In “Beyond Incompetence: Washington’s War in Iraq”, Jonathan Cutler provided a compelling argument against the notion that the neoconservatives did not intend for the Shi’a to assume the facade of power in Iraq’s new govt., but that it was part of their long-range plans for reshaping the Middle East. I took note of his article here.
As Cutler explains in his latest update, “The Devil Wears Persian“:
In an earlier ZNet essay — Beyond Incompetence: Washington’s War in Iraq — I described David Wurmser’s 1999 book Tyranny’s Ally as a kind of Right Zionist playbook. Wurmser elaborated a plan for moving from Clinton-era “dual containment” of Iraq and Iran to a new policy of “dual rollback” in both countries.
Wurmser described a central challenge for achieving “dual rollback”:
“How can we vanquish one without helping the other? Similarly, how can we deal either with a radical, secular, pan-Arabic nationalism or with fundamentalist pan-Islamism without allowing one to benefit from the other’s defeat?” (Tyranny’s Ally, p. 72)
In the months after the US invasion of Iraq, the US did tilt toward Shiite power in Iraq. It aligned itself with Iraqi Shiites in order to topple Saddam’s regime.
But that was only the first phase of “dual rollback.” Now, with the Israeli intervention against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the second phase has begun.
“Dual rollback” is a two act play:
Act One: Target Iraqi regional power, with the acquiescence of Iran.
Act Two is just beginning. Please return to your seats and ignore Time magazine which seems to have mistaken the “intermission” for the end of the show.
Act Two centers on “rollback” in Iran. Arab officials are cast in a supporting role, with Israel in the lead. The second Act opens in Lebanon, although the finale is almost certainly supposed to be set in Iran.
The Bush Revolution, Act Two [continue reading]
Cutler, who is nearing the end of a two-week hiatus, predicts this for Syria:
I would not be stunned to return August 7th to a new regime in Syria. This could happen in one of two ways: either President Bashar Al-Asad does a “Qaddafi” and switches sides (”get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit” as our President says; very unlikely, but not impossible) or he is unseated in a US-backed coup. Let us be clear, the parties to that coup are totally in place and would essentially represent a return of the “old guard” that was marginalized in the transition from Hafez to Bashar. The key figure in this coup would be former Syrian Vice-President Abdel-Halim Khaddam. The coup option is in such plain view to all that this may, in fact, be sufficient to move Bashar.
Justin Raimondo and Margaret Griffis are both on the case.