It’s “beat the war drums” Sunday in the British press

Add the Guardian to the list of Sunday papers that are featuring heavily the Israel/Iran issue. It apparently took four authors to slam Israel with the typical canards.

And while some of the messages amount to signalling, to warn Iran as well as the EU and the US that Israel does not intend its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East to be challenged, it is clear that Israel has launched an aggressive information campaign apparently designed to soften up public opinion for the case for war, reminiscent of the run-up to the war against Iraq. Indeed, some of the same cast are back on stage, not least the former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, who has loudly been making the case for an Israeli strike.

Interesting how they put the cause for war. Israel doesn’t want it’s “nuclear monopoly” to be challenged. It doesn’t happen to be that Israel is at risk of being destroyed by Iran, no. The article discounts utterly the proxy war that Iran has been waging for years via Hamas, PIJ and other terrorist groups, and Hezbullah.

Academics and journalists who have recently visited Israel have come back from meetings convinced the country is getting ready for war. The campaign has been assisted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) in the US and the Britain-Israel Communications and Research Centre in the UK, two influential Jewish lobby groups who have brought over experts to brief the media.

And thus we see the true subtext of this story. Those crafty Jews are at it again: Doing what they have done for millennia, tricked the world into going to war. You think I’m reading into things? Read on.

Last week, Bicom invited journalists to meet Shmuel Bar, a former military intelligence officer and civil servant in the Prime Minister’s Office. Now an academic, Bar writes on Iranian defence doctrine. On Monday the same organisation will be hosting a member of Israel’s security cabinet, Isaac ‘Bouji’ Herzog, who once again will answer questions, among other issues, on the threat posed by Iran.

The Israel lobby is trying to convince the media that the war is right. But there’s even more blame for AIPAC to go around, and of course, the article is filled with references to “neocons.”

Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney and the remnants of the neoconservative lobby in Washington are believed to be sympathetic to the idea. However, there are also those in strong positions, such as Defence Secretary Robert Gates and some senior military chiefs, who are thought to be privately opposed to such a move. ‘If it were up to Bush and Cheney they would want to see this thing done,’ said Larry Johnson, a former top CIA analyst. ‘But they are now up against a lot of fundamental military realities that make it hard. The military has been pushing back against this.’

Larry Johnson is now a Democrat (he once even gave the Democratic response to Bush’s radio address) with, shall we say, an agenda. You may remember that the Air Force is currently restructuring its top brass due to some really awful mistakes made with the transportation of nuclear-armed missiles (among other things).

The Air Force continued handing out disciplinary actions in response to the six nuclear warheads mistakenly flown on a B-52 bomber from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug. 30. The squadron commander in charge of Minot’s munitions crews was relieved of all duties pending the investigation.

[…] The original plan was to transport non-nuclear Advanced Cruise Missiles, mounted on the wings of a B-52, to Barksdale as part of a Defense Department effort to decommission 400 of the ACMs. It was not discovered that the six missiles had nuclear warheads until the plane landed at Barksdale, leaving the warheads unaccounted for during the approximately 3 and one-half hour flight between the two bases, the officers said.

Here’s Johnson’s analysis of what happened—before the Air Force investigation came out.

So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let’s call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.

Then he told me something I had not heard before.

Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can’t imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?

That’s some awesome analysis, Johnson. Why, it’s only 100% wrong regarding the nukes. No wonder the Guardian is quoting him. He says all the things they want to have “confirmed” by “experts” for their “readers.” (Sorry, got carried away with the scare quotes there.)

Right-wing think-tanks, however, such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, have been vocal in their advocation of confronting Iran. Indeed, the institute recently produced a report on a theoretical military attack on Iran authored by Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt, entitled ‘The Last Resort: Consquences of Preventive Military Action Against Iran’.

The study fell short of recommending such an attack but it did provide an exhaustive argument on why and how such an attack would work. That led critics to dub it a blueprint for war with Iran. It suggested that the possible best line of attack would in fact not be against Tehran’s nuclear programme but against its oil industry, thus cutting off the source of Iran’s current wealth. ‘The political shock of losing the oil income would cause Iran to rethink its stance,’ the report suggested.

Shyeah, because that’s exactly how stupid they think we are: Performing actions guaranteed to double (yet again) the price of oil.

It comes at a time when a resolution has been put forward in Congress calling for a naval blockade of Iran led by US warships. The proposal calls for the United States to lead an international effort to cut off the country by sea, something that would almost certainly by seen as an act of war by Iran. The resolution has got huge support from Israeli politicians and the country’s highly effective lobbying industry in Washington, led perhaps inevitably by Aipac, which has made the issue its legislative priority. ‘The war drums are beating. There is no doubt about that,’ said Johnson.

A naval blockade? Oh, they must be referring to this:

(2) urges the President, in the strongest of terms, to immediately use his existing authority to impose sanctions on–

(A) the Central Bank of Iran and any other Iranian bank engaged in proliferation activities or the support of terrorist groups;

(B) international banks which continue to conduct financial transactions with proscribed Iranian banks;

(C) energy companies that have invested $20,000,000 or more in the Iranian petroleum or natural gas sector in any given year since the enactment of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996; and

(D) all companies which continue to do business with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps;

(3) demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program; and

That’s a bill in committee at the moment calling for tougher sanctions on Iran. So does this make the EU complicit in the war as well? They’re also calling for tougher sanctions on Iran.

Read the whole article. It’s Israel Wants A War Day in the British press. Know your enemy, as Frank J likes to say.