JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AN EXCELLENT PIECE ON THE DRONE ATTACK OF SAUDI OIL FACILITIES - AMERICA'S UNRELENTING AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE HOSTILITY TOWARDS IRAN - ITS SOURCE - THE SECRET AMERICAN GOVERNMENT LIST OF NAMES GENERAL WESLEY CLARK SAW YEARS AGO - IRAN'S AMAZING ACHIEVEMENTS IN DRONES AND MISSILES THWART BULLIES - WORLD ASKED TO BELIEVE A SAUDI CROWN PRINCE WHO HAD A MAN DISMEMBERED ALIVE AND BURNT IN A BBQ

John Chuckman


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DAVID C HENDRICKSON IN CHECKPOINT ASIA



“Iran Teaches Empire That ‘Maximum Pressure’ Goes Both Ways

“This isn't how Trump’s war on Persia was supposed to go

“Trump is in a tight spot of his own making, with neither escalation nor retrenchment looking to be attractive options.”



https://www.checkpointasia.net/iran-teaches-empire-that-maximum-pressure-cuts-both-ways/



Just an excellent piece, bringing together the many threads of this event.

I will only disagree on Israel's motives.

The fear of Iran has been largely manufactured. Of course, when a government chooses to terrify its own citizens, as Netanyahu’s government has, there will be some people who are genuinely afraid.

But when we talk of the attitudes and demands of a state, we talk about its government, not a group of people reading newspapers. Israel for many years has had a totally irresponsible government. No wonder it works so well with the irresponsible and confused Donald Trump.

Nuclear powers, and one moreover further backed up by a superpower, are not afraid of being attacked by a non-nuclear state.

I'm sure Israeli intelligence has a good grasp of the facts around Iran's nuclear work. Netanyahu has just lied about it for years, as he lies about just about everything.

We have a very sick man leading a state which is in a peculiar situation.

And we have another sick man, perhaps only slightly less so, leading the superpower supporting Israel.

Israel’s real motives – those of its leaders – are about Iran’s size and influence in the region. Israel wants no competitor for influence. The states with which it shares some closeness are run by tyrants who toe the American imperial line.

And that’s something Iran most certainly does not do, toe the American imperial line. That was true for other states in the region too, but Israel’s influence in Washington got them all attacked and dismembered or destroyed.

It's been a huge price in decency and barbarism and ‘Western” values that Washington has paid for its relationship with Israel. That secret list, seen and discussed some years back, by General Wesley Clark, of Middle Eastern countries to be toppled over a period of years included Iran as well as the others that have been since incinerated by America’s Neocon Wars.

It is interesting to note while Pompeo rants on and on about Iran’s responsibility, America just killed about thirty civilians in a misdirected drone attack in Afghanistan. The deaths are nothing new, America having killed many thousands there needlessly, but the method of misdirected drones has a huge irony.

Iran’s hard work on developing technology for drones and missiles, work undertaken under the tremendous duress of American sanctions and of America’s flagrant support for Saddam Hussein in starting a years-long, vicious war against Iran, just maybe has effectively removed Iran’s name from the list Wesley Clark saw and talked about.

It has truly made a contribution to the struggles of others, like Yemen, against imperial bullying.

Saudi statements that the oil-facility attacks were “unquestionably sponsored by Iran” are literally meaningless. As are statements about there being “no way the attacks were launched from Yemen,” while Yemen openly and repeatedly claims responsibility.

Statements from Saudi Arabia are proof of absolutely nothing, in this or any other matter. We must remember the recent record of the very state making the claims.

Its launching the bloody war on Yemen, including the incompetent killing of more civilians than soldiers. Its long covert support for the terror in Syria which has killed half a million. Its bloody suppression of the Shia minority at home. Its record level of executions, including the execution of teen-agers. And most relevant of all, perhaps, its Crown Prince’s clear guilt in having a man, a journalist, dismembered alive. Does anyone in his or her right mind take anything the Saudi government says seriously?