Obama's Cosmetic Visit

During his first term, both the Republicans and the Israelis criticized President Barack Obama for not visiting Israel. It was viewed as a serious offense — I mean, on par with that of a Muslim imam refusing to go on pilgrimage to Mecca. Neither George Bush Sr. nor Ronald Reagan ever set foot in Israel, though, and nobody accuses them of anti-Semitism.

Obama’s recent visit to Israel and the West Bank was devoid of meaning. There was no need for him to demonstrate his support for the Jewish state, nor did he have a peace plan to offer the disillusioned Palestinians, who by now expect nothing from the man who paid his respects at Yitzhak Rabin’s tomb while not deigning to visit Yasser Arafat’s.

Nor would he be likely to travel so far simply in order to heal the rifts in his personal relations with Netanyahu, or to caution him against making a unilateral attack on Iran — he already did that at the White House — or even to show the world that, despite difficult relations with Tel Aviv, the U.S.-Israel alliance is a constant.

In reality, the U.S. president’s whistle-stop tour aimed to demonstrate that his “return to Asia-Pacific” policy, designed to hold China in check, does not imply neglect of the Middle East. From there, too, he will attempt to freeze his rival giant’s economic growth: Iranian oil sanctions deprive China of its third biggest oil supplier.

The visit was another empty gesture from a president unable to admit that he lacks initiatives to solve the region’s conflicts. The mistakes made by his administration and its lack of any serious perspective is pushing several countries closer to war.

On the one hand, he expects Israel to believe that economic sanctions and diplomatic negotiations with Iran will be successful in avoiding a war. On the other, he refuses to ease up on sanctions in return for Iranian concessions on its nuclear program. He is asking for Iran’s unconditional surrender but refuses to even discuss security guarantees to safeguard Iran against attack. Does he have no control over Israel?

For the present, Obama is looking to delay an illegal preemptive attack against Iran by the Jewish state. In this way he will gain time to rally world public opinion to his side and so place himself on the right side of history, saying that all peaceful channels have been exhausted. Both Saddam and Gadhafi were U.S. allies and neither possessed weapons of mass destruction. If they, as allies, were overthrown and their countries devastated, what would the U.S. be capable of against an enemy?

Obama must know that Tehran will not simply raise the white flag and surrender. Quite the reverse. Some 300,000 U.S. soldiers — stationed in Iraq and the Arab countries, in Afghanistan, Turkey and Israel, as well as on naval vessels moored in the Persian Gulf — are reason enough to question Obama’s good will. Unlike the Bush administration, the Obama administration already has a military action plan against the Iranians.

The only significant, perceptible positive outcome of this trip has been the reconciliation between Israel and Turkey, following Netanyahu’s apology for the incident involving the Gaza solidarity ship. Obama, who has Patriot missiles stationed in Turkish territory, needs the loyalty and unity of both his allies if he is to take on the challenges of the Middle East.

In an interview, Obama said that “Right now, we think it would take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon.” Was he trying to set a date for a war? Does he honestly believe that an armed conflict with Iran would be less damaging to the U.S. than coexisting with a nuclear Iran? He is mistaken if he does. Likewise, U.S. foreign policy continues to be held hostage to Israeli interests. The state of Israel, which considered Iraq its closest rival, has been the principal beneficiary of the invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq — while the U.S. has been the greatest loser in every sense. Not for nothing does Zbigniew Brzezinski counsel Obama to waste no time in shooting down Israeli fighter planes if they attempt to attack Iran.

But Obama, despite his lack of trust in the Israeli leader, has given Netanyahu the green light in the interest of saving his own face: “Israel is a sovereign nation with the right to defend itself.”* In other words, “Good luck with your independent venture.” The answer bounced back from Tehran: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened to raze Tel Aviv and Haifa “to the ground” if Israel attacked his country. The three of them are gearing up for the worst.

How can the U.S. hope to achieve peace in the region by arming Israel and weakening Iran, when the guarantee of a cold and lasting peace depends on a balance, albeit one of terror? The current fragile balance is being upset by increasing Israel’s qualitative military advantage over its rivals in the region.

Plan to “Africanize” the Middle East

“And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.’ And I did.” These are the words of George W. Bush, as quoted by Palestinian minister Nabil Shaath. Bush had apparently confused the voice of God with the voice of Ariel Sharon, who on Aug. 14, 2002, named Iraq as “the greatest danger facing Israel.”** The exact same phrase is now being uttered by Netanyahu, changing Iraq for Iran. The plot line is identical — and once again, the world is buying it.

The object of the United States’ invasion and abasement of Iraq was not to protect Kurdish or Shiite minorities from Saddam’s persecutions; neither was its aim to establish democracy and rescue Iraqi citizens from weapons of mass destruction. Not even the Iraqis’ oil was the reason, since the U.S. already controlled that. The war was another proxy war, fought by the U.S. on behalf of Tel Aviv, whose object was to eliminate a developed Islamic Arab country and obstruct the constitution of any other government capable of challenging Israel’s supremacy. A great pile of rubble would guarantee a successful outcome to their projects, among which were the recovery of the Iraqi oil pipeline between Mosul and the Israeli port of Haifa, the destruction of the country’s infrastructure and the weakening of Iraqi secular society, leaving it impoverished and mired in underdevelopment for generations to come. All of this would facilitate their subordination in the long term. Then came “divide and rule,” fanning the flames between Shiite and Sunni Arabs and the Kurds.

The policy of “dual containment,” devised by Washington for the Middle East at the end of the ‘70s, ordered the obstruction of economic, political, social and military growth in Iraq and Iran in order to increase the power of the Israeli state.*** Iraq has been returned to the Stone Age. Now it is the turn of Iran. Israel is hinting that it has the capability to return Iran to the Stone Age and disable all its electronic devices with an electromagnetic pulse attack.

For decades, neocolonial policy in Africa has been to destroy more or less structured nations of strategic importance, turning them into “failed states” whose subsequent occupation and domination can then be justified. Among the most recent examples are Sudan and Libya. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, this same strategy of condemning countries to poverty in order to guarantee lasting control over their resources or their strategic routes is being applied to the Middle East and Central Asia: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and now they are trying to do the same with Syria and Iran.

Meanwhile, curiously, the thing that is really troubling the Iranian leadership is neither the sound of U.S.-Israeli sabers rattling nor the economic crisis and the sanctions that are devastating the country. Their sleepless nights are the result of President Ahmadinejad’s threats to provoke a “spring” if he is not permitted to present Rahim Mashaei, his adviser and daughter-in-law’s father, as candidate to the presidency in the June 14 elections.

Such is the way of the tragedy playing out in this part of the world.

* Editor’s note: The actual quotation was spoken by Netanyahu in reference to Obama and is as follows: “Thank you for unequivocally affirming Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself against any threat.”

** Translator’s note: This statement was made on Aug. 12, 2002.

*** Translator’s note: The dual containment policy was instituted in 1993, not the late ‘70s.