STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Rational Iran and the Great Power Games

 Since the 1950’s when the CIA under the leadership of covert operatives F. Roosevelt Jr and Schwarzkopf Sr. initiated a coup against the Iranian Nationalist leader Mossadegh to install the Shah of Iran who was more "sympathetic" to our oil interest,  the US has been playing games in Iran. Along with the US geopolitical partners - Britain, Russia, France, Russia, and Israel---Iran became a pawn as well as major power player in the Middle East for the next sixty five years. Not once in that period of time under Iran’s respective leaders—Shah Pahlavi, Ayatollah Khomeini and his son Ayatollah Khameini and President Ahmadenijad has there been any evidence of "irrational" or "crazy" thinking. In fact, Iran's leaders, except for the Shah, who was exceedingly weak and not very bright, have shown an uncanny ability to manipulate the US, Britain, and Israel into varying positions of confrontation and eventual cooperation.

During the brutal reign of the Shah and SAVAK (Iranian intel), the Iranian clergy convinced the CIA to place the Ayatollah Khomeini under safe keeping with our once ‘helpful’ ally Saddam Hussein for protection against SAVAK. In 1979, the Iranian clergy convinced our CIA again to return Khomeini to Iran where he was eventually installed as the leader of Iran after having overthrown the Shah without the help of the CIA who was completely caught off guard. In 1979, I had, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under the Carter Administration, four hundred members of our US Embassy of whom only eight spoke Farsi. Despite the entreaties by Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher that Ayatollah Khomeini was ‘crazy’,  I tried to explain to him that he was extremely ‘sane’ and would ‘carry out’ his long espoused agenda of making Iran into an Islamic State for the next six hundred years. Weeks later, the Iran Hostage began for the second time. Before the infamous Iranian Hostage Siege that began in April 30, 1980 and lasted for years, there was actually a hostage siege before that where our brave Ambassador Sullivan was taken hostage in his own house, again as a result of faulty US intelligence, specifically manipulated by a very effective Iranian Revolutionary Guard counter –intelligence effort. 

The American hostages were released by Reagan on his inaugural day- no one had been aware that there had been illegal negotiations undertaken for months prior to the official release of the hostages which Reagan and other Republicans had initiated against the protests of Democratic officials in the Carter administration . The nefarious individuals involved in this illegal activity would become prominent in subsequent Republican administrations including Elliot Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle and many others. The Iran Contra Affair was an outcome of this intrigue involving American officials, Israel and the cunning ability of the Iranians to compromise everyone involved. 

This cunning behavior of Iran would eventually lead to a war with Iraq for geopolitical concerns in which both the US and Israeli governments played integral parts. The First Iran-Iraq War [1980-1988] was directly precipitated by Secretary of State George Shultz, [my boss at the time], Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad [ an Afghani neocon and CIA asset] and SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, all of whom with Reagan’s administration support allowed Saddam Hussein to employ gas warfare. Our military supplied Saddam with Fighter Jets and in certain cases we even flew for the Iraqis against Iranian pilots. But what made this war particularly revealing of the underlying hypocrisy was the fact that with our encouragement [read Republican Neocons] Israel supplied the necessary ammunition, airplanes and even flew the F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tiger planes for Ayatollah Khomeini. The idea of encouraging this war between Iraq and Iran for almost ten years, where countless millions of children, men and women died needlessly, was the strategy espoused by both Israel and the US, that it would benefit both countries if Iran and Iraq were weakened and Israel remained the predominant ‘democratic’ power in the Middle East.

 For eight years Israel and their ‘inhumane’ Zionist leaders were in fact aiding and abetting the ‘crazy’ Iranian Ayatollahs and mullahs to vanquish a secular “Baathist Regime’. So again, there is no evidence up to this time that Israel nor Iran have considered each other barbaric or insane. In fact, what we see at this point in history and even later , is that Iran needs Israel and Israel needs Iran. One without the other cannot create the necessary ‘strategic tension’ in the Middle East to counter the power of Saudi Arabia or Turkey [both Sunni countries]. Then we enter the Second Persian War under Bush Sr which again was initiated under false pretenses. But that’s another story for the moment. And once again, Israeli fighter pilots [ in secret of course] fly US fighter jets and other unmarked planes attacking Iraqi bases in the Bush Sr’s ‘unified coalition’ for democracy and peace. That was lasted less than thirty –six hours. The next encounter that we have involving Israel, Iran and the US is the continuing conflict in Syria where it’s such a bouillabaisse of confusion and misperceptions that Israel realizes that if Bashir Assad is overthrown then Israel's fate will be completely determined by Iranian hegemony. Something Israel cannot manipulate.

 So what is the next pretext for a neocon /Israeli inspired war? A fictional narrative created around the Iranian nuclear bomb. In reality, if Israel were really worried about an “Arab Bomb’ then they should attack the failing –state of Pakistan which has in fact hundreds of atomic bombs. Furthermore , unlike Iran, Pakistan is really controlled by fanatical Sunni/Salafist Radicals funded by the Saudi family. So why doesn't Israel even mention Pakistan as a potential problem? There lies the question of the distortions and fabrication of Iran’s presumed threat . Pakistan and Israel have worked very closely along with US and CIA encouragement to develop Pakistan’s infamous arsenal, presumably aimed only at India. Of course, this is nonsense. But nonsense, lies and contradictions and geopolitical interests has never never stopped the Israelis or the Iranians or the Americans or the Saudis. The only difference with Israel is that it is becoming a ‘failed state’ soon to be abandoned by the USG geopolitical interest, soon to be left alone in a paranoid world in which they helped to foment the unrests and dangers that paranoids always fear. For in the world of psychiatry and intelligence, we have a saying, “Paranoids really do have enemies". But this time Israel cannot use the “Holocaust Raison D’etre" since they helped create that one too.