Iran and Obama are the Winners

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By M. I. BHAT

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How long Israel-Hamas truce could last is anybody’s guess given the past experiences with such ceasefire agreements. Netanyahu says he gave “peace a chance” while Hamas sees “victory” in the truce. As was pointed out earlier, Israel was unusually eager this time for truce no sooner it launched attack on Gaza, prompted, as is evident by now, by its intelligence failure on Hamas’ military capabilities. That is encouraging to imagine hesitance on Israeli side for another attack on Gaza in the immediate future.

On hindsight, it seems Netanyahu, compared to some of his colleagues, became less strident in his anti-Hamas utterances soon after the military assault got underway, though not in the intensity of military attacks on Gaza, which he didn’t limit to usual killing of Gazan civilians and destroying their infrastructure but also included selective targeting of non-Western international media personnel and their resources.

Netanyahu is unlikely to have agreed to ceasefire but for the long range rockets Hamas fired deep into Israel. They proved game changer, not merely unsettling Israeli public and initiated exodus, though limited, of scared expatriate workers but also leaving political and military leadership unnerved about the likely outcome of threatened ground assault. Hamas’ claim about “more surprises” for Israel should it launch ground assault could not have been just hype for moral boasting.

For Israel scared population is not the same as the dead Gazans are for Hamas – for the former it saps moral, for the later it energizes to go an extra-mile to avenge. This should explain Israel’s immediate willing to ceasefire and long range rockets (and what more?) in the hands of Hamas.

Whether Iran provided Hamas merely long-range rocket-technology, as it claims, or real off-the-shelf pieces is immaterial. What is material is that after helping Hezbollah secure itself against frequent Israeli depravations, it has made another Israeli victim feel bold enough, if not fully secure, to confront it with a real sting.

In the process, Iran has punched a big hole in the Israel’s overinflated hot air ego-balloon – inflated by America’s active military (both hardware and intelligence) support not just in peace time but even during its wars against Palestinians/Arabs since 1967 Arab-Israel war.

This is definitely a great achievement for Iran, boosting its stock on the Arab streets to the detriment of Arab monarchs and Sunni protagonists who have become Zionist tools against Shia Iran. And at the same time Iran has severely sweakened Israel on one of its war fronts.

Iran’s win doesn’t end there.

The way war ended has greatly helped Obama, too, which has significantly improved opportunities for him to resolves Iran’s nuclear issue diplomatically.

Here is possibly how.

It is no secret how difficult Israel’s drumbeaters in America and Netanyahu, in particular — personally and through his cheerleaders in US Congress — made Obama’s life from the day he came to office. He was greeted with Operation Cast Lead by Ehud Olmert and then Netanyahu didn’t let any forward movement on the Middle East peace process by refusing even temporary freeze on settlement expansion in the West Bank. On Iran, Netanyahu, on the back of Republicans, kept Obama on tenterhooks through threats (of war on Iran, demands for “redlines”) and theatrics (in UNGA). Not satisfied, Netanyahu finally made a direct hit at Obama, supporting and financing his opponent Republican Mitt Romney.

It is in this context that people interpreted Obama’s open and strong defense of Netanyahu’s latest attack on Gaza as the abject surrender to Netanyahu and Zionist lobbies.  However, some details have emerged that tell a different story.

Writing in the New York Times, Helene Cooper and Mark Landler  in their article “Obama, Showing Support for Israel, Gains New Leverage Over Netanyahu” tell how intensely Obama was working for a ceasefire right from the moment Israeli attack began, talking frequently to President Morsi on phone, including through the night after he (Obama) was hardly done with summit meeting in Cambodia, securing nod from Morsi for Secretary Clinton’s visit to the region for participating in the ceasefire negotiations. They think Obama’s public defense of Israeli attack on Gaza was directed at gaining “new leverage over Netanyahu” with the Israeli public.

Could we say same holds for the cancellation of just cancelled WMD-Free Middle East Conference?”

Well, we should expect to show it up soon as the Israeli elections come closer.

Beyond the possibility of influencing Netanyahu’s reelection, Cooper and Landler argue Netanyahu may have yielded far more to Obama in wider Middle East. Quoting Middle East experts, they write:

“All of this … means that Mr. Obama may have buttressed his own standing with the Israeli public, and is now in a far better position to start pressing Mr. Netanyahu on issues from the Israeli siege of Gaza to Iran to the dormant Middle East peace process, where he has had little leverage.” (italics mine).

Obama thus needs to thank Iran for finding an opportunity so soon to turn tables on Netanyahu.

However, it is also a fact that Obama hadn’t been silent and simply waiting for such an unexpected opportunity.

Obama rebuffing Netanyahu by refusing him meeting during latter’s US visit for UNGA meeting is well known; so are his remarks, “You’re sick of him, but I have to deal with him every day.” What is not in the main news, though, is how Obama has been going about dismantling the alleged plot, linking Netanyahu with neocons and some senior US army officers, to overthrow Obama administration in case of his re-election.

Obama has been using blunt axe in recent months against some high profile senior military and intelligence officers, dismissing some, demoting or letting retire others. Contrary to the officially stated position on these sackings (like “sweetheart” dalliance or “expense padding”), knowledgeable people (e.g., here and here) link them with their complicity in the alleged coup plot.

(As a related aside: So much drastic is happening to the US military but curiously the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, doesn’t appear visible anywhere. He seems to have taken low profile since his plane was attacked on Bagaram air base in Afghanistan in August 20012 soon after he flew from Israel where he is said to have told Netanyahu “No” to war on Iran. The attack was thought inexplicable given                                                                                                                                                                                      the: “The rocket detection systems, early warning blimps with ground penetrating synthetic aperture radar and the continual coverage by UAV drones using infrared detection, $2 billion in technology on this one perimeter alone.”)

Whether the alleged coup was really plotted or not, time will reveal. However, what is well known is that some Israeli lobbyists, like of WINEP, have been openly advocating false flag operation to provoke America into war on Iran. Also, what is no secret is that one such attempt was actually made during Bush43’s presidency in 2007 by the US Vice Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff and Commander Lynn Chow, most likely on the then Vice-President Dick Cheney’s order. The plan fortunately was leaked in time by former National Security Advisor to Presidents Clinton and Bush 43, Gwyneth Todd, working for at the time for Cosgriff, thus saving may be millions more Muslims from Zio-neocon planned butchery – at least until now. Five years later, coinciding with the time when many army and intelligence officers were made to fall like dominos, in September Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, Patrick Leahy, Directed the Department of Defense to conduct an inquiry into this false flag plot.

The latest development, that appears in the same vein, is the announcement of the ‘Presidential Memorandum — National Insider Threat Policy and Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs.’ The memorandum primarily envisages “to provide direction and guidance to promote the development of effective insider threat programs within departments and agencies to deter, detect, and mitigate actions by employees who may represent a threat to national security.”

Who could be the “employees who may represent a threat to national security?”

Answer probably lies in the conclusions of the yet-to-be publically announced recent report entitled “Preparing For A Post Israel Middle East” prepared, according to Franklin Lamb, by all of the 16 American intelligence agencies comprising the US Intelligence Community. One of the conclusions specifically seems relevant to the “Insider threat Policy” memo:

“Gross Israeli interference in the internal affairs of the United States through spying and illegal US arms transfers. This includes supporting more than 60 ‘front organizations’ and  approximately 7,500 US officials who do Israel’s bidding and seek to dominate and intimidate the media and agencies of  the US government which should no longer be condoned.”

If “Insider Threat Programs” guidelines are implemented effectively, it should starve Zionist lobbyists dry and put Israel in its rightful lowly place and let US administration see Middle East problem from its correct perspective (which is primarily rooted in illegal occupation and land grab).

Anyway, having put Netanyahu and his American backers, accomplices and conspirators on the defensive, Obama should feel free enough to move ahead to seek a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear issue in the short term and mend US-Iran relations on the long term. However, on the Middle East, he could initially feel some resistance from wounded Netanyahu.

Finally, could the withdrawal of one of the two US aircraft carriers from the Persian Gulf — stated reason: “unexpected repairs” – then be actually meant as the first signal in the direction of lowering psychological and military pressures on Iran– or, perhaps a first return gesture in the way of thanks to Iran from Obama.

If these observations and “optimistic” (or misplaced?) inferences hold any water, the best thing would be that all this is happening well before Obama is to begin his second term. He has full four years to work unfettered by re-election politics to remedy the United States and to let the Muslim world cool.

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