Donald
Trump occasionally utters unspeakable truths. In March 2018 he called Bush
Jr.’s decision to invade Iraq “the worst single mistake in US history.”
Earlier, Trump had said that Bush should have been impeached for launching that
disastrous war.
Yet
on January 2 2020 Trump made a much bigger mistake: He launched all-out war
with Iran—a war that will be joined by millions of anti-US non-Iranians,
including Iraqis—by murdering Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the legendary hero who
defeated ISIS, alongside the popular Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
Gen. Soleimani was by far the most popular figure in Iran, where he polled over
80% popularity, and throughout much of the Middle East. He was also adored by
millions even outside that region, non-Muslims as well as Muslims. Many
Christians throughout the world loved Gen. Soleimani, whose campaign against
ISIS saved the lives of thousands of their co-religionists. Even Sunni Muslims
(the people, not the billionaire playboy sheikhs) generally loved and admired
the Shia Muslim Gen. Soleimani, a saintly warrior-monk who was uncommonly
spiritual, morally impeccable, and the most accomplished military genius of
this young century.
The
strategic stupidity of Trump’s order to murder Soleimani cannot be exaggerated.
This shocking, dastardly murder, committed while Soleimani was on an
American-encouraged peace mission, has unleashed a “Pearl Harbor effect” that
will galvanize not just the nation of Iran, but other forces in the region and
around the world. Just as the shock effect of Pearl Harbor helped the American
war party overcome domestic political divisions and unite the nation in its
resolve for vengeance, so has the Soleimani murder galvanized regional groups,
led by Islamic Iran and Iraq, in their dedication to obliterate every last
trace of any US-Israeli presence in the region, no matter how long it takes, by
any means necessary.
Most
Americans still don’t understand the towering stature of Soleimani. Perhaps
some comparisons will be helpful.
To
understand the effect on Iran and the region, imagine that Stalin had succeeded
in murdering George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, and Douglas MacArthur, all on
the same day, in 1946. These US generals, like Soleimani, were very popular, in
part because they had just won a huge war against an enemy viewed as an
embodiment of pure evil. How would Americans have reacted to such a crime? They
would have united to destroy Stalin and the Soviet Union, no matter how long it
took, no matter what sacrifices were necessary. That is how hundreds of
millions of people will react to the martyrdom of Gen. Soleimani.
But
even that comparison does not do justice to the situation. Patton, Eisenhower,
and MacArthur were secular figures in an increasingly secular culture. Had
Stalin murdered them, their deaths would not have risen to the level of
religious martyrdom. Americans’ motivation to avenge their deaths would not
have been as deep and long-lasting, nor as charged with the avid desire to
sacrifice everything in pursuit of the goal, in comparison with the millions of
future avengers of the death of Gen. Soleimani.
The tragedy, from the US point
of view, is that this didn’t need to happen. Iran, a medium-sized player in a
tough neighborhood, is a natural ally of the United States. As Zbigniew
Brzezinski wrote in The Grand Chessboard,
“Iran…provides stabilizing support for the new political diversity of Central
Asia. Its independence…acts as a barrier to any long-term Russian threat to
American interests in the Persian Gulf region.” (p. 47) Obama, guided by
Brzezinski and his acolytes, set the US on a sensible path toward cordial
relations with Iran—only to see his foreign policy triumph sabotaged by the
pro-Zionist Deep State and finally shredded by Netanyahu’s puppets Trump and
Pompeo. Iran, dominated by principled anti-Zionists, is a thorn in the side of
Israel, so the unstable Iranophobe Trump was inserted into the presidency to
undo Obama’s handiwork and reassert total Israeli control over US policy—the
same total control initially cemented by the 9/11 false flag.
If
the murder of Soleimani bears comparison to Pearl Harbor, it also echoes the
October 1914 killing of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the first domino in a
series that ended in a world war. The dominos are lined up the same way today,
though it may take longer for all of them to fall. Due to the enormity of its
psychological effect, the Soleimani assassination irreversibly sets the US at
permanent war with Iran and the rest of the Axis of Resistance. That war can
end in only two ways: The destruction of Islamic Iran, or the complete
elimination of the US military presence in the region. The first alternative is
unacceptable not only to Iran, its regional friends, and the conscience of the
world, but also to Russia and China, who would be next in line for destruction
if Iran is annihilated. The second alternative is probably unacceptable to the
permanent National Security State that governs the US no matter who is in
office, and to Israel and its global network (and its agents in the “US”
National Security State). So the irresistible force will soon be meeting the
immovable object. It is difficult to see how this could possibly end well.
Ironically,
given Trump’s well-justified scorn for Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the first front
of the world war unleashed by Soleimani’s killing will be in that
long-suffering nation, whose government has just ordered US troops to depart
posthaste. If Trump wants to keep US forces in Iraq he is going to have to
re-invade that nation, attack and destroy its government and military, fight a
long-term counterinsurgency (this time against the vast majority of the
population) and take far more casualties than Bush Jr. did.
Trump’s
decision to martyr the great Iranian general and the celebrated Iraqi commander
was perfectly timed to unite Iraq against the American occupation. Prior to the
murder, Iraq was in the midst of color-revolution chaos, as demonstrators
protested against not just the US and Israel, the real culprits in the
destruction of their country, but also Iran, Iraqi politicians, and other
targets. Those demonstrations, and the murders that marred them, were
orchestrated by Gladio style covert US forces. As Iraqi Prime Minster Abdul
Mahdi explained:
“… I visited China and signed an important agreement with them to
undertake the construction instead (of an American company). Upon my return,
Trump called me to ask me to reject this agreement. When I refused, he
threatened to unleash huge demonstrations against me that would end my
premiership.
“Huge demonstrations against me duly materialized and Trump called
again to threaten that if I did not comply with his demands, then he would have
Marine snipers on tall buildings target protesters and security personnel alike
in order to pressure me. I refused again and handed in my resignation. To this
day the Americans insist on us rescinding our deal with the Chinese.
“After this, when our Minister of Defense publicly stated that a
third party was targeting both protestors and security personnel alike (just as
Trump had threatened, he would do), I received a new call from Trump
threatening to kill both me and the Minister of Defense if we kept on talking
about this ‘third party’.
“I was supposed to meet him [Soleimani] later in the morning when
he was killed. He came to deliver a message from Iran in response to the
message we had delivered to the Iranians from the Saudis (as part of a peace
initiative).”
So
Trump lured Soleimani to Tehran with a peace initiative, then ambushed him.
That’s why Soleimani was traveling openly on a commercial flight to Baghdad
International Airport. He thought he was under US protection.
Abdul
Mahdi’s explanation rings true. It reflects the views of most Iraqis, who will
be galvanized by Trump’s atrocious actions to resume their insurgency against
US occupation.
As
Iraqis continue to attack the hated US presence in their country, Trump will undoubtedly
blame Iran, whatever its actual role. So this time the Iranians will have no
motivation to avoid helping the Iraqi liberation struggle—they would be blamed
even if they didn’t. Though Soleimani was a relatively America-friendly
stabilizing force after the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan—the claim that
he was behind IEDs that killed US troops is a ridiculous lie—in the wake of his
death Iran will respond positively to Iraqi requests for help in its national
liberation struggle against the hated US occupier.
A
rekindled anti-US insurgency in Iraq, and various forms of ambiguous/deniable
retaliation for the murder of Gen. Soleimani throughout the region and the
world, will force Trump up the escalation ladder. Iran, and the larger
eject-the-US-from-the-Mideast project, will not back down, though they may
occasionally stage tactical retreats for appearance’s sake. The only way Trump
could “win” would be by completely destroying Iran. Even if Russia and China
allowed that, an unlikely prospect, Trump or any US president who “won” that
kind of war would be remembered as the worst war criminal in world history, and
the US would lose all its soft power and with it its empire.
Russia
now faces the same kind of decision it had to make when the Zionist-dominated
US tried to destroy Syria: stand by and let Tehran be annihilated, with Moscow
next in line; or use its considerable military power to save its ally. Putin
will have no choice but to support Iran, just as he supported Syria. China,
too, will need to ensure that the USA loses its Zionist-driven war on Iran.
Otherwise Beijing would risk facing the same fate as Tehran.
Even
if the only help it gets from Russia and China is covert, Iran is in a strong
position to wage asymmetric war against the US presence in the Middle East.
Almost two decades ago, the $250 million war game Millennium Challenge 2002
blew up in the neocons’ faces, as Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper commanded Iranian
forces against the US and steered them to victory. Though some technological developments
since then may favor the US, as Dr. Alan Sabrosky recently
pointed out on my radio show, others favor Iran, which now has
missiles of sufficient quality and quantity to rain down hell on US bases,
annihilate much of if not all of Israel, and send every US ship anywhere near
the Persian Gulf to the bottom of the ocean. (Anti-ship missiles have far
outstripped naval defenses, and Iran has concealed immense reserves of them
deep in the Zagros Mountains overlooking the Persian Gulf.)
So
Trump or whoever follows him will eventually face a choice: Accept defeat and
withdraw all American bases and forces in the region; or continue up an
escalation ladder that inexorably leads to World War III. The higher up the
ladder he goes, the harder it will be to jump off.
The
apocalyptic scenario may not be accidental. Mike Pompeo, who is widely believed
to have duped Trump into ordering the killing of Gen. Soleimani, may have done
so not only on behalf of the extremist Netanyahu faction in Israel, but also in
service to an apocalyptic Christian
Zionist program that yearns for planetary nuclear destruction.
Pompeo is ardently awaiting “the rapture,” the culmination of Christian Zionist
history, when a global nuclear war begins at Megiddo Hill in Occupied Palestine
and consumes the planet, sending everyone to hell except the Christian Zionists
themselves, who are “beamed up” Star Trek fashion by none other than Jesus
himself.
Whether
it goes down in radioactive flames or in a kinder and gentler way, the US
empire, as unstable as its leaders, is nearing the final stages of collapse.
“Very stable genius” Trump and Armageddonite Pompeo may have hastened the
inevitable when they ordered the fateful killing of Gen. Soleimani.
