Despite the fact that no one asked for it, another regional war looms in the Middle East.
The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) completes the third and final scheduled explosive event of Full Ship Shock Trials while underway in the Atlantic Ocean, Aug. 8, 2021. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Novalee Manzella / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)
The Laurel and Hardy negotiating team of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, coupled with Trump’s appalling ignorance of world affairs and megalomania, seem set to push the U.S. into yet another debacle in the Middle East, one the Congress has not approved, and the public does not want.
The demands imposed on Iran by the Trump White House are no more acceptable to the regime in Tehran than those imposed on Hamas in Gaza under Trump’s sham peace plan.
Trump’s demand that Iran shut down its nuclear program and give up its missile capabilities in return for no new sanctions is as tone deaf as calling on Hamas to disarm in Gaza.
But since we have long dispensed with diplomats, who are linguistically, politically and culturally literate, who can step into the shoes of their adversaries, we are being led to another war in the Middle East by our newest coterie of buffoons.
The U.S. and Israel foolishly believe they can bomb their way to decapitating the Iranian government and installing a client regime. That this non-reality-based belief system failed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya eludes them.
The promise of no new sanctions will not incentivize Iran to broker an agreement. Iran is already crippled by onerous sanctions that have gutted its economy.
This will do nothing to break the economic stranglehold.
Iran will not give up its nuclear program, which has the potential to be weaponized, or its ballistic missile program, which Israel said it would target in an air attack.
Israel’s reputed nuclear arsenal of some 300 warheads is a powerful incentive for Iran to retain the capacity to build a nuclear arsenal of its own. Iran, like Hamas, is never going to render itself defenseless against those seeking its annihilation.
An aerial attack on Iran will not be like the 12-day assault last June against Iran’s nuclear facilities and state and security facilities.
Then Iran calibrated its response with symbolic strikes on Al Udeid air base in Qatar in the hopes that it would not lead to a wider, protracted conflict.
If an aerial assault is launched, Iran will have nothing to lose. It will understand that appeasing its adversaries is impossible.
Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Afghanistan. Iran is not Lebanon. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Syria. Iran is not Yemen.
Iran is the seventeenth largest country in the world, with a land mass equivalent to the size of Western Europe. It has a population of almost 90 million — 10 times greater than Israel — and its military resources, as well as alliances with China and Russia, make it a formidable opponent.
The Strait of Hormuz and the Musandam Peninsula on Dec. 6, 2018. (MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)
Despite Iran’s relative military weakness, when set against the combined forces of the U.S. and Israel, it can inflict a lot of damage. It will do this as swiftly as possible.
Hundreds of American troops will likely be killed. Iran will certainly shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil chokepoint that facilitates the passage of 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.
This will double or triple the price of oil and devastate the global economy. It will target oil installations along with U.S. ships and military bases in the region.
Mounting losses and a huge spike in oil prices will provide the fodder for Trump, and his vile counterpart in Israel, to ignite a sustained regional war.
This is the cost of being governed by imbeciles. God help us.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report.”
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The thing I find most infuriating about all of this is that there is no debate to be found anywhere in America. Not on the House or Senate floor, not on the news or even the streets of America. I am calling this the fist war of silent consent in American history. Members of Congress are in such fear of Israel that they dare not speak out against this war. We all know the words about 1984 but not even Orwell himself could have known that he was describing the Zionist entity that is destroying the entire free world.
If members of Congress cared more about the good of the country as a whole, as opposed to just being reelected, then they could act to counter this atrocious foreign policy, with its outrageous goal of driving us into war with Iran. None of those who favor such dangerous and lethal foreign policy deserve reelection. Iran is not a danger to us. The fascistic state of Israel defines it as a danger to it. And so it is, in that it seeks hegemony in the Middle East, created and backed by the USA. Israel has become a rogue state, with the US funding its out of control foreign policy. If the US stopped financing every absurd whim of Netanyahu’s government, we might be able to get back on the road to sanity. Where is it written that the US must continually spend endless billions on Israel’s elective wars?
“Despite the fact that no one asked for it, another regional war looms in the Middle East.”
Grossly misleading.
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows exactly what religio-ethnic group has been foaming at the mouth for this war for over 30 years.
And what a foreign and domestic policy
change for the US-Israeli/West genocide
in Gaza: “To survive as a human being
is possible only through love” (Chris
Hedges, “War is a Force That Gives Us
Meaning”).
Lessons never learned!
Iran can wipe Israel off the map. ps there’s no such thing as ‘god’.jj
It wouldn’t surprise me if the US or Israel knows how to stop Iran from closing the Hormuz Straight. As in Venzuaela I also won’t be surprised if much of the Iran forces have all been bought off with the US paper money. I do hope I am wrong.
War with Iran will cause Americans and Iranians to die hurt the environment and collapse our economy plus medical injuries on both sides I am opposing the war Kushner and Witkoff are greedy know nothings who are not capable of diplomacy my guess is that there is a 95 percent chance of war
We passively let Russia, China, Pakistan, and even North Korea develop nuclear bombs. I’m glad we finally, after 85 yeaqrs of passive acquiesence, are engaging in our first actually protective war in my 78-year lifetime.
You didn’t ‘let’ them, because you didn’t have the right to decide – it wasn’t your decision to make.
This is the kind of arrogance that has resulted in millions of people killed and displaced since WWII. Until such time as the US decides to learn to live with the world rather than control it, you will suffer the consequences of your belligerence and hubris.
Iran is not actively threatening the US, it is simply responding to your threats agaisnt it. You started it, or rather Israel did and you blindly followed its lead. So, this war will not be ‘protective’, it will be offensive.
Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons, Iran doesn’t want nuclear weapons, what Iran wants is relief from the crippling, illegal American sanctions and respect as a sovereign nation.
America/Israel wants hegemony over the ME and the entire planet. Israel HAS nuclear weapons.
I think Trump is looking for a deal : he won’t start WWIII if we don’t release the E. Files and prosecute him for pedophilia.
(That’s jail time if he doesn’t pardon himself)
Hedges writes: This is the cost of being governed by imbeciles.
Trump & Co. give imbeciles a bad name — figuratively and literally.
“The U.S. and Israel foolishly believe they can bomb their way to decapitating the Iranian government and installing a client regime. That this non-reality-based belief system failed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya [and Syria ?] eludes them.”
As someone once said: “keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is the definition of stupidity”. QED
“keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is the definition of stupidity”
Isn’t that what millions of people do when they continue to pray for something?
Yes, quite so. Who was the original quote attributed too
Seems to me kushner is a freelancer to trump like epstein was to barak ?
Let me now how far off base I am aside the known who he works for .
Lots of money and endless supply it seems like the printers of same .
Ari Ben seems more credible ?
Who they work for !
Apparently, in the Epstein files there are 12,000 mentions of a particular family. Them’s the bosses, we’s the cattle.
Steve ,
Tnx for reply ,
I generally don’t get replies for my comments because they are sort of a question .
If I were a cow I would lift my my tail and thunderclap a big MOO !
I accept your saying “they” and not “he”
Humbling
Again ty.
That is exactly where all of this leads. If we don’t pull the death vine out by its roots, it will continue to strangle all of us.