The Alternative View: War With Iran Is 'A Load Of Baloney'

That’s the view of M. K. Bhadrakumar and, interestingly, the authority he cites for his belief that all the war talk emanating from Trump 2.0 happens to be Steve Witkoff. In a way it all fits in with Trump’s MO—create a fake crisis, cause the crisis to go poof! and then bask in self plaudits. Could it work this time around? This time around Trump’s demands on Iran amount to a surrender Iranian sovereignty.

Talk of US-Iran war is all a load of baloney

Obviously, a war of this sort would be a global catastrophe. There’s the oil angle, of course, but there’s also a water angle:

There are no takers among the regional states for a military conflagration in the Gulf region. The old US-led anti-Iran front has unravelled following the shift in the Iranian and Saudi policies towards reconciliation and amity and the display of strategic autonomy by even those countries who still remain close allies of the US (in particular, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar.)

In a recent interview with the famous American podcaster Tucker Carlson, Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani drew an apocalyptic scenario that his country and the Persian Gulf Arab states will run out of water within three days if Iran’s nuclear facilities are targeted by the US or Israel! Does that occur to anyone?

Most of the rest of the article is simply a transcript of Witkoff talking with Tucker Carlson. And what Witkoff’s views amount to is the same old idea of isolating Iran by forcing most of the region’s Arab states—largely authoritarian Sunni regimes—into a de facto subservience to nuclear armed Israel. That’s what’s behind the Anglo-Zionist installation of a genocidal jihadi regime in Syria—no matter that this is a genocidal regime, the point is that they’re genocidal toward Shia Muslims. They’re anti-Iran. Is that cynical enough for you? Isn’t that the message we’re getting for other Anglo-Zionist subservient regimes flocking to cozy up to the jihadis in Damascus and end sanctions, even as the killing continues—UK, Germany, and now Trump:

US Issues Demands To Jolani In Exchange For Syrian Sanctions Relief

If you think Trump is demanding an end to the genocide against Alawites, Shia, and Christians in Syria, guess again.

There’s also this. Trump is cozying up to Erdogan, trying to pry Turkey away from its Russian air defense system and get them in line to buy F-35’s. But Turkey is also traditional—virtually millenia long—enemy of Iran, so we’re seeing a sort of twofer. A solid West Asian alliance of Sunnis and Zionists against Iran, with a revived isolating move against Russia with Turkey at the chokepoint of the Black Sea. Russia certainly understands all this.

So, here I’ll paste in Witkoff’s remarks to Tucker, as quoted by MKB:

“I would say the goal begins with how do we deal with Iran? That’s the biggie. So the first is nuclear… If they were to have a bomb that would create North Korea in the GCC, we cannot have that… we can never allow someone to have a nuclear weapon and have outsized influence. That doesn’t work. So if we can solve for that, which I’m hopeful that we can.

“The next thing we need to deal with Iran is they’re being a benefactor of these proxy armies because we’ve proven that … they’re not really an existential risk… But if we can get these terrorist organisations eliminated as risks. Not existential, but still risks. They’re destabilising risks. Then we’ll normalise everywhere. I think Lebanon could normalise with Israel, literally normalise, meaning a peace treaty with the two countries. That’s really possible.

Note the use of the code word “terrorist”. None of these groups—Hezobollah, Hamas, Houthis, Iran—are terrorists. Not by US Department of State stats that Larry Johnson has thoroughly analyzed. This is just propaganda. The real terrorists in the region—in addition to Israel—are the genocidal jihadis that the Anglo-Zionists installed—with Turkish help—in Damascus. This “terrorist” talk is the height of hypocrisy.

“Syria, too, the indications are that Jelani is a different person than he once was. And people do change. You at 55 are completely different than how you were at 35, that’s for sure… So maybe Jelani in Syria is a different guy. They’ve driven Iran out.

Right there is the bottom line. The Anglo-Zionists will deal with literally anybody, as long as they’re anti-Iran. Jelani isn’t a different guy—he’s the same genocidal, beheading maniac he’s always been. It’s just that he’s our genocidal maniac—for the time being. Any talk by Witkoff of Syria becoming “normal” under jihadi rule would be laughable if it weren’t so sociopathically hypocritical and cynical. The same goes for Witkoff’s talk of “peace in Gaza.” That’s code for: successful genocide/ethnic cleansing.

“Imagine if Lebanon normalises, Syria normalises, and the Saudis sign a normalisation treaty with Israel because there’s a peace in Gaza. They must have that as a — without question — as a prerequisite. That’s a condition precedent to Saudi normalising. But now you’d begin to have a GCC that all work together. I mean, that would be, it would be epic.”

MKB thinks all this can be accomplished without destroying Iran. Well, that’s a bit of a leap, because there are so far no indications that Iran will give up its sovereignty. Renounce any and all uranium enrichment, including for civilian uses, renounce its foreign policy, place itself at the mercy of Anglo-Zionist whims.

“Look, he [Trump] sent a letter to the Iranians. Usually it would be the Iranians sending a letter to him…They’re open to attack today. Yeah, they’re a small country compared to ours… If we used overwhelming force, it would be very, very bad for them…

Not to mention, for the rest of the world.

“So under those circumstances, it would be natural for the Iranians to reach out to the President to say, I want to diplomatically solve this. Instead, it’s him doing that. Now, I can tell you that he’s not reaching out because he’s weak, because he is not a weak man. He is a strong man… Maybe the strongest man I’ve ever met in my life…

“So with that all said, he wrote that letter. And why did he write that letter? It roughly said, ‘I’m a president of peace. That’s what I want. There’s no reason for us to do this militarily. We should talk. We should clear up the misconceptions. We should create a verification program so that nobody worries about weaponisation of your nuclear material. And I’d like to get us to that place because the alternative is not a very good alternative.’ That’s a rough encapsulation of what was said…

That’s a very rough encapsulation of what Trump told Iran. He also told them that they have two months to submit before Trump goes max military on them. Peace is: I win, you lose. That’s what Anglo-Zionists call “diplomacy.” What follows is obviously propaganda that’s not directed at Iran. It’s directed at bamboozling Americans to justify a catastrophic war if it comes to that. Trump’s position—the one that the Israel Lobby has given him—is that if Iran doesn’t submit he will risk Armageddon. As we’ve seen with the new deployments of military resources to the Indian Ocean region, Trump is backing himself into a position from which retreat—in the face of Iranian determination to defend itself—could prove impossible.

In Witkoff’s closing remarks the important thing to note is that Witkoff has spoken to nobody in Iran. Everything he says is simply Trumpian rhetoric in a slightly less flamboyant style. It’s story telling.

“The Iranians have reached back out, and I’m not at liberty to talk about specifics, but clearly, through back channels, through multiple countries and multiple conduits, they’ve reached back out.

“I think that it has a real possibility of being solved diplomatically, not because I’ve talked to anybody in Iran, but just because I think logically it makes sense that it ought to be solved diplomatically. It should be.

“I think the President has acknowledged that he’s open to an opportunity to clean it all up with Iran, where they come back to the world and be a great nation once again and not have to be sanctioned and being able to grow their economy. Their economy—I mean, these are very smart people. Their economy was once a wonderful economy. They’re being strangled and suffocated today. There’s no need for that to happen.

“They can join the League of Nations and we can have a better relationship and grow that relationship… That’s the alternative he’s presenting… he wants to deal with Iran with respect. He wants to build trust with them if it’s possible. And that’s his directive to his administration. And hopefully, that will be met positively by the Iranians.

“And I’m certainly hopeful for it. I think anything can be solved with dialogue by clearing up misconception and miscommunication and disconnects between people… And the president is a president who doesn’t want to go to war, and he’ll use military action to stop a war … In this particular case, hopefully it won’t be necessary. Hopefully, we can do it at the negotiating table…”