Warsaw, Poland is not a fun place to visit
in darkest February, but that is where the US just staged an anti-Iranian
jamboree of 60 client states that brought derision and scorn from Europeans and
much of the Mideast.
The point of this cynical exercise was to
lay the diplomatic groundwork for an anti-Iranian coalition to act as a
fig-leaf for an upcoming attack on Iran planned by President Donald Trump and
his close ally, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
The real question is who is calling the
shots in bleak Warsaw, Trump or Bibi Netanyahu? It seems to many that the
Israeli tail is again wagging the American dog.
This is
thanks to the power of America’s born-again evangelicals, hoodwinked into
believing that a Greater Israel is somehow a key part of the Second Coming of
Christ.
A Fox
News poll this week finds that a quarter of these credulous folks believe that
God actually summoned Donald Trump to become president. This may even be
more than the number of Americans who believe that Elvis is still alive.
More proof that the Republicans have pretty much become a theological party.
The three horseman of the hard right
Republican Apocalypse, Vice president Mike Pence, Insecurity advisor John Bolton, and
State Secretary Mike Pompeo (who reportedly keeps an open bible on his desk)
joined their voices to the Warsaw jamboree to excoriate Iran for being a
‘sponsor of terrorism,’ and a danger to world peace and stability.
The
never understated Bibi Netanyahu, whose nation has at least 100 nuclear
weapons, claimed Iran, which has no nukes and feeble armed forces, was planning
a ‘second Holocaust’ for Israel.
An
over-excited Netanyahu even tweeted that the Warsaw meeting was preparing for
`war with Iran.’ He was forced to retract his tweet. But he did get
to sit next to the delegate from war-torn Yemen, a stooge put into place by the
Saudis and Emiratis whose aggression against Yemen has so far cost hundreds of
thousands of lives, mass starvation and epidemics.
This
week a newly energized US House of Representatives voted for an end to their
nation’s support for the Saudi-led war in the Mideast’s poorest nation.
The Senate, still controlled by Republican Crusaders, will be likely to
vote down the sensible House proposal.
Another
participant at Warsaw was the largest Arab nation, Egypt. This nation
just extended the rule of its military dictator, Field Marshall al-Sisi, to
2034. It was Sisi, backed by Saudi money, who overthrew Egypt’s first
democratic government in history, killing and jailing thousands.
In a
slap in the face to Washington, Europe’s leaders, France, Germany and the
European Union government, either refused to attend the Warsaw hate-fest
against Iran or sent low-level paper-passers.
Ironically,
while Trump’s people were fulminating against Iranian ‘terrorism,’ it was Iran
that was the victim of terrorist attacks. An attack from a Pakistan-based
Sunni Jaish al-Adl extremist group linked to the CIA killed 27 soldiers and wounded
a similar number. Iran has been the target of constant attacks since its
1979 revolution by groups linked to the US, and from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and
other US regional vassals.
Trump’s
lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is even a long-term lobbyist for the hyper-violent
Marxist Iranian extremist group, the MEK which was even branded a ‘terrorist
group’ by the US government.
The Warsaw jamboree was also
supposed to set the stage for Trump’s much ballyhooed Mideast ‘peace’
plan. Run by son-in-law Jared Kushner, the full plan is expected to be
released in April, right after Israeli elections. It will likely consist
of trying to buy off Palestinian land claims with US taxpayer money and some
cash from the Saudis. America’s Arab client states in the region will all
provide polite applause.
The
Warsaw jamboree produced no evident results and left the US even more isolated
than before. Europe is moving ahead with a financial mechanism to permit
trade with Iran that circumvents US sanctions. US intelligence itself
reports that Iran is not working in nuclear weapons. Europe wants to
trade with Iran.
America’s
anti-Iran campaign has just suffered another blow. This after Washington
badly damaged relations with China and Canada over the arrest of the daughter
in Vancouver of the founder of Huawei over charges it traded with Iran.
Most non-Americans view this as an outrage. But the later-day Crusaders
around Trump don’t seem to care that they are damaging America’s reputation and
making a mess of its foreign policy.
Eric S.
Margolis [send him
mail] is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new
book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the
Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.
Copyright © 2019 Eric Margolis
