The Real Story on Iran, US, Russia and China
The
real story is, and will continue to be, how Iran, the key power in
Southwest Asia, is about to be positioned in the nonstop complex ballet
between the US, Russia and China. That’s one of the key vectors of the
New Great Game in Eurasia.
By Pepe Escobar
March 09, 2015 "ICH" - "Spuitnik"
- The real story was never about how warmonger Israeli Prime Minister
Bibi Netanyahu, a foreign leader, would crudely use the House of Cards,
sorry, the US Capitol, as a lowly re-election bully pulpit to mould the
US presidency and American foreign policy.
A
graphic indication is that while “Bomb Iran” Bibi was distilling his
39-minute harangue in Washington, US Secretary of State John Kerry and
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif were engaged in their third
round of nuclear negotiations in Montreux.
The
real story is also only partially about this perennial soap opera — the
Iranian nuclear dossier. By the end of this month there will be a
deadline to reach a framework agreement, and by June – optimistically – a
comprehensive final settlement.
What’s
at stake at the highest level has been known to all major players
for ages. Tehran won’t settle for anything less than a swift end to the
current nasty, illegal package of sanctions. Yet Washington,
under the cloud of the self-described "Don’t Do Stupid Stuff" Obama
administration, keeps changing the goal posts as negotiations advance.
The latest is a demand by Obama for a 10-year suspension of Iranian nuclear activity. Zarif called it "illogical" and "excessive".
Well, as illogical as the trademark paranoia exhibited
by the usual basket of US neo-cons and extreme right-wingers. Compare
it to how Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei regards nuclear power
– with all its implications; this has also been on the record for ages for anyone to see.
China, Russia and Plan B
Unlike
the Cheney regime, the Obama administration seems to have reached a
logical conclusion – facilitated by extensive Pentagon gaming;
Washington can’t destroy Iran’s nuclear program – unless it would use
nuclear weapons.
Along
most of the past decade, that was Plan A. Plan B is the never-ending
"negotiations", which boils down to placing a series of restrictions
on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for a still very dubious end
of sanctions.
Yet
the real objective of the Masters of the Universe who control the
shadowplay in the Washington/Wall Street axis is to manage imperial
decline. That implies, in Southwest Asia, a renewed Divide and Rule
push, featuring Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Some
key players in Washington are getting increasingly impatient with the
House of Saud – what with its low price oil strategy bombing the US
shale oil industry. Others worry that Turkey – after a key Pipelineistan
deal, the Turk Stream – is moving away to Russia. Thus the option
to sort of reintegrate Iran into a collaboration with the West, if not
close, at least yielding profitable deals for Western corporations.
Meanwhile,
Russia and China are not standing idly, as they are an important part
of the P5+1 negotiating team with Iran. Both BRICS nations can – and
do — use Iran as leverage in how they negotiate with the hegemon, always
finding ways to undermine the US "pivoting to Asia".
As
soon as relations with Iran are normalized, Tehran will be admitted
to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); currently it enjoys
observer status. Washington dreads the move – as it will advance Iran’s
Eurasian integration, and solidify a Moscow-Tehran-Beijing
political/commercial axis.
Russia
already does very good business with Iran – from nuclear plants
to weapons sales. No US deal with Iran will come through without a tacit
Russian acquiescence – and the Americans know it. Beijing, for its
part, tends to cling to the status quo – as in not desiring Tehran
to get any closer to the West because that would mean a freer hegemon
in its "pivoting to Asia" mode, which China, correctly, identifies
as containment.
Further
on down the road, Tehran can use a rapprochement with the West
to increase its bargaining power with Beijing. Assuming a deal is
reached this summer, Tehran will be in an excellent position to extract
concessions – on the economy, security, defense – from its Chinese
partners. But the name of the game remains Eurasian integration.
The Caliphate, "our" bastards
As
for vociferous Bibi, all he had left was to once again try to sell
Washington an Israeli war of choice against a demonized-to-oblivion
Iran. It didn’t fly – as much as those usual suspects, the AIPAC lobby,
bluntly ordered their shock troops to tell the House of Cards, sorry US
Congress, that war is peace, and any nuclear deal is a deal with the
devil. As argued by Trita Parsi, the real "existential threat" for Bibi is peace.
Once
again, the real story here is not a nuclear Iran; it’s the possibility
of a US-Iran détente where Israel’s grip on US foreign policy is not
ironclad anymore.
Predictably,
Bibi lumped as evil forces lurking in his "neighborhoo" everyone
from Iran and "Lebanon" (he meant Hezbollah) to Assad’s Syria and Hamas.
But not ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. So a non-nuclear Iran is a worse threat
to civilization than the fake, beheading-addicted Caliphate.
Espousing
such a worldview Bibi would not even qualify as an extra on House
of Cards – the one on Netflix. Meanwhile, the real Israel story – the
illegal occupation/apartheid imposed on Palestine – continues, obscured
by the usual gaggle of somnambulists in the Bibi-raided House of Cards,
sorry, US Congress.
Pepe Escobar’s latest book is "Empire of Chaos". Follow him on Facebook.
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