378 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biographyeven though the words seemed to come out of Obama’ mouth. The reader must also imagine a tone
of voice used to convey the American offer which is reminiscent of Jack Nicholson as the US
president negotiating with the Martian leader in the cinema classic, Mars Attacks.
Obama/Brzezinski would speak to the Iranians thus: “Why should we be enemies and
adversaries? Why can’t we be friends and cooperate and work together? Between the two of us,
we could totally dominate the entire Middle East, and nobody could do anything here without our
permission — not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the Indians, not the Pakistanis, not the
Egyptians. Just think of it: the United States and Iran working together! Imagine the potential!
What do we need to do for you to make it possible? What do we need to give you? Just for openers,
we can free up those frozen assets that we have been holding in our banks for the past 30 years —
they now add up to hundreds of billions of dollars. We need to have comprehensive diplomatic
relations, a cultural exchange program, maybe a mutual nonaggression pact if that is what you
would like. Of course we’d take you off that silly old terrorist list! Of course we can make sure that
Hezbollah gets what they are entitled to in Lebanon! Of course we can make a whole series of
other concessions to your various friends and proxies! But let’s get to the really big issues. You
want to have nuclear weapons. We can’t approve that in public but we are willing to guarantee you
right here and right now that we will give you a wink and a nod. If you run into problems along the
way, we can help you solve your bottlenecks with the right kind of technology when you need it.
Come to think of it, we could deliver a small stock of bombs if that is what you would like. Just like
Iran-contra, but better! We have a new missile that we call the Brzezinski special — you fire it off
from anywhere in the world and it flies straight to Moscow! We’d be glad to give you some of those
right now! You just have to remember that your hereditary enemy has never been the Americans,
but the Russians! Think how badly they behaved when they occupied the northern part of your
country during World War II — that was really messy! We’ve never done anything like that, and we
don’t want to! We just want to be friends and make sure that you’re strong enough to stand up
against the real threats and all of those come from Moscow. By the way Mr. President, we see that
your popularity has been a little anemic lately. But surely you know that the biggest resentment
harbored by the Iranian people is their resentment against the Russians. Your Iranians hate those
Russians much more than they hate the US and the British! So any time you pick a quarrel with
Moscow you can count on pleasing a big majority of your own base! And we can help you to do it.
Think of how bad those Russians treated you lately on that Bushehr reactor. They charged you too
much in the first place, and then they withheld the parts, blackmailed you, and all the rest — a real
humiliation! We would certainly never do that! So what else would you need? How about a nice
new naval fleet in the Caspian Sea so you can sail right up to the ports of southern Russia and spit
in their eye! With nuclear missiles, of course! Think of all the dandy incidents you could stage that
way, poking at that Russian bear with your big Iranian pitchfork! That way you can stop them from
stealing your Caspian oil! And if they ever fight back, don’t worry — we’ll be here to back you up!
And then there are those Chinese! Why do you want to sell so much oil to them? Pretty soon you’ll
be selling them so much that they will have you in their pocket, and you wouldn’t want that, would
you? You’re better off dealing with us, even if it is for dollars. We want you to know that we are
honest in the worst way!”
Thus the siren song of Brzezinski, intent on playing the Islamic fundamentalists of Iran against
the Russians in the same way that he once played the Islamic fundamentalists of Afghanistan
against the Soviet Union, destroying the latter and its entire world system of alliances. The line
towards Syria would be similar, and would sound something like this: “We are natural allies! We
need to be friends! All we need to do is to remove a few little irritants and everything will be hunky-