The Iran Nuclear Agreement Within the “Grand
Chessboard”. Decline of American Power
By Jack Dresser
September 29, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Global
Research"-
In a stratified society, the tiny fraction who
comprise the ruling class must control perceptions of the much
larger fraction under their control. To do so they must tightly
manage the conduits of information and its interpretation through
endlessly repeated story lines that alternately generate and relieve
public anxiety. Driven by anxiety and reinforced by its reduction,
we are herded along the path chosen by the rulers with only fleeting
glimpses of reality. US news reports, invariably immersed in
American mythology and disembodied from honest history, remain
intentionally disinformative.
There is no more glaring current example than the Iran nuclear
issue, a red herring recognizable as such through examining our past
and likely future relationships with Iran. Who should distrust whom?
Who are the aggressors, who deserves international sanctions, who
holds which cards, and what are the real stakes? For answers it
helps to examine the historical trajectory within which today’s
“news” about Iran is embedded.
In 1953 the US overthrew Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammed
Mossadeq and destroyed Iranian democracy to maintain Western control
of Iran’s oil industry, then installed Shah Pahlavi and his brutal
Savak-enforced police state for a quarter century as a bastion of US
power in Central Asia until overthrown by a popular revolution in
1979. Given US stakes in control of the region, holding US embassy
hostages seemed sensible at that time to discourage US military
intervention, but the Iranian people have been punished by sanctions
ever since including billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets
and a 40% reduction in Iranian oil exports.
In 1980 the US encouraged and supported Iraq in launching and
maintaining an 8-year war against Iran causing an estimated
half-million Iranian deaths. Assuring sustained devastation to both
sides, the US increased sanctions against Iran while duplicitously
providing it secret arms using Israel as an intermediary with
revenues diverted and laundered to support US atrocities in Central
America. In 1988 shortly before a UN-brokered ceasefire, the USS
Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 with two missiles, killing
all 290 aboard including 66 children. Rather than disciplinary
consequences, its Captain received the Legion of Merit, a neck
decoration reserved for flag rank officers and second only to the
Congressional Medal of Honor. Thus have we respected Iranian life.
Iran is not an aggressor nation, having invaded no other country for
over 200 years. US and Israeli intelligence services – supported by
the IAEA – acknowledge that NPT-signatory Iran has no nuclear
weapons program, and moreover, would pose no military threat even
with nukes. They are neither crazy nor suicidal. In contrast, NPT
non-signatory Israel has repeatedly attacked and occupied
territories of all its contiguous neighbors throughout its brief
67-year history and is the only nuclear threat in the region with
both land- and sea-based missile delivery systems. The US has
completely destroyed two modern, advanced, secular, socialist Arab
societies, has inflicted continuing chaos upon Afghanistan while
restoring their opium production to assure continuing chaos in the
West as well, and is covertly waging massive warfare against Syria
and Yemen.
Having identified the real aggressors, real victims and real
threats, what then is the real agenda behind Israel’s hysterical
demands for attack and our insistent sanctions upon Iran, both
violating the UN Charter prohibiting “the threat or use of force
against the territorial integrity or political independence of any
state”?
Wahhabist Saudi Arabia bitterly opposes Shia Iran as a regional
hegemonic rival. It has made common cause with Israel, which wants
to eliminate Iran’s support of Hezbollah, the defensive force
against Israel’s 1982 invasion and 18-year occupation of south
Lebanon that remains Lebanon’s bulwark against Israeli aggression.
The Saudis have provided much of the funding and the Israel lobby
has provided vigorous political pressure behind our proxy war
against Syria, the key “Shia crescent” bridge between Iran and
Hezbollah.
But Israel and the Saudis aside, what independent US interests are
involved? Russian and Chinese leaders seem to be implementing
Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard strategy more quietly and skillfully
than the West. Sanctions against Iran have served a revitalized US
cold war face-off against Russia, blocking Iran’s admission to the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization which excludes membership to
nations under UN sanctions. With India and Pakistan to become SCO
members next year, inclusion of Iran would largely complete
Russian-Asian dominance of central, southern and eastern Eurasia and
encircle the resource-rich Caspian Basin. Iran applied for SCO
membership in 2008 and will be eligible to join when UN sanctions
are lifted, and the US can no longer block this.
The SCO is a political, economic and military alliance that will
soon represent about half the world’s population, intended to
challenge the Bretton Woods financial institutions and reproduce the
former Warsaw Pact’s counterweight to NATO. Chinese, Indian and
Russian troops marched together in Moscow’s WWII victory parade this
year. The SCO overlaps the three-continent BRICS alliance, which
including Brazil in turn overlaps Latin American alliances of
Mercosur, ALBA and UNASUR with its new Banco del Sur for development
lending free of neoliberal “structural adjustments” imposed by the
World Bank and IMF.
Irrespective of congressional action on the agreement, the other
P5+1 negotiating countries will not impose continuing sanctions. The
EU is eager for Iranian natural gas. Iran and Russia together hold a
third of the world’s natural gas reserves, to which the EU wants
access. Force is not an option. Russia and Iran have already signed
a major trade agreement and Russia will soon deliver them an S-300
surface-to-air anti-missile system, sufficient for effective defense
against the US or Israel without needing to maintain ambiguity about
a nuclear deterrent.
Iran will also provide essential strategic land and sea links in
China’s far-reaching New Silk Roads projects and is a founding
member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank for financing
these projects. Chinese companies have already begun pumping from
Iran’s immense gas fields in the Persian Gulf and oil fields along
its border with Iraq, purchased in yuan and other alternative
currencies to bypass Western sanctions.
The Monroe Doctrine is finished and American power to control world
resources is declining rapidly. Iran has refused to bend to our
will, and the developing world is applauding. The 120-member
Non-Aligned Movement chose Tehran for its 2015 conference and Iran
is its current chair. We can either lose a decisive round or at
least stay in the game. That, I believe, is what our acceptance of
this accord will – at least for now – determine.
Jack Dresser, Ph.D., a US Army psychologist during the Vietnam War
and currently a retired behavioral scientist, is national vice-chair
of the Veterans for Peace working group on Palestine and the Middle
East, a member of the International Society of Political Psychology,
and co-director of the Al-Nakba Awareness Project in Oregon that
focuses on the Israeli land seizure, ethnic cleansing and occupation
of Palestine.
Copyright © Jack Dresser, Global Research, 2015
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