{"id":213914,"date":"2020-09-23T05:00:17","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T05:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=213914"},"modified":"2020-09-26T05:57:13","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T05:57:13","slug":"tony-blairs-grubby-fingerprints-on-trumps-mideast-deals-spells-war-not-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=213914","title":{"rendered":"Tony Blair\u2019s Grubby Fingerprints on Trump\u2019s Mideast Deals Spells War, Not Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finian Cunningham \u2013 Strategic Review Sept 21, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Cynics of the \u201chistoric\u201d peace deals signed this week at the White House between Gulf Arab rulers and Israel were further emboldened in their criticism with reports that former British premier Tony Blair was a leading mediator behind the development.<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. President Donald Trump hailed<\/strong><\/span><\/a> the normalization of diplomatic ties between on the one hand the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and on the other Israel, as the \u201cdawn of a new era\u201d of peace in the Middle East. Trump said the formal detente signed on the White House\u2019s South Lawn would \u201cchange the course of history\u201d. He may be right, for altogether different reason.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump added that several other Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, would soon follow suit, thereby ending decades of Cold War between Arabs and Israelis.<\/span><\/p>\n

The pomp and ceremony this week has only a veneer of significance. The UAE and Bahrain are the third and fourth members of the 22-member Arab League to have moved to normalize ties with Israel, following Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. The decades-long regional stand-off stems from two wars in 1967 and 1973 and the ongoing Israeli annexation of Palestinian land.<\/span><\/p>\n

Arab League members Syria and Lebanon remain critical of the new move to normalize ties with Israel, as do Muslim-majority nations Iran and Turkey which slammed the deal this week as a sellout of Palestinian rights. Palestinians themselves were united in denouncing<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>the UAE and Bahrain for \u201cstabbing in the back\u201d their aspirations for a future independent state.<\/span><\/p>\n

The UAE and Bahrain contend that their recognition of Israel is contingent on the Israelis halting plans for further annexation of Palestinian lands which the Trump administration has green lighted in its so-called Middle East \u201cVision for Peace\u201d plan, cooked up by Trump\u2019s ardently Zionist son-in-law Jared Kushner.<\/span><\/p>\n

Palestinians and other critics say the push to normalize ties with Israel by the Gulf Arab states is merely legitimizing illegal occupation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attended the signing this week at the White House, has previously rebuffed claims that the latest Gulf Arab accords would stop future annexation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cynics have also pointed out that a major motive for Trump\u2019s supposed peace deals is his desire<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to boost U.S. weapons sales to Arab nations, in particular the new-generation F-35 stealth fighter jet.<\/span><\/p>\n

With a touch of Orwellian irony, the so-called new dawn of peace is more a new opening for flogging more American war machines.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the emergence of Tony Blair as an \u00e9minence grise figure in the Arab-Israeli realignment would confirm that the whole hoopla is a sham no doubt connected to Trump\u2019s reelection bid in less than two months. The former British prime minister was in attendance at the ceremony this week at the White House and feted as a crucial mediator in brokering Trump\u2019s deal. One Republican pollster was quoted<\/strong><\/span><\/a> as saying Blair was viewed as a \u201crockstar\u201d with delegates \u201clining up to have photos with him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As architect of the Iraq War, launched in 2003 along with GW Bush, the idea of Blair having anything to do with facilitating peace is a stupendous oxymoron. Arguably he should be prosecuted for war crimes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Following Blair\u2019s resignation as British premier in 2007, he immediately acquired a United Nations\u2019 sinecure as Middle East Envoy, tasked with finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After eight years in that post, Blair achieved absolutely nothing for the advancement of Palestinian rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, what Blair did \u201cachieve\u201d was a reputation for using his \u201cpeace envoy\u201d status to promote personal business interests across the region. He became a consultant for Wall Street giant JP Morgan Chase. His so-called \u201cnon-profit\u201d think-tank Tony Blair Institute for Global Change is bankrolled<\/strong><\/span><\/a> by the U.S. State Department and the rulers of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. He counts himself as a \u201cclose friend\u201d of Israel\u2019s Netanyahu.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what motivates Blair is less the peace of a region and more a lucrative piece of the action. A more suitable moniker would be \u201c\u00e9minence grease\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Blair\u2019s cozy relations<\/strong><\/span><\/a> with Arab monarchs make him an ideal broker to smooth over public relations with seeming genteel English gravitas. In that regard, his services to Trump is about selling an illusion of peace-making which is a reprise of his facilitating role for GW Bush in selling the cause for war against Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n

The paradox is that in the GW Bush episode the aim was openly to launch a war. In Trump\u2019s episode, the packaging may be wrapped in the rosy rhetoric of peace, but the content would seem to be still war. This time, war against Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

Blair has emerged as a keen advocate of a U.S.-led alliance to confront what he calls Iran\u2019s \u201ctotalitarianism\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

His money-grubbing institute published a paper last year stating<\/strong><\/span><\/a>: \u201cThe totalitarian and divisive worldview born from the 1979 Iranian Revolution\u2026 has been a driving force of instability and violence for years.\u201d It added: \u201cUnless Western leaders can learn the lessons from the 1979 revolution, the threat Iran poses will continue to grow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Blair has also backed the Trump administration in undermining<\/strong><\/span><\/a> the international nuclear accord with Iran. That 2015 accord has infuriated Israel as well as the Sunni Arab regimes led by Saudi Arabia all of whom want to see it binned. Indeed, the U.S.-led anti-Iran axis of Israel and the Gulf Arab oil sheikhdoms has paved the way for formal realignment, a realignment for war against Iran, in which the historic Palestinian cause has become a mere trifle to be thrown under a bus.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tony Blair is not about peace in the Middle East. His involvement with the Trump administration is about selling war against Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Tony Blair is not about peace in the Middle East. His involvement with the Trump administration is about selling war against Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153,"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":[19,61,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Behind_The_News","category-Commentary","category-Iran"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213914","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\/153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213914"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213916,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213914\/revisions\/213916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}