{"id":190193,"date":"2019-06-20T06:33:21","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T06:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=190193"},"modified":"2019-06-22T06:08:03","modified_gmt":"2019-06-22T06:08:03","slug":"war-against-iran-will-not-end-well-for-the-aggressors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=190193","title":{"rendered":"War against Iran will not end well for the aggressors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asa Winstanley \u2013 Middle East Monitor June 19, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Nuclear deal, or Trump protecting Israel? Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Here we go again. The shadow of war is again cast over the Persian Gulf. Having already destroyed Iraq over the past decade and more, the US is now threatening to do the same to Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

The escalation of events in recent weeks is, frankly, alarming, but a military invasion of Iran will not end in the same way as it did in Iraq. While Iraq itself as a country was never really subdued, the US and UK-led war of aggression did succeed in killing more than a million people. It also ignited a brutal sectarian civil war which tore the country apart for years, as well as birthing ISIS\/Daesh, the so-called Islamic State. Moreover, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein<\/strong><\/span><\/a> fell quite easily.<\/span><\/p>\n

The government of Iran will not fall in the same easy manner that Saddam\u2019s did in 2003. The US and its regional puppets, clients, and allies know this. So what Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE all seem to be agitating for is not a full-scale invasion, which is likely to be defeated easily by Iran\u2019s substantial military forces. Instead, the push seems more to be towards a bombing campaign, by air and sea, without the boots on the ground which would lead to too many body bags heading back home. Blanket bombing would weaken Iran and its armed forces.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a major regional power, Iran is a country which, since 1979<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, has refused to submit to the dictates of US hegemony. It has independent domestic and foreign policies, which is anathema to the imperial power and its clients. This explains the true reasons for US hostility.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the US and its allies are already engaged in warfare against Iran by other means \u2014 terrorism, cyberwar, and brutal sanctions \u2014 they have so far not engaged in an outright military assault. Why is that? Well, Iran has credible military capabilities, and the capacity to launch attacks against the US and its allied assets across the region.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to Washington\u2019s belligerence, tensions are now so high that it would not take much for a chain of events to be set off which result in a full-scale war in the region. Indeed, the Americans, largely via and on behalf of Israeli interests, is pushing Iran into this, almost despite themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2015, the US and five other world powers made a deal with the government in Tehran to curb sanctions on Iran in exchange for a limit on its nuclear energy programme. Israel was never happy with the deal, and ever since has been pushing hard, through its lobby in the US, for an end to the \u201cJoint Comprehensive Plan of Action\u201d. Pro-Israel lobby groups associated with far right, anti-Palestinian billionaire Sheldon Adelson, for example, are behind this. Not coincidentally, Adelson was also Trump\u2019s top donor<\/a><\/strong><\/span> and he and his wife also donated more than $55 million to Republican Congressional election campaigns last year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel is now pushing strongly on all fronts for war against Iran. The sketchy US \u201cintelligence\u201d which is alleged to prove that Iran was behind recent attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman just outside the Persian Gulf, has been supplemented by equally sketchy British \u201cintelligence\u201d on another supposed Iranian-linked plot in recent weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to a report in the Telegraph,<\/em> British spy agencies claim that in 2015 they secretly caught an alleged agent stockpiling \u201cexplosive materials\u201d in North West London as part of \u201can international Hezbollah plot to lay the groundwork for future attacks.\u201d Iran arms and funds Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah.<\/span><\/p>\n

The report is based on information from \u201ca UK intelligence source\u201d. While it is careful not to name Israel, it states that MI5 acted on \u201ca tip-off from a foreign government.\u201d Israeli press reports stated that this government was indeed Israel<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Notably, the report does not claim that the materials were being stockpiled for attacks in Britain, although it seems to want to give that impression. That\u2019s something that Hezbollah would be highly unlikely to do; as well as being a political party which has long been part of Lebanon\u2019s government, Hezbollah is an armed resistance movement devoted to fighting Israeli occupation, in Lebanon and in Palestine. While it has intervened to shore up the government of Bashar Al-Assad in neighbouring Syria \u2013a long-time Hezbollah supporter \u2013 London is not within its usual theatre of operations.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot about the Telegraph<\/em> report that doesn\u2019t add up. The headline claims that the alleged Hezbollah agent \u2014 who was eventually released without charge, by the way \u2014 was stockpiling \u201cexplosives\u201d, but we learn in the text that these were actually \u201cexplosives materials\u201d, namely \u201cthousands of disposable ice packs\u201d. These were said to contain an ingredient held in common with homemade bombs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a Lebanese professor and Hezbollah expert, has cast doubt<\/a><\/strong><\/span> on this. Why would Hezbollah, she asked, \u201cone of the most powerful military forces in the [Middle East], with precision-guided missiles and other advanced conventional capabilities\u201d content itself with homemade bombs?<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, the whole narrative of the report \u2013 that this alleged plot was covered up by British politicians in order to protect the then-fresh Iran nuclear deal \u2013 seems far-fetched. Based on MI5 and Israeli Mossad sources, its release seems to have been aimed at increasing the pressure on Iran, hence the headline describing Hezbollah as \u201cIran-linked terrorists\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the sake of all concerned, a war with Iran is best avoided. If past experience of Western military interventions is anything to go by, it will not end well for the aggressors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here we go again, writes Asa Winstanley. Having already destroyed Iraq over the past decade and more, the US is now threatening to do the same to Iran<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Iran"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190193"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190196,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190193\/revisions\/190196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}