Page 2 of 2 THE ROVING
EYE The
'axis of fear' is
born By Pepe Escobar
when
Vietnamese naval vessels attacked US destroyers,
setting in motion the impetus toward the Vietnam
War.
Pray and then I'll kill you
The US-stoked Sunni-Shi'ite divide had to
involve oil. Saudi Arabia is directly confronting
Iran inside the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries. Traders take for granted that
the Bush administration is once again allied with
the House of Saud. Iran
wants oil to be sold for at
least US$70 a barrel. Saudi Oil Minister Ibrahim
al-Naimi, on the other hand, keeps repeating that
oil prices are going "in the right direction", ie
down.
The US/Saudi nexus pulls no punches
to squeeze Iran economically (fewer oil sales,
less hard currency, mounting problems for
Ahmadinejad, whose notoriously incompetent
administration has not managed a better
distribution of Iran's oil revenues). To top it
off, to extract a barrel of oil Saudi Arabia may
spend as little as $2. Iran, on the other hand,
may spend as much as $18. And it will get worse.
Iran is barred from buying the best exploration
and drilling equipment, which is basically made in
North America.
No wonder Tehran is
proceeding with extreme caution - while bracing
for a possible attack. Diplomatically, Tehran has
invited International Atomic Energy Agency
scientists and diplomats from the Non-Aligned
Movement, the Group of 77 and the Arab League to
visit Iran's nuclear sites. Ali Larijani, the head
of the Supreme National Security Council and chief
nuclear negotiator, went to Saudi Arabia and
personally talked to King Abdullah - conveying the
Supreme Leader's offer of Iranian help to
stabilize Iraq. But this won't be enough to
appease Bush.
Bush's green light for the
assassination of Iranians inside Iraq has been no
less than absurd - apart from being illegal. The
majority of Iranians in Iraq are pilgrims, who go
predominantly to the holy sites in Najaf and
Karbala (Iran is actually financing the
construction of an airport in Najaf). Anyone now
can dub the pilgrims "spies" or "terrorists" or
worse, and engage in targeted assassinations. What
Iranian agents do is sell mortar shells and
rocket-propelled grenades to Muqtada al-Sadr's
Mehdi Army commanders. The Mehdi Army is not
killing Americans - at least not yet.
American casualties are not produced by
Shi'ite pilgrims. The killers are Sunni Arabs -
from al-Anbar province to Salahuddin, from Mosul
to western Baghdad. These Sunni Arab killers are
sponsored by none other than wealthy individuals
living in the "axis of fear" - Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the Emirates. Of more
than 10,000 prisoners in US jails in Iraq, the
majority of foreigners are Saudis, followed by
Jordanians. There are practically no Iranians.
In a January 19 interview with the Arab
satellite channel al-Manar, Hezbollah secretary
general Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah sharply analyzed
how Lebanonization is linked to Iraqification and
to the larger Sunni-Shi'ite divide in the Middle
East. It all has to do, of course, with Bush's
"New Middle East".
In Nasrallah's view,
"In short, the 'New Middle East' signifies a
collection of statelets that are divided along
religious, sectarian and racial lines from Lebanon
to Syria to Iraq to Iran to Turkey to Afghanistan
to Pakistan; all the way to Saudi Arabia and Yemen
and the rest of the Gulf states, reaching North
Africa. And here ... I would like to warn everyone
in the Arab and Islamic world, whichever sect or
religion they identify with, whether they be
Muslim or Christian, Shi'ite or Sunni or Druze,
whichever race they belong to, Arabs, Kurds,
Turks, etc ... Whoever believes that the 'New
Middle East' will grant him his own independent
state, that may be the case, but they should not
ignore that a founding pillar of the 'New Middle
East' is continuous conflict between these
statelets."
Reality proves it. The Bush
administration thrives on chaos - internal
sectarianism and state-to-state sectarianism. It
orders an Iraqi client regime (the Nuri al-Maliki
government) to kill Sunni Arabs (or nationalist
Shi'ites, such as the Sadrists). It orders a
supplicant client in Palestine (Mahmoud Abbas) to
kill people from Hamas. It orders a client regime
in Lebanon (the Fouad Siniora government) to kill
people from Hezbollah. This is what Washington
calls "democracy". Compare it with the fact that
Nasrallah, Khalid Meshal from Hamas and
Ahmadinejad are the three most popular Muslim
leaders among the Egyptian masses.
If
"Sunni solidarity" were something more than a
meaningless slogan in the war for the soul of
Islam, the "axis of fear" would have had to
support the Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq to drive
out the US. They could never have summoned the
courage, of course - unlike their populations - so
they fabricated the threat of a "Shi'ite
crescent". The US is more than comfortable
attributing to hardcore Sunni Saudi Arabia the
role of key "axis of fear" player in the war of
the US against Shi'ite Iran. Taliban-friendly
Pakistan may soon join.
The fact that both
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan fabricate "terrorists"
in industrial quantities is a minor detail. What
matters now for the Bush administration is yet
another wild bunch of even more evil "terrorists"
who threaten "civilization" with (non-existent)
nuclear weapons.
Should a mini-September
11, 2001, come, the US will blame it on Iran.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the US Congress will have
to say "yes" to US bombs. And meanwhile, Muslims
will be killing Muslims all over the Middle East
for the United States' greater benefit.
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