While life in Iraq for the average Iraqi becomes truly unbearable (this missive is essential to understand what Western journalists simply cannot see) and the Bush administration cares little for the “liberated” people themselves, Dick Cheney is apparently keen to attack Iran with the US military. The Washington Note reports:
The person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney. The person in Iran who most wants a conflict is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force would be big winners in a conflict as well — as the political support that both have inside Iran has been flagging.
Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney’s national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush’s tack towards Condoleezza Rice’s diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.
This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an “end run strategy” around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.
The thinking on Cheney’s team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran’s nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).
The idea that the US military could strike Iran and not expect the most serious blowback is unimaginable. Being here in the Middle East, and speaking to a host of writers, bloggers and intellectuals, it’s clear that even amongst the most Western-friendly of them, the US is truly hated these days. It is as simple as that. For Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and supporting autocratic regimes in the region, literally nobody believes the “democracy” rhetoric coming out of the US. Furthermore, the ability of the US to gather support from anybody other than the corrupt and authoritarian elites is non-existent. This reality is virtually ignored in the Western media, as if these poor oppressed people are just waiting for some good old fashioned US liberation.
Welcome to the new Middle East.