Neoconservatives continue to advocate for a war with Iran despite its potential consequences and the need for careful strategy.
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
In 2000, the The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) proposed a U.S.-led global security perimeter in 2000, which influenced military strategies and led to the Iraq invasion after 9/11. Today, neoconservatives continue to advocate for a war with Iran despite its potential consequences and the need for careful strategy.) issued a report that proposed establishing a new U.S.-led security perimeter across the globe to protect Western interests and perform the “constabulary” duties associated with “shaping the security environment in critical regions.”
The report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” which suggested billions more in the Pentagon budget annually for reimagining military capabilities across the forces, including nuclear and space, was based in part on the Defense Policy Guidance, crafted by Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney during the George H. W. Bush Administration “for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.”
The report noted that “the process of transformation” that PNAC envisioned, “even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”
PNAC, which was founded by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan and had been actively lobbying to remove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power, got its “Pearl Harbor” a year later. Within two years of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. invaded Iraq, saw Hussein executed, and was well on its way to fulfilling at least one top line goal from “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”: to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars.”
Of course the “winning” part never happened. Yet the centrifugal force that was the neoconservative project, which placed several of its founders and signatories at the levers of political and military power inside the George W. Bush Administration (Cheney, Wolfowitz, Don Rumsfeld, Elliott Abrams, Paula Dobriansky, Scooter Libby), was able to perpetuate a Global War on Terror and a U.S. military footprint across the Greater Middle East and Africa that remains to this day.
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Why revisit this now? Despite their discredited handiwork overseas (vividly reflected in the vulnerability of 3,400 U.S. troops left over from counterterror operations against ISIS, a militant group created in the vacuum from PNAC’s vaunted Iraq regime change), neoconservatives and their aspirations are still at the very center of today’s foreign policy debates, and they really, really want the U.S. to go to war with Iran.
“You have to figure out which Iranian leaders are making the decisions, and you take them out,” the GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley said following the drone attack on three U.S. Army troops stationed in Jordan on Jan. 29. This wasn’t a one-off. Haley, who shares mega donors with AIPAC, has been neocon-friendly since her days in the Trump administration, when she helped kill the Iran nuclear deal. Her campaign has been heavily dosed with hyperbolic and simultaneous calls for fighting Putin, the mullahs in Iran, and Xi Jinping in China. She is fond of saying things like we have to “punch (Iran) once and punch them hard.”
Haley is part of a longstanding ecosystem of neoconservatives and their attendants in the foreign policy blob who have long identified Iran as a key, if not existential, adversary of both the U.S. and Israel—this was clear in “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”—putting it on the current place in the “Axis of Evil,” thanks to George W. Bush speechwriter and neocon David Frum in 2002.
The Biden administration may choose not to retaliate in a big enough way as to set off World War III—all signs this week thankfully point to an effort on both sides, Washington and Tehran, seeking to tamp down the prospects. Even with the U.S. strikes on militia targets in Iraq and Syria on Friday night, “they appeared to stop short of directly targeting Iran or senior leaders of the Revolutionary Guard Quds Force within its borders, as the U.S. tries to prevent the conflict from escalating even further,” according to early AP reporting.
This is no thanks to this pernicious army of the Iran obsessed, who implicitly regard the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel as the “Pearl Harbor” for the final confrontation, if not the regime change, they have long been seeking.
Top on this list is the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), which was conceived as an American public relations tool for Israel but made its mark in Washington as a neoconservative counterterrorism think-tank and Iraq War cheerleader after 9/11. With retired military and administration officials like Ret. Gen. H.R. McMaster often fronting the mission, FDD has long advocated for the toppling of the regime in Iran, mostly focused on Tehran’s nuclear program and its threats to Israel.
The killing of U.S troops in Jordan has paved the way for the FDD’s apotheosis, as its fellows (like Mark Dubowitz, Andrea Stricker, Richard Goldberg) have enjoyed mainstream news attention, accusing President Biden of long-standing “appeasement” and demanding he “strike Iran hard.” Their talking points can be heard in the mouths of nearly every single war party hawk who has found his or her way to a microphone or camera following Oct. 7, including but not limited to, John Bolton, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, Tim Scott, Tom Cotton, and Roger Wicker.
A number of retired U.S. military officers have been using their cache to advocate for war with Iran over the last three months, too. They may not be “neocons” but they work closely with groups that are, and have internalized the messaging. Just like the ramp up and justification for the Iraq invasion two decades ago.
Gen. Frank MacKenzie and retired Admiral James Stavridis lead this conga line, showing up on Fox News, Bloomberg, and NBC News almost daily now.
“Iranian leaders work with Lenin’s dictum that ‘you probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.’ Tehran and its proxies are pressing their attacks because they haven’t confronted steel,” wrote MacKenzie just after the fourth anniversary of the U.S. assassination of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. MacKenzie boasted that he was the commander of that operation under the Trump administration.
“The Iranians subsequently backed down,” he added in his Wall Street Journal essay. “Here is the lesson: The Iranians’ strategic decision-making is rational. Its leaders understand the threat of violence and its application.”
Meanwhile, Stavridis, who never misses an opportunity to push military solutions onto complex combustible geopolitical problems, has written at least two Bloomberg pieces outlining plans for multi-pronged strikes on Iran and its proxies. After the Jordan strikes, his plans now include attacks on Iranian warships, boarding and seizing an Iranian naval or commercial vessel, targeting Iranian oil and gas platforms in the Arabian Gulf and strikes against Iranian military command-and-control sites, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps headquarters.
“If that doesn’t work, the administration is going to have to consider strikes inside Iran,” Stavridis told NBC News on Thursday.
Earlier in January, Stavridis was echoing a familiar call in the message force multiplier vortex—that the U.S. sank the Iranian naval fleet in 1988 during “Operation Praying Mantis.” “Iran got the message,” he said. “Perhaps it is time to send it again.”
McKenzie and Stavridis aren’t the only ones. Ret. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and Ret. Gen. Jack Keane have also appeared on Fox seeking direct action against Iran as early as November.
So what does this all mean?
Neoconservative forces injected the foreign policy discourse as early as the 1990s with the idea that deposing Saddam Hussein was part of a grander plan to maintain peace and security (U.S. primacy) in the Middle East. They pushed this idea until it became a reality, with 9/11 giving them their opening to make war on Iraq and to push the boundaries of their Middle East vision in the Global War on Terror.
Twenty years later, the Iran piece of the “Axis of Evil” remains intact. There is no doubt that Iran has funded and resourced proxies that have fought against the lingering U.S. military presence in Iraq and Syria. There is no doubt Iran has funded and resourced Hamas, which bears the sole responsibility for the horrific Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. Yet it is important to put the voices for war with Iran into perspective and not allow them to inflate the threat for their own agenda, which far predates the current crisis and for which motivations are less clearly in the U.S. national interest.
In other words, we cannot afford another war, and if we need to retaliate, it should be after careful deliberation and based on sound strategy, not the saber rattling of zombie neoconservatives and their minions in the blob.
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Comments
13 responses to “Beware the Iran ‘Pearl Harbor’ Moment”
Iran has not been in amy conflicts for over 300 years.its a paranoid obsession with the used furniture salesman psychopath miliekowski the idiocy of shrieking about american defenses would die out if the u.s.stopped creating enemies by its actions.note the mentally deranged in govt never once contemplate peaceful cooperation with others.
The Zionists/Israel have been trying to instigate a war with Iran for over 40 years making all kinds of lies up about them ever since Iran rid themselves of the US puppet government. From the late 1990s forward Israel and its puppet US have been accusing Iran of making nuclear weapons which Iran has never tried to make. If fact, Iran has asked for a nuclear-free Middle East but the US and Israel have declined that request and Israel is the one with a hidden nuclear weapons agenda. Now after two US soldiers were killed by a drone, the US said that they believe it was Iran’s drone that did it and therefore the US has the right to bomb Iran because the US “believes” that Iran’s drone was involved. So after a US missile, in fact, shot down a Russian plane killing 70 Ukrainian prisoners and a Russian flight crew, Russia has the right to decimate Washington DC, New York, Los Angeles and a few other cities. Let the games begin.
I recommend to all of the readers of these pages, the daily articles on Youtube by a financial advisor based in Singapore, named Sean Foo. In them you will find a detailed explanation of the financial, geopolitical and military consequences of an attack on the very badly underrated Iran.
Here we have a country that possess the highest technology available anywhere else in the world, as shown by the use by Russia of some models of Iranian military attack drones in Ukraine of which they have tenths (hundreds?) of thousands ready to use when needed.
Furthermore please open the map, and see Iran’s location just a rock throw away from not only some of the biggest oil fields and refineries in the world just waiting for Iran to blow them to bits faster that you can say fire away. Consequently creating an unstoppable economic tsunami that would topple the world’s economy from one day to the next including of course shaky America. Please do as I tell and learn from this annalist Sean Foo.
In 1956 America and the UK, decided to attack Egypt where the great Gamal Abdel Nasser was president because he nationalized the oil industry. Since he could not defeat such powerful enemies he simply sank several ships in the Suez canal and interrupted the use of a vital link of the world’s economy. Too bad for the US Empire and friends because they had to give up their malicious plans and Nasser won the confrontation. On top of the measures available to Iran already mentioned, Iran can do the same than Nasser did in the Straight of Ormuz (name of Persian origin). Check the map and everything else, and then tell me how easy or even possible is for anybody to attack Iran and succeed. How crazy and stupid can these jackasses possibly be?
The US was dead last with third world country Brazil in fighting covid because the US was too disorganized. If they try to fight Russia, Iran, China, etc. it would be disastrous. It’s way past time for the clowns in DC to realize that they are no longer the world power before they get us blown away.
Best way to unite all Iranians is to attack or invade it. Karma never goes away or retires, it will follow you, be with you till the end of time. Truth is the only answer, happiness only to the righteous.
“for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.”
And AmeriKKKan interests were inherited from ye o£de European feudal warlords, hence the 1953 coup instigated by MI6 for BP when Mossadech decided the Iranian people should have the benefits of Iranian resources.
The CIA, under Kermit Roosevelt joined in the exercise and after 1979 and the Shah puppet’s ejection the plotting resumed to ‘get our oil back’.
The Brits do forward p£anning and puppeteering par excellence. Theit sticKKKy financia£ fingers fiddle in all pies.
If the Biden administration provokes a war against Iran, then all of America will drown in blood, because this conflict will engulf the entire Middle East, including half of Africa, and will force half of the nuclear-armed states to intervene, including Russia, China, and Pakistan. This world war. So those people who claim that it is necessary to strike Iran are either fools or suicides.
“Fools or suicidal”, how about simply stupid and uninformed or all of the above. Also remember the people pulling the strings won’t be in harm’s way, rather they’ll be “far away”.
scrdmgl please note that the Suez debacle was a UK/French/Israeli venture and the US put a stop to it.
I’m not rewriting history, is a very different story when a foreign power opts for a ‘cease and desist’ option when is clearly a lost cause. My interpretation of past history is always related to past events to the one being judged at any point in time. The forced Theocracy presently dominating the great people of Iran since 1979, owes its existence to the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup d’etat against the secular government of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh for nationalizing Iran’s oil resources. Talk about unintended results backfiring in your face. There was only one master of the world at the end of WWII, so US oil corporation interests either overtly or behind the scene were duly represented in the Suez Canal failed enterprise against Egypt. In general, you’ll be correct in thinking that the US Evil Empire is behind all evil in the world, directly or indirectly.
So declared Imam Ruhollah Khomeini also originator of the term ‘Great Satan’ for good cause, may he rest in peace. Additional examples of US foreign blunders are also found in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, initiatives that ended in unabated failure and in the last case, bankrupted the US economy forcing Nixon to detach the Gold standard supporting the dollar. Since then America has ruled the world with a currency not worth the paper that is printed on. In fact the Soviet collapse, was due exactly to the same reason because of the Afghan campaign. The difference being that Russia paid with ‘Real’ resources and not paper as America so it fell by its own weight of course. Nothing wrong with Socialism but the opposite. Today Russia is back on top and America about to implode for many a reason as you are probably aware. Master Trump himself, a wheeler dealer and regime insider corroborated my assertion during his 2016 campaign “‘ The US is broke and 9/11 was an inside job’. Dead on Orange Man.
Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are the eternal bad guys and the US is always at war with them directly or indirectly. The problem is all of these regimes continually outwit the Americans, whose only response is more military intervention.
WE ARE A NATION WHO NEED WARS, KILLINGS, ATROCITIES ETC IN GLOBAL SCENARIO.. SINCE 1776 WE HAVE BEEN AT WAR FOR ABOUT 220 YRS & HAVE SEEN PEACE ONLY FOR ABOUT 28 YRS & THAT TOO ONLY ONCE FOR 8 YRS STRETCH, OTHER PEACE YRS IN BITS & PIECES. THATS WHAT WE ARE. OUR ECONOMY IS WAR ECONOMY RUN BY ARMS & KILLING EQPT CORPORATIONS. OUR SO CALLED ELECTED GOVTS ARE BACKED & FUNDED BY THESE CORPORATIONS WHO MAKE SURE WE KEEP FIGHTING GLOBALLY, DIRECTLY & THRU OUR PROXIES & BUYING WEAPONS & KILLING MACHINES FROM US. LOOKS AROUND AND SEE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH WEAPONS ARE BEING SHIPPED OUT TO ONE PROXY COUNTRY IN EUROPE & ONE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. THEY CAN DIE, BUT WE NEED TO MAKE MONEY.
With leadership like the US has, it doesn’t take very much brain to out think them. Our government is an embarrassment to humanity.