On the one year anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese figure Rafiq Hariri, Robert Fisk asks some questions and finds uncomfortable answers:
“The Americans, deep in distress in their occupation of Iraq, have hatched a deal with the Syrians. In response to a request that the Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada Sadr keep his distance from the Iraqi Sunni insurgents and play by the ball in the elections, Syria has promised to use its ‘influence’.
“In response to an American appeal, Syria has arrested up to 8,000 Iraqi insurgents inside its borders. In response to a plea by Washington, it is cutting back on the assistance that the Iraqi rebels receive from inside Syria.”
While the US talks tough over Syria, it seems, as ever, the official line is rather different to reality.
Great new look to the site Ant.
Anyway, in spite of the tough rhetoric, it is refreshing that the US has been forced to reconsider diplomacy of sorts. Even though this will likely lead to sleazy back room deals, it is still far better than armed conflict.
Who knows. Some places I visit are utterly sure the Iran talk is just talk and that Syria is the real target. There are so many good reasons, even for profit crazed warmongers or mad neocons, NOT to attack Iran. Syria was first in Clean Break and the Yinon statelet theory, so I’d look out if I were them.
Glenn,
Syria does not have oil. Iran does. It’s all about oil. The US is building permanent bases in Iraq. They may of course not be able to hold them but they are building them all the same.
You have to wonder which chapter this is in the Occupiers Winning Hearts and Minds Manual but no doubt they have the Tel Aviv version.
The Americans, insanely, seem to think they can leave the Iraqis in bloody misery and hunker down in their state of the art ‘bases’ and control the oil of the region.
Conflict with Iran, one suspects it may be argued, would allow the US, not to invade and occupy Iran but to invade and occupy the oil region along the Iraqi border.
rhoss
it seems counterintuitive to me too, but this is what xymphora says:
‘Scott Ritter thinks that war on Iran is inevitable because John Bolton’s speechwriter told him that the speech setting it up has already been written. Think about it. If this is true, would Bolton’s speechwriter have told Ritter about it? Isn’t it just an obvious trick to fool Ritter into thinking that the target is Iran? The United States isn’t going to attack Israel’s only possible friend in the Middle East. Besides hiding real American intentions, and keeping the Iranian leadership as radical as possible (moderate Iranian leaders would be a disaster for Israel), the Iran talk helps maintain a high world oil price (gotta keep those Exxon profits up near forty billion a year!).’
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
He has a few posts on this topic and is always good for an alternative view.
clearer exposition of rationale from a later post from same place:
‘The Kurdistan pipeline thesis is powerful as it is based on geography. We know the Kurds are trying to include the Kirkuk oil fields in Kurdistan. We know that Kurdistan is landlocked. We know that the oilfields are useless without a way of moving the oil to a port. We know that the north is blocked by Turkey, the east by Iran, and the south by the rest of Iraq (which won’t be a friend if the Kurds abscond with the Kirkuk oil fields). The only way out is west, through two possible routes. The southern one is through Jordan to Israel, but moving oil through Israel isn’t politically possible now. That leaves the route through Syria to Lebanon. For that route to work, the Kurds need regime change in Syria. This will have the added advantage of breaking off the east part of Syria to form part of Greater Kurdistan. The Kurds are being manipulated by Israel and the United States through the use of the carrot of Greater Kurdistan. This isn’t going to end well for the Kurds.’