Why Iran?

Attacking Iran: What’s In It For Bush?
By Paul Craig Roberts

01/17/07 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Initially, the Bush Regime denied that Bush’s surge speech on January 10 signaled that the Regime intends to attack Iran. Now a number of Regime officials have made it clear that Iran, not Iraq, is the focus of the Regime’s war planning. Robert Gates, the new Defense Secretary and member of the Iraq Study Group, was supposedly brought into the Pentagon to de-escalate the war. Gates now says that Iran is the target of US military moves in the Persian Gulf

Suddenly the media is full of Bush Regime propagandistic assertions designed to make the American public believe that Iran is the enemy that is fighting against our troops in Iraq. To facilitate this deception, the Bush Regime staged a propaganda event by invading an Iranian government liaison office in Northern Iraq, kidnapping the Iranian officials and declaring them to be involved in plans to kill US troops.

The Bush Regime’s latest big lie is that the US is not winning in Iraq because of Iran. “The Iranians are acting in a very negative way,” alleges the “moderate” Gates. Iraq, the target for the surge in US troop levels, has dimmed in importance. In the few days since Bush’s “surge” speech, Bush, Cheney, Gates, Rice, and national security advisor Hadley have said far more about Iran than about Iraq. In 2003, the same technique was used by the Bush Regime to shift the public’s attention from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein. The technique succeeded to the extent that even today a significant percentage of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Clearly, the Bush Regime expects that it can again deceive the American public. There is no doubt that Iran will be attacked. The Israeli government and the neoconservatives have been demanding it.

The question is: why is Bush, who is confronted with failure in Iraq, willing to compound his problems by attacking a more powerful Muslim state that the US has no prospect of being able to occupy?

A former member of the National Security Council gave me a possible answer. Bush can bury his defeat in Iraq with a “victory” in Iran.

Here is the victory scenario: Bush and Cheney will claim that their air attack on Iran succeeded in destroying Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. The victory claimed by the Bush Regime and the propagandistic US media will “make America safe from nuclear attack.” This will restore Bush’s popularity and move the US back to a 50-50 political split in time for Karl Rove to steal the 2008 election with the fraudulent electronic voting machines built and programmed by Republican operatives.

The former national security official believes that Bush will be able to claim victory over Iran, because Iran will avoid responding militarily. Iran will not use its Russian missiles to sink our aircraft carriers, to shut down oil facilities throughout the Middle East, or to destroy US headquarters in the “green zone” in Baghdad. Instead, Iran will adopt the posture of another Muslim victim of US/ Israeli aggression and let the anger seep throughout the Muslim world until no pro-US government is safe in the Middle East.

Bush needs a short-run victory, and Iran will let him have it in order to gain the long-run victory.

The consequences for the US, Israel, and the US puppet regimes in the Middle East will be catastrophic, but they will not occur in the short-run.

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