There are at least two issues important to understanding Iran’s current turmoils. One has to do with the conflicts within the elites within Iran over how to govern the country. Escobar says a little about who the leaders are, and what their conflicts might be. Against the conflict between different factions of Iranian elites, their are the vast number of Iranian citizens, both well-to-do and poor, who have wanted the government to give them more support, in the way of jobs and services, or liberty in having fewer religious restrictions. The second issue has to do with the influence of outsiders on Iranian politics. Spooks working for the United States have been said to have spent around $400 million dollars to bring about what they call “regime change” in Iran. The amount of money spent by our spooks in Iran would be comparable to about $1.2 billion dollars if Chinese spooks worked to elect Obama or McCain.
But, should we see these issues as mutually exclusive? That is, if there’s a problem with corruption in Iran, or religious hubris, does that mean others, like the United States, are justified in manipulating their choices? Or, if American spooks are pitting one faction of their elites against another, does that mean Iranian elites should be, in our estimation, more innocent?
Kurosawa had something to say about this,
The town has been involved in a fight between rival gangs. The Samurai with no name provokes more and more violence between these gangs that eventually they both destroy themselves. The principle here is a corollary to ‘divide and conquer.’ It might be held that once you ‘divide,’ you make your opponents fight amongst themselves. This is what we might be concerned about in Iran. The pro-democracy camp are being made to fight against the ‘mullah-ocracy” as Escobar will characterize the Iranian elite. From the point of view of American spooks, this ‘self-destruction’ might be a good thing, and go to bring about “regime change.” But, from the point of view of Iranians working for the independence of Iran, the mutual destruction of these two factions cannot be a good thing.
Escobar speaks to the conflict between these two rival factions in Iran, the two factions that the Samurai with no name in Yojimbo manipulates into destroying each other.
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3946
Engdahl speaks about the way American spooks plan and strategize dominance of the world. Apparently, Iran plays a part in their thinking. You can’t have the Eurasians getting together and ganging up on poor little U.S. Here’s a two-part interview done by the Real News Network.
The Real News guy, Jay, point out the predicament the Chinese are in, they want to hurt the U.S., or at least keep the U.S. from attacking other countries, but it can’t put economic pressure on the U.S. without hurting itself.
JAY: And it must make it difficult for the Shanghai Cooperation countries, particularly China and Russia. They want to kind of balance US power. On the other hand, they're totally enmeshed in a global finance system with the US as the manager of the system. If the US economy really tanks, all of these house of cards come with it, don't they?
ENGDAHL: Not quite, and that's what's interesting about what's been going on since the outbreak of the crisis in August of 2007, with the subprime elements of the US. What's been going on has been rather quietly but very effectively, typically, Chinese way that the government has been building economic bridges to countries on its borders in South Asia, countries where the infrastructure had been neglected. They're building up its economic links with ASEAN countries in their own region. As well, they're trying to strengthen links with Kazakhstan, which is rich in oil and natural gas; with Russia; and also with Iran and other countries in the Middle East, to say nothing of Africa. So I think what they're positioning themselves for is to have all options open, but with an eye to the fact that the dollar system is sinking like the proverbial Titanic and that there's not much they can do, certainly nothing they can do to save it, should they even want to save it. But then they have to look out for their own future economic well-being, their national economic security.
JAY: So this issue of collaborating and contending, they want to push back on US dominance. But certainly it's not in their interest to see some of the American economy completely burned, both in terms of as a market and they're enmeshed in US dollars. They need to do what they can, don't they, to help the US tried to stabilize this?
ENGDAHL: That's the problem, the last part. What they can is very, very limited. The US economy is going—and I've said this before on Real News, as you know, Paul. US economy is going to go through ten years of hell at least. It's going to go through a Great Depression, tragically far worse than the 1930s, despite the so-called stabilizers of Social Security and unemployment insurance. Already, states like California are going through pure hell economically and in terms of employment, and that's preprogrammed to get worse. There is nothing China could do, short of committing national economic suicide, along with the other countries of the world, including the European Union, to save that dollar-indebted system. The US is in classic debt trap of its own making. So the point becomes: what do we do to survive? You know, you throw a life raft to the Titanic to let a few passengers escape, but the Titanic has a hole blown through it called the Wall Street securitization boondoggle that Alan Greenspan and, later, Bernanke actually did everything in their powers, together with Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, to create and support.http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3966
The problem for the United States, and probably this means more the poor people who fight in it’s wars, the country needs to get its act together economically, i.e., rebuild its productive capacity, make things that the rest of the world would like to buy, educate its people and provide basic “first-world services, but, in order to do that, it feels it must throw all its money both saved and borrowed, to put armies in the field. The more it fights the “war on terror,” the weaker economically it will become.
Engdahl and Jay continue,
Jay talks about the interviews he’s had with Iranians who argue that their attempt to change the Iranian “regime” is not controlled or inspired by American spooks. Engdahl replies that their limited observations are not relevant.
…the people I've interviewed that have been talking to Iranians—I've talked to people that were actually there and [who said] that the people in the streets are far, far wider, in terms of the spectrum of the politics, than the people that just want to wear blue jeans, which, in fact, a lot of people are already wearing blue jeans. But the trade-union movement in Iran was in the streets. There were conservative clerics in the streets who were opposed to Ahmadinejad. There were many of southern Tehran. Much of the poor working class was there because of 50 percent unemployment rates in sections of Iran. That's a far broader scale than just some people looking to dress and have cultural habits as in the West.
ENGDAHL: Paul, the point is that that's well said and done, but that's the perfect ingredient for triggering a destabilization and maximizing input through things like Twitter, through YouTube, etcetera, etcetera. All that you need is a tiny little handful of a few people who've gone out to the West, been trained, and sent back in—not that you send USAID people on the ground in Tehran. No, that's not what we're looking at. It's not the same exact template that you had in Georgia. That's why some people are confused. But I think the US grand strategy is to maximize chaos and confusion to take advantage of the economic crisis in Iran. Keep in mind oil prices going from $147 down to $30 a barrel in 12 months or even less had a devastating impact on the economic situation inside Iran, which is dependent on oil export for its earnings. So huge economic problems in the country by all accounts. And there is a tremendous—most of the Iranians alive today were born after '79, after the revolution of Khomeini, so they've known only that. And, you know, I think it's mixed up with many, many different sentiments. But that's kind of getting caught up in the forest-tree paradox here. The main point is: what is US policy vis-à-vis Iran?
JAY: But before we do that, I just don't think it's fair to what's going on to—like, the majority of the people in the streets, I've been told by all the Iranians I speak to, are not on the Internet, and most of them have never even heard of Twitter. In fact, it was text messaging was the main thing that got things started until they turned the text messaging off.
ENGDAHL: Yeah. Doesn't matter. It's irrelevant.
JAY: Well, why is it relevant?
ENGDAHL: Yeah, because once you get the thing started, it takes on a life of its own. And that's the point, because Rafsanjani had a powerful faction inside Iran wanted Mousavi declared that the election favored him before the polls were even closed. What did that do? That legitimized his complaint that he was robbed of the election victory, and that galvanized the people out in the streets. Then that took a changed form, according to Iranian friends that I've discussed with, and it changed after about a week of that from pro-Mousavi demonstrations that "He's our man" and so forth to a actual "Let's change the whole system. We're sick and tired of the mullah-cracy, the theocracy here that we've had for the last 30 years in Iran. We want a free, liberal Iran." Okay, once that kind of thing gets started, it's very, very difficult for anyone—the security forces or whoever—to control it. And that, I think, has been the behind-the-scenes, less-visible objective of Washington foreign policy. The aspirations of the Iranians on the street are human, they're understandable, they're legitimate. But I'm not talking about that here, Paul. I'm talking about who's stirring the pot, who's putting little signals in here and there that provide the critical ingredient and at key points. And there, I think, it's a color revolution. I'm sorry.
JAY: I think the point you made, though, is really the most significant, is it starts with a section of the Iranian elite. Rafsanjani, Mousavi, they're the ones that opened the door to this. They didn't need anybody from the outside doing it. They are the ones that call people onto the streets.
ENGDAHL: Yeah. Now, one question is: why did President Obama take such a very restrained position on the green revolution? It's a color; it's a green revolution, as it's been called by its supporters. So why did President Obama take such a cautious public stance on the thing, although condemning the violence of the regime and so forth? I think the point is the following. Obama is president of the United States because the establishment realized they had gone down the road of raw, brute power force-projection of the Bush-Cheney era for eight years, and it stood to lose everything in terms of America's role in the world. They had to put a kinder, gentler face on American hegemony, and that face is called Barak Obama. And Obama's whole diplomatic ploy since he has been in the White House has been to project to the Arab world, to the Islamic world (Iran not being Arabic, primarily, but Persian), to project a new foreign policy, a new, friendly face in contrast to the Bush-Cheney years. So Obama has no choice: he has to appear to be restrained and not interfering blatantly in the internal affairs of Iran and their settling of their election dispute. If you look at what he did in Istanbul in April—or Ankara, in his visit there, he's played a very—well, the State Department and the strategists behind the administration are playing a very sophisticated, deeper game of trying to tilt the power geometry away from China, away from Russia, away from Eurasia, and bring it back closer into the orbit of the United States, as is Saudi Arabia, from all accounts.
JAY: I don't see why both things can't be true, which is you have a genuine movement of the people for democracy in Iran, and the Americans tried to use it and do what they can to assist it to destabilize. And, sure, Obama—certainly the Americans would know it would be a kiss of death for that movement. The more the Americans endorse the movement, the more it's a kiss of death, because widespread public opinion in Iran is in defense of Iranian sovereignty, and they don't want to feel at all pushed around or manipulated by the Americans.
ENGDAHL: I think the Iranian people are very sophisticated people politically and pick up on those nuances extremely fast, much more than some people I know in so-called Western countries.
JAY: But the progressive Iranian's anti-imperialist, if you want to use that language. And the reason I am using that language [inaudible] Ahmadinejad uses the language. But the people I'm talking about it to in Iran who consider themselves anti-imperialist, they don't believe Ahmadinejad is anti-imperialist, and they think his use of that rhetoric is a smokescreen. And they don't understand—actually, we've done interviews with young Iranians who, for example, are big fans of Hugo Chávez. They don't understand why many of what they consider progressive forces are in this alliance with Ahmadinejad. And, you know, Ahmadinejad calls himself anti-imperialist, but this is the same Iran that helped the Americans invade Afghanistan; it's the same Iran that helped the Americans prop up the Maliki government in Iraq; they're the same Iran that negotiated the deal of Basra. They collude and they contend with the Americans. I don't see where the anti-imperialism is in Ahmadinejad.
ENGDAHL: I don't like the term, frankly. I don't think it's descriptive of anything meaningful in today's world. It may have meant something in the 1960s, but certainly not today. No. I think Iran's foreign policy under Ahmadinejad has been one of, quite simply, realpolitik—pragmatism. You've got a giant monster with nuclear teeth on your door, surrounding Iran and Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Iraq after 2003, literally every corner of Iraq.
JAY: And another one in the Middle East called Israel, which is a supplement to that arsenal.
ENGDAHL: So you don't go out of your way to anger that paper tiger, as Mao Zedong once said, back, I believe, in the '60s. Well, the paper tiger has nuclear teeth, and, you know, the whole hype about Iran's nuclear program, I think, is more hype than it is reality, from everything I've seen and heard. I'm not privy to the internal secrets of Iran on the nuclear question, but I think that is a projection of something saying, okay, we're not going to be seen as being subdued by this awesome military, full-spectrum-dominance projection of the Pentagon that we've seen all throughout the Middle East. So from Iran's relatively weak military position, it's a clever strategy, as foreign policy, to be seen occasionally helping the US vis-à-vis supply lines in Afghanistan or toppling this or that, but at the same time trying to maintain a national independence. It's a very complex game and certainly not a simple black-white one.
JAY: Yeah. I mean, I guess what I'm getting at is that within this system of imperialism, if you want to use the language, there are many contending powers; and in its relationship with the dominant imperialism, US, the others vie for their positions. But the problem I'm trying to raise is that within this system, when you have an Iran which colludes with the US, with the United States when it serves its interests, contends otherwise, which is fair enough—that's what these states do—but when the people have a legitimate movement and legitimate grievances against that regime, if that regime has kind of positioned itself as anti-US, then automatically everybody's saying, well, that movement must then be just some outgrowth of the CIA or just a manipulation of the US. And I'm saying it's more complicated than that. There is a legitimate—.
ENGDAHL: I agree with you on that, Paul. I agree with you on that. It's much more complicated, much more complicated. That being said, what is Washington policy, what is NATO policy, vis-à-vis the unrest, the legitimate grievances, call it democracy, call it more liberal, this or that? I have yet to see an organized form of presenting the grievances in some kind of way that could be points for a negotiation. That might be an interesting development. We may well see it. But my point is it was ripe for such a situation, regardless of what Ahmadinejad's voting tally was or was not in the election, and that this would have been triggered off in any case.http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3972
The Iranians should be encouraged to deal with their own problems. The Spook Samurais should be discouraged from whatever manipulating they’re doing so that the fighting in Iran can be resolved.
We might ask ourselves whether the Samurai with no name did a good thing. If we don’t like the gangs, then we might imagine that there should be a pox on both their houses, or that they deserve whatever suffering they have coming to them. I’m afraid this might be the opinion our own leaders have. Their continuous threats and all the money they have invested in “regime change” supports the idea that I’ve suggested here that both sides are being provoked by spooks. As our leaders in Washington don’t care who wins, and all we want is a town that we can better control, a town we can better live with, a town that will not be a source of harm to us, then I see them provoking them to destroy each other.
But there is another way to go here. Just because we have the idea we want a town that is not a threat to us, doesn’t mean we can set a fire, or provoke a civil war, and expect that events will turn out to our liking. The spooks have been known to have their manipulations get out of control in the past. If we want a town that will not be a source of harm to us, then the better strategy would be to assist the townspeople to resolve their disputes without ever having to resort to violence or behaviors that, if uncontrolled, might spill over and bite our butts over here. This strategy where rivalries are settled without resorting to war and violence does not seem to be one of the strategies in Obama’s or our spook’s playbook. If they do not believe that negotiations between the U.S. and Iran can really be fruitful, where disputes are actually settled, rather than violence just delayed, then they will not see that internal rivalries can be negotiated either.
The whole effort to “change regimes” in Iran supports this contention that our spooks think disputes can not be resolved through argumentation. If they thought argument was effective, they would have put the $400 million into that instead.
So, it seems we are committed to the “Yojimbo” scenario in Iran. That strategy might have been an entertaining way to eliminate rival bad guys, it is not a prudent way of making Iran safe for Iranians or the rest of us.
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