Iran: matters arising

My grandson, thirteen months old tomorrow, paid a visit. He likes me a lot; there are few men in his life so far. His beautiful face lights up when he sees me. His short pudgy arms reach out to be lifted.

Of late I’ve taken – it’s an occupational hazard – to looking into that face and striving to set to one side my dark thoughts. I’m not morbid by nature, nor given to depression, but how could I contemplate such piercing vulnerability without imagining the agonies of children just like him, their brown bodies ripped by shrapnel or crushed by glide bombed masonry; hopefully to die instantly but just as likely to do so alone after hours or even days of terror in a dark tomb some call Israel’s right to self defence?

And how could I not wonder, as two criminally insane regimes backed by a dozen more led by cowards and toadies speed us towards global war in a nuclear era, what his future holds?

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Two general questions, both now taking on more particular significance, are exercising me. One concerns the agency of a US president. It goes without saying that he – so far it’s always been a he – could not have gotten within a million miles of the Oval Office without the endorsement of powerful wings of a US ruling class also known as a corporate oligarchy. But once anointed and duly installed, how much freedom of action does he enjoy?

I’d say very little. Obama couldn’t close Guantanamo, nor let the criminal elites who caused the 2007/8 crash face the music. Nor could Trump end the forever wars. I don’t say either seriously wanted to, mind. Just that, for reasons given elsewhere and with monotonous frequency, they couldn’t even if they did so want. ¹

So the first general question now assuming frighteningly particular form is whether Trump’s failed gamble – that he could effect Iranian regime change in a weekend of shock, awe and decapitation before the markets opened on Monday – reflected the concentrated will of the US ruling class, or simply the reality of said ruling class being itself so divided and panic stricken ² that, for once, the myth of power invested in the US president comes close here to actuality.

That this really was Trump’s move.

There are other possibilities of course. One being that Trump enjoys a degree of independence consequent on an oligarchy in confusion and disarray whilst at the same time being a prisoner to Washington’s Zionist proxy. That possibility leads me to the second general question now assuming frighteningly particular form.

Does Israel rule the USA? And why does the question matter now more than ever? To which I’d reply that if Israel does not dictate US foreign policy we must ask how far Washington will go to regain its advantage in a war the whole world can see it blundered into with astonishing lack of preparation.

Whether, in fact, it would allow a tactical nuclear strike on Iran while claiming with ‘plausible deniability’ that Israel acted alone?

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I’ll revisit both questions soon but right now feel a need to hold my grandson.

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1. Vladimir Putin got it right:

   I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens with every administration.

2. In speaking of the US ruling class as “divided and panic stricken” I don’t mean in respect of shoring up its global rule, to which end recapturing Iran is a key goal. There are many indicators – Wesley Clark’s revelation .. the 2009 Brookings Report on Which Path to Persia? .. continuity of US policy from Bush to Trump 2 as per the previous post – of this uniting neoliberals and neocons, and transcending other fault lines up to and including whether Israel has moved from imperial asset to liability. Rather, the divisions I speak of concern tactics and strategy and, where acute, may leave an administration with greater agency.