IRAN DEFEATED

second draft

(For background please refer to the prior two posts. I will be referring to SOFA as the “defense and security treaty,” as the “colonialist treaty,” and as the “Treaty.” Note that the defeat is episodic)

FAILURE AS DEFEAT: THE DOUBLE-AGENTS SURPRISE IRAN

Because the relationship between Dona Quixote and the harmful idiots is one of hostility and war-by-proxy, failure by these or by their adjutant regional players in Iraq, or in matters related to America’s colonial project there, is akin to defeat in battle. In that sense, we are witnessing Iranian defeats against the United States. Iran, it turns out, has more than one Achilles’ heel in Iraq, and these are borne out not of physical facts (e.g., Iran’s reliance on imported gasoline), but of Iran's illusions about its nuclear program, its ability to control the double-agent Badr/Dawa state, its miscalculation when it allowed that state to encircle the Mahdi Army, its failure to build a bridge to the Arab Sunnis, and its failure to trump America’s formation of an ancillary Iraqi army (likely a nucleus within the wider army) that’s likely quite revanchist against Iran.

All these failures became apparent when it turned out that Dona Quixote had been taken by surprise at the news that the Badr/Dawa Shia state in Plantation Iraq -- the double-agent state -- was nearing the signing of a defense and security treaty with the harmful idiots.

The immediate and fierce reaction by a number of Iranian ayatollahs at Friday sermons and a few Iranian government officials (including Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani) in the last several days reveal total and unequivocal unpreparedness for the news by Iran. This surprise indicates at the very least a failure of Iranian intelligence in Iraq, next door (!); at the most it indicates that Iran has lost its ability to control the Badr and Dawa personalities, the double-agents. That these had concealed, likely intently and quite successfully, from the Iranians the negotiations about the Treaty. Iran (and Syria) had nursed these during so many of the years when Saddam Hussein had been in power. Most bewildering about the Iranian failures is that the announcement of the negotiations about the proposed Treaty has revealed that Iran has been asleep at the wheel as the harmful idiots have been bringing back an Iraqi army which nucleus is ancillary to the American. (That army is now the largest importer of American weapons.) Rumors had this army ready and willing to stage a coup d’etat against the Badr/Dawa Shia state should the latter fail to sign on the dotted line. Iran in Iraq is left with next-to-nothing!

In short, the news about the Treaty has shown that Iran is losing battles in Iraq against the United States. These losses cumulatively and unmistakably are spelling a major defeat for the Islamic Republic. Misreading Iraq repeatedly and having its influence on the retreat spells a major defeat. At this rate, Iran should be left with no political clout among the Iraqis but only with mercenaries, not much more; and we know that these cannot win battles. It’ll be as if US troops have withdrawn and left behind their own mercenaries – the Blackwater USAs. No one would expect these, alone, to be able to hold the line.

WHY DID IRAN FAIL?

What accounts for the Iranian failure to read Iraqi events correctly and to engage politically in Iraq?

1 – THE ILLUSION OF SECURITY VIA NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

I think Iran’s failure to keep up with developments about the Treaty may have had quite a lot to do with success by the harmful idiots and Israel at (consciously and intently) reinforcing Iran’s illusion that its nuclear program is in fact such a gem, and that its security is best achieved through that program and not through engagement in Iraq. In other words, the harmful idiots, by campaigning so hard against Iran’s nuclear program, have intended in good part to nurse along Iran’s illusion that its nuclear program was in fact so critical to its security that Iran ended up placing Iraq lower on the list of its concerns. Israel and the US know something from experience: that nuclear weapons can be useless, even an albatross. But they’ve wanted Iran to cling to its nuclear program and fear an American attack on its locations as a way of diverting Iran’s attention and resources away from Iraq. They’ve succeeded.

Likely the harmful idiots have read correctly that the Iranians invest a lot of nationalistic fervor in developing their own and independent nuclear power and a nuclear arsenal. Accordingly, the harmful idiots have nursed along Iran's self-induced nuclear illusion -- that the Bomb would do it for the Islamic Republic. Here the Iranians have forgotten the fact that the Bomb is useless. Israel for decades has had a huge nuclear arsenal and that has not helped that state in the very least. Better yet for the nouveau colonialists (the harmful idiots) and the established colonialists ( the Israelis) – these two may be able to gain for themselves yet more precious and substantial time to consolidate their hold (the Israelis, indirectly) over Plantation Iraq since Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal should be a long one. Why? Iran will need a second strike capability if it is to establish a true balance of terror with Israel. To construct a MAD – Mutual Assured Destruction – as had the U.S. and U.S.S.R. during the cold war. This long voyage should further deepen Iran’s illusions and, barring total bankruptcy by the harmful idiots and rebellion at home, should give these the time necessary to further buttress their ancillary Iraqi army to the point where that army would in fact be able to take over.

You can see the harmful idiots pursue this policy with a cunning and creativity borne out of a modicum of desperation: go after Iran’s nuclear program with such elan that the Iranians themselves increasingly dig themselves into it and away from Iraq. Their fear of a US attack on their nuclear facilities, and the nursing of that fear by the harmful idiots, has achieved so much for the harmful idiots’ colonial project . To the point that that the Iranians are losing the Iraqi Shia realm, the very realm they thought would defend them.


2. THE ILLUSION THAT IRAN CAN DO IT ALL WITH ONLY THE SHIA: IRAN’S FAILURE TO BUILD A BRIDGE TO THE IRAQI SUNNIS.

Iran’s fear of the Iraqi Sunnis has delivered those to the harmful idiots. A virtual Sunni army of nearly 110,000 (the sahwas) is now on the dole, courtesy of the harmful idiots. (Not to count those on the dole of the oil-rich shadow governments of the Gulf protectorates.) The Sunnis’ mistrust of Iran has caused them to stand on the sideline and watch for a war between Iran and the US, or an intra-Shia civil war. This development has pleased the harmful idiots quite a lot. My suspicion is that the ancillary army the harmful idiots are developing has more than its fair share of former Baathist Sunni officers. Anti-Iran revanchists.

Iran failed to build a bridge to the Sunnis not only because both parties distrust each other. Too, the harmful idiots through their ancillary state likely have been able to torpedo at least one attempt by Moqtadha as-Sadr to build such a bridge. The harmful idiots would not want that bridge. And neither did Iran. That bridge would almost certainly spell a revival of Iraqi Arab nationalism. Iran’s aversion to that nationalism has been yet another Achilles’ heel for the Islamic Republic. The harmful idiots took advantage.

Put differently, Iran’s aversion to that nationalism, even paranoia about it, likely is its most pronounced Achilles’ heel. This is made all the worse for Iran by the pursuit by Saudi Arabia’s shadow government of a Sunni political revival as a way of containing the Shias, including Saudi Arabia’s own. Iran’s paranoia has proved gem-like to the Saudi shadow/secret government. Why? Because this paranoia has prevented the Islamic Republic from allowing, even encouraging, a new brand of Arab Iraqi Islamic nationalism to emerge, one that would have a solid Shia component to it, even be led by Shias. That brand of nationalism would be allied to Iran and would scare the wits out of all the Gulf countries. All of these have Shia minorities, some substantial, within them. Because of their pluralism, the new brand of Shia-led Arab Iraqi nationalism would be so appealing to these countries' population, both Sunni and Shia. But, again, Iran’s paranoia has stood in the way of like thinking. Not to mention that Saudi Arabia’s shadow government has stood in the way, too. But, at any rate, Iran likely thought it safer to put most (if not all) of its eggs in the Iraqi Shia basket -- the realm. Iran has thought it can rely on that Shia realm to defend it. It’s found out that the Shia realm (in Iraq, at least) isn’t as solid as it has thought. Will Iran learn to play it less safe? I doubt it. The paranoia runs too deep.


3. THE ILLUSION THAT BADR/DAWA IS POWERFUL ENOUGH AND ALLEGIANT ENOUGH TO PROTECT IRAN: TO FAIL BY WEAKENING MAHDI, ONLY TO BE DONE IN BY BADR/DAWA.

The proposed defense and security treaty has revealed that the Badr/Dawa Shia state is likely useless to Iran, and useful to the harmful idiots if only because that state could give the colonialist Treaty a cover of legitimacy. Iran’s activation of Lebanon's Hizbollah (Nasrallah made a statement averring his party’s support for resistance in Iraq) should not send shivers up the spine of either the harmful idiots or the Badr/Dawa personalities. Grant it, Hizbollah may be the best guerrilla army in the world, but it is a small army. Iraqis themselves will have to do the work against the harmful idiots and others if they are to shed the suffocating colonial yoke, especially financial (see below), with which the harmful idiots, the Kuwaitis, and the other Gulf Arabs have shackled them. (They may have to opt for total chaos as a best means of defense against the nouveau financial colonialists and their Arab adjutants since a “government, ” any government, by definition is anti-chaos, and you need chaos to help break out of the financial noose the harmful idiots and their Gulf adjutants have put around Iraq’s neck to subdue it as an American base in the region.) More precisely: the Iraqi Shias will have to do the work. Yet more precisely: the Sadrists. But Iran has most recently sold the Sadrists out in favor of the Badr/Dawa Shia state. Now that state is selling Iran out. Iran has allowed the Mahdi Army to weaken, assessing wrongly that the Badr/Dawa state would look after Iran’s interest. It hasn’t. Iran, by weakening the Mahdi Army vis-a-vis Badr/Dawa, has shot itself in the foot. Even if the Treaty isn’t signed, Iran now knows that the Badr/Dawa people will sell it out or will be powerless against the harmful idiots and their Arab Gulf Adjutants. But there’s little the Iranians can do about that. They live in an illusory world where they’ve fallen for their adversary’s ruse that their nuclear program is all that counts, not Iraq. Meanwhile, the Americans are dividing and conquering even within the Shia realm. Afraid that the harmful idiots would bomb their nuclear facilities, the source of the Iranians’ illusory Big Power status, the Iranians helped Badr/Dawa suppress the Mahdi Army. Only to find out later that not only is Badr/Dawa unreliable; it, too, lives under the threat of a coup by yet another state: the harmful idiots’ Iraqi ancillary army.

(Oddly, the Sadrists can save the Arabs or can save the Iranians in the new brand of Iraqi Arab nationalism in which they would be the essential component. But both parties – Iranian and Arab – have not wanted to take that route.)

It’s not by coincidence that the news about the Treaty came soon after Iran did in the Mahdi Army, allowing the harmful idiots near-total control of Iraq’s Shia realm. The harmful idiots have proved cunning: they set up a trap for Iran, one where Iran was forced to rein in Mahdi in favor of the double-agent state, to avoid an American bombing of its nuclear facilities. Once that was done –Mahdi reined in – and the Shia realm was emptied of any real political and military power, the harmful idiots allowed the news about the Treaty to emerge. They did it unwittingly as they likely pressed forward on the signing of the Treaty to take advantage of the neutralization of Mahdi militarily and the concomitant disappearance of Shia opposition.

4. THE ILLUSION THAT THE HARMFUL IDIOTS WOULD PARTNER WITH IRAN IN IRAQ AND THE GULF.

Iran has labored under the illusion that, sooner or later, the harmful idiots would accept partnership with it. Harmful idiots-extra-ordinaires (most recently: the harmful idiots’ rep at the UN, on or about 5/17/08), as part of the ruse to lure it away from Iraq, would repeatedly make statements that Iran should define reasonable goals in Iraq, implying that the harmful idiots would then accommodate the Iranians. These ruses Iran has fallen for, giving the harmful idiots yet more time to consolidate their control over their ancillary Iraqi army. Such naivete for a once-cunning state! Here again, the harmful idiots’ focus on Iran’s nuclear program has numbed the Iranians into thinking that the nuclear program is what matters. And that once they achieve the status of a nuclear power, the harmful idiots would have to deal with them – to partner with them. Kudos to the harmful idiots. True, they did bankrupt us and devastated a defenseless country to steal its oil to dodge their inability to manage our own country. But, hey, look: Iran has fallen for their carrot: the false hope of partnership. Their scheme worked. They’ve had success! Iran now is looking like the idiot, not they.


5. THE ILLUSION THAT THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT HAS ALL THE FREEDOM WHEN IT COMES TO ITS PUBLIC.

The Iranians’ recent failure in Iraq (the proposed Treaty) may have quite a lot to do with the fact that the Iranian government finds it easier to mobilize its public about the nuclear program than about the U.S. stationed next door and getting ready for an eventual assault on the Islamic state of the mullahs. This contrast between the ease at mobilizing about the nuclear program and the difficulty at mobilizing about the threat next door likely accounts for the furthering of the illusion that the nuclear program would bestow security on Iran. Put differently, Iran’s preoccupation with and illusion about the nuclear program is so deep in part due to the popularity of that program at home and the legitimacy it bestows on the mullahs. Therefore, talking illusion, it doesn’t matter that the nuclear program doesn’t help Iran in dodging sanctions, or in conveying security, or in displacing the harmful idiots from Iraq.


THE INDEPENDENT.CO.UK: THE US TO DOMINATE PLANTATION IRAQ USING FINANCIAL BLACKMAIL.

It was the Independent.co.uk which first broke the story about the proposed Treaty, which proved such a surprise to the Iranians. Patrick Coburn, on Thursday, June 5, 2008, published an article titled: “Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US occupation.” He followed this revelation by yet another bombshell. On Friday, June 6, he wrote that “[t]he US is holding hostage some $50 bn . . . of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely...” (“US issues threat to Iraq’s $ 50 bn foreign reserves in military deal.”)

Mr Coburn terrific revelations are missing yet more financial blackmail by the harmful idiots. This blackmail is being used to force the Iraqis into total submission, now that the harmful idiots have dismembered them and their state. Iraq “owes” $67 bn to America’s Gulf protectorates (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE.) And these have hitherto refused to forgive that “debt.” (It really isn’t a debt. It was thanks to Iraq’s long war with Iran, which the Gulf Arabs financed and the harmful idiots supported, which failed the attempts by the Islamic Republic to export its revolution to these countries. In other words, Iraq had provided real services for that money.) Add to this financial noose the $28 bn compensation Iraq is to pay (likely: mostly mostly to Kuwait) for he 1990 invasion. And do not think for a moment that the four Gulf adjutants of the harmful idiots have taken that position (against forgiving the “debt”) without some approval from the harmful idiots -- especially Kuwait and the UAE. Kuwait’s shadow government, after all, had been taken over by the harmful idiots starting in the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war. So let’s not do the act that Kuwait is independently screwing Iraq. It had, did, and will fuck the Iraqis only with the permission and encouragement of the harmful idiots.

As damage control, to contain the revelation about the Treaty, the harmful idiots dispatched the foreign minister of the UAE to Baghdad on 5/5 or 5/6 -- on the same day of the revelation about the Treaty or the day after. The harmful idiots meant the visit as a carrot to the fucked Iraqis – a lure. From Baghdad, the UAE foreign minister announced that his country would soon open an embassy in Iraq. This visit was so sudden that there’s no doubt that the harmful idiots meant it to soften the blow of the revelation about the colonialist treaty. In other words, the harmful idiots have dispatched the representative of a reliable protectorate to promise indirectly that the harmful idiots can have these forgive Iraq its “debts” to them once the Iraqis sign on the dotted line.


ASSAFIR.COM: IRAN WAS IN FACT SURPRISED.

Ali al-Haj Yousef reports for the Lebanese assafir.com (Shia/Arab nationalist/pro-Syrian; I find it to be one of the best newspapers in the Arab World) from Tehran. On June 7, he wrote an article titled “Where Does Maliki Stand vis-a-vis Tehran’s Fears and Washington’s Greed?” (Arabic.)

Yousef seemed to imply that some among the Iranian officials (but only some) were blaming themselves for not seeing the Treaty coming. That only a few months ago, Maliki and Bush had signed a Declaration of Principles. It would follow, wouldn’t it, that a Treaty would come after. Though Yousef didn’t come out and say it, this was an Iranian failure. Yousef relayed an alternative Iranian point of view which said that the Iranian government was visibly and purposely so over-reacting to the proposed Treaty to prepare the ground for a Parliamentary rejection of it. And that should give Maliki a way out so not to alienate his allies, the harmful idiots.

Here Yousef sounded quite naive. He couldn’t see that the Iranians have failed in a most basic way when they were unable to secure real a fatwa from Ayatollah Sistani condemning the proposed Treaty outrightly. This failure at influencing Sistani became obvious when Iran’s people in Iraq floated rumors about Sistani issuing secret fatwas for resistance against the US, which Sistani’s people swiftly denied. In other words, Yousef was believing his Iranian interlocutors when these were concealing their failures and portraying themselves as being on top of the game – which they weren’t and aren’t. (Yousef had so blindly believed his Iranian interlocutors in the past when he had reported that Iran had issued an ultimatum to the harmful idiots, which translated into a couple of posts in this newsletter to warn unwitting US troops.)

Tellingly, though. Yousef did confirm that there were rumors circulating that the harmful idiots might stage a military coup against Maliki should he refuse to sign on the dotted line. But here again, Mr. Yousef, so enamored with Iran, couldn’t see that these very rumors indicated that the Islamic Republic had failed yet again, this time when it had allowed the harmful idiots to build the ancillary army.

CONCLUSION

Just as the harmful idiots nurse their own illusions and indulgences, which are their Achilles’ heel, so does Iran.

-- Its surprise at the news of the proposed Treaty;

-- its obsession with its nuclear program, which obsession is pushed along by Israel and the harmful idiots as a trap for the Islamic Republic, in which trap it has fallen, as a way of diverting its attention away from the real prize – Iraq – and allow the harmful idiots to consolidate their position there;

-- its passivity about the harmful idiots evolving an ancillary Iraqi army next door that likely is quite revanchist against Iran;

-- its failure to build a credible bridge to the Iraqi Arab Sunnis;

-- its fear of and paranoia about Arab Iraqi nationalism;

-- and its recent stand against the Mahdi Army in that Army's confrontation with the Badr/Dawa troops --

. . . all show that Iran is fallible even in its own realm, and has in fact failed. In war parlance -- and this is war, have no doubt about it -- the harmful idiots and the Israelis (and their Arab protectorates/adjutants in the Gulf) have dealt Iran a defeat in Iraq.