Road to Iran

All the signs are in place that a war with Iran is coming soon. One sign comes from Israel in the form of threats from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Telegraph Co.

On the Iranian front, Mr Olmert privately pronounced himself happy after his visit to the White House that Israel and America are of one mind over the possibility of military intervention against Tehran's nuclear programme.

In President George W Bush, Israel has a firm ally who shares its belief that Iran must be stopped at all costs from becoming a nuclear power.

One of Mr Olmert's party deputies, Shaul Mofaz, kept up the pressure on Iran saying an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites looked "inevitable" given the apparent failure of diplomatic and economic sanctions on Tehran.

"If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it," he said.

"The sanctions are ineffective. Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable."

If Israel does begin a war with Iran considering the slavish devotion to Israel on recent display by our national leaders and the huge amounts of cash we give to Israel it is inconceivable that our government would remain neutral and we would most certainly be drawn into a war with Iran with all of the catastrophic possibilities arising from such a fatal blunder. And don’t look to the Democratic leadership for any sanity regarding a war with Iran. Have the Democrats so much as lifted a finger to stop the ongoing occupation in Iraq? They have not. All they have done is mouth mealy mouthed excuses ever since coming into power in Congress. Given that fact what would make anyone believe they would not support a war with Iran? They have said time and again that Iran is threat, that Iran cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Obama has said it, and the most powerful Democrat in the country has said it Miss impeachment is off the table Nancy Pelosi.

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that no option should be ruled out in order to stop Iran's march toward nuclear weapons.

"Iran must be stopped. They are a threat to the neighborhood and a source of funding for Hamas and Hizbullah," Pelosi told Channel 1.

Despite all of this the progressive blogosphere chirps merrily on about the rise of Obama the Magnificent who like the proverbial leopard has shown his true spots in his recent groveling before AIPAC. I don’t think anything else besides a war with Iran could reveal just how unimportant this election really is. I wonder what passes through the minds of progressives when they hear Obama pledge his fealty to protecting Israel from a non-existent threat. I wonder what the progressives think when they hear Pelosi of the first one hundred days squawk how Iran must be stopped, nothing ruled out. Perhaps they believe it is a secret code to be deciphered with a secret decoding ring from a box of Cracker Jacks. Maybe it goes in one ear and out the other filtered out by a head stuffed with oatmeal. Maybe the moon is made out of green cheese and the leprechauns are burying magical gold while riding miniature horses dancing to the tune of an Irish shanty. Oh I know, Pelosi and Obama don’t really mean it, they’re just kidding.

Still, there are more signs…

Aljazeera

Israel has reportedly started to set up an 'Iran Command' within its air force as part of preparations for a possible war against Iran.

According to reports by unnamed Israeli military sources, the regime's air force has launched 'Iran Command' to coordinate operations to 'confront the growing threat from Tehran'.

The command's operations are aimed at improving coordination among Israeli ballistic missiles and air and missile brigades which deploy the Arrow and Patriot missile systems.

Okay, this is only my opinion that an American war with Iran precipitated by Israel is about to take place. However you can read these articles and decide for yourself. And if you are wondering why the ties that bind the U.S. to Israel are so strong you can read this recent article by Noam Chomsky.

…The strong US-Israel alliance took its present form in 1967, when Israel performed a major service to the United States by destroying the main center of secular Arab nationalism, Nasser's Egypt, also safeguarding the Saudi rulers from the secular nationalist threat. US planners had recognised a decade earlier that a "logical corollary" of US opposition to "radical" (that is, independent) Arab nationalism would be "to support Israel as the only strong pro-Western power left in the Middle East."

Investment by US corporations in Israeli high-tech industry has sharply increased, including Intel, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Warren Buffett and others, joined by major investors from Japan and India Ñ in the latter case, one facet of a growing US-Israel-India strategic alliance.

To be sure, other factors underlie the US-Israeli relationship. In Jerusalem, Bush invoked "the bonds of the book," the faith "shared by Christians like himself and Jews," the Australian Press reported, but apparently not shared by Muslims or even Christian Arabs, like those in Bethlehem, now barred from occupied Jerusalem, a few kilometres away, by illegal Israeli construction projects…

…It is not difficult to discern why Bush's chosen legacy should stress relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia, with a side glance at Egypt, along with disdain for the Palestinians and their miserable plight, apart from a few ritual phrases.

We need not tarry on the thought that the president's choices have anything to do with justice, human rights or the vision of "democracy promotion" that gripped his soul as soon as the pretexts for the invasion of Iraq had collapsed.

But the choices do accord with a general principle, observed with considerable consistency: Rights are assigned in accord with service to power.

Palestinians are poor, weak, dispersed and friendless. It is elementary, then, that they should have no rights. In sharp contrast, Saudi Arabia has incomparable resources of energy, Egypt is the major Arab state, and Israel is a rich Western country and the regional powerhouse, with air and armoured forces that are larger and technologically more advanced than any NATO power (apart from its patron) along with hundreds of nuclear weapons, and with an advanced and largely militarised economy closely linked to the United States.

The contours of the intended legacy are therefore quite predictable.

And as we have seen it is not only Bush who considers Israel to be of ultimate importance to American hegemony in the Middle-East but that of the Democratic leadership as well. There is no need to look to that quarter for any succor from the insane foreign policies that are leading us to the brink of disaster and beyond.