By Howard Bloom
Iran has just offered to take Iraq off our hands...for a price.
What is it asking for? That the U.S. drops its "bullying" policy toward Tehran and that we act with "justice." In other words, that we let Iran develop nuclear weapons in peace. That we stop asking for economic sanctions. And that we give Iran whatever it wants from Israel this month--short of utter oblivion.
Yes, Iran is asking us to hand them Iraq and to pay them for accepting it. What a twist! We've done Iraq's work for it.
We've spent nearly a trillion dollars and over 2,000 lives swinging Iraq into Iran's hands.
And Iraq wants us to pay them? Shouldn't it be the other way around? If we give Iraq away, we pay a price we can not afford. We lose our stature, our power, and our ability to influence this world, to turn this globe toward free speech, gender equality, tolerance, and pluralism--all values Iran is definitely NOT promoting as part of its global agenda.
And Iran DOES have a global agenda. But more about that in a minute. First, here's why Iran should be paying us, not the other way around. Iran spent close to a billion dollars, 500,000 lives, and eight years trying to take Iraq militarily in the Iran-Iraq War of 1980 to 1988. And it failed.
If we reverse that failure by handing Iraq over on a depleted-uranium platter, we will prove to the world that we are historically ignorant and geopolitically blind. We will demonstrate to Europe, Asia, and the Middle East that we are no longer a superpower…in fact that we are a toothless tiger, a people of retreat. And it will open a power vacuum to others.
In that vacuum, Iran will use its uranium-and-missile-waving face-offs with America to establish hegemony and control in the Persian Gulf, control over 66% of the world's oil reserves, control over the sea lanes through which 40% of our oil travels daily, control over the world's economy via a stranglehold over oil prices, and the first step toward a role as the Middle East's new land superpower.
Iran will turn Iraq into an Islamic Revolutionary power following the truths of the Ayatollah.
This will give Iran a puppet government and a de facto province that increases its size 27%, bulks up its population by 42%, nearly doubles its oil reserves, and whose military adds manpower-complete with US weapons and training--to the Iranian combat and doomsday machine.
It will hand Iran a victory. A victory in its patient 28 year struggle to topple the Great Satan. A victory in its 28 year long attempt to follow the dictates of the Iranian Islamic Revolution's founding father, Ayatollah Khomeini, who said: "We will export our revolution throughout the world...until the calls 'there is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God' are echoed all over the world." The first nation the Ayatollah wanted to export his revolution to was Iraq. And we will give him his wish.
We will add heft to a claim made a mere two months ago by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a claim that mixes partial truths with an aim that I find ominous:
"The great powers…kill the peoples in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, and turn them into refugees… They operate all the terrorist groups in Iraq and Palestine, …They fill all their warehouses with atomic, biological, and chemical weapons. …they cause the greatest damage to natural resources …The powers are willing to destroy the planet several times over, in order to line the pockets of the world's capitalists, parties, and great powers. …they have failed in the proper management of the world. …Today, the Iranian people is recognized as a model for all the peoples of the world. …the world is left with only one light, one banner, and one people, which has preserved the hope in the hearts of all the peoples. This is the great and courageous people of Iran. …the Iranian people--because of its past culture, its past civilization, its intelligent youth, its human and material potential--has the capacity to quickly become an invincible global power. This will happen as soon as it achieves advanced technologies."
Those technologies may already be in Iranian hands. And, thanks to us, Iraq may soon be in Iranian hands as well.
Very interesting, as usual, and quite convincing. There is however a potential flaw in your theory that it's all part of Iran's cunningly-laid plan... Are you sure the Iraqi Sunnis would be so easily beaten into submission by Iran? And that the Iraqi Shi'ites would be so happy to be reunited with their Iranian "brethren", if the latter tried to take control?
Posted by: Spev | June 12, 2007 at 11:26 AM