Washington Report On Middle East Affairs – October 2018

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP and his neocon advisers have

been trying to provoke a war with Iran and Syria for many

months.

The neocons are echoing Cato the Elder’s cry, “delenda est

Carthago!”Iran must be destroyed.

So far, Tehran and its ally Damascus have refused to respond

to U.S. naval and air incursions or Israel’s growing air attacks in

Syria. But the war of words between the U.S. and Iran has now

reached a critical phase.

In late July, Trump, who evaded military service during the Viet-

nam War, made his loudest threats yet against Iran, bringing the

danger of war to the boiling point. On May 21, the hard-line U.S.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a thunderous ultima-

tum to Iran during an address to the U.S. Heritage Foundation,

a rich, influential arm of America’s Israel lobby.

Pompeo made 12 totally unacceptable demands on Iran that

were clearly designed to be rejected by Tehran. Not since Aus-

tria-Hungary’s ultimatum against Serbia in 1914 have we seen

such a clear effort to bring about war. Tehran quickly dismissed

Pompeo as “a gangster.”

We are by now used to blood and thunder rhetoric between

Washington and Tehran. But this time White House policy is

clearly being directed by pro-Israel American neocons who want

the U.S. military to crush Iran as it did Iraq.

Crushing Iran will leave Israel with unfettered control of the

Mideast and its oil—unless Russia or Turkey intervene against

Israel, which is most unlikely. Some think Russia and Israel—

Iranian students stand on a tank at the Holy Defense Museum in Tehran, July 17, 2018. The museum displays items from the 1980-88 Iran-

Iraq war.

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated

columnist and the author of american raj: liberation or domina-

tion? resolving the conflict between the West and the Muslim

World(available from AET’s Middle East Books and More). Copy-

right © 2018 ericMargolis.com.

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The Looming War Against Iran

By Eric S. Margolis

Special Report

october 2018 Washington report on Middle east affairs

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