III. Is the Danger for a War with Iran Over? A. The Answer

By Geoffrey Cook, TMO

Treasure Island–San Francisco–July 10th–Your author replied on an influential Turkish listserv on military strategy to the question of any likely remaining possibility of (violent) hostility with Iran in the immediate future.  I replied in agreement with many of the specialists on the list, who were much more proficient than yours truly, that a war against Iran is unlikely now.

One, the current American Administration does not wish another confrontation with an Islamic country, and, two, Israel probably could not successfully conduct the aggression on its own amongst other factors.  Although an “October Surprise” – even if it destabilizes the IDF (Israel Defense Force) is possible if the civilian government in Tel Aviv wishes to subvert President Obama’s bid for a second term in November as they did to the pro-Palestinian Jimmy Carter in 1980 to prevent Carter from putting pressure on the Israelis to live up to the Oslo accords, for there is sufficient evidence that Barack Hussein Obama, who is frustrated with the Netanyahu coalition, to be much  more forceful in forcing the Hebrews to tear down their Settlements in the Occupied Territories during the Obama’s “Lame Duck” second term.

Reagan’s Administration was a debacle not only for Muslims, but  for the American State as a whole not only in the Abrahamic Holy Land, but in the Hindu Kush — where the Middle East, Central and South Asia meet — when the Americans financed, and brought, under the Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) management, Arab and other Wahhabi and Salafi (inclined) nationalities which disrupted a Sufi-oriented population, and after 1989 the remaining  anti-Soviet mercenaries emigrated, also, into the Kashmir theater enforcing their vision of Middle Eastern Islam upon the South Asian adherents to the Prophet (PBUH) of Islam. These Arab immigrants often clashed with the indigenous customary practices and understanding of the hadith et al.!   

Of course, America, instead of instituting a mini-Marshall Plan (the program which brought Europe back from the economic brink after World War II, and that ensured strong bonds between North America and the the nations “over the pond”)…after the Soviets were purged from the dry mountains at the end of the Twentieth Century C.E. (the Common Era)…Washington deserted the(ir) victorious holy warriors.  What ensued in Afghanistan was a five-pronged civil war for dominance over the Afghani political power vacuum after the Communist retreat, which, then, led to the Taliban (Madrassa students) arising militarily and to their ascendency which, bizarrely, ended the instability of region.  Amongst those foreign fighters (who were non-State act actors) Al-Quaida, who most of us would consider to practice a form of hetero-“orthodox” Islam, declared war against the United States for their abandonment of the Mujahidin after their defeat of the Russian Empire (i.e., the U.S.S.R.).  In short, the answer to bourgeois America’s “Why do “they” hate us so much?”

The resentment of certain Arab irregulars lead to 9/11, and further, to consternation within the American-Muslim “family,” who for the most part, had no connections to the conflict in Afghanistan as well as the average person in those mountains who got caught between competing political forces over which they had no control.  Over all, this was a classic case of the will of the elite over a powerful and unsophisticated Subaltern (the classes of the powerless).  

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