SYKES-PICOT REDUX
Will London's Puppet Israel
Soon Launch Attack on Iran?
by Jeffrey Steinberg
Aug. 16—Two high-level sources have warned of a growing concern that Israel will launch a military attack against Iran within the next months, despite strong U.S. institutional opposition to such an action. One such source, a senior retired U.S. military intelligence official, said on Aug. 13, that he is concerned that a new consensus has been reached between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, for a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran, ostensibly to preempt additional political pressure on Israel, following Israel's attack on the Gaza flotilla earlier this year. This source, who has close ties to the current Pentagon leadership, emphasized that the issue of Iran's purported nuclear weapons program is an excuse for the Israeli action, not the trigger. He emphasized that a combination of factors has stalled Iran's nuclear energy program, and that there is ample time for a serious diplomatic effort to resolve the outstanding issues.
"Israel has other motives for attacking Iran in the near term," he concluded.
A second source, a former Israeli intelligence officer based in the United States, with close ties to the Likud leadership, offered a similar warning: that a Netanyahu-Barak "new consensus" has been reached, in the past week, for an attack on Iran by October 2010. He described the political situation inside Israel as "deep in turmoil" over this, noting that senior Israeli military officials, including the current IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) chief of staff, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, oppose such an attack, but, are nevertheless, proceeding with updated operational plans, focused on the Israeli Air Force and Israeli Navy submarine forces already deployed in the Persian Gulf.
The source reported on recent Israeli helicopter rescue manuevers in Romania, and other recent actions by the IDF, characterizing them as advance preparations for such an attack, sometime this year. "Such pre-war deployments would not be taking place if these were just contingency plans, being updated," the source concluded.
According to this Israeli source, there is even serious opposition to an attack on Iran by Israel, coming from factions of the Likud, and this factor could result in a government crisis. But, he warned, there are emergency powers, granted to the Prime Minister during a national emergency, that Netanyahu could invoke, to order an attack, without even the endorsement of his security cabinet.
Sykes-Picot
Lyndon LaRouche today emphasized that the real source of the war danger is the British hysteria over the total collapse of the global dollar/sterling financial system. The British, he warned, can trigger an attack on Iran by Israel, utilizing their longstanding Sykes-Picot[1] controls over key regional assets, including both the Jabotinsky apparatus in Israel and factions of the Saudi royal family.
"The British policy is strategic chaos," LaRouche explained. "Through assets like Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki bin-Faisal, to name just one of many, the British have imposed cultural backwardness throughout the Muslim world. It is a policy of manipulated religious wars. Such wars," LaRouche concluded, "should be banned as crimes against humanity. Religious war is the work of Satan, and this current provocation is coming from a Satanic cult, run from London."
Another senior U.S. intelligence source, speaking on condition of anonymity, recently warned that Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms are now obsessed with Iran's allegedly looming nuclear weapons capability, and, while publicly shunning any kind of alliance with Israel, are privately conveying their support for an Israeli or American attack on Iran.
At a recent Aspen Institute conference in Colorado, the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States was grilled about his country's concerns about Iran, and conceded that, under worst-case conditions, he would prefer an attack on Iran to that country acquiring a nuclear bomb. The statement was widely misquoted, to create a drumbeat for war.
Nevertheless, the U.S. intelligence source expressed concern that the combined lobbying pressures of Israel and Saudi Arabia carry considerable political clout in Washington, and could drive a desperate Obama Administration into war, whether launched by Israel or by the United States itself. "The Sunni Arab states, particularly those in the Persian Gulf, are now obsessed with Iran. They would protest publicly, but privately applaud the knocking out of Iran's suspected nuclear program," the source warned.
Jabotinsky Speaks
In a recent widely circulated war propaganda piece, published as the cover story to the September 2010 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Jeffrey Goldberg profiled Netanyahu's 100-year old father, Benzion Netanyahu, who was the personal secretary of the British pro-Mussolini revisionist Zionist agent Vladimir Jabotinsky, and who, at his recent 100th birthday party, hosted by his son, demanded preemptive military action by Israel against Iran, equating Iran's current leadership with the Spanish Inquisition and Adolf Hitler. "The Jewish people are making their position clear and putting faith in their military power," the elder Netanyahu told his birthday gathering. "The nation of Israel is showing the world today how a state should behave when it stands before an existential threat: by looking danger in the eye and calmly considering what should be done and what can be done. And to be ready to enter the fray at the moment there is reasonable chance of success."
Author Goldberg, an IDF reservist, who moderated the Aspen event, set the trap for the U.A.E. ambassador; his credentials as an Israeli war propagandist go back to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when he penned a series of shameless lies, claiming to "prove" that Saddam Hussein was sponsoring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, thus justifying the Anglo-American invasion.
The Goldberg piece signaled an all-out mobilization for war, from the usual suspects. Within days of the Goldberg article's pre-release, former George W. Bush UN Ambassador John Bolton demanded an attack on Iran prior to Aug. 21, when Russia plans to activate the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, by installing the fuel rods. The same day, syndicated columnist George Will issued a similar call for support for an Israeli "self-defense" attack on Iran.
[1] The secret 1916 Sykes-Picot Treaty divided up the Ottoman Empire between imperial Britain and France. Its legacy remains in every aspect of the Mideast conflict today. See this EIR report.
