A Neocon Admits the Plan to Bomb Iran
Tehran at night, home to more than 8 million people.
A Neocon Admits the Plan to Bomb Iran
Exclusive: The neocon Washington Post, which wants to kill the talks aimed at constraining Iran’s nuclear program, allowed a contrary opinion of sorts onto its pages – a neocon who also wants to collapse the talks but is honest enough to say that the follow-up will be a U.S. war on Iran, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews, March 16, 2015
Not exactly known for truthfulness, U.S. neocons have been trying to reassure the American people that sinking a negotiated deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program would be a painless proposition, but at least one prominent neocon, Joshua Muravchik, acknowledges that the alternative will be war – and he likes the idea.
On Sunday, the neocon Washington Post allowed Muravchik to use its opinion section to advocate for an aggressive war against Iran – essentially a perpetual U.S. bombing campaign against the country – despite the fact that aggressive war is a violation of international law, condemned by the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal as “the supreme international crime.”
Given that the Post is very restrictive in the op-ed pieces that it prints, it is revealing that advocacy for an unprovoked bombing campaign against Iran is considered within the realm of acceptable opinion. But the truth is that the only difference between Muravchik’s view and the Post’s own editorial stance is that Muravchik lays out the almost certain consequences of sabotaging a diplomatic solution.
In his article headlined “War is the only way to stop Iran” in print editions and “War with Iran is probably our best option” online, Muravchik lets the bloody-thirsty neocon cat out of the bag as he agrees with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hysterical view of Iran but recognizes that killing international negotiations on limiting Iran’s nuclear program would leave open only one realistic option:
“What if force is the only way to block Iran from gaining nuclear weapons? That, in fact, is probably the reality. … Sanctions may have induced Iran to enter negotiations, but they have not persuaded it to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons. Nor would the stiffer sanctions that Netanyahu advocates bring a different result. …
“Does this mean that our only option is war? Yes, although an air campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would entail less need for boots on the ground than the war Obama is waging against the Islamic State, which poses far smaller a threat than Iran does. … Wouldn’t destroying much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure merely delay its progress? Perhaps, but we can strike as often as necessary.”
Typical of the neocons, Muravchik foresees no problem with his endless bombing war against Iran, including the possibility that Iran, which Western intelligence agencies agree is not working on a bomb, might reverse its course if it faced repeated bombing assaults from the United States.
This neocon-advocated violation of international law also might further undermine hopes of curbing violence in the Middle East and establishing some form of meaningful order there and elsewhere. This neocon view that America can do whatever it wants to whomever it wants might actually push the rest of the world into a coalition against U.S. bullying that could provoke an existential escalation of violence with nuclear weapons coming into play.
Never Seeing Reality
Of course, neocons never foresee problems as they draw up these war plans at their think tanks and discuss them on their op-ed pages. Muravchik, by the way, is a fellow at the neocon-dominated School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins and the Washington Post’s editorial page is run by neocons Fred Hiatt and Jackson Diehl.
But, as U.S. officialdom and the American people should have learned from the Iraq War, neocon schemes often don’t play out quite as well in the real world – not that the neocons seem to care about the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis or the nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers who died fighting in the neocons’ Iraq debacle.
For the neocons, their true guiding star is to enlist the U.S. military as the enforcers of Netanyahu’s strategic vision. If Netanyahu says that Iran – not al-Qaeda and the Islamic State – is the more serious threat then the neocons line up behind that agenda, which also happens to dovetail with the interests of Israel’s new ally, Saudi Arabia.
So, Americans hear lots of scary stories about Iran “gobbling up” its neighbors – as Netanyahu described in his lecture to a joint session of the U.S. Congress this month – even though Iran has not invaded any country for centuries and, indeed, was the target of a Saudi-backed invasion by Iraq in 1980.
Not only did Netanyahu’s wildly exaggerate the danger from Iran but he ignored the fact that Iran’s involvement in Iraq and Syria has come at the invitation of those governments to help fight the terrorists of al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the Islamic State. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Congress Cheers Netanyahu’s Hatred of Iran.”]
In other words, Iran is on the same side of those conflicts against Sunni terrorists as the United States is. But what we’re seeing now from Israel and the neocons is a determined effort to shift U.S. focus away from combating Sunni terrorists — some backed by Saudi Arabia — and toward essentially taking their side against Iran, Iraq and Syria.
That’s why the neocons are downplaying the atrocities of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State – or for that matter the chopping off of heads by Israel’s Saudi friends – while hyping every complaint they can about Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Secret Saudi Ties to Terrorism.”]
Muravchik favors this reversal of priorities and doesn’t seem to care that a U.S. bombing campaign against Iran would have a destructive impact on Iran’s ability to blunt the advances of the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. The neocons also have been hot for bombing Syria’s military, which along with Iran represents the greatest bulwark against the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.
The neocons and Netanyahu seem quite complacent about the prospect of the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front hoisting their black flags over Damascus or even Baghdad. Yet, such a move would almost surely force the U.S. president – whether Barack Obama or his successor – to return to a ground war in the Middle East at enormous cost to the American people.
The obvious alternative to this truly frightening scenario is to complete the international negotiations requiring Iran to accept intrusive inspections to ensure that its nuclear program remains peaceful – and then work with Iran on areas of mutual interests, such as rolling back the advances of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria.
This more rational approach holds out the prospect of achieving some stability in Iraq and – if accompanied by realistic negotiations between Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and his political opponents – reducing the bloodletting in Syria if not ending it.
That pragmatic solution could well be the best result both for the people of the region and for U.S. national interests. But none of that would please Netanyahu and the neocons.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative.
SOURCE w/Links: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/16/a-neocon-admits-the-plan-to-bomb-iran/
Note to Hosts: Robert Parry allows DUers to use his articles in total.
Not to DUers: These neocon swells are floating the idea in the "mainstream press" that mass murder is normal.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran... 
Yet, the signs are all there. And, had we a national news media with integrity, more would know what we need to do to stop yet another illegal, immoral, unnecessary and disastrous war for profit.
A great article from Katya Soldak of Forbes from two years before the It-Wasn't-a-CIA-Coup:
Message from Condoleezza Rice to Ukraine:
"The World is Watching You"
Katya Soldak
Forbes, 9/19/2012
Recently, Condoleezza Rice, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Gordon Brown, Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan congregated at Livadia Palace in Southern Ukraine, the summer retreat of the last Russian tsar, Nicolas II—a Renaissance style building on the top of a hill, with the Black Sea rolling below. The same place as where Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met at their famed Yalta conference of 1945.
The difference is that back then the rulers of the powerful countries met to make real decisions about the world’s future. This past weekend, Rice, and other guests of the 9th annual Yalta European Strategy meeting came to share their thoughts about the world’s challenges. Discussions today could influence policymakers and lead to making tomorrow’s decisions.
Among the matters discussed were the economic future of Europe and the role of the United States in dealing with economic and political issues of today. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian theme continued throughout the two-day conference. The government imprisoned former prime minister and opposition leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, and this has drawn criticism by the West; Ukraine tightens conditions for independent media and freedom of speech; the parliamentary elections coming up this October have already caused concerns among democratic observers on the subject of fairness and transparency.
Condoleezza Rice made it clear in her speech that the world is interested in Ukraine and is carefully watching all its developments: “Country like Ukraine with consolidation of democracy is watched carefully,” she said. Rice emphasized the importance of freedom of speech and free elections. “If Ukraine speaks in one voice, this voice would be heard.”
SNIP...
Indeed, the 9th annual Yalta conference – by many opinions, one of the best international platforms for discussions among high-profile politicians and innovative thinkers – is organized by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk’s foundation and is taking place in Ukraine at a time when European leaders have recently boycotted the Euro 2012 soccer championship over Tymoshenko’s arrest and detainment. The fact that American politicians like Condoleezza Rice and Britain’s Gordon Brown attended, can’t be attributed to good relationships between Ukrainian and Western governments.
CONTINUED...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/katyasoldak/2012/09/19/message-from-condoleezza-rice-to-ukraine-the-world-is-watching-you/
In retrospect, it appears the Neocons -- the axis of Wall Street and Secret Government -- have stayed on top the entire time. And, like their ilk did to Iran in 1953, neither the Ukraine Operation nor war on Iran or Russia will benefit the American people as a whole. It will benefit the owners of Big Oil and Condoleeza Rice and the rest of Wall Street-on-the-Potomac.
There's still one sliver of hope for justice and democracy to prevail. As you've noted, sabrina 1, there is no statute of limitations on war crimes.
Which says ''BFEE'' to me. So, I can see how he's qualified to advance the "Money Trumps Mission" of modern American foreign policy.
Here are a few of Muravchik's connections, courtesy Right Watch:
http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Muravchik_Joshua
A modern warmonger, obviously an associate of Victoria Nuland and the neocons who pine for World War III:
Victoria Nuland's spouse: Robert Kagan
Robert Kangan's brother: Frederick Kagan
Frederick Kagan's spouse: Kimberly Kagan
Smart people who get behind war know it's money:
Remember Richard (PNAC/Another Pearl Harbor) Perle? Just after September 11 and the Washington-Wall Street axis of war profiteering was heating up, Perle hit up Adnan (Iran-Contra/BCCI) Khashoggi for $100 million to make his new "Trireme Partnerships" take off.
Khashoggi's money would help launch the Carlyle Group-like investment group Perle founded. The petromoney was not for arms, directly. It was for investing in companies that were going to be making a killing off of homeland security related areas.
Interesting selling point: Perle already had secured financing from in from Boeing and some other bigwigs like Henry Kissinger.
One of the most important articles The New Yorker ever published:
Lunch with the Chairman
by Seymour M. Hersh
17 March 2003
At the peak of his deal-making activities, in the nineteen-seventies, the Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi brokered billions of dollars in arms and aircraft sales for the Saudi royal family, earning hundreds of millions in commissions and fees. Though never convicted of wrongdoing, he was repeatedly involved in disputes with federal prosecutors and with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in recent years he has been in litigation in Thailand and Los Angeles, among other places, concerning allegations of stock manipulation and fraud. During the Reagan Administration, Khashoggi was one of the middlemen between Oliver North, in the White House, and the mullahs in Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi subsequently claimed that he lost ten million dollars that he had put up to obtain embargoed weapons for Iran which were to be bartered (with Presidential approval) for American hostages. The scandals of those times seemed to feed off each other: a congressional investigation revealed that Khashoggi had borrowed much of the money for the weapons from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), whose collapse, in 1991, defrauded thousands of depositors and led to years of inquiry and litigation.
Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.
The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.
Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.
CONTINUED...
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/17/030317fa_fact
A bit on the new TRIREME business...
At Hollinger, Big Perks in A Small World
By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, November 19, 2003; Page E01
It's amazing the coincidences you find digging into Hollinger International, the publishing empire that includes Chicago's Sun-Times and London's Daily Telegraph and is quickly slipping from Conrad Black's control.
Let's start with the board of directors, which includes Barbara Amiel, Conrad's wife, whose right-wing rants have managed to find an outlet in Hollinger publications.
And there's Washington superhawk Richard Perle, who heads Hollinger Digital, the company's venture capital arm. Seems that Hollinger Digital put $2.5 million in a company called Trireme Partners, which aims to cash in on the big military and homeland security buildup. As luck would have it, Trireme's managing partner is none other than . . . Richard Perle.
Perle, of course, has been pushing hard for just such a military buildup from his other perch at the Pentagon's secretive and influential Defense Policy Board, where there are a number of other Friends of Hollinger.
CONTINUED (archived nowadays)...
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-309818.html
Thanks for the heads-up, Electric Monk. These are gangster times, as well as the wealthiest era in human history.
The connections to PNAC become clear as we run up to more war for profit in Iran or Ukraine or the Russias.
How we -- "We" as in We the People, the Government of the United States -- got to thinking this way:
Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception
Many neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz are disciples of a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses.
By Jim Lobe / AlterNet May 18, 2003
What would you do if you wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, but your intelligence agencies couldn't find the evidence to justify a war?
A follower of Leo Strauss may just hire the "right" kind of men to get the job done – people with the intellect, acuity, and, if necessary, the political commitment, polemical skills, and, above all, the imagination to find the evidence that career intelligence officers could not detect.
The "right" man for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, suggests Seymour Hersh in his recent New Yorker article entitled 'Selective Intelligence,' was Abram Shulsky, director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) – an agency created specifically to find the evidence of WMDs and/or links with Al Qaeda, piece it together, and clinch the case for the invasion of Iraq.
Like Wolfowitz, Shulsky is a student of an obscure German Jewish political philosopher named Leo Strauss who arrived in the United States in 1938. Strauss taught at several major universities, including Wolfowitz and Shulsky's alma mater, the University of Chicago, before his death in 1973.
Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives. Adherents of his ideas include prominent figures both within and outside the administration. They include 'Weekly Standard' editor William Kristol; his father and indeed the godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol; the new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a number of senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (home to former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and Lynne Cheney), and Gary Schmitt, the director of the influential Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is chaired by Kristol the Younger.
Strauss' philosophy is hardly incidental to the strategy and mindset adopted by these men – as is obvious in Shulsky's 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)" (in Greek philosophy the term nous denotes the highest form of rationality). As Hersh notes in his article, Shulsky and his co-author Schmitt "criticize America's intelligence community for its failure to appreciate the duplicitous nature of the regimes it deals with, its susceptibility to social-science notions of proof, and its inability to cope with deliberate concealment." They argued that Strauss's idea of hidden meaning, "alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception."
CONTINUED...
http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/leo_strauss%27_philosophy_of_deception
In a way, the neocons are so very right, Enthusiast. They believe, as long as a few people -- their people, the ones who consider themselves "superior" to other human beings based on anything from wealth to skin tone -- remain alive after their wars, they will consider it a "win."
...I am remembering how I was pilloried on June 16, 2005, immediately after Congressman John Conyers' rump-Judiciary Committee hearing in the bowels of the Capitol, for a candid answer to a question from one of his colleagues; i. e., if the invasion of Iraq was not about WMD, and not about non-existent ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, then why did we attack?
In answer, I used the acronym OIL. O for oil; I for Israel; and L for Logistics, meaning the military bases deemed by neoconservatives as necessary to protect both. Neither the House members present nor the media people seemed to have any problem with oil and military bases as factors-in itself an interesting commentary.
However, the suggestion that one main motive was an attempt to make that part of the Middle East safer for Israel (yes, folks, the neocons really thought that attacking Iraq would do that) -- well, that was anathema.
As it is anathema today to suggest that this is still one of the main reasons, besides oil, that Elliott Abrams, other neocons -- not to mention Vice President Dick Cheney and his team -- insist we must stay, Maliki and his associates be damned. (See the cartoon in the Washington Times today showing Maliki and words telling him "We are NOT leaving."
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2008/07/17/obama-mccain-allergic-new-iraq-reality
Through truth, justice. Peace to You and Yours, Dont call me Shirley!
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Really. Who would benefit most from wars without end for profits without cease?
The Pitfalls of Peace
The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth
Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014
The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.
An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.
The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.
Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.
It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not today’s entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.
War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.
SNIP...
Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.
Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0
He's making friends in all the right places, cough, Koch.
WMDs! Why wouldn't you believe it? 
We (maybe just "I" always figured that the neocons want to destroy every country that isn't crazy about Israel, but knowing that most of them are not Jews, you have to wonder why their unflinching concern for Israel. Is it real, or just another way to get the oil that was mistakenly placed under Arab soil?
I don't believe the Iran haters are pro-Israel. They're just greedy to sell weapons and own oil that isn't theirs. Some are spoiled by contributions to their campaigns from the Jews. And the Jews are probably afraid to stop donating to the right-wing thinking politicians because they know, deep down, that their support is based on false concern.
The OP doesn't say what Muravchik's claim to fame is other than he's a neocon.
Parry will be slammed for his writing of unpopular views.
Thank you for posting Octafish. It'll be a wonderful day if they ever get a successful 2-State system in Israel, for those folks there who want and deserve peace. I watched something somewhere on TV that showed a Jewish woman married to a Palestinian non-Jew, and they owned and operated a restaurant somewhere in/near Gaza. Good people they are.
