March 31, 2007March 11, 2012 Joe Quinn

‘Hostage Crisis’ Or End Game?

9/11, al-qaeda, illegal war, Iran, Politics

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Up until the 23rd March 2007, it seemed unlikely that the ‘creative destructionists’ (1) and ‘reality-makers’ in the Pentagon and Tel Aviv would get to “liberate” Iran in the way they have liberated 26 million Iraqis (1 million of them from their bodies).

The past 3 years of subtle and not-so-subtle slander and demonisation of the Iranian president and people by the American, British and Israeli governments and their media had been largely ineffective in further provoking the anti-Islamic ire of Joe six-pack. After all, with the US invasion of Iraq either a war crime or a quagmire (depending on your political perspective and depth of conscience) Bush’s political capital account was seriously overdrawn, rendering the idea of extending the Middle East madness into an attack on Iran nothing but a Zionist pipe dream.

Or so it seemed.

Political capital and its raw material – human emotion – is, you see, much like crude oil, self-replenishing, all you need to know is where to look and where to ‘drill’, and the flow can be re-established in an instant.

In yet another amazing coincidence of the type to which most people have become immune since September 11th 2001, 15 British marines were captured by Iranian soldiers in the Persian Gulf, just one day before the UN security council was to meet to decide whether to impose further immoral sanctions on 80 million Iranians (2) Of course, the timing of the capture of the British marines could have been a coincidence and the direct result – a slam dunk on the sanctions vote – just a piece of uncanny bad luck for Ahmadinejad.

Likewise, the fact that the US government somehow ‘bungled‘ the Iranian President’s visa application, preventing him from presenting his case to the Security Council on the same day, could also have been mere chance. After all, we need only remember how John Ashcroft was warned by an unknown confidant not to fly on commercial planes just a few days before 9/11 or that a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli army gave Israel’s most recent suicide bomber a lift to his destination, to understand that strange coincidences are the norm rather than the exception in the world of the Zionist-Neocon War of Terror.

That the capture of the British marines was to be transformed into a causus belli was evident right form the get go with the purportedly moderate BBC News taking a page from Necon Rupert Murdoch’s Fox and Sky news song sheet and running day-long ‘crisis specials’ on the event, complete with ad-nauseum repetitions of the ‘details’. For example, the following (verbatim) is an example of one of the repeated “clarifications” by BBC newscasters in response to comments by an alleged “expert”:

Reporter: “so you’re saying that they were definitely captured in Iraqi waters”

and

Reporter: “again, let me just be clear on this, you’re saying that this could seriously effect tomorrow’s UN Security council vote”.

If you have been watching the news or reading the papers over the past week, you should already be aware that someone is protesting a little too much, and it ain’t the Iranians.

Since the arrest of the 15 useful idiots, the Western public has been subjected to a week-long barrage of simplistic anti-Iranian propaganda that has sought to capitalise on the event and pitch the Iranian government as the aggressor. As you might expect, however, there is far more to this story than is being told in the mainstream press.

First of all, consider the strange fact that just hours before she was arrested, the only female among the Marines, leading Seaman Specialist Faye Turney, gave an exclusive interview to the UK Independent in which she spoke of her “devotion to her job and three-year-old daughter, Molly, and the guilt of leaving her behind at home in Plymouth to be cared for by her husband Adam, a Petty Officer in the Royal Navy.”

It was also leading Seaman Specialist Turney who was chosen by the Iranian government to speak when she and some of her colleagues appeared on Iranian television a few days later, and it was Turney who penned two probably scripted ‘confession’ letters to her parents where she apologizes to the Iranian people for trespassing on Iranian territory and calls on the British to leave Iraq. All in all it was emotional stuff, or rather it was meant to jerk the emotional chains of the great British (and Western) public if we allow ourselves to be guided by recent headlines from the UK’s largest (and Rupert Murdoch-owned) daily, the Sun:

It should be noted that the above headline: “who do you think you are kidding Mr Ahmadinejad” is not as innocuous as it might at first seem, but rather is evidence of the very insidious yet subtle propaganda methods used by the mainstream media to undermine the critical thinking abilities of the average UK citizen. Virtually every Brit will recognise (most likely unconsciously) the headline as a play on the theme tune from the wildly popular British sitcom Dad’s Army (1968 -1977) which portrayed the British home guard during WWII as a bunch of bumbling idiots. The chorus from the theme tune was: “Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler”. The replacement of ‘Hitler’ with ‘Ahmadinejad’ of course being the slur of choice of American, British and Israeli Zionists.

That their opinions are being directly manufactured by such subtle propaganda and disinformation is unfortunately lost on her Majesty’s loyal subjects, most of whom remain blissfully unaware that what is now being called a “hostage crisis” is part of a deliberate policy by Western government officials to manipulate them and make them willing accomplices in an upcoming attack on their fellow human beings in Iran. Likewise, a recent US poll claims that almost 60 percent of Americans believe that Iran is “helping the Shiites in Iraq by providing weapons to them.” The fact that every one of those polled would have serious problems telling the difference between a Shiite and a Shish kebab is of course not the point – the point is that they, and those who read about the poll, now believe, know, that Iran = bad.

The warmongers in the British, American and Israeli governments (and those behind them) realise that there can be no war with Iran without public backing, if only temporarily (as was the case with the invasion of Iraq) and with the fabricated Downing street dossier and WMD lies still relatively fresh in our minds, most members of the public are ill-disposed to being fooled twice. Blair and his cronies understand very well however that, in the absence of a direct threat to their lives, a certain blood-lust can be conjured up among the masses by somehow involving them personally in the conflict.

Because the public of any nation does, and always will, strongly identify with their troops (they generally view them as ordinary people just like themselves) any high-profile ‘crisis’ that involves military personnel, particularly in the case where they are ‘humiliated’ in some way, invariably has the immediate effect of repressing logical and rational thought and replacing it with thinking of a distinctly emotional flavor. Hence the current “hostage crisis” and a proliferation of headlines such as this form the Scotsman this week:

But how exactly did this “crisis” come about? As I have already mentioned, it is rather suspicious that it occurred one day before the UN Security Council was due to vote on further sanctions on Iran, and what are the odds that Seaman Specialist, Faye Turney would have given a personal and heartfelt interview only hours before her arrest?

We know that the basics of the story are that the Iranians claim that the British Marines strayed into Iranian waters and were, reasonably enough from the Iranian point of view, arrested. The British government, on the other hand, without directly stating it, has suggested that the Iranian military captured the British Marines in Iraqi waters where, we are told, they were engaged in their normal, almost ‘humanitarian’ daily routine of searching boats in the Persian Gulf in an attempt to stop “smugglers”. The truth of what the British sailors were actually doing that day is however rather different.

The crew of HMS Cornwall (including the 15 arrested Marines), had been part of a massive military operation codenamed “Operation Troy“, instigated three years ago after “suicide bombers” in three dhows attacked the Al Basra and Khawr Al Amaya oil terminals, killing three Americans. A three-kilometre exclusion zone was thrown up around each of the terminals – which pump out 90 per cent of Iraq’s crude oil. From this, it becomes obvious that, like the rest of the British and American military in Iraq, the arrested Marines were in the role of corporate mercenaries, hired to ensure that Iraq’s oil remains flowing in the hands of government-associated Western oil companies.

Context, as they say, is everything.

But what of British government claims that the Marines were 1.7 nautical miles within Iraqi waters? So far, the British Navy has produced a map with the locations of the Marines inflatable boat, HMS Cornwall, and the demarcations of Iraqi and Iranian waters.

The British Ministry of Defence has also produced a series of numbers, apparently GPS co-ordinates, which apparently place the Marines’ boat in Iraqi waters at the time of their arrest. A British Navy Commodore however, was quoted by the UK Independent as saying that the Marines were just half a mile inside Iraqi waters.

For their part, the Iranians have presented two different sets of coordinates that placed the Marines in both Iraqi and Iranian waters and yesterday, an Iranian officer appeared on Iranian television to say that a captured British GPS device showed five violations of Iranian waters.

With both the British and Iranians making contradictory and confusing claims, we suspect that the exact details of where the Marines were are largely irrelevant. Indeed, such nitpicking would seem pointless in light of the fact that it appears that there is no definitive agreement on the precise boundaries of Iraqi and Iranian waters. The Shatt al-Arab waterway was divided in half by the Iranian and Iraqi governments in 1978, and up until recent years the median line was marked simply with buoys. The demarcation of the waterway has however suffered in recent years with the boundaries of the waterways described as “very complicated”.

According to British Admiral Alan West a commission would usually meet every two or three years to agree exactly where the median line should be:

“The commission is meant to sit regularly to discuss and arbitrate exactly where the median line down the Shatt al-Arab goes because it does move with the seasons and each year it moves in shifts because it’s quite a flow of water.”

“The commission would consist of representatives, principally of Iran and Iraq, sitting around a table and deciding where the line would be. There are other people involved to mediate.”

The commission had not met for a few years because of the war, he added.

Richard Schofield, an expert in international boundaries at King’s College London, questioned whether the dispute would be eased if the Royal Navy released co-ordinates of where the sailors were seized:

“Releasing the co-ordinates wouldn’t necessarily help us as there is no formally agreed boundary”

“It isn’t clear the incident happened off the water of Shatt al-Arab. We are talking about territorial waters beyond.”

“Iran and Iraq have never agreed a boundary of their territorial waters. There is no legal definition of the boundary beyond the Shatt al-Arab.”

Of course, if there is “no legal definition of the boundary between Iraq and Iran’s territorial waters”, then we have to wonder where the British DOD got the map that appears to show those exact demarcations? Was it just a matter of DOD officials drawing a line on a map to suit British claims? I am also still waiting for someone to explain to me how, if the Marines were in Iraqi waters when arrested by the Iranians, why were the Iranians allowed to pass unchallenged into Iraqi waters?

Whatever the case, the main point here is that the “Iran crisis” has begun. Blair and his cabinet cronies now have a drum to beat, and it seems they mean to beat it as loudly as possible. Already Blair has waxed indignant about the “parading” of the British Marines on Iranian television, heck, he even became somewhat “disgusted” over it:

“I just think it’s completely wrong, a disgrace actually, when people are used in that way, that’s contrary to all international laws and conventions, and is not going to make any difference to us.

[…] “I really don’t know why the Iranian regime does this [show captives on TV],” because it just arouses disgust, he told reporters Friday.

“We need all 15 released because they were doing their job under a United Nations mandate. There is no justification whatsoever for taking them in that way.”

In an example of the ignorance, arrogance and paramoralistic thinking that is rife among British establishment figures, Labour party member and MP for Shrewsbury Daniel Kawczynski opined thusly on the “crisis”:

“Obviously I have been raising this issue in the Commons. I feel extremely angry the Iranians have paraded them on television. It totally contravenes international protocol. We would not do that in a million years in our country.”

Of course, I forget, this is Britain, Western ‘Democracy’, a paragon of virtue. I admit it, Blair and the British MP are correct, British or American soldiers and politicians would never sanction the “parading” of captured foreign nationals on television…such acts are disgusting. Piling prisoners naked into pyramids with bags over their heads on the other hand, is totally kosher, especially when it’s in the prisoners own country.

Compare and contrast:

‘Parading’ and feeding = “disgusting”

Naked prisoner pyramid with head bags = “liberation”

Of course Blair, being a man without a conscience, has no problem with the inherent hypocrisy in such statements. For Blair, the arrest and good treatment of 15 British personnel by Iran is a “disgrace”, while the abduction, torture and long-term imprisonment of innocent people by the CIA and British intelligence is good old British fair play. It is for this reason that Blair, confronted with the opportunity to resolve the issue, chose to respond to the Iranian offer to release Leading Seaman Faye Turney, by marching off to the UN in an attempt to steamroll a resolution “deploring” the Iranian action. As it turned out, Russia, China, Indonesia and Qatar objected to the use of the word, preferring “grave concern” and rejecting the inclusion of a statement that the Royal Navy team was “illegally arrested outside Iranian waters”. Apparently the days when all bowed to British “pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war” are long gone.

As for the Bush government and media; given that the US military in Iraq is still holding the five Iranian diplomats abducted in Iraq last month with no consular access, no charges brought against them and no information about where they are being kept and under what conditions, you might think that they would want to keep a low profile on this one, and in any normal world you would be right, but not in this one, not in the good old US of A! The US media is instead joyously profiting from the “hostage crisis” to ramp up the Iran war rhetoric for the US population, and the US government has enthusiastically backed the British government position, even as Bush and Co continue to imprison hundreds of innocent people in Guantanamo bay and issuing condemnations to other countries for arresting political opponents. So just in case you are still wondering, the answer is ‘yes’ this is an astonishing double standard and one that has been the hallmark of the Fascist Blair-Bush-Israel triumvirate.

But wait! I forget…those innocent inmates in Guantanamo, the unfortunates who are “rendered” by the CIA, the 10,000 Palestinian men, women and children in Israeli jails and the Iranian diplomats all have two things in common: they are Muslims and therefore are “terrorists”, while the British troops who share the blame for 1 million dead Iraqis are “liberators”. We must not forget that important point.

From the Iranian point of view, there are two fronts on which the “hostage crisis” must be managed.

On one level, there is international opinion and the need to project a moderate stance in an effort to offset three years of Western media slander that has sought to pitch Ahmadinejad as a new “Hitler”.

On another level there is Iranian public opinion and public opinion in the Arab world.

At present, Iran is militarily encircled by US and British forces, with no justification. American troops are based in almost every country bordering Iran – Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Azerbaijan (not to mention 121 other countries around the world). Added to that is the fact that, last month, most of the developed world voted at the UN to sanction Iran for its non-existent (in terms of being a threat) nuclear programme. Meanwhile, the Israeli Mossad has been murdering Iranian scientists, rescuing their long-term spies from the Iranian government, and calling for Ahmadinejad to be assassinated (simply because he took a leaf out of Bush’s book and called for regime change in Israel). And all of it against a nation that has never attacked or threatened another country for several hundred years.

Understandably, all of this makes for a certain amount of siege mentality among the Iranian ruling class, not to mention frustration and annoyance among the Iranian people.

The fact is, the Iranian people have serious and justified historical grievances against the Americans, British and Israelis to which Ahmadinejad must cater. For example, 6 months after the 2003 illegal US invasion of Iraq, the Iranian people were mourning a 50 year-old US and British intervention in their country, one that had terrible and lasting consequences:

Iranians mourned this week the consequences of Anglo-American regime change as they marked the 50th anniversary of a CIA coup that toppled their democratically elected prime minister.

Organized by the CIA and the British SIS [MI6] to secure Iran’s oil resources [sound familiar?] from a possible Soviet takeover and secure Iran’s oil resources, the coup marked America’s first intervention in the Middle East. Its aftershocks are still being felt.

The end of Iran’s first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship by Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, who relied on US aid and arms. The anti-American backlash in 1979 shook the whole region and helped spread Islamic militancy.

“If there had not been a military coup, there would not have been 25 years of the Shah’s brutal regime, there would not have been a revolution in 1979 and a government of clerics,” says Mr. Yazdi, who served briefly as foreign minister in the first cabinet after the fall of the Shah. “What we have now is a result of the coup.”

Kind of puts a different spin on Israeli, American and British denunciations of Iranian “extremists” and the need to prevent them from acquiring a single nuke, does it not?

The current “hostage crisis” therefore must be handled carefully by Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Khamenei. With the aforementioned history and most Iranians understandably suspicious of any British government, its intelligence agencies and military, there is little scope for the Iranian government to simply release the British troops and kowtow to pompous British demands, particularly in the case that the British Marines did indeed trespass into Iranian waters. The Iranian government has asked for a simple apology from the British to appease public opinion (and possibly the Iranian military command which has a significant say in Iranian domestic and foreign affairs). At the same time however, the British government would rather “refuse to negotiate” in an effort to incite British public opinion in preparation for a Zionist-inspired attack on Iran.

Sounds a little like ‘end game’ to me.

In all of this, there is one group that has been conspicuous by its silence – Israel. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the Zionists, even more so than the Bush government, have a vested interest in the escalation of this particular “crisis”. More than that, Israel has something of a track record in setting one group against another and profiting from the resulting conflict. Consider the following extract from ex-Mossad officer Victor Ostrovsky’s book The Other Side of Deception, and see if you notice anything that stands out in relation to the events surrounding the capture of the 15 Marines last week:

Shimon activated Operation Trojan in February this year. I’d still been in the Mossad when that order was given, and because of my naval background and acquaintance with most of the commanders in the Navy, I participated in the planning for the operation as liaison with the Navy.

A Trojan was a a special communication device that could be planted by naval commandos deep inside enemy territory. The device would act as a relay station for misleading transmissions made by the disinformation unit of the Mossad and intended ot be received by American and British listening stations. Originating from an IDF navy ship out at sea, the prerecorded digital transmissions could be picked up by the Trojan. The device would then rebroadcast the transmission on another frequency, one used for official business in the enemy country, at which point the transmission would finally be picked up by American ears in Britain.

The listeners would have no doubt that they had intercepted a genuine communication, hence the name Trojan, reminiscent of the mythical Trojan horse. Further, the content of the messages, once deciphered, would confirm information from other intelligence sources, namely the Mossad. The only catch was that the Trojan itself would have to be located as close as possible to the normal origin of such transmissions, because of the sophisticated methods of triangulations the Americans and others would use to verify the source. […]

[Once the Trojan was in place and transmitting], by the end of March the Americans were already intercepting messages broadcast by the Trojan, which was only activated during heavy communication traffic hours. Using the Trojan the Mossad tried to make it appear that a long series of terrorist orders were being transmitted to various Libyan embassies around the world. As the Mossad had hoped, the transmissions were deciphered by the Americans and construed as ample proof that they Libyans were active sponsors of terrorism. What’s more, the Americans pointed out, Mossad reports confirmed it.

Heads of the Mossad were counting on the American promise to retaliate with vengeance against any country that could be proven to support terrorism. The Trojan gave the Americans the proof they needed. The Mossad also plugged into the equation [Libyan leader] Qadhfai’s lunatic image and momentous declarations, which were really only meant for internal consumption.

Operation Trojan was one of the Mossad’s greatest successes. It brought about the air strike on Libya that President reagan had promised – a strike that had three important consequences:

First, it derailed a deal for the release of the American hostages in Lebanon, thus preserving the Hizb’allah as the number one enemy in the eyes of the West.

Second, it sent a message to the entire Arab world, telling them exactly where the United States stood regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Third, it boosted the Mossad’s image of itself, since it was they who, by ingenious sleight of hand, had prodded the United States to “do what was right”.

I have to admit that I did wonder how it was possible that the British, with all of their modern satellite positioning equipment and 4 years experience patrolling the Shatt al_Arab waterway, could have made the mistake of trespassing into Iranian waters, unless their GPS tranmissions somehow gave them wrong information.

Likewise, I was perplexed as to why the Iranians should have made the serious move of arresting 15 British Marines without having a very good reason to do so – for example, if they picked up a transmission that a British commando team were planning to infiltrate Iranian territory.

I can’t say if this manufactured crisis is but the opening gambit or as good as it’s gonna get in terms of the Israeli/American/British case for war on the Iranian people, what is clear however is that an attack on Iran will happen, within the next few months, and that it will have serious repercussions for every man woman and child on the planet.

You have been warned. It’s time, yet again, to wake up.

Stay tuned for updates.

Notes:

1. In The War Against the Terror Masters, Neocon Michael Ledeen stated:

First and foremost, we must bring down the terror regimes, beginning with the Big Three: Iran, Iraq, and Syria. And then we have to come to grips with Saudi Arabia. … Once the tyrants in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia have been brought down, we will remain engaged. …We have to ensure the fulfillment of the democratic revolution. … Stability is an unworthy American mission, and a misleading concept to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize.

Rejecting stability as “an unworthy American mission,” Ledeen goes on to define America’s authentic “historic mission”:

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. … [W]e must destroy them to advance our historic mission.

2. Note that I say that the sanctions will be imposed on the Iranian people, not the Iranian government directly. In case you are unaware of the fact, let me make it clear: the source of power of every modern government is the people. The best way to attack a government therefore is to attack the people from which it derives its power.