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Brzezinski: The White House Could Provoke Attacks in the United States    [

    Nuclear Matters: Iran Is Tempted to Suspend Activity
    By Jean-Pierre Perrin
    Liberation

    Saturday 10 February 2007

President Ahmadinejad's isolation relaunches a new phase in negotiations with the UN.

    Is Iran poised to decide to suspend uranium enrichment as the international community has been demanding it do? Signs in Tehran make this hypothesis ever more plausible. The first is the entry onto the scene of Ali Velayati, the Islamic Regime's longtime, indefatigable Foreign Affairs Minister, and now Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei's diplomatic advisor.

    Radicalism

    Now it's Velayati - with the Guide behind him - who is maneuvering, as his Thursday visit to Moscow where he met Vladimir Putin demonstrates. Up until now, the nuclear issue was in the hands of Larijani and President Ahmadinejad, the latter practicing systematic one-upmanship. Exit Larijani, whom the exercise seems to have completely worn out, and who was unable to move the issue forward. Exit also President Ahmadinejad, weakened since his December double defeat in both the municipal and Assembly of Experts' elections. He is now being attacked by the regime's principal dignitaries, who, blaming his radicalism, hold him responsible for the imposition of UN sanctions and possible American strikes.

    It is within this context that the Kremlin has gone on the offensive to convince the Iranian regime of the validity of its proposals to get out of the crisis. At the end of January, the Kremlin sent Secretary of the Russian Security Council Igor Ivanov to Tehran. In an unprecedented act, he was received by the Guide, who never - apart from the very rare Head of State - talks with non-Muslim leaders. February 1, Putin had called on the Iranians to "work actively" on the proposition advanced by Mohammed El Baradei, director general of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) for the simultaneous suspension of its enrichment activities by Iran and of sanctions by the Security Council.

    In Moscow, Velayati declared that Iran supported Russian "efforts" and came with a message to that effect. One may assume that the message from Tehran responds positively to the El Baradei initiative, or, at the very least to the Kremlin's request for a return to negotiations. If Putin and Ivanov have been able to obtain a change in the Iranian position, it is likely that they also reassured the regime on a point that will undoubtedly never be made official: Russia will supply military assistance to allow Tehran to resist an American attack. Moscow already delivered 29 TOR-M1 ground-to-air missiles (worth seven hundred million dollars) - capable of reaching airplanes and cruise missiles - last month. A military reinforcement that raises the cost of an American intervention significantly.

    Pretext

    This process from Moscow promotes the logic of diplomacy. It interrupts the "logic of war" that has been pushed forward in Washington as well as Tehran, and so deprives the Pentagon of a pretext for military intervention. A few days away from a Security Council meeting charged with examining Iran's nuclear cooperation with the UN, it reassesses the "logic of sanctions."

    Go to Original

    The White House Could Provoke Attacks in the United States
    Reporterre

    Thursday 08 February 2007

In testimony before the American Senate, Carter's former National Security Advisor considered the hypothesis that the White House could provoke attacks on its own soil to justify an intervention in Iran plausible.

    Zbigniew Brzezinski is one of the people most widely respected in geopolitical matters in the United States. Advisor to Jimmy Carter when the latter was President of the United States between 1977 and 1981, he was considered a "hawk among the doves." Since then, he has stayed very attentive to international questions, within the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Notably, he published a widely regarded essay, Le Grand Echiquier [The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives] (Hachette, 1997).

    Hostile to the war in Iraq, he spoke February 1st before an American Senate committee on the international situation and more specifically on the power struggle with Iran. One passage in his testimony has caught the attention of several observers: the one in which he considers that the White House could provoke a terrorist act in the United States itself to win public opinion over to the idea of an intervention against Iran. Here is the passage:

    "A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan."

    The allusion to a terrorist act in the United States, responsibility for which "would be attributed to the Iranians" is remarkable: an American official at the highest level concedes the idea that the Bush Administration could not only use terrorism to serve its own ends, but even provoke attacks on its own soil in order to justify its aggressive intrigues.

    Brzezinski's statements are all the more remarkable in that he himself in his book, The Grand Chessboard, deemed that control of central Asia and its oil resources were necessary for the maintenance of American domination.

    But he emphasized that it was difficult to obtain a consensus from the American public to support United States' interventions beyond its borders "in the absence of a sudden threat or a feeling by the population that its well-being was at stake." On that occasion, he recalled the example of Pearl Harbor which tipped American opinion in favor of an intervention in the Second World War.

    Consequently, it is not "conspiracy theorists" only who are blowing the whistle on such a corruption of American democracy, even if one must not extrapolate too much from the statements of Jimmy Carter's former advisor. But for several years, many people have, in fact, wondered about the exact unfolding of the events of September 11, 2001 and wonder whether the American administration has not done everything to prevent them [from knowing.] Zbigniew Brzezinski's position provides legitimacy to these questions and undoubtedly constitutes a message addressed to George Bush and his entourage.

    Here is the original text:

SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE TESTIMONY - ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

February 1, 2007

Mr. Chairman: Your hearings come at a critical juncture in the U.S. war of choice in Iraq, and I commend you and Senator Lugar for scheduling them.

0aIt is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:

0a1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.

0a2. Only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for a tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and the intensifying regional tensions.

0aIf the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

0aA mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMDs in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America's involvement in World War II.

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    Source: The Washington Note.

    You may also find additional analysis of this testimony at DeDefensa.org.