such as his involvement in the murder of
Russian dissidents – the more damage they inflict on
America’s multi-national oil corporations.
America’s Jewish fundamentalists have basically provoked
Putin into marginalizing America’s energy industry to such
an extent it is being pushed towards extinction! “In
virtually all cases, the interests of the West and of its
multinational oil companies and big Western financial
institutions are being minimized and/or pushed out as the
global trend of nationalization, by one means or another, of
the oil-and-gas sector picks up speed. That is occurring in
Russia, in Central Asia, the Middle East and in Latin
America. Within virtually all such regimes the lines of
separation between the top levels of political leadership
and the directorship of key corporations and industries are
not only blurred but are being obliterated. The
multinational oil companies of the West are being
marginalized as a direct result.” (W Joseph Stroupe ‘Russia
spins global energy spider's web’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH25Dj01.html
Aug 25, 2006).
These American-Russian events are almost an exact replica of
events transpiring between America and Iran. The same Jewish
neocons pursuing the same regime-change policy towards both
Iran and Russia. These Jewish policies are doing severe, and
perhaps even irreparable, damage to America’s gigantic
energy companies. The greater the Jewish neocons’ lies and
denunciations of the Iranian/Russian governments, the more
Iranians/Russians resist regime-change.
The Iranian people have seen what America’s Jewish inspired
policies have done in Iraq whilst the Russian people have
seen what the Jewish neocons did to their country during
Yeltsin’s reign, and neither wants to suffer again because
of these Jewish criminals stirring up such self-serving
hatred.
5. The Rise of Iran’s Geostrategic Value.
During Pahlavi’s reign,
Iran possessed considerable geostrategic value which America
was all too willing to exploit and enhance. There are a
range of reasons for
proposing that Iran’s geostrategic value is even greater now
than it was then.
The Increase in Iran’s Geostrategic Value: America in the
Middle East.
Ever since the Pentagon and New York (P-NY) bombings
America’s Jewish neocon foreign policies have inadvertently
boosted Iran’s political and military power. Firstly,
America’s invasion of Afghanistan resulted in the overthrow
of the Taliban - an implacable enemy of Shia Iran. Secondly,
America invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein – Iran’s
biggest adversary. If this wasn’t enough, the American
neocons tried to replace Saddam with another dictator -
Ahmed Chalabi – later exposed as an Iranian double agent.
Thirdly, the coalition provisional authority set up after
the invasion of Iraq dismantled the Iraqi military thereby
leaving the country virtually powerless against Iran.
Fourthly, the Bush regime was eventually pressured into
accepting national elections in Iraq which allowed Iraqi
Shiites, allies of Iran, to take a dominant role in the
Iraqi government. Fifthly, after the assassination of Rafiq
Hariri, America forced Syria to remove its army from the
Lebanon thereby giving default power to Hezbollah which has
been trained, armed, and financed, by Iran. Sixthly, the
Bush administration insisted on free elections in Palestine
only for the Palestinians to elect Hamas - another Iranian
ally.
So, in a matter of a few, short years America’s neocon
foreign policies boosted Iran’s power in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Lebanon, and Palestine. “So far the administration's magic
potion for democracy in the Middle East has produced a
majority for Hamas and its Islamist leadership, a sworn
enemy of Israel and ally of Iran, in the Palestinian
territories, and an alarming election sally by the long
banned Muslim Brotherhood, another sworn enemy of Israel and
friend of Iran, in Egypt. Hezbollah, an adjunct of Iran in
Lebanon, is also comfortably installed in the parliament in
Beirut.” (Arnaud de Borchgrave ‘Iraq, Iran unintended
results’
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060217-115704-7804r
Feb. 17th 2006). They have even boosted the
power of hardliners within Iranian politics.
The Increase in Iran’s Common Interests with America.
America has always shared some common interests with Iran.
Firstly, developing Iran’s fossil fuel reserves. If America
had allowed its multinational energy corporations to exploit
Iran’s vast fossil fuel reserves, both countries would have
enjoyed a huge economic bonanza. America’s oil corporations
would have made huge profits - profits that would have
helped to boost the American economy. The profits made by
the Iranians would have enabled them to buy American goods
and weapons – instead of the current situation where
America’s ruling Jewish elite manipulates America into
giving away American weapons to the Jewish state for free.
Secondly, developing Iran’s uranium deposits.
Thirdly, stemming drug production in Afghanistan. There are
a huge number of heroin addicts in Iran – just as there are
in America. The drug trade damages Iranian society just as
much as it does American society.
“Like the fact that no nation fights harder against the
Afghan drug trade than our axis-of-evil enemy Iran, while
our «staunch ally» Pakistan lends support to the trade and
to the Taliban as well.” (Ann Jones ‘What Are They Smoking?’
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=9933
October 30, 2006). America’s occupation of Afghanistan has
caused the production of heroin to soar.[14]
America’s catastrophic foreign policies in the greater
Middle East have not merely inadvertently boosted Iran’s
geostrategic value, they have also established new common
interests between the two countries. As a result of its
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, America has common
interests with Iran in establishing political stability in
these two countries - which would also help to stabilize the
Middle East as a whole.
The Increase in Iran’s Geostrategic Value: Central Asia.
The discovery of vast oil and gas deposits in Central Asia
boosted Iran’s geostrategic value. The shortest, quickest,
and cheapest, route for the export of these fuels is through
pipelines across Iran to the country’s Persian gulf ports.
“Geographically Iran makes the shortest and the most
economical route for Kazakhstan’s oil pipeline from the
Caspian Sea, north, to the Persian Gulf south with all the
oil-tankers traffic.” (Elias Akleh ‘War on Iran: Unleashing
Armageddon in the Middle East’
http://www.countercurrents.org/Iran-akleh091106.htm
November 09, 2006). The same is also true as regards
Turkmenistan and, since America’s invasion, Afghanistan.
“Afghanistan is especially important to Washington because
it is the only plausible way to bring natural gas down from
Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. The Turkmenistan
alternative is being used to push Delhi away from any
flirtation with an Iranian pipeline. As Afghanistan falls
again into substantial chaos, India is being forced to
reconsider, and to seek to draw on Iran's Yadavan fields,
with a pipeline coming down through Pakistani Baluchistan
and over to the Indian border. The turn for the worst in
Afghanistan may explain the sudden warming of relations
between Delhi and Tehran.” (Juan Cole ‘The Iraqization of
Afghanistan’
http://www.juancole.com/2006_09_01_juanricole_archive.html
September 08, 2006).
The Increase in Iran’s Geostrategic Value: Europe.
Europe currently obtains a substantial amount of its fossil
fuels from Russia. Friedmann
Muller, head of the research group Global Issues at the
German Institute for International and Security Affairs
.. “emphasizes that 10 of the
current 25 EU member states depend on Russia for more than
50% of their total natural-gas supplies, and five of them
for 100%. France, Germany and Italy import between 25% and
50% each.” (Pepe Escobar ‘Iran impasse: Make gas, not
bombs’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HE09Ak02.html
May 9, 2006); “At the
consumer end of this (Russian) pipeline system, reliance on
Russian gas is currently 100% in Finland; 99% in Bulgaria;
97% in Slovakia; and 76% in Greece. In volume of Russian gas
consumption, Germany takes most, followed by Italy, Turkey
and France.” (John Helmer ‘Sakhalin gas: Shell loses,
whales win’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HL15Ag01.html
December 15, 2006).
Europe’s imports of Russian fossil fuels will increase
dramatically in the coming decades.
“Europe now depends on Russia for
25% of its gas, a figure set to rise to 70% by 2020 ...”
(David Clark ‘Putin's power struggle’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,1959441,00.html
November 29, 2006). But Russia is also offering to
sell more fossil fuels to Asia which means it is unlikely to
be able to meet all of Europe’s energy needs. This boosts
Iran’s geostrategic value. “In
short, Russia by itself will not solve Europe's gas thirst,
especially because Russia also wants to export heavily to
both China and Japan. So Europe will have to find the gas it
needs somewhere else - North Africa and the Caribbean, for
instance. But most of all it will need Iran.” (Pepe Escobar
‘Iran impasse: Make gas, not bombs’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HE09Ak02.html
May 9, 2006).
The Increase in Iran’s Geostrategic Value: India and
Pakistan.
In the 1990s the Jewish state developed a strategic alliance
with India because of their mutual animosity towards
Pakistan.[15]
The Jewish state and India have been collaborating to
upgrade their nuclear weapons, and civil nuclear power,
capabilities. In stark contrast, America’s geostrategic
interests are to keep the nuclear rivalry between Pakistan
and India in balance to ensure nuclear war doesn’t break out
between them. However, such is the power of the Jewish
state, and its political agents in America, that it has
recently succeeded in fooling the Bush administration into
proposing a nuclear agreement with India which will
considerably boost India’s nuclear threat to Pakistan. “C
Raja Mohan, strategic-affairs editor with the Indian
Express, has described the US legislation removing
restrictions of nuclear trade as India's «nuclear
liberation». It «has not only freed India from three and a
half decades of nuclear bondage, but also met two of India's
very important strategic objectives - breaking the nuclear
parity with Pakistan and establishing strategic equivalence
with China».” (Sudha Ramachandran ‘India's
'nuclear liberation'
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HL12Df01.html
December 12, 2006).
The Jewish state, and its Jewish political allies in
America, persuaded the Bush regime to offer to legitimize
India’s nuclear capabilities in order to deter India from
supporting the construction of an oil pipeline from Iran
through Pakistan to India.
“Contrary to the assertions of Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh, it is widely believed that during the nuclear
bargaining, he did make three major concessions to Bush.
Secondly, Singh conceded to terminate the $4 billion «Peace
Pipeline» project, which was to have delivered natural gas
from Iran, across Pakistan, to India which was slated to be
operational by 2011. And Thirdly, Singh has demoted the main
architect and proponent of the Peace Pipeline, his Union
Petroleum Minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar to the post of Sports
and Youth Affairs.” (Ingmar Lee ‘Bush's Destabilizing Nuke
Deal with India’
http://www.counterpunch.org/lee05082006.html May 8, 2006).[16]
India, however, badly needs to acquire vast quantities of
energy. It can do this by increasing civil nuclear power
with American help or by importing fossil fuels from
Kazakhstan, Iran, or Russia. Given
the chaotic situation in Afghanistan, which discourages the
construction of a fossil fuel pipeline from Kazakhstan
through Afghanistan to India, India has had to look more
seriously at Iran’s fossil fuels. No matter how much Bush
believes his nuclear deal with India has deterred India from
supporting the construction of an Iranian oil pipeline,
India is unwilling to miss out on this important supply of
fossil fuels. “Indian PM Manmohan Singh called up
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and stressed the need
to fast track the pipeline project, which had seemed dead
earlier this summer. (Last spring the pro-Iranian minister
of petroleum had been fired, and some assumed it had been in
part as a result of American pressure). By deserting
Afghanistan to run off to war in Iraq, Bush ensured that it
would risk falling again into social turbulence, and thus
helped seal the fate of the Turkmenistan pipeline through
Herat (wouldn't the Taliban just blow it up?). In turn, that
may have ensured that Iran would be able to sidestep US
sanctions by dealing, not only with China, but also with
India. And that may mean that Bush let the big fish get away
by getting bogged down in Iraq, which is turning out not to
be any prize for him, either.” (Juan Cole ‘The Iraqization
of Afghanistan’
http://www.juancole.com/2006_09_01_juanricole_archive.html
September 08, 2006).
Putin has recently offered to finance and build the
pipeline. “Whatever the West may
have thought about it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has
already spectacularly pre-empted this weekend's Group of
Eight (G8) summit in St Petersburg with his own bit of
Pipelineistan news. Putin announced in Shanghai on June 15
2006 that «Gazprom is ready to support the construction of a
gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan and India with financial
resources and technology». He was referring to a fabled US$7
billion, 2,775-kilometer, 10-year old project - an Iranian
idea - which should now be finished by 2009, developed by
Gazexport, a Gazprom subsidiary. As a result, by 2015 both
India and Pakistan should be receiving at least 70 million
cubic meters of natural gas a year.” (Pepe Escobar ‘Russia
and Iran lead the new energy game’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HG14Dj03.html
Jul 14, 2006). What Russia might lose by not piping
its own fossil fuels to India, it can more than make up for
by financing, building and owning, this new pipeline.
“Another dimension that has gained salience is Russia's
emerging position as an energy superpower as the world's
largest gas producer and second-largest oil producer and
therefore its importance to India's energy security.
Russia's increasing influence in Central Asia and its
dominant control of the pipeline routes implies that only a
well-crafted energy partnership will enable India to access
those oil and gas reserves.” (Zorawar Daulet Singh ‘Reviving
the India-Russia partnership’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HK14Df01.html
November 14, 2006).
As the legislation for America’s nuclear deal with India
goes through congress, India continues to struggle to ensure
that the Bush regime does not obligate it to oppose the
construction of the peace pipeline.
“The controversial demand that
India dovetails its Iran policy to US concerns over its
nuclear program has been made a non-binding clause in the
legislation.” (Sudha Ramachandran ‘India's 'nuclear
liberation'
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HL12Df01.html
December 12, 2006).
The construction of the peace pipeline would do much to
ensure harmonious relations between India and Pakistan
deterring them from embarking on a nuclear war. America is
abandoning its own national interests by opposing this
pipeline in order to promote Jewish hostilities towards Iran
(and Pakistan).
Clearly Iran has a high geostrategic value if it can help to
avert nuclear war between India and Pakistan.[17]
The Increase in Iran’s Geostrategic Value: China.
China depends heavily on Iranian fossil fuels being shipped
to China which are vulnerable to American interdiction.
However, there are plans for a pipeline from Iran through
Pakistan and India and then on to China which would evade
American military intervention. This would enhance Iran’s
geostrategic value.
The Increase in Iran’s Geostrategic Value: Russia.
The primary reason for the rise in Iran’s geostrategic value
is Russia’s dramatic emergence as the world’s fossil fuel
superpower. This can be appreciated at the most basic level
in terms of the supply of fossil fuels to global oil
markets. The more fossil fuel reserves that Russia ties up
in long term, state to state, contracts, the more important
that Iranian supplies of fossil fuels will become to the
world’s oil markets – assuming, that is, that Iran chooses
to place these resources on the global market rather than
copying Russia and tying them up in long term contracts.
As Russia’s geostrategic value has risen, Iran’s ties with
Russia has helped to increase its geostrategic value whilst
the strategic value of countries like Saudi Arabia have
declined because they have no such ties with Russia. It
needs to be stressed that Iran’s ties with Russia have been
brought about primarily because of Jewish-induced American
efforts to ostracize Iran from the rest of the world. “In my
opinion, it is important to allow more flexibility for an
evolving Turkish-Iranian relationship, especially since Iran
is totally isolated from the international community.
Because links between Turkey and Iran are currently being
opposed internationally, this creates greater incentives for
Iran to engage in a relationship with Russia which could
threaten the viability and independence of the entire
region. And for this reason, flexibility on this issue has
strategic significance.” (Zbigniew Brzezinski ‘The Caucasus
and New Geo-Political Realities: How the West Can Support
the Region’
http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/52_folder/52_articles/52_caucasus.html
March 26, 1997).
Conclusion.
Iran’s geostrategic stature is much more substantial now
than it was
during Pahlavi’s reign. Conjecturally, it could further
boost its geostrategic value by forming an alliance either
with Russia, the world’s fossil fuel superpower, or with
America, the world’s economic and military hyperpower. Both
Russia and America would benefit enormously from an alliance
with Iran. Iran’s geostrategic importance is such that it
can decide whether it wants to boost the global power of
either, or both, countries.
6. The Benefits of an American Alliance with Iran.
Although the Bush regime expresses loathing towards Iran’s
government and refuses to talk directly to it about matters
of mutual interest, there are reasons to believe America
could benefit immensely from an alliance with Iran. It would
boost American influence in many areas around the world.
The Benefits of an American Alliance with Iran: Middle East.
As a result of America’s catastrophic foreign policies since
the Pentagon and New York (P-NY) bombings, Iran has acquired
significant common interests with America. Iran could
endeavor to reduce these common interests by undermining
America’s occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq or it could
seek to enhance them by contributing to peace and stability
in these two countries.
Despite Bush’s ingratitude towards Iran over the help it had
given America, Iran has continued to aid America in Iraq.
“This is hardly surprising, given Khamenei's open admission
that continuing instability in Iraq was «harmful to everyone
in the region». From Iran's vantage point, it has played a
constructive role toward the new Iraq, reflected in
bilateral trade, energy and other agreements signed between
Tehran and Baghdad, as well as in Iran's mediation role in
intra-Shi'ite power struggles. Complaining that the West,
and the US in particular, has gone unappreciative of Iran's
constructive behavior, such as when Iran intervened in the
US-Mehdi Army confrontation in 2004 by urging Muqtada to
desist from further action, Iran's new, and considerably
much tougher, approach is that it may have no choice but to
play a rejectionist card with regard to foreign occupation.”
(Kaveh L Afrasiabi ‘Titans
square up for clash in Iraq’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HL01Ak05.html
December 01, 2006).
America’s traditional Arab allies have been Sunni states
such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. However, America’s
rash interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have
inadvertently given birth to a new political phenomenon in
the Middle East. “In December 2004 King Abdullah of Jordan
famously described this emerging alliance as a “Shia
crescent”, a synonym that outraged Tehran but spoke
tellingly of Sunni Arab fears about the ambitions of Iran to
become a regional superpower capable of facing up to Israel.
Although the inclusion of the Sunni Hamas movement in the
alliance weakens the notion of a Shia crescent, the idea is
not entirely fanciful.” (Nicholas Blandford ‘Shia Crescent
Pierces Heart Of Arab World’ The Times July 17, 2006).[18]
In the short term at least, it is highly unlikely that the
Shia crescent is going to disappear particularly since its
leaders Ahmadinejad in Iran, Moktada al-Sadr in Iraq, and
Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon, are far more popular in the
Sunni Arab world than Sunni heads of state. So either
America accommodates itself to the Shia crescent and
exploits the assets it offers or America embarks with the
help of Sunni Arab countries on an even more catastrophic
regional war to crush it.
The Benefits of an American Alliance with Iran: Central
Asia.
Given that the cheapest route for the export of fossil fuels
from
Central Asia is across Iran then the co-operation of
American energy corporations with Iran in building these
pipelines could have two beneficial consequences for
America. Firstly, it could significantly undercut Russia’s
political power resulting from its ownership of the Eurasian
pipeline network and, secondly, it could boost the amount of
oil placed in global markets thereby countering the effects
of Russia’s reliance on long term contracts.
If America chose Iran as its primary geostrategic asset in
the Middle East and Central Asia there would be much less
need for it to be concerned about
Kazakhstan, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
The Benefits of an American Alliance with Iran: India and
Pakistan.
If America had an alliance with Iran it could encourage the
construction of a peace pipeline from Iran to India and
Pakistan that would bind these two nuclear powers together
and thereby lessen the chances of a nuclear war between
them. This would considerably boost America’s geostrategic
interests. There would then be no reason for it to break the
nuclear proliferation treaty by legitimizing India’s nuclear
industry.
The Benefits of an American Alliance with Iran: China.
If American energy companies had a close relationship with
Iran this would give America an even greater grip over
China. “Controlling Iran leads to the containment of China
(America’s greatest competitor), who depends heavily on
Iranian oil to satisfy its growing hunger for energy.”
(Elias Akleh ‘War on Iran: Unleashing Armageddon in the
Middle East’
http://www.countercurrents.org/Iran-akleh091106.htm
November 09, 2006).
China is highly vulnerable to an oil blockade by the
American navy. It has sought to diminish this vulnerability
by constructing an oil pipeline from Kazakhstan.
It is seeking to further diminish this vulnerability
by concluding an agreement with Russia to build pipelines to
China. It is also encouraging the construction of a pipeline
from Iran, through Pakistan and India, to China. However, if
American energy companies were operating in Iran then
America might regain some of its leverage over China by
influencing the amount of fossil fuels that Iran was pumping
to China.
The Benefits of an American Alliance with Iran: Russia.
If the Bush regime allowed American energy companies to
exploit Iran’s fossil fuels this would create huge economic
advantages for both America and Iran. However, the most
critical benefit of such cooperation would be geostrategic -
balancing
Russia’s recent emergence as the world’s fossil fuel
superpower. Iran has benefited considerably from Russia’s
rise as the world’s dominant fossil fuel broker. However, if
America succeeded in developing an alliance with Iran it
could balance Russia’s fossil fuel eminence.
Firstly, and most basically, if
American energy companies were allowed to exploit Iranian
fossil fuels this would boost Iranian fossil fuel production
thereby creating a balance to Putin’s long term, state to
state, fossil fuel contracts.
Secondly, if America’s nuclear industry agreed to build
nuclear power plants in Iran this would reap huge economic
benefits for these companies, and the American economy. It
would also free up more fossil fuels for export rather than
being consumed in the country. This would boost Iran’s
ability to compete with Russia.
Thirdly, if American energy companies were allowed to build
fossil fuel pipelines from the Caspian sea across Iran then
Russia would lose much of the political leverage it has
gained through its ownership of Eurasia’s pipeline network.
“As a result, if Washington ever lifted its trade embargo on
Iran, its territory could be used as the most obvious
transit route for the delivery of oil and natural gas from
the Caspian countries to global markets, especially in
Europe and Japan.” (Michael T. Klare ‘Putting Iran in Great
Power Context’
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=9150
June 16, 2006); “Gennady
Yefstafiyev, a former general in Russia's Foreign
Intelligence Service, said, «The US's long-term goals in
Iran are obvious: to engineer the downfall of the current
regime; to establish control over Iran's oil and gas; and to
use its territory as the shortest route for the
transportation of hydrocarbons under US control from the
regions of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea, bypassing
Russia and China. This is not to mention Iran's intrinsic
military and strategic significance.»” (F William Engdahl ‘The
US's geopolitical nightmare’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HE09Ad01.html
May 9, 2006).
If America had an alliance with Iran it could seriously
challenge Russian power over the world’s fossil fuel
resources thereby consolidating American global power.
“The only discernible result of US sanctions on Iran has
been to delay Iran's development of its energy resources.
Iran's oil and natural-gas reserves equal those of Saudi
Arabia. The US has obstructed the development of at least
two known large oilfields in Iran (Azadegan and Yadavaran),
which together could have proven reserves exceeding 35
billion barrels and produce more than a million barrels per
day of crude at their expected peak; has hindered oil and
gas development in the Caspian Sea by playing the countries
of the region against one another; has vetoed the
construction of a Caspian pipeline through Iran (even though
it would cost only about half the price of alternative
pipelines); and has opposed Iranian gas pipelines to
Pakistan and India, even offering India nuclear deals in
exchange for not buying Iranian gas.” (Hossein Askari ‘Why
sanctions on Iran will fail’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HI19Ak01.html
September 19, 2006).
The Benefits of an American Alliance with Iran: Russia and
Europe.
Over the last few years the Bush regime has tried to foist
two adverse policies upon European governments concerning
their fossil fuel imports.
Firstly, it has been trying to persuade European countries
to adopt a common policy over Russia’s export of fossil
fuels to Europe. Obviously if European governments acted
together as a single consumer this would give them much
greater advantages when negotiating with Russia over its
energy exports than if they all individually strike
bilateral deals with Russia. But America has failed to
persuade Europe to act in concert and, as a consequence,
Russia is doing deals with each European country separately
to its great financial and political benefit.[19]
Putin has already concluded a major energy deal with
Germany, “Putin underlined the
strategic significance of the Russian-German partnership by
saying, «We are linked by the common goals of building a
unified and prosperous Europe, dedication to the principles
of building a just world order, and the aim of effectively
countering international challenges and threats.»” (M K
Bhadrakumar ‘Russian energy: Europe's pride, US's
envy’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HJ14Ag01.html
October 14, 2006). Putin got the deal he wanted
because it allows Russian companies to play a role in
Germany’s domestic energy markets. “And
last Thursday, Russia's Gazprom and Germany's E.ON AG signed
a framework agreement to swap assets in production, trade
and sale of natural gas and relating to power industry.
Gazprom will acquire the German company's stakes in gas
companies in Hungary as well as in regional electricity and
gas companies in return for Russia providing access to E.ON
AG to Russia's Yuzhno-Russkoye deposits in the Tyumen
region, which holds more than a trillion cubic meters of
natural gas and will be the source for the US$10.5 billion
North European Gas Pipeline project.” (M K Bhadrakumar ‘The
rise and rise of Russia’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HG20Ag01.html
July 20, 2006).
What made this deal even sweeter for Putin is that it
punishes Poland for its slavish devotion to the Bush regime.
“Sikorski was voicing Warsaw's complaint that German
Chancellor Angela Merkel ignored Polish pleas to scrap the
US$10.5 billion trans-Baltic North European Pipeline project
with Russia, which was negotiated by her predecessor Gerhard
Schroeder - a project that would cement Berlin's energy ties
to Moscow but bypass Poland and the Baltic states. Planned
in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
the gas-pipeline project was intended to reduce Russia's
dependence on having to transit through such countries as
Belarus and Ukraine to export its gas to Europe. The
1,200-kilometer line would transport gas from Russia's
Baltic Sea coast through international waters offshore
Poland and the Baltic states to a landfall in Griefswald on
Germany's coast.” (M K Bhadrakumar ‘Germany,
Russia redraw Europe's frontiers’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HE03Ad01.html
May 3, 2006).
Hungary and Italy have also concluded deals with Russia.
“Meanwhile, Russia is also going ahead with forging
bilateral energy deals with European countries. An agreement
was signed on June 22 with Hungary for the extension of
Russia's Blue Stream gas pipeline to Central Europe. Italy
has dealt an even more severe blow to Washington by
concluding a significant energy deal bilaterally with Russia
on the eve of the G8 summit.” (M K Bhadrakumar ‘The
G8 summit: A chronicle of wasted time’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HG06Dj01.html
July 6, 2006).
Even worse for Europe is that if Putin succeeds in buying up
some of the oil pipelines that export Iran’s fossil fuels to
Europe then Russia will have even more leverage over
Europe’s fossil fuel imports.
“Significantly, on January 23, the Russian daily Kommersant
reported that Armenia, sandwiched between Iran and Georgia,
had agreed to sell a 45% control of its Iran-Armenia gas
pipeline to Russia's Gazprom. The Russian daily added, «If
Russia takes over this [Iran-Armenia] pipeline, Russia will
be able to control transit of Iranian gas to Georgia,
Ukraine and Europe.»” (F William Engdahl ‘A high-risk
game of nuclear chicken’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA31Ak02.html
Jan 31, 2006). If Russia acquires these pipelines
then even if there is a future reconciliation between Iran
and America/Europe, it might be too late to reverse the
shift in the balance of power between America/Europe and
Russia.
Worse still for Europe is that Russia’s negotiating position
with the European continent is growing stronger since it
started constructing oil pipelines to the Pacific. It has
made it obvious that if Europe is not willing to buy
Russia’s fossil fuels on its terms then it will sell them to
China, Japan and other Asian countries.
“It has threatened Europe with
accelerated diversification of its exports to the East if
Europe fails to open its markets to rapidly advancing
Russian investment and acquisition of downstream assets.” (W
Joseph Stroupe ‘Part 2: Corporate gigantism’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HI26Ag01.html
September 26, 2006).
The second policy America has
pressured Europe into adopting is reducing purchases of
Iranian fossil fuels. For European countries this policy has
serious negative implications but it is even more
self-destructive in combination with the first policy.
America is demanding that Europe limits its imports of
fossil fuels from both Russia and Iran. It might be possible
for Europe to implement one of these policies but to
implement both at the same time would be a nightmare.
If America had a strategic alliance with Iran then the
Europeans could have used the supply of Iranian fossil fuels
as a counterweight to resist excessive Russian demands
resulting from its increasingly monopolistic position over
energy supplies to Europe. This has not been possible
because of America’s hostility to Iran.
As a consequence, Europe is
undermining its own interests by failing to encourage
imports of Iranian fossil fuels. “Enno Harks, a senior
fellow on energy and resources at the German Institute for
International and Security Affairs, and Friedmann Muller,
head of the research group Global Issues at the same
institute, were both in Tehran recently for an energy
conference. Their studies and conclusions are important to
understanding what's at stake in the convoluted relationship
between the European Union and Iran and how ostracizing and
sanctioning Iran may turn out to be yet another case of the
EU shooting itself in the foot.” (Pepe Escobar ‘Iran
impasse: Make gas, not bombs’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HE09Ak02.html
May 9, 2006); “It's going
to be an extremely tricky affair. The EU is actively trying
to explore deals with Central Asia - with both Kazakhstan
and Turkmenistan - and also with Iran, bypassing Russia via
the South Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. The key project in
this Pipelineistan node is the proposed trans-Caspian
gasoduct - which would in effect break Russia's monopoly on
transit of Central Asian gas.” (Pepe Escobar ‘The
Gazprom Nation’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HE26Ag01.html
May 26, 2006).
America is trying to deter European countries from
exploiting Iranian fossil fuels but all that this policy
achieves is undermining Europe’s negotiating position with
Russia. It is in effect driving European countries into an
even closer embrace with the Russians.
The Benefits of an American Alliance with Iran: Russia and
China.
Iran could play an even more valuable role on America’s
behalf in confronting the growing geostrategic significance
of the Asian continent i.e. the increasing political and
military co-operation between Russia and China. But
America’s Jewish-induced hostility to Iran is pushing Iran
even further into collaboration with these countries at
America’s expense. Russia and China seem to appreciate
Iran’s geostrategic assets far more than the Bush regime
which is blinded by Jewish anti-American propaganda.
America could use Iran as a vital counterweight to both
Russia and China but, since it has chosen to throw away this
asset, China and Russia are using Iran to boost their power
at America’s expense. Not only has America forsaken Iranian
help in boosting its global interests, its hostility towards
Iran is driving the country into a closer relationship with
Russia and China which will enable these three countries to
increase their global power at the expense of America and
Europe. America’s treatment of Iran is self destructive –
driving the country into the camp of its biggest rivals –
both of whom America is also antagonizing! It is bizarre,
and highly revealing, that the only country in the world
which America is not going out of its way to antagonize and
abuse is the Jewish state. America’s hostility towards
virtually every country around the world is in stark
contrast to its grovelling subservience to the Jewish state.
7. The Greater Iran’s Strategic Value the more that America
treats it with Contempt.
Iran’s geostrategic stature has soared as Putin has
transformed Russia into a fossil fuel superpower. And yet
the Bush regime’s hostility towards Iran (and Russia) has
increased dramatically.
America is still faced by the same choice with which it was
confronted after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. It can
either try to woo Iran because of its geostrategic
importance or it can continue its belligerent policies to
isolate Iran from what remains of the American-allied world
in order to bring about regime change.
Michael Klare mentions some
of the temptations of the latter approach – and in doing so
highlights Iran’s strategic importance.
“For Washington, the replacement
of the clerical government in Tehran with a U.S.-friendly
regime would represent a colossal, threefold accomplishment:
It would eliminate a major threat to America's continued
dominance of the Persian Gulf, open up the world's number
two oil-and-gas supplier to American energy firms, and
greatly diminish Chinese and Russian influence in the
greater Gulf region.” (Michael T. Klare ‘Putting Iran in
Great Power Context’
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=9150
June 16, 2006). However, America’s regime change tactic is
self defeating since the more propaganda pressure America
applies to Iran, the more it alienates the Iranian people,
thereby reducing the likely success of regime change.
Iranians still remember that in 1953 America destroyed their
democratic system and imposed Pahlavi’s brutal regime upon
them. It is true that many Iranians born after the Islamic
revolution admired America in many ways but since America’s
utterly barbaric occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq they’ve
lost all respect for it. “While most Iranians welcomed the
elimination of Saddam, the horrors inflicted and unleashed
by US military forces next door have left many of the old
rich in Tehran with the realization that the dream of
American intervention may turn into a nightmare. My trip
convinced me that support for US intervention does not exist
to any significant degree but rather resides solely in the
minds of those in the West who have had their impressions of
Iran shaped by pro-Shah expatriates who have been absent
from the country for more than a quarter-century.” (Scott
Ritter ‘The Case for Engagement’
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061120/ritter November
03, 2006). The overwhelming majority of Iranians bitterly
resent America telling them they cannot develop civil
nuclear power. They even find it unreasonable to be told
they can’t have nuclear weapons - like their neighbours. “The
country is not only ringed by atomic states (India,
Pakistan, China, Russia, Israel), it also faces a string of
American bases with potential or actual nuclear stockpiles
in Qatar, Iraq, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
Nuclear-armed US aircraft carriers and submarines patrol the
waters off its southern coast.” (Tariq Ali
‘High-Octane Rocket-Rattling Against Tehran Won't Work’
http://www.counterpunch.org/tariq05112006.html
May 11, 2006).
During Pahlavi’s reign Iran had a substantially greater
geostrategic value than the Jewish state. American
politicians appreciated that their national interests were
best served by an alliance with Iran rather than with the
Jewish state. However, since 1967 an American alliance with
Israel became more popular and after 1979 America’s alliance
with Israel became one of its most important in the region.
American Jews thus have a vested interest in denouncing
Iran, discrediting Iran in the eyes of the American public,
to protect America’s alliance with Israel. Overwhelmed by
Jewish propaganda and by Jewish bribes, America’s wasp
politicians have been manipulated into ignoring their
country’s national interests by aligning their foreign
policies with Israel rather than Iran.
Today, the superiority of Iran’s geostrategic value over
that of Israel’ is even greater than it was during Pahlavi’s
time and yet Jewish anti-Iranian propaganda has so poisoned
Americans against Iran that virtually no mainstream
politician advocates talking with Iran let alone forming an
alliance with it. Americans are so blinded by the Jewish
parasites who infect them, they no longer see their own
national interests and make no attempt to woo Iran. The only
way that America could reap the vast geostrategic benefits
of an alliance with Iran is by ridding itself of the Jewish
state’s parasitic influence. America’s Jewish elite
continues to churn out an endless stream of scandalous
accusations against Iran. It must at all costs prevent
Americans from realizing their national interests because
this would lead them to dumping the Jewish state for a far
more fruitful relationship with Iran. Odom outlines the bare
minimum of a new American alliance with Iran .. “the U.S.
must informally cooperate with Iran in areas of shared
interests. Nothing else could so improve our position in the
Middle East. The price for success will include dropping
U.S. resistance to Iran's nuclear weapons program. This will
be as distasteful for U.S. leaders as cutting and running,
but it is no less essential. That's because we do share
vital common interests with Iran. We both want to defeat Al
Qaeda and the Taliban (Iran hates both). We both want
stability in Iraq (Iran will have influence over the Shiite
Iraqi south regardless of what we do, but neither Washington
nor Tehran want chaos). And we can help each other when it
comes to oil: Iran needs our technology to produce more oil,
and we simply need more oil.” (William E. Odom ‘How to cut
and run’
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/latimes527.html
October 31, 2006). Bush’s new secretary of defence
Robert gates once noted Iran’s value to America, “In
a 100-page report for the Council on Foreign Relations,
entitled Iran: Time for a New Approach, written in 2004, he
argued that isolating Teheran was «manifestly harmful to
Washington's interests».” (Kay
Biouki and Harry De Quetteville ‘Iran offers to arm enemies
of Israel with rocket arsenal’ November 12, 2006);
“(Robert Gates) has publicly urged for more than a year that
the U.S. begin direct talks with Iran.” (Seymour M. Hersh
‘The Next Act: Is a damaged Administration less likely to
attack Iran, or more?’
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/061127fa_fact
November 20, 2006).
If the world was a rational place, it would make much more
sense for America to threaten war against the Jewish state
until it abolishes its nuclear weapons rather than America
continuing with its current catastrophic foreign policies
which are leading it inexorably towards a war against Iran.
8. The apparent focus of America’s Foreign Policies on Oil
is a Cover for the pursuit of Global Jewish Interests.
Most liberal and left wing political commentators argue that
America’s foreign policies are almost wholly determined by
the economic interests of the country’s multinational energy
corporations. They believe America invaded Afghanistan and
Iraq to get access to their fossil fuels. Liberal realists
proclaim such policies as legitimate whilst left wingers
denounce them. This article has highlighted the importance
of fossil fuels in global politics. It has assumed that if
American politicians were implementing foreign policies
based on America’s short term national interests then the
promotion of the country’s multinational energy corporations
would be near the top of its agenda. But it has been
concluded that the fossil fuel hypothesis simply does not
explain America’s current foreign policies. These policies
diverge fundamentally from those it would be following if it
intended to maximize the interests of the country’s
multinational energy corporations.
Firstly, America believes in the free market. It shouldn’t
matter to America who owns fossil fuels as long as they are
placed on global markets and prices kept low. If American
energy companies can get involved in the exploration and
production of fossil fuels around the world this is an
additional economic benefit. But clearly, America’s foreign
policies go far beyond protecting the free market. It has
been concerned to ensure that the vast fossil fuel revenues
accumulated by Arab countries is not used to buy weapons to
defend themselves from attack by America’s cuckoo strategic
ally. If America was concerned about its oil industry it
wouldn’t bother what oil producing countries were doing with
their oil revenues but, in reality, all that America is
bothered about is ruining the economies of oil producing
countries which pose a threat to the Jewish state.
Secondly, in 1995 America banned its gigantic multi-national
energy companies from investing in Iran’s fossil fuel
industry. This policy runs counter to America’s economic and
national interests. Indeed, from America’s perspective this
policy makes no sense at all. It was imposed because of
Iran’s alleged terrorist activities. But such a rationale
was absurd. Firstly, America was punishing its own energy
companies for the alleged terrorist activities of another
country. Secondly, because these allegations have never been
substantiated. Thirdly, because of the negligible scale of
the alleged terrorism. And, finally, because the punishment
on American energy companies was completely disproportionate
to the crimes alleged to have been committed. Here was the
world’s greatest economic power banning its gigantic fossil
fuel multi-national corporations from investing in Iran,
thereby throwing away tens of billions of dollars in
profits, just because of unsubstantiated allegations of
Iran’s involvement in minor acts of terrorism. Whilst this
policy blatantly runs counter to the interests of America’s
wasps, it makes perfect sense from the perspective of
America’s ruling Jewish elite which wanted to ensure that
America did not develop a close relationship with Iran which
would undermine its relationship with the Jewish state. It
is not surprising then that it was America’s Jewish ruling
elite which was solely responsible for hyping up terrorist
allegations against Iran.
In the 1970s and the 1980s, the Jewish neocons made
scandalous, fantastical, unsubstantiated allegations that
Russia was developing highly sophisticated, technologically
advanced, weapons of mass destruction against which America
had no defences and that it was also involved in terrorist
activities around the world to promote its interests. After
the collapse of the soviet empire, these Jewish extremists
simply transferred these allegations to Saddam Hussein and
Iraq. They alleged that Saddam had wmds and was funding al
Qaeda to carry out acts of terrorism against American
interests around the world. After the invasion of Iraq and
the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, these lunatics once again
transposed these same accusations to yet another country
i.e. Iran. The belligerent, paranoid, Jewish fundamentalists
who promoted wild, unsubstantiated, accusations of Russian
wmd and who denounced Russia for conspiring to promote
global terrorism, are the same lunatics who, in the 1990s,
made exactly the same allegations against Iraq and who today
are repeating these same allegation against Iran! Before he
became a Jew-ish neocon, Dick Cheney spoke for the interests
of the country’s energy industry when he denounced Clinton’s
ban on American energy companies’ investing in Iran which
had been imposed under pressure from the Jewish lobby.
Thirdly, after the collapse of the Soviet empire, Jewish
oligarchs gained control over the majority of Russia’s
largest industries and proceeded to ransack the country’s
natural resources. During this time virtually no American
Jews, whether in the Jewish lobby, the media, or politics,
made any criticism of these scandalous events. However,
since Putin routed the worst of Russia’s Jewish oligarchs,
American Jews have embarked on a massive media campaign to
denounce Putin’s democratic credentials in the hope of
bringing about regime change thereby restoring the criminal
Jewish oligarchs to power. The consequence of this torrent
of Jewish abuse towards Putin has been that Putin has given
no contracts to America’s multi-national energy corporations
to exploit Russia’s fossil fuel resources. “Plainly
speaking, Gazprom's decision on Shtokman implies that as of
today there are no major plans on the anvil in the Russian
energy sector aimed at the US market. This is a dismal
legacy for the Bush administration, which is supposed to be
tied to the US oil industry by the umbilical cord.” (M K
Bhadrakumar ‘Russian
energy: Europe's pride, US's envy’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HJ14Ag01.html
October 14, 2006). Yet
again, America’s Jewish fundamentalists have pushed America
into acting against its own interests for the benefit of a
Jewish elite which believes it is entitled to rule Russia.
Yet again, the parallels between the Bush regime’s attitude
toward Iran and its attitude towards Russia are stark. Bush
has shown little but belligerence towards both countries
even though it is in America’s interests to treat them as
allies who will allow America’s multi-national fossil fuel
companies to exploit their fossil fuels. In both cases,
Bush’s belligerence has resulted in America’s energy
companies being unable to exploit these country’s fossil
fuels. In both cases, America’s Jewish elite, in conjunction
with the Jewish dominated media and the Jewish lobby, have
made scandalous, entirely fictitious, accusations against
both countries for allegedly acquiring wmds and conspiring
to promote global terrorism when there has been not the
slightest evidence for such allegations. In both cases,
Jewish propaganda has resulted in America’s energy companies
losing out on highly lucrative energy deals.
Fourthly, the belief that it is possible for a country to
invade another speckled with fossil fuel facilities in order
to steal its resources is absurd. Even the most avaricious
politicians, as long as they are sane and rational, cannot
fail to appreciate that sending Bulls to guard china shops
is self-defeating. “.. the failure in Iraq where, as Anthony
Cordesman, the US strategist and supporter of the war,
recently observed: “we essentially used a bull to liberate a
china shop”.” (David Gardner ‘Misplaying
the Islamic power game’
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ee3f892c-289e-11db-a2c1-0000779e2340.html
August 10 2006).[20]
Fighting wars in the middle of a country with a large number
of fossil fuel facilities and an extensive network of gas
and oil pipelines is not merely irrational but insane.
In what must be one of the most predicable outcomes in
modern history, America’s invasion of Iraq has resulted in
less oil being exported from that country than during
Saddam’s time. What is more, the amount of oil that America
has expended in invading and occupying Iraq is probably not
that much different from the amount of oil it was hoping to
steal from Iraq. The cost of invading Iraq has been far in
excess of how much it would have spent buying oil from Iraq
if it had not invaded the country.
America’s energy companies were not in favour of the
invasion of Iraq. It is quite true that some have profited
considerably from the rise in fossil fuel prices as a result
of the chaos brought about by America’s two invasions but if
they had had a motive for invading it would have been to
keep down the price of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel producing
countries/companies do not like high oil prices. High prices
may provide a short term bonanza, a profits’ windfall, but
over the long term they are against the interests of the
fossil fuel industry since they speed up the switch to
alternative energy. Over the last few decades Saudi Arabia
has deliberately kept global fossil fuel prices as low as
was necessary to make it uneconomical for industrialists to
invest in alternative forms of energy. The higher the price
of fossil fuels, the greater the incentive there is for
environmentalists to usher in alternative forms of energy.
It is true that, as a result of the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq, American oil companies are now in the best
position to gain control of these countries’ fossil fuel
industries. “This is the point of the US invasion - a return
on investment on the hundreds of billions of dollars of US
taxpayers' money spent. It's not war as politics by other
means; it's war as free-market opening by other means - full
US access to the epicentre of the energy wars and the
perfect geostrategic location for «taming», in the near
future, both Russia and China. US Energy Secretary Samuel
Bodman duly landed in Baghdad this past summer, insisting
that Iraqis must «pass a hydrocarbon law under which foreign
companies can invest». Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein
al-Shahristani was convinced, and said the law would be
passed by the end of 2006, as promised to the IMF.” (Pepe
Escobar
'Stability First': Newspeak for rape of Iraq’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ27Ak03.html
October 27, 2006). But in reality
being in ‘the best position to expropriate these countries’
resources’ means nothing. Iraqis/Afghanis are now closer to
removing the American military from their countries, than
America’s fossil fuel companies are to gaining control over
these resources. The basic conditions which multi-national
fossil fuel corporations need in order to maximize their
interests are peace and stability not war and chaos.[21]
Fifthly, if the Bush regime had invaded Afghanistan for oil
it would not have neglected the country to such an extent as
to allow the Taliban to reassert itself making it impossible
to carry out any further work on oil exploration and
distribution. “The Trans-Afghan Pipeline (TAP) has
disappeared from view - obliterated by the Taliban
resurgence - but the project remains in the cards, although
the realistic prospects are grim, according to Seyed Shah
Bukhari of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad.”
(Pepe Escobar ‘In
the heart of Pipelineistan’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC17Ak03.html
March 17, 2006). Juan Cole, a traditional, centre
left, apostle of the hypothesis that America’s foreign
policies are designed to promote the interests of the
country’s energy companies, informs us that Afghanistan is
“especially important to Washington” and then the next
moment that it is not important enough to ensure peace and
stability. Surely this logical contradiction indicates that
oil is not as central to the Bush regime as it is alleged to
be. “Afghanistan is especially important to Washington
because it is the only plausible way to bring natural gas
down from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. The
Turkmenistan alternative is being used to push Delhi away
from any flirtation with an Iranian pipeline. As Afghanistan
falls again into substantial chaos, India is being forced to
reconsider, and to seek to draw on Iran's Yadavan fields,
with a pipeline coming down through Pakistani Baluchistan
and over to the Indian border. The turn for the worst in
Afghanistan may explain the sudden warming of relations
between Delhi and Tehran.” (Juan Cole ‘The Iraqization of
Afghanistan’
http://www.juancole.com/2006_09_01_juanricole_archive.html
September 08, 2006); “By deserting Afghanistan to run off
to war in Iraq, Bush ensured that it would risk falling
again into social turbulence, and thus helped seal the fate
of the Turkmenistan pipeline through Herat (wouldn't the
Taliban just blow it up?). In turn, that may have ensured
that Iran would be able to sidestep US sanctions by dealing,
not only with China, but also with India. And that may mean
that Bush let the big fish get away by getting bogged down
in Iraq, which is turning out not to be any prize for him,
either.” (Juan Cole ‘The Iraqization of Afghanistan’
http://www.juancole.com/2006_09_01_juanricole_archive.html
September 08, 2006).[22]
If the Bush regime was so concerned about promoting the
interests of its energy companies it would have consolidated
its position in Afghanistan rather than risking everything
on a military adventure in Iraq. The only reason America
invaded Iraq was because Jewish pressure overpowered the
interests of America’s energy companies.
Sixthly, many left wing commentators regard Cheney as the
real president rather than the imbecilic Bush. They deduce
that since Cheney had been heavily involved in America’s
energy industry then he must be promoting foreign policies
to boost its interests.
F William Engdahl outlines this aspect of the oil hypothesis.
“The «Cheney presidency», which is what historians
will no doubt dub the George W Bush years, has been based on
a clear strategy. It has often been misunderstood by critics
who had overly focussed on its most visible component,
namely, Iraq, the Middle East and the strident war-hawks
around the vice president and his old crony, Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The «Cheney strategy» has been a
US foreign policy based on securing direct global energy
control, control by the Big Four US or US-tied private oil
giants - Chevron Texaco or Exxon Mobil, BP or Royal Dutch
Shell.” (F William Engdahl ‘The Emerging Russian Giant, Part
1: Moscow plays its cards strategically’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HJ25Ag01.html
October 25, 2006).
Engdahl’s rationalization of Cheney’s support for the
invasion of Iraq is as follows. “At that time, Iraq, with
the second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia in the
Middle East, was under the rule of Saddam Hussein. Iran,
which has the world's second-largest reserves of natural
gas, in addition to its huge oil reserves, was ruled by a
nationalist theocracy which was not open to US private
company oil tenders. The Caspian Sea oil reserves were a
subject of bitter geopolitical battle between Washington and
Russia. Cheney's remark that «Oil remains fundamentally a
government business», and not private, takes on a new
significance when we do a fast forward to September 2000, in
the heat of the Bush-Gore election campaign. That month
Cheney, along with Rumsfeld and many others who went on to
join the new Bush administration, issued a policy report
titled, «Rebuilding America's Defenses». The paper was
issued by an entity named Project for the New American
Century (PNAC). Cheney's PNAC group called on the new US
president-to-be to find a suitable pretext to declare war on
Iraq, in order to occupy it and take direct control over the
second-largest oil reserves in the Middle East.” (F William
Engdahl ‘The Emerging Russian Giant, Part 1: Moscow plays
its cards strategically’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HJ25Ag01.html
October 25, 2006).
But Cheney is no more of a determinant of America’s foreign
policies than Bush. After his defeat in 1995 at the hands of
the Jewish lobby over the banning of fossil fuel industry’s
investments in Iran, Cheney knew he would never advance his
political career merely by promoting the fossil fuel
industry. He could succeed only by becoming a neocon which
is why he signed up to PNAC and became one of their leading
political advocates promoting Jewish foreign policies.
PNAC’s sole interest was boosting the JOS’s military
supremacy in the Middle East. Cheney’s hope was that
America’s fossil fuel industry could take advantage of any
opportunities opened up by what fundamentally would be the
Bush regime’s Jewish foreign policies. Cheney went along
with Jewish neocons’ plan because he did not have the power
to stop them and simply hoped, vulture- like, that America’s
energy industry could make as much profit as they could from
whatever ensued during the supposed transformation of the
greater Middle East. If Cheney had been concerned primarily
about the interests of America’s fossil fuel industry he
would have ensured the invasion of Afghanistan was
benefiting America’s energy companies before supporting an
invasion of Iraq.
Seventhly, if America’s foreign policies were primarily
concerned with boosting the country’s fossil fuel industry
then, given a choice about which oil-rich, Middle Eastern
country to invade, it should have chosen Iran rather than
Iraq. This is because it possessed far more energy reserves
and had a far greater geostrategic value than Iraq. And yet
the Jewish dominated Bush regime went after Iraq first. The
reason for this was because it posed a much bigger military
threat to the Jewish state than Iran.
Finally, and most critically, if America was concerned with
pursuing its national interests, maximizing the interests of
the country’s fossil fuel industry, then by far and away its
most important policy would have been the establishment of
an alliance with Iran rather than the Jewish state or Saudi
Arabia. This is because Iran possesses vast fossil fuel, and
considerable uranium, deposits; it occupies a critical
geographical position for the export of fossil fuels from
the Caspian sea area; it could challenge Russian domination
of fossil fuel supplies to Europe; it could challenge
increasing Russian dominance over the world’s fossil fuel
resources; and, finally, it could undermine the growing
power of the Russian-Chinese military and political
alliance. If America was intent on securing its oil
supplies, dominating the world’s fossil fuel industry, and
using fossil fuel politics to promote its global power then
it would have looked to Iran as its primary ally in the
Middle East. It needs to be re-emphasized that although
Saudi Arabia may export more fossil fuels than Iran, Iran is
far more geostrategically important than Saudi Arabia.
America’s failure to develop an alliance with Iran is proof
that its foreign policies have been hijacked by the
country’s ruling Jewish elite which is concerned solely with
boosting the regional supremacy of the Jewish state even if
this takes place at the expense of America’s national
interests.
Paradoxically, it is the oil hypothesis itself which exposes
the fact that America’s foreign policies are concerned about
enhancing the Jewish state’s regional supremacism not
maximizing America’s oil interests. If America was following
an oil based foreign policy its main focus would have been
an alliance with Iran rather than with Saudi Arabia or the
Jewish state.
Liberal and left wing political commentators, despite all
the evidence to the contrary, continually insist that
America’s foreign policies are concerned with the interests
of its energy corporations. This fantasy is also promoted by
the Jewish state’s political agents throughout the western
world who seek to provide a smokescreen for the power of
America’s Jewish elite which implements foreign policies
boosting the interests of the Jewish state rather than
America. It is not just a coincidence that so many of the
liberal and left wing commentators promoting this fantasy
are Jewish. The belief that America is pursuing an oil based
foreign policy is an illusion conjured up by neo-liberals
and neo-lefties who refuse to confront the reality of Jewish
power in America and around the world. “Pressure
from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the
U.S. decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was a
critical element. Some Americans believe that this was a
“war for oil,” but there is hardly any direct evidence to
support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good
part by a desire to make Israel more secure.” (John J.
Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt ‘The Israel Lobby and U.S.
Foreign Policy’ rwp_06_011_walt.pdf March 2006 p.30).[23]
9. The Rise of Iran in Global Politics.
Russia’s newly-acquired status as a fossil fuel superpower
would be enhanced considerably by an alliance with Iran just
as, conversely, it would be undermined by an Iranian
alliance with America. In the
realm of global politics, Iran is gradually emerging as the
pivot which will determine who comes out on top of the power
struggle between America and the Asian bloc of Russia/China
and their allies. If Iran joins America then America could
consolidate its position as leader of the new world order
but, if it joins the Russian/Chinese bloc, then they will
emerge as the new global leaders. If America wants to remain
the world’s hyperpower it must forge an alliance with Iran.
But to do this it must sacrifice its support for the Jewish
state.
The Jewish state is responsible for inflicting a succession
of increasingly catastrophic economic and military disasters
upon America which is undermining America’s position as the
world’s hyperpower. The longer the Jewish state and
America’s ruling Jewish elite continue to manipulate America
into demonizing Iran, the more they will undermine America’s
global dominance. “By
incessant strategic blunders, the US has isolated itself
internationally and fanned the fires of global
anti-Americanism, which increasingly engulf the very regions
where its own resources-based strategic interests lie.” (W
Joseph Stroupe ‘Russia spins global energy spider's web’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH25Dj01.html
Aug 25, 2006).
America did not become a hyperpower because Israel was
America’s strategic asset in the Middle East. On the
contrary, it became a hyperpower in spite of its alliance
with Israel. Israel has been ruining American interests in
the region on an increasingly catastrophic scale. This
sabotaging of American interests cannot last. Israel’s
manipulation of America into demonizing Iran will provoke a
regional war that will be so catastrophic as to bring about
the collapse of America’s hyperpower status. The Jewish
state, and its Jewish fifth columnists in America, will have
inflicted their last catastrophe upon America for it to
survive as the world’s number one power.
America’s ruling Jewish elite have forced America to turn
its back on its own national interests i.e. an alliance with
Iran that benefits from the country’s immense geostrategic
value, for the sake of supporting the Jewish state which has
no oil and a negligible strategic value. But America’s
alliance with the Jewish state is even more bizarre
considering that the Jewish state has inflicted on America a
series of increasingly devastating military and economic
disasters. America has suffered one Jewish-lobbied disaster
after another and yet such is the power of the Jewish
dominated media that they’ve managed to persuade the
American public that these have not been disasters, that
they have not been the fault of the Jewish lobby, and that
the Jewish state is America’s most unwaveringly loyal ally
despite having done nothing for America. It seems as if
America’s Jewish elite can promote as many anti-American
policies as their heart desires and still have enough
political power to manipulate members of congress into
supporting them and enough media power to continually
deceive Americans into believing that these policies are in
their interests.
Jewish interests have come to predominate in American
politics to the detriment of America’s national i.e. oil,
interests and, as a consequence, America is being trounced
by Russia in the world’s oil game. If Americans want to
remain a hyperpower they must dump the hysterical, paranoid,
psychotically belligerent, Jews who are solely concerned
with triggering off endless wars in the Middle East and
beyond solely for the benefit of Jewish supremacism.
America’s threatened invasion of Iran runs counter to
America’s national interests and, if it proceeds, will
have a catastrophic impact on these interests. It will
also have a catastrophic impact on Europe’s national
interests. And yet neither America nor Europe are
powerful enough to dismiss the twaddle of Jewish
propaganda and insist that their interests would be
better served by an alliance with Iran rather than with
Israel. Jewish elites around the world must have some
colossal global power if they can force America and
Europe to undermine their own national interests for the
greater good of the Jewish state and the global Jewish
empire. The modern day parable of the cave is that the
Jewish dominated media and Jewish dominated think tanks
have replaced reality with a Hollywood fantasy which
serves Jewish interests and all those intellectually
entrapped in this Jewish spectacle are unable to
perceive their own true interest.
Notes:
[1] Israel
refused Bush’s request for Israel to attack Syria
during Israel’s unprovoked war against Lebanon in
July 2006. The Bush regime made it clear that it
wanted Israel to extend the war to Syria but Israel
refused to comply. “In August 2006, the Inter-Press
Service provided additional details, reporting that
the message was passed to Israel by Bush’s deputy
national security adviser Elliott Abrams, who had
been a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of
the 1980s. “In a meeting with a very senior Israeli
official, Abrams indicated that Washington would
have no objection if Israel chose to extend the war
beyond to its other northern neighbor, leaving the
interlocutor in no doubt that the intended target
was Syria,” a source told the Inter-Press Service.
In December 2006, Meyrav Wurmser, a leading U.S.
neoconservative whose spouse is a Middle East
adviser to Vice President Cheney, confirmed that
neocons in and outside the Bush administration had
hoped Israel would attack Syria as a means of
undermining the insurgents in Iraq. “If Syria had
been defeated, the rebellion in Iraq would have
ended,” Wurmser said in an interview with Yitzhak
Benhorin of the Ynet Web site. “A great part of it
was the thought that Israel should fight against the
real enemy, the one backing Hezbollah. … If Israel
had hit Syria, it would have been such a harsh blow
for Iran that it would have weakened it and
(changed) the strategic map in the Middle East.””
(Robert Parry ‘A Very Dangerous New Year’
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/122006.html
December 21, 2006). Why should the Jewish
state attack Syria and risk severe military
retaliation when it is likely to persuade America to
attack Syria?
[2] This is the
first time that America’s foreign policies
contribute to the religious radicalization of the
greater Middle East - what Hannah Arendt called the
boomerang effect of imperialism, “Had the U.S. not
overthrown the Mossadegh regime in Iran in 1954 it
is very likely the mullahs would never have come to
power and we would not now be considering a
dangerous war there.” (Gabriel Kolko "As an Economic
System, Capitalism is Going Crazy"
http://www.counterpunch.org/kolko11252006.html
November 25/26, 2006); “By installing
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as shah to replace Mossadegh,
the US condemned the Iranian people to a
quarter-century of tyranny and repression that
eventually strengthened extremist Islamic
fundamentalism and gave birth to theocratic
revolution led by ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in
1979.” (Henry C K Liu ‘Regime-change blowback’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HK11Ak02.html
Nov 11, 2006). Today, America’s foreign policies in
the greater Middle East are overwhelmingly directed
at trying to undo the damage caused by its policies
decades earlier – although all that these policies
are achieving is to make matters even worse for
future administrations.
[3] See also,
“The second example
is that of Iran. That country approached the United
States with a promise to cooperate prior to the
latter's invasion of Afghanistan. In fact, Iran
offered to cooperate with the Bush administration in
case of any air mishaps and offered to conduct
search-and-rescue operations for US pilots under
such circumstances. Within a matter of weeks after
that attempted rapprochement by the Iranians,
President Bush made his infamous State of the Union
speech that lumped Iran, North Korea and Iraq
together as part of an "axis of evil", thereby
conclusively alienating Iran.” (Ehsan Ahrari
‘Father, son and Holy Ghost’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HL12Ak01.html
December 12, 2006).
[4] The Jewish
dominated western media is currently covering up the
critical help that Iran provided for America during
the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It is
rewriting history in order to prepare the western
public for an American attack on Iran.
“The atmosphere between
the two countries (America and Iran) improved
marginally under former President Mohammad Khatami,
who encouraged athletic and cultural exchanges. But
it deteriorated after the Sept. 11 attacks when
President Bush declared that Iran belonged to an
"axis of evil" with North Korea and Saddam Hussein's
regime in Iraq.” (Ali Akbar Dareini ‘Iran
responds to U.S. fingerprinting law’
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061202/ap_on_re_mi_ea/Iran_us
December 02, 2006).
[5] See also,
“Iran's shared interest
with the US in maintaining the new status quo in
Iraq.” (Kaveh L Afrasiabi ‘US sends the wrong
messages to Iran’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ25Ak01.html
Oct 25, 2006);
“Iran has enormous influence over the Badr brigade,
which was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards, and they could bring a lot of pressure to
bear on Hakim, and Moqtada Sadr, to rein in the
death squads. If Baker suggests talking to Iran,
that would make a lot of sense. The U.S. interest in
Iraq and Iran's interests in Iraq are actually
congruent. The idea that Iran is being unhelpful or
is somehow helping the Sunni insurgency has no basis
in reality. Tehran does not want Iraq to break up:
They're as worried as Turkey is about the Kurds
becoming independent. They want a united Iraq, a
democratic Iraq in which the Shi'ites' majority
makes itself felt. They obviously want their
preferred Shiite leaders, such as Maliki and Hakim,
to be in power, rather than, for example, a former
Baathist Shi'ite such as Iyad Allawi [the former
prime minister installed by the U.S.], or Moqtada
Sadr, who is viewed by Iran as a loose cannon who
they would prefer to see marginalized. Tehran is
even willing to see the Sunnis given more power in
Iraq in order to help keep the country together. So,
the U.S. and Iran actually want many of the same
things in Iraq, and it makes perfect sense for them
to cooperate. It's a self-defeating policy of the
Bush administration to fail to recognize Iran as a
tacit ally in Iraq.” (Juan Cole quoted in Tony Karon
‘Why Iraq's Leader Balks at U.S. Demands’
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1551743,00.html
October 27, 2006);
“In the run-up to the US invasion and subsequent
occupation of Iraq, it is a publicly known and
officially acknowledged fact the Iran supported the
US overthrow of Saddam Hussein, provided
intelligence to the US, advised and supported Shia
co-operation in the formation of a US client regime,
recognized and established formal relations with the
puppet regime despite its collaboration with the
killers of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Iran has been a major bulwark against Al Qaeda,
arresting and in some cases offering to extradite
them to the West, thus showing a decided
partisanship to some aspects of the US ‘War on
Terrorism’.” (James Petras ‘The US and the
Middle East: A “Grand Settlement” Versus the Jewish
Lobby’ December 2006).
[6]
During Yeltsin’s
presidency, the Jewish oligarchs who’d taken control
of vast slabs of the Russian economy made a
determined effort to bypass the country’s state
owned pipeline network. “At a Russia-American oil
summit held in Houston in late 2002, an agreement
was signed to build a pipeline from the rich oil
fields in western Siberia to Murmansk, where it
could be easily shipped to the US. The pipeline was
to be Russia's first private consortium, and Yukos
was essentially going to lead it. This was it, the
first big play to free up Russian oil from Kremlin
control, and get it to the US.” (Mark Ames ‘How
Dick Cheney Got His Cold War On A Cold War
Timetable’
http://www.exile.ru/2006-May-19/the_cold_war_timeline.html
May19, 2006). Putin prevented this from
happening only at the very last minute by arresting
and imprisoning one of the Jewish oligarchs Mikhail
Khodorkovsky who owned Yukos. George Bush likes to
compare himself with Churchill but in many respects
he’s quite similar to Boris Yeltsin. Both were
elected president with the help of their country’s
Jewish neocons, part of a global Jewish network of
neocons throughout the world. Both were imbecilic
frontmen for Jewish interests – the only difference
being that Bush seems to have managed to overcome
his addiction to alcohol during his presidency.
Putin has not had it all his own
way as far as the construction of pipelines go. “In
this context, the oil czars in the Kremlin may not
particularly welcome the newly operational
Kazakh-China oil pipeline with its
200,000-barrels-per-day capacity. After all, this
pipeline competes with the long-talked-about but
never built oil pipeline from Russia's Siberia to
China's northeast. For Beijing, this Boris
Yeltsin-initiated, Putin-stalled and
Japanese-frustrated eastern pipeline project may
eventually be built.” (Yu Bin ‘The 'not an
anti-American' bloc’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HL08Ad01.html
Dec 8, 2006);
“China plans to build more pipelines (from Russia,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) and the
proposed one to Turkmenistan almost reaches up to
the northern borders of Iran. China has just entered
a cooperation agreement with Iran in the Caspian
region and has a massive multibillion-dollar energy
deal with Tehran.” (M K Bhadrakumar ‘China
plays its own energy game’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HL19Ad06.html
December 19, 2006).
[7] A number of
non-dollar oil exchanges have already been set up.
“The new Shanghai Petroleum Exchange settles
transactions in the Chinese currency, the Yuan.
Qatar's new Energy City concept with its integrated
IMEX (International Mercantile Exchange), which
India has recently joined with the planned creation
of a satellite Energy City/IMEX complex in Mumbai,
will apparently settle transactions initially in the
US dollar, with the capability to switch to other
currencies. The IMEX is a fully autonomous system
predominantly designed and intended to capture the
rising energy markets in the East. Prudently, Arab
oil and gas exporters are leveraging IMEX to work to
achieve full autonomy as respects market and
exchange operations and product pricing and
delivery, foreseeing the day when having their
operations constrained almost completely under the
aegis of the Anglo-US market arrangement and the US
dollar no longer serves their strategic interests.”
(W Joseph Stroupe ‘The
New World Oil Order. Part 2: Russia tips the
balance’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HK23Ag01.html
November 23, 2006).
[8] It has been
noted above that Chinese leaders fear that America
could choke off oil supplies to China during a
political confrontation. There are two places where
America could enforce such an embargo: the straits
of Hormuz and in Indonesian waters. At present,
Indonesia allows the American navy access to its
coastal waters because of its dependence on American
fossil fuel companies but there is no reason to
believe this will not change if Russian energy
companies replace American companies. Russia could
then decide to help its Chinese ally by demanding
that Indonesia ban the American navy from its coast.
ban the American navy from its
coast.
[9]
See also, “Nor was
American triumphalism a fleeting reaction to 1991. A
decade later, the tragedy of September 11 gave
Washington a second chance for a real partnership
with Russia. At a meeting on June 16, 2001,
President Bush sensed in Putin's «soul» a partner
for America. And so it seemed after September 11,
when Putin's Kremlin did more than any NATO
government to assist the US war effort in
Afghanistan, giving it valuable intelligence, a
Moscow-trained Afghan combat force and easy access
to crucial air bases in former Soviet Central Asia.
The Kremlin understandably believed that in return
Washington would give it an equitable relationship.
Instead, it got US withdrawal from the ABM treaty,
Washington's claim to permanent bases in Central
Asia (as well as Georgia) and independent access to
Caspian oil and gas, a second round of NATO
expansion taking in several former Soviet republics
and bloc members, and a still-growing indictment of
its domestic and foreign conduct. Astonishingly, not
even September 11 was enough to end Washington's
winner-take-all principles.” (Stephen F.
Cohen ‘The New American Cold War’
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060710/cohen
July 10, 2006); “On
November 14, 2001, merely a month after the
terrorist attacks, Bush and Russian President
Vladimir Putin issued a joint statement in which
they declared that the US and Russia «have overcome
the legacy of the Cold War», adding that «neither
country regards the other as an enemy or threat».
The two presidents of the world's two major nuclear
powers cited their joint responsibility to
contribute to international security, and went on to
say that the US and Russia «are determined to work
together, and with other nations and international
organizations, including the United Nations, to
promote security, economic well-being, and a
peaceful, prosperous, free world». Although the word
«terrorism» was not mentioned, the intention was
clear that anti-terrorism, though the official
definition of which was not congruent in the mind of
each leader, was the motivating factor behind the
new spirit of co-existence. Yet on December 13,
2001, another month later, Bush announced that the
US would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) Treaty, pursuant to its provisions
that permit withdrawal after six months' notice.
This was a complete reversal of nuclear-deterrence
scholastics that had evolved in the Cold War that
successfully prevented a nuclear holocaust though
five decades of superpower hostility. The idea that
both superpowers agreed not to undertake defensive
measures to neutralize any advantage of a first
strike by exposing themselves to certain
vulnerability to a counterstrike was a key factor in
stabilizing nuclear escalation. With US withdrawal
from the ABM Treaty, the deterrence doctrine based
on mutual assured destruction (MAD) became history,
and the notion of a winnable nuclear war became US
policy.” (Henry C K Liu ‘The lame duck and
the greenhorn’ HYPERLINK
"http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HF23Ad02.html" http://www.atimes.com/atimes
/China/HF23Ad02.html June 23, 2006).
[10]
The list of Russian
«preemptive measures» against the geopolitical harm
that the US is doing to Russia already runs long:
the strengthening of Russia's «strategic
partnership» with China; the highly nuanced Russian
position on the Iran nuclear issue; the independent
course being charted toward the Muslim world; the
stationing of surface-to-air missiles back in
Belarus; charging Ukraine and Georgia with market
prices for energy supplies; hardening of its
position over Transdniester (region of Moldova,
which broke away from that country in the dying days
of the Soviet Union but remains unrecognized
internationally); and the «frozen conflicts» in
Transcaucasus (the southern Caucasus); the
strengthening of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization and the Collective Security Treaty
Organization; and incipient trends toward forming a
«gas alliance» with Iran and the Central Asian
countries.” (M K Bhadrakumar ‘The G8 summit:
A chronicle of wasted time’
HYPERLINK
"http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HG06Dj01.html"
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_
Economy/HG06Dj01.html
July 6, 2006).
[11]
There is another reason why Putin is refusing to do
business with American companies. “Washington
imposed sanctions on two of Russia's leading arms
firms over their links with Iran on Friday, a step
Moscow said was a «clearly illegitimate» attempt to
impose U.S. laws on foreigners. Russia's Foreign
Ministry said in a statement that the State
Department had slapped sanctions on state export
agency Rosoboronexport and state-owned warplane
maker Sukhoi, meaning they could no longer work with
U.S. firms. The statement said the sanctions would
stop U.S. companies from working with the two
Russian firms, a potential blow to the Russian
Regional Jet civil aviation project, which Sukhoi is
working on with aerospace giant Boeing.” (Oliver
Bullough and Tom Miles ‘Russia says US bans its arms
firms over Iran Sales’
HYPERLINK
"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060804/ts_nm/russia_usa_sanctions_dc"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060804/ts_nm/russi
a_usa_sanctions_dc
August 04, 2006).
[12]
See also, “Russia has
moved to get a strategic foothold for Gazprom in the
Sakhalin-2 project, which is now 55% controlled by
Royal Dutch Shell Plc, and is estimated to have
total reserves of about a billion barrels of oil and
500 billion cubic meters of gas, which, once
operable, would make it one of the world's largest
combined oil and gas projects.” (Bill Guerin
‘Indonesia-Russia: Arms, atoms and oil’
HYPERLINK
"http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/HL12Ae02.html"
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_As
ia/HL12Ae02.html
December 12, 2006).
[13]
Some commentators have suggested that Russia may not
be such a dominant fossil fuel superpower.
“For all its bombast,
Russia’s strength rests on sand. Its demographics
are disastrous: in the minute you may have taken to
read to this point, five Russians died, and only
three were born. Its roads and railways are still
rickety, its pipelines and power stations
clapped-out. The much touted gas weapon may not be
loaded: decades of neglect and under-investment may
mean that Russia is an energy beggar, not an energy
bully.” (Edward Lucas ‘The one way to fight
Putin's menace’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2470215,00.html
November 25, 2006).
Economically Russia has
done better, but its foreign investments overseas
still put it on a par with Malaysia. As an energy
provider, Russia supplies Europe with about a
quarter of its natural gas, but this is two-thirds
of Russia's gas exports, so that actually Russia is
far more dependent on its European consumers than
they are on it.” (Nicolai N Petro ‘Sticking
it up Vladimir the Impaler’
HYPERLINK
"http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HJ31Ag01.html"
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_A
sia/HJ31Ag01.html
October 31, 2006).
[14]
President Bush supports the ‘war against drugs’. “In
2002, President Bush announced, «We must reduce drug
use for one great moral reason. When we fight
against drugs, we fight for the souls of our fellow
Americans.»” (Ann Jones ‘Drug war, Taliban,
poppies are all in full flower. Opium, thugs bloom
under U.S. policies in Afghanistan war’
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/12/17/ING08MTPMB1.DTL
December 17, 2006). However,
one commentator has
suggested that the heroin problem in America is not
as bad as in other countries and that the Bush
regime has taken little action to deal with the
problems that do exist. “Almost all the heroin goes
to Europe, although significant amounts are siphoned
off (with less profit but equal social devastation)
in Pakistan, Iran, and the Central Asian Republics
en route. These countries now have monster drug
problems where none existed before. But only a tiny
amount of Afghan heroin finds its way to the US.
Which is probably why Washington has little interest
in forging consensus about how to deal with the
disaster, or in committing US troops and (most
importantly) aid effort to eradicate production.”
(Brian Cloughley ‘Afghanistan's Drug
Catastrophe’
http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley12212006.html
December 21, 2006). It is true that the
Taliban nearly succeeded in wiping out poppy
cultivation and that the American invasion of
Afghanistan triggered the explosion in heroin
production. “When the Bush
administration invaded Afghanistan in October 2001,
poppies were grown on only 7,600 hectares. Under the
American occupation that followed the defeat of the
Taliban, poppy cultivation spread to every province,
and overall production has increased exponentially
ever since - this year by 60 percent. So far, the
poppy-eradication program, largely funded by the
United States, hasn't made a dent. Last year, it
claimed to have destroyed 38,000 acres of poppies,
up from 12,000 the year before; but during the same
period overall poppy cultivation soared from 104,000
hectares to 165,000 hectares (or 408,000 acres).”
(Ann Jones ‘Drug war, Taliban, poppies are
all in full flower. Opium, thugs bloom under U.S.
policies in Afghanistan war’
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/12/17/ING08MTPMB1.DTL
December 17, 2006). The Nato alliance in
Afghanistan is pursuing a two pronged objective –
destroying the Taliban and wiping out heroin
production. These objectives are mutually self
defeating. Destroying poppy cultivation pushes
Afghans into support for the Taliban. Attacking the
Taliban boosts the power of the drugs’ warlords in
Kabul’s parliament. “The
trade penetrates even the elected Parliament, which
is full of the usual suspects. Among the 249 members
of the Wolesi Jirga (lower house) are at least 17
known drug traffickers, in addition to 40 commanders
of armed militias, 24 members of criminal gangs, and
19 men facing serious allegations of war crimes and
human rights violations, any or all of whom may be
affiliated with the poppy business.” (Ann Jones ‘Drug
war, Taliban, poppies are all in full flower. Opium,
thugs bloom under U.S. policies in Afghanistan war’
HYPERLINK
"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/12/17/ING08MTPMB1.DTL"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/12/17
/ING08MTPMB1.DTL
December 17, 2006).
[15]
Just as China developed a
strategic alliance with Pakistan
to counter
their mutual rival, India.
[16]
See also, “In the
corridors of the conference, most of the oil and gas
executives and scholars agreed that the way the game
is played today in Pipelineistan, everything is
politicized. «When Bush tells India, 'You don't need
to import gas from Iran,' that's totally illogical,»
said a Georgian scholar based in Bologna. «The
[alleged Iranian] bomb is a pretext,» said an
Iranian oil executive based in London. «The
Americans don't want Iran to develop, and that's
equally true of China and Venezuela. We need to talk
about security through knowledge.»” (Pepe Escobar ‘In
the heart of Pipelineistan’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC17Ak03.html
March 17, 2006);
“Last year Condi whizzed down to New Delhi to
prevent India from finalizing technical and
commercial contracts for a $4.5 billion natural gas
pipeline – the so-called «Peace Pipeline» – that
would transit Pakistan but provide Iranian natural
gas mostly to India. Iran proposed making India
effectively a «partner» in the gas pipeline, oil
refining and other energy related projects to the
tune of $40 billion. Well, an
Iranian-Pakistani-Indian Islamic law-friendly energy
«partnership» would never do. So, Condi proposed, as
a mutually exclusive alternative, a U.S.-Indian
Nuclear Cooperation Agreement.” (Gordon Prather ‘Condi's
Diplomatic Triumph’
HYPERLINK
"http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=10210" http://www.antiwar.com/prather/
?articleid=10210
December 23, 2006).
[17]
America’s attempt to woo India at Pakistan’s expense
has forced Pakistan into an even closer relationship
with China. Pakistan may well achieve through China
what India is acquiring through Israel and America.
“Sino-Pakistan cooperation
in many fields goes back several decades, and both
countries are effusive in their description of their
friendship. And indeed the relationship has been an
«all-weather friendship», having survived the
region's turbulent politics as well as major
realignments in international politics. A shared
antagonism toward India keeps the friendship alive.
For China, Pakistan is a useful counterweight to
India. This is behind its efforts at building the
country's economic and military muscle. Pakistan
also provides China with a link to the Muslim
world.” (Sudha Ramachandran ‘Good deals, but
no nukes for Pakistan’
HYPERLINK
"http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HK28Df01.html"
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asi
a/HK28Df01.html
November 28, 2006).
[18]
See also, “Abdullah
angered many Shiites when he warned two years ago of
a Shiite “crescent” extending from Iran to Lebanon.
Earlier this week, he said the region soon could
face three civil wars - in Iraq, Lebanon and the
Palestinian territories.” (Sally Buzbee ‘Maliki’s
snub reverberates through Middle East’
HYPERLINK
"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15975499/" http://www.msnbc.
msn.com/id/15975499/ Nov. 30, 2006).
[19]
One amusing indication as to just how desperate
british politicians were to prevent Europe from
succumbing to Russian fossil fuel domination was
that even American oriented, anti-euro politicians
started insisting that Britain must give up on its
euroscepticism! “Then the
West must stick together. Russia expertly plays off
one country against another. British eurosceptics
must drop their defeatist disdain for a common
European foreign policy, especially in the field of
energy security. Without it, we risk losing half the
continent to the Kremlin’s new empire, one built on
pipelines rather than tanks.” (Edward Lucas ‘The
one way to fight Putin's menace’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2470215,00.html
November 25, 2006). Euroscepticism has
played straight into Putin’s
strategy for fossil fuel
domination.
[20]
Bulls is an accurate description not merely of Bush
but of American troops in Iraq. Their policy is to
shoot first and then ask questions later – a stance
accepted by the American public as common sense
since they do not want their troops killed in
action. But this policy is just a deception because
us troops don’t speak Arabic. “If winning hearts and
minds is supposed to be part of the plan, then the
U.S. troops just don’t have the means. They don’t
speak Arabic, they don’t understand the culture,
they don’t share the faith, they don’t know the
history. Van Creveld doesn’t mince his words: “The
American military have proved totally incompetent.””
(Christopher Dickey ‘Closer to the Abyss’
HYPERLINK
"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16072946/site/newsweek/"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16
072946/site/newsweek/
Dec. 6, 2006).
[21]
The
military-industrial-zionist complex is unlikely to
have profited from the wars. “Oil was a
terrible reason (for invading Iraq), as events have
shown. Profiteering was a terrible reason too: real
defense companies learned long ago that you can make
just as much money selling the government expensive
stuff that shuffles off into obsolescence without
ever being used. Much the same goes for other
corporations. Halliburton has lost money every year
of the war. Bechtel, the giant construction firm,
has just cut and run itself. WMDs, no, not a great
reason. Fighting terror, no, not a great reason
either.” (Michael Neumann
‘Sooner Rather Than Later. Cut and Run from
Iraq’ HYPERLINK
"http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann11072006.html" http://www.counterpunch.org/neu
mann11072006.html
November 7, 2006).
[22]
The Jewish lobby’ was
intent on manipulating America into an invasion of
Iraq. From the start of his presidency, Bush was
entirely focused on Iraq and state terrorism. As a
consequence, the Bush regime was blinded against the
threat posed by Al Qaeda. “This was a drastic policy
shift. Time magazine reported in June 2002 that Bill
Clinton's national security adviser Sandy Berger and
counter-terrorism deputy Richard Clarke, in
presenting their transition report to Berger's
successor Condoleezza Rice and her staff in the
first week of January 2001, had cited al-Qaeda as
the greatest threat facing the US as Clinton left
office. Rice thought otherwise and identified China
as the greatest threat. Bush subsequently referred
to China as a strategic competitor, rather than a
strategic partner as the outgoing Clinton
administration had done.” (Henry C K Liu ‘The
lame duck and the greenhorn’
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HF23Ad02.html
June 23, 2006).
The irony was that after Al Qaeda’s spectacular
attack on America, the Bush administration used the
attack not merely to go after Al Qaeda but as an
excuse to invade Iraq. The American military made
only a half hearted job of eradicating Al Qaeda in
Afghanistan because they were too busy making
preparations for the invasion of Iraq. Once the
invasion had taken place little further attention
was paid to Afghanistan enabling the Taliban, and
even Al Qaeda, to survive and flourish. So, in
effect, the Bush administration was so pre-occupied
by Iraq it was blinded both to Al Qaeda’s attack and
then to the resurgence of the Taliban in
Afghanistan. “Remember them, the guys who
harbored the Al Qaeda terrorists, who gifted us with
the 9/11 attacks five years ago, that President Bush
promised to eliminate? Well, it turns out that while
he was distracted with Iraq, the patrons of
terrorism were very much in business back where the
9/11 attack was hatched, turning Afghanistan into a
narco-state that provides a lucrative source of cash
for the “evildoers” Bush forgot about.” (Robert
Scheer ‘Afghanistan: High on Opium, Not Democracy’
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060905_robert_scheer_afghanistan_opium/
Sep 5, 2006);
“Rather than take care of business in
Afghanistan after 9/11, Bush and clueless U.S.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld allowed bin Laden
to slip out of the Tora Bora caves to plan more
attacks and the Taliban to regroup. Instead, Bush
and Co. threw the bulk of our military and aid
resources into a disastrous attempt to remake
oil-rich Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11,
into an American puppet state.” (Robert Scheer
‘Afghanistan: High on Opium, Not Democracy’
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060905_robert_scheer_afghanistan_opium/
Sep 5, 2006); “On
his last day in office, in the traditional meeting
between retiring and incoming presidents, Clinton
identified Al Qaeda to Bush as America's most
pressing foreign-policy challenge. Yet later that
same month, January 2001, Rice themed the first
National Security Council meeting of the Bush
presidency on the topic of «how Iraq is
destabilizing the [Middle East] region.» (David
Olive ‘End of the Neo-Cons’
HYPERLINK
"http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110606J.shtml" http://www.truthout.org/docs_20
06/110606J.shtml
November 05 2006).
[23] Given the
Jewish ruling elite’s total emasculation of the
interests of America’s gigantic, multi-national, oil
corporations, which are currently amongst the
world’s biggest companies, the question that has to
be asked is why haven’t America’s energy companies
come out with all guns blazing to defend their
interests before they lose everything? Surely at
some point they have got to challenge the Jewish
lobby before they are locked out of other countries
besides Russia and Iran. Such must be the power and
the wealth of America’s Jewish ruling elite that not
even the country’s oil giants can stand up to it.
It has been suggested that James
Baker’s Iraq Study Group represents the interests of
the country’s fossil fuel companies and is making
just such a come-back - attempting to force Bush to
change his fantastical ‘victory is still possible’
policies in Iraq. “Whatever one thinks about James
Baker, he is a seasoned diplomat and a serious man.
His record shows that he has broad support among the
leaders in the American oligarchy, so he can't
simply be ignored. He represents a powerful
constituency of corporate chieftains and oil
magnates who are conspicuously worried about the
deteriorating situation in Iraq and want to see a
change of course. Baker's their man. He's the
logical emissary for the growing number of jittery
plutocrats who see that the Bush policy-train has
jumped the tracks. But if Big Oil wants a change of
direction then where is Bush getting his support for
"staying the course"? The only group left touting
Bush's failed policy is the "Israel first" camp
which continues to wave the bloody shirt of
incitement from their perch at the Weekly Standard
and the American Enterprise Institute. These same
diehards are leading the charge for a preemptive
attack on Iran; a criminal act which will have
catastrophic effects on America's long-term energy
needs. So, the battle lines have been drawn. On one
side we have James Baker and his corporate
classmates who want to restore order while
preserving America's imperial role in the region.
And, on the other side, we have the neo-Trotskyites
and Israeli-Jacobins who seek a fragmented and
chaotic Middle East where Israel is the dominant
power.” (Mike Whitney ‘Something's Gotta Give James
Baker Versus the Lobby’
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney12092006.html
December 9/10, 2006).
See also,
“Equally important, Baker has the backing of the major petroleum and gas
companies of Houston-Dallas, who have been sidelined
from Middle East policymaking during the Zioncon-militarist
ascendancy in the White House. They are eager for an
“even-handed” Middle East policy to serve their
economic ties with Middle East oil producers and to
facilitate commercial negotiations with Iran and the
Gulf States. Major US investment houses, including
those whose CEOs are prominent donors to the
pro-Israel lobbies, are eager for a peace
settlement, which includes Iran, in order to move
into the new multi-billion dollar Islamic
investments funds, which have emerged among the Arab
Gulf States.” (James Petras ‘The US and the
Middle East: A “Grand Settlement” Versus the Jewish
Lobby’ December 2006); “Nevertheless,
there was an element of historical drama in what
took place in Washington in the first week of
December 2006. When the grand narrative of the
American Empire is written decades from now, it will
describe the preparation and the issuance of the
Baker-Hamilton recommendations, together with the
replacement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
with Robert Gates, as elements in a powerful
political coup staged by the members of the old
American foreign policy establishment against the
neoconservative ideologues who had taken control of
the Bush administration's national security
apparatus and much of official Washington after
9/11.” (Leon Hadar ‘The Baker-Hamilton
Recommendations: Too Little, Too Late?’
http://www.antiwar.com/hadar/?articleid=10153
December 13, 2006); “President
Bush lacks the knowledge, judgment, and experience
to be in the Oval Office. He has been deceived and
manipulated by neoconservatives who live in the
fantasy world of their own ideology and who have
been aligned with Israel's right-wing Likud Party
for most of their careers. The neoconservatives put
Bush and the U.S., along with Iraqis, Afghans, and
Lebanese, in harm's way. Their fantasy enterprise
failed, and now they damn Bush for a lost war that
they said would be a cakewalk. Neoconservatives told
Bush that U.S. troops would have flowers thrown at
them, not bombs. Many neoconservatives have been
cleared out of the Bush administration. But other
neoconservatives still occupy media positions, which
they will continue to use to lie to the American
public. As long as the neoconservatives' protector,
Vice President Cheney, continues to have influence,
the Israeli Lobby might again succeed in
overthrowing American public opinion and win its war
against the Iraq Study Group.” (Paul Craig Roberts ‘Is
James Baker a Match for AIPAC?’
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10160
December 14, 2006).