Iran Trapped: Thinks the US Needs It

The Iranian leadership has landed in an extremely dangerous trap with its pro-American policy shift: It is under the illusion that the U.S. government absolutely needs it to contain the situation in the Middle East. Namely, it is not only transforming its own concession into an ostensibly desperate need of the up-to-now enemy, but also the concession of the Iranian society as a whole. Thus, it is attempting the ideological cover-up of its own defeat. The leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran is thus showing it has not yet learned its lesson from the mistakes of the leaders of state in the Arab community. First and foremost, it has not realized the most fundamental issue: It supposes that the Islamic leadership is going to be allowed to have the upper hand in conducting the approach with the United States, but that is far from reality. In fact, if it puts the principle of cooperation with the U.S. into effect, very soon the Americans themselves will relentlessly send the ayatollahs in Iran into history’s trashcan. They will replace them with Iranian bourgeois politicians, who will leave nothing standing of Iranian power. They will skin the ayatollahs alive! Saddam thought the same when he ordered the launching of attacks against Iran in September of 1980, only a year and a half after Iran’s Islamic Revolution, bringing Khomeini to official power. It served the interests of the Americans, who wanted to overthrow the new Iranian regime. Saddam fought against Iran for eight whole years, sacrificing several hundred thousand of his compatriots for the sake of the Americans. He was under the illusion that he would be remunerated for his services.

When a year and a half after the Iran-Iraq War ended, in August 1990, Saddam supposed that the White House had given him the green light to receive remuneration for the services provided to the U.S. by invading Kuwait, the Americans literally brought him down. They killed over 85,000 Iraqi militants, and some 175,000 Iraqis were taken prisoner. Fifteen years later, on Dec. 30, 2006, acting on a U.S. mandate and after replacing him with a U.S. military occupation, the Iraqis hanged him.

Gaddafi was also under the same illusions when he started showing political openness toward the United States, United Kingdom and the rest of his allies. Having put him to sleep, they organized an uprising against him. Just two to three days before counter-insurgency measures were imposed, NATO itself attacked Libya. It crushed Gaddafi’s army, completely dismantled the country, and Gaddafi was butchered by guerrilla American mercenaries and literally left for dead.

Bashar al-Assad of Syria is going through such a process. The Syrian regime went as far as torturing prisoners for the sake of the Americans, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 on the World Trade Center and the U.S. Pentagon. They subjected the alleged members of al-Qaida to torture, and whatever information was extorted from the unfortunate people transferred to the fangs of the Assad regime was then passed on to the Americans, who were often in attendance at the brutal interrogations.

As “remuneration” for his services, the Americans and Israelis organized an anti-Assad uprising, receiving funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, with the help of thousands of “jihadi” airborne mercenaries through Turkey. There are considerable doubts as to whether Assad would have gained a victory against the mercenaries, if it had not been for the until-recently, anti-American, Islamic regime in Iran and the unconditional military, financial, not to mention political, support provided by Tehran to Damascus.

The future for Assad is bleak, if the pro-American shift in Iranian policy is actually put in effect. The situation is not quite over. It is not completely sure that Bashar al-Assad will die of old age, but while the Iranian Islamic leadership has so many recent examples of the fate that awaits anti-American leaders, who at some point bow to the United States, they believe that they will get away with it. If they think that this inviolable rule to date does not apply to them, they are deluding themselves. They are sadly misled, as they will find out in the near future. Arrogance is a bad adviser, and sometimes, it is fatal …