London's Hand Behind Drive
for World War III Exposed
by Nancy Spannaus and Jeffrey Steinberg
Jan. 16—Two dramatic developments in recent days have served to further expose the direct British hand behind the drive for thermonuclear World War III, principally targeted against Russia, China, and the United States.
As has been the case with imperial wars since the time of the Roman Empire, the objective is always to pit one nation or people against another, while the imperial power sits on the sidelines to reap the benefits of the slaughter. In this case, London's goal is the destruction of Russia, China, India, and the United States, and the mass extermination of billions of people in a thermonuclear holocaust, centered in the heart of Eurasia, that they somehow delude themselves into believing they will survive.
Assassination a War Provocation
On Jan. 11, a 32-year-old Iranian nuclear physicist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was assassinated when a bomb was attached to his car as he was being driven to the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. Roshan was the director of the facility. He was the fifth Iranian nuclear scientist to be targeted for assassination in the past two years (four were successful). Thousands of Iranians turned out for his funeral several days later, and the government accused Israel, Britain, and the United States of being involved in the murder.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a strenuous denial on behalf of the U.S. after Iran released a formal letter to the Obama Administration, claiming to have evidence of CIA involvement in training of the assassins.
Four days after the cold-blooded murder, Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times of London printed a blood-curdling account of the assassination, purportedly from a confidential Israeli intelligence source. While claiming that it was agents of the Israeli Mossad who conducted the carefully planned assassination, the Times story implied that the Mossad's string of assassinations and sabotage bombings inside Iran have been fully blessed by both London and Washington.
While London's hand in the asymmetric warfare cannot be doubted, Clinton's strong statement that the U.S. was not involved rings true. On Jan. 15, the Pentagon announced that the United States had indefinitely postponed scheduled joint missile defense manuevers with Israel. "Austere Challenge 12" was to be the largest such joint maneuvers ever, and had been scheduled to take place in April, with the participation of thousands of American military personnel.
While the official announcement of the delay attributed it to logistical constraints, and claimed it was a mutual decision by the U.S. European Command (Eurcom) and the Israeli Defense Forces, high-ranking U.S. intelligence sources have told EIR that the cancellation was in direct response to the Roshan assassination, which was not cleared by or coordinated with Washington.
American officials in the Pentagon and the intelligence community, who have been involved in non-stop war avoidance efforts since the time of the Libyan regime-change operation, were furious at the assassination, which came at a moment when efforts are underway to resume UN Security Council Permanent Five plus Germany (P5+1) talks with Iran over its nuclear program.
In one of the clearest statements from this patriotic American intelligence faction, Paul Pillar, the former Middle East director of the National Intelligence Council, wrote just hours after the Roshan assassination in The National Interest of Jan. 11: "The killing of an individual foreigner overseas, if carried out for a political or policy purpose by either a nonstate actor or clandestine agents of a state, is an act of international terrorism." That is the criterion that the U.S. State Department has used for decades in placing foreign nations on its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Pillar condemned the Roshan assassination and challenged:
"Imagine the response if even just one scientist (let alone four or five) who was employed, say, at one of the U.S. national laboratories, had been similarly assassinated and a foreign hand was suspected. There would be screams of 'act of war' and the U.S. president would be hard-pressed to hold back impulses to strike back forcefully."
Pillar indicated that he agreed with other experts, like Dr. Trita Parsi, who accused Israel of carrying out the assassination, because they "prefer a military confrontation with Iran over a compromise that would permit Iran to retain nuclear enrichment capabilities, even if it doesn't build a bomb." Pillar warned that such actions, combined with other hostile threats and acts against Iran, will only drive the Islamic Republic to conclude that it needs a nuclear weapon as a deterrent to fend off its enemies.
"The proper U.S. response to all this," he concluded, "is to pursue—vigorously—negotiations with Iran, with the starting point being the most recent Iranian proposal for a new round of talks with the P5+1. That is the only way out of the larger spiral of mutually reinforcing hostility of which the assassinations are only a part.... To do otherwise would be, to use a hackneyed phrase, a victory for the terrorists."
Israeli False Flag Operation
While London exposed itself in terms of the Roshan assassination, U.S. military historian and Middle East peace activist Mark Perry laid bare another of their dirty operations as well. In an act of defiance against the Anglo-Israeli war schemes, on Jan. 13, the online magazine Foreign Policy published an article by Perry exposing an Israeli "false flag" operation that targeted Iran for terrorist attacks, while passing itself off as a CIA program.
Perry obtained details of a string of CIA memos from the latter years of the George W. Bush Administration, which revealed that Israeli intelligence operatives, using American passports and presenting themselves as CIA agents, were recruiting terrorists from the Balochistan, Pakistan-based Jundallah group, to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran. Jundallah, a Sunni fundamentalist group operating along the border between Iran and Pakistan, have been responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks, some against innocent women and children, as well as Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) outposts along the border.
In November 2010, the U.S. State Department placed Jundallah on its list of international terrorist organizations.
Perry reported that the CIA station in London became aware of the Mossad false flag operations, which were run out in the open. He quoted one U.S. intelligence officer who was privy to the probe of the Israeli program: "It's amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with," the officer said.
"Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn't give a damn what we thought."
What Perry did not draw out, was the fact that London was the perfect place for the Mossad to recruit Jundallah members, because the British government and MI6 were giving sanctuary to the group, as part of Britain's longstanding policy of promoting an independent "Greater Balochistan" to maintain permanent conflicts along the borders of the entire Southwest, South, and Central Asian region.[1] For identical reasons, the British have provided safe haven in London for the separatist terrorists of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), Uighur terrorists from the Xinjiang Province of Western China ("Eastern Turkistan"), Chechen separatists from the Russian Northern Caucasus, and many similar brutal terrorist groups. Even the British media frequently refer to the presence of all of these terrorist networks, all enjoying British intelligence protection, as "Londonistan."
Will the U.S. Go Along?
In short, a combined British-Israeli apparatus is driving the world to the very edge of thermonuclear confrontation, and is hell-bent on drawing the United States in, taking advantage of the London levers of control over President Barack Obama.
The question is: Will the British Empire, with its control over President Obama and brainwashing of the American population into monetarist madness, succeed in leading humanity into genocidal devastation in the weeks ahead, either by thermonuclear war, or mass chaos, starvation, and disease? The answer to that question will depend upon whether leading policy-makers, particularly in the United States, recognize and respond appropriately to reality.
That reality, as Lyndon LaRouche and this publication have repeatedly emphasized, is that, in the midst of an obvious general breakdown crisis of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system, the British Empire is pursuing a thermonuclear confrontation with Russia, China, and other nations of Asia. And despite notable war avoidance measures being taken by the Russian government and leading military-intelligence circles in the United States, the danger of triggering such a war, through confrontation with Iran or one of many other British-manipulated "hotspots," has notably advanced over the last week.
LaRouche has outlined the unique solutions, both in terms of the immediate action of removing Obama from the Presidency, and the necessary mindset, which are required to defuse this existential crisis. Here, we review the recent major developments in the strategic arena.
The Target Is Asia
During the last week, Russian and Chinese high-level spokesmen have spoken out boldly, to emphasize that NATO policy toward the Middle Eastern cockpit, especially Syria and Iran, represents a direct threat to their own security, and will be responded to as such.
On Jan. 12, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev warned that military escalation is likely in Iran, with "real danger" of a U.S. strike, in an interview published by the daily Kommersant. Also, Syria, which has refused to break its ties with Tehran, could be a target for Western intervention, he said.
"There is a likelihood of military escalation of the conflict, and Israel is pushing the Americans towards it," Patrushev said. "At present, the U.S. sees Iran as its main problem. They are trying to turn Tehran from an enemy into a supportive partner, and to achieve this, to change the current regime by whatever means."
"They use both economic embargo and massive help to the opposition forces," Patrushev said, adding that "for years we have been hearing that practically by next week the Iranians are going to create an atomic bomb; still nobody has proved the existence of a military component of Iran's nuclear program."
Patrushev said the current tension over Syria is linked to the Iran issue. "They want to punish Damascus not so much for the repression of the opposition, but rather for its refusal to break off relations with Tehran," he insisted. "There is information that NATO members and some Arab Persian Gulf states, acting in line with the scenario seen in Libya, intend to turn the current interference with Syrian affairs into a direct military intervention."
LaRouche responded to Patrushev's warning by pointing to the danger of a possible thermonuclear confrontation between the British-controlled U.S., and Russia and China. This represents "a danger to humanity as a whole," he said.
On Jan. 13, the Russians escalated, choosing an international forum to underscore Patrushev's message. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin, the former ambassador to NATO, returned to Brussels to give his final press conference at NATO headquarters. Rogozin's message is provided here in EIR's translation. Asked about Iran, he said:
"For the Americans, that is very far away, on completely the opposite side of the Earth, the planet, the globe. But for us, it is just south of our Caucasus. And therefore, if something happens with Iran, if it becomes involved in some kind of military action, then this is a direct threat to our security" (emphasis added).
After stressing that Russia "will conduct a very tough policy, designed to prevent countries, while we are helping them to develop modern sources of energy, from acquiring technologies for using the atom for military purposes," he added that it is the right of every country
"to have everything they need, to feel comfortable and secure. Iran has this type of right, as well. Therefore we would like to say to all the participants in this agitated game around Iran: 'Calm down. Tone down your discussions and public statements. Bear in mind that every public statement has material consequences.'... We hope that the current crisis around Iran will be cooled out jointly by us all. If tension continues to grow around Iran, and then multiply that by the situation in Syria, the aftermath of the civil war in Libya, and the oncoming 'Arab Summer' in North Africa, nobody is going to say that that's something insignificant. So we repeat, 'Take a drink of cold mineral water and calm down.' "
Rogozin's criticism of the sanctions against Iran was reiterated the same day by Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov, who said,
"Additional sanctions against Iran, or a possible military strike against the Islamic Republic of Iran, will unquestionably be perceived by the international community as pursuing the goal of 'regime change' in Tehran."
While less direct, the Chinese government is utilizing various outlets to make clear that it sees the policy against Iran, in particular, as aimed at its security. China get 13% of its oil from Iran, and would suffer significantly from the cut-off of supplies being pressed by the Obama Administration and others. In an editorial in Global Times Jan. 14, the writer gave the view of many in the Chinese leadership:
"China should not bend to U.S. pressure... Iran's oil resources and geopolitcal value are crucial to China."
War on Iran Has Begun
But the Empire and its tools, notably including Barack Obama, and British agent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have shown absolutely no signs of backing down from their belligerence. Indeed, through both tightening of sanctions against Iran's vital oil trade, and a policy of assassinations and terrorism within Iran, the British-Israeli-U.S. nexus has already launched that war. This is the context for seeing the strategic significance of the Roshan killing.
Within two days of his assassination, the Iranian government had sent off letters to Great Britain and the United States, charging that they are behind the assassinations, and lodging official protests. The government has also sent an official demand for investigation of the incident to the United Nations.
While some Iranian leaders clearly are keeping their wits about them, and refusing to be provoked into a "tit-for-tat" response against Israel for the hits, despite statements from some Israelis almost taking credit for the mayhem, it is not clear that they can necessarily maintain that control within the factionalized Iranian political class. As some statements from the Iranians threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 60% of the world's crude oil flows, indicate, there are those in Iran who are threatening to respond with rage, not strategy.
Thus, on Jan. 14, LaRouche issued a sharp warning that any kind of provocations at this point, particularly in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, would be insane. LaRouche was responding, in part, to reports from a senior U.S. intelligence source that a "pro-war" faction within the Revolutionary Guard was contemplating a "limited" military incident in the Strait, to allow them to consolidate power on the eve of the March parliamentary elections.
"The only people who would benefit from such an irresponsible provocation at this moment would be the worst enemies of Iran," LaRouche warned. "If some element within the Revolutionary Guard were to consciously provoke even a minor incident in the Strait of Hormuz, I would have to ask: Whose side are you on? Are you an Israeli agent?"
War-Avoidance Efforts
Meanwhile, efforts to defuse the tensions, combat the lies about Iran's nuclear program, and get diplomacy between Iran and the West back on track, have gone into high gear. The Pentagon's cancellation of "Austere Challenge 12" has been the most direct action to date.
Simultaneously, there is a broad outpouring of war-avoidance efforts coming from American political and military-intelligence professionals, who are pulling no punches on their assessment that the current trajectory is leading straight to World War III.
Over Jan. 13-14, a number of public calls were issued for the activation of a war-avoidance back-channel between Washington and Tehran, modeled on the Robert Kennedy-Anatoly Dobrynin channel during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which successfully averted a thermonuclear world war between the United States and the Soviet Union. On Jan. 13, David Ignatius published an explicit call for such a back-channel in the Washington Post, and Jan. 14, former Carter Administration National Security Council staffer Gary Sick called, on CNN, called for the U.S. and Iran to reach an agreement based on Iran turning over its 20% enriched uranium, in exchange for 20% enriched nuclear fuel rods, needed for its isotope reactor which is part of Iran's medical system.
LaRouche gave his full endorsement to Sick's proposal.
Meanwhile, several well-known analysts raised the alarm that the U.S. strategic posture on Iran, including its heavy military deployments in the Persian Gulf, portend a thermonuclear confrontation.
In a Jan. 13 piece, "The Next War on Washington's Agenda," former Reagan Administration official Paul Craig Roberts reviewed the U.S. pre-war provocations, concluding that the United States would only be willing to risk the Fifth Fleet to create justification for a nuclear strike versus Iran, which would then target Russia and China.
"The consequences," he wrote, "would be that the world would face a higher risk of nuclear armageddon than existed in the mutually assured destruction of the US-Soviet standoff." Roberts calls this a "silly pointless provocation of Washington's largest creditor," referring to the targeting of China. The article ends with a pointed warning, based on U.S. provocations against Russia and China: "Where do we go from here? If not to nuclear destruction, Americans must wake up. Football games, porn and shopping malls are one thing. Survival of human life is another...."
On Jan. 11, former CIA analyst Phil Giraldi published a column on antiwar.com, "What War with Iran Might Look Like," in which he referenced a previous piece he wrote in September 2007, titled "What World War III Might Look Like," and updated it based on some changed circumstances. Iran remains the target, and the U.S. is already conducting economic war against Iran as Obama shuns all opportunities to negotiate in good faith, Giraldi charged.
Under his scenario, a minor skirmish between a local Iran Revolutionary Guard naval commander and a U.S. frigate leads to limited exchanges of fire, a standing-order U.S. bombing of the site from which the IRGC boats were launched, and a temporary standdown and emergency session of the UN Security Council demanding American restraint. Israel uses the occasion to bomb Bushehr and Natanz, killing 13 Russian scientists and technicians working at the two facilities. The Congress votes overwhelmingly to demand that the President support Israel militarily, leading to full-scale American bombing campaign. The scenario escalates to thermonuclear World War III.
Want to avoid it? Break from London now.
[1] See Ramtanu Maitra, "Balochistan: Is the Obama Administration Backing London's Plan To Dismember Pakistan," EIR, Jan. 13, 2012.
