Alternative Insight

Bringing Peace to the Middle East


In attempting to bring peace and stability to the world's regions, the United States and its allies have proceeded from one premise - first wage war. After survivors clear the battlefields, peace and stability remain fragile. Perpetual war has become inevitable.

Events in the Middle East validate this thesis, where, after innumerable wars, the region suffers extensive calamities with no clear avenue to peace and stability. Deception, distortion of truth, misinterpretation of facts, and pursuit of self-serving agendas conceal the proper path to peace. Rather than truth and facts shaping agendas, agendas shape truths and distort facts. These agendas can be reduced to one crippling perversion, which generates the major conflicts -- an entente of the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia dedicates itself to the debilitation of Iran and contributes to the advancement of other conflicts -- Shi'a/Sunni confrontation, repression of native peoples in Palestine, Bahrain and Yemen, and development of international terrorism.

As described in a previous article at http://www.alternativeinsight.com/Making_World_Safe_for_Terrorism-1.html, the Middle East has become divided into two regions -- a northern region that contains the nations the U.S. confronts (except for Iraq), and a southern region that contains the nations the U.S. befriends, and whose policies have directly and indirectly contributed to violence and international terrorism.

The Islamic Republic, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon occupy the northern area of the Middle East. Israel, Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, and Yemen occupy the southern frontier. This division simplifies the analysis of the causes of war, havoc, and instability in the cradle of civilization, and increases understanding of how to prevent additional war, reduce havoc, and restore stability.

Accusations have Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel intending to dominate their neighbors and control much of the terrain by proxies, military muscle, and skillful force. Because Iran has been accused of

analyzing and comparing Iran's activities with Saudi Arabia and Israel resolve the veracities of the accusations. Once the truth is shaped, the road to peace becomes easier to pave. Performing this investigation has one caveat, the internal affairs of these sovereign nations are their own affairs; we are only interested in activities that contribute to aggression against others, to international unrest, and to igniting violence throughout the Middle East.

The following table summarizes the analysis and a commentary clarifies the issues.

  ACTIVITY  IRAN  SAUDI ARABIA  ISRAEL
 Warlike activities Since 1800, has not invaded another nation. Attacked by Iraq in 1982 and fought a minor skirmish with the Taliban in 1996.
Claims of using Hezbollah and Hamas in proxy wars are not substantiated.
Has provided military assistance to Iraq, Hezbollah, and Assad's Syrian government,		  Has not invaded another nation, but has sent military to fight beyond its borders. 1948-Fought Arab armies and seized territory given to Palestine.
1956-Invaded and captured Egypt's Sinai peninsula
1967 - Offensive against Syria, Jordan, and Egypt - captured West Bank, Golan Heights, and Sinai.
1967-1970 - War of Attrition with Egypt
1973 - Fought invasion by Arab armies
1982- War with Lebanon
2006 - Second Lebanon War
2008, 2012. 2014-Gaza Wars
Expansionist policies with attempt to
dominate entire area		 Has not increased territory during last 200 years. Has done what other nations do, make friends and assist them in their endeavors in order to expect reciprocation. Has not expanded territory. Has used military force in Bahrain, Yemen, and North Africa to exert influence and dominate. Has tried to dominate Qatar.  After 1947 partition. captured and annexed additional Palestinian lands. Later acquired Sinai and Gaza, but failed to keep them.
In 1967 war, captured all of Palestine, Jerusalem, and Golan Heights and doubled original size. Dominates neighbors with threats of military force.
Uses a variety of lobbying methods (AIPAC in U.S. ) to influence foreign governments and media.
State sponsorship and activities in international terrorism Assassinated dissidents during 1990s.
Has engaged in retribution against Israel by assassinations of Israelis.
Has been accused of sponsoring international terrorism, with insufficient proof offered of incidents. 		 No direct terrorism, but evidence indicates has funded terrorist groups. Assisted in formation of al-Qaeda during 1980s in Afghanistan.
Supported Taliban.
Supported al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Home of many international terrorists.
Saudis assisted ISIS and al-Nusra in entering Syria.		 Has been guilty of multitudes of assassinations of Egyptian, and Iranian scientists, PLO and Hezbollah leaders
Continually pulverizes Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza.
Has bombed Syria and Lebanon several times and caused casualties.
Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders have cited Israeli policies as one reason for their actions.
Interfering in rebellions in several countries Substantial claims of having assisted Shi'a militants in Bahrain, and little verified claims of assistance to Yemen Houthi rebels.
Has provided significant military assistance to Bashar Assad's Syria and Hezbollah. Meager military assistance to Hamas.		 Has interfered militarily in Bahrain, Yemen, and North Africa. Responsible for large amount of civilian casualties in Yemen, and, indirectly, for its cholera epidemic. Assisted South Sudan in its uprising and to Ethiopia during Eritrea uprising. Jerusalem Post reports that "between 1968-70, a small team of Mossad operatives and doctors trained the South Sudan Liberation Movement, participated in some of their sabotage and ambush activities against the army, and provided light weapons to the rebels via Uganda
Provoking an arms race Has halted nuclear arms developments.
Inferior offensive capabilities - no modern air force or navy -- proceeds mainly with defensive and retaliatory weapons.		 Has advanced weaponry and uses them in Yemen.  Most advanced military in Middle East, including nuclear weapons. Has provoked almost all Arab nations to seek weapons. Receives $3.8 billion in military assistance from U.S, each year.  


Commentary
Iran
During Ayatollah Khomeini's rule in the 1980s, Iran attempted to spread its revolution, but that approach disappeared from the Islamic Republic's agenda. The chart shows that Iran is not the culprit in the Middle East conflicts. The Mullahs are not as peaceful as Finland, but they are only doing what other nations do to protect their interests. Two often-stated descriptions describe the distortions of Iran's behavior.
(1) Iran's state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide continues with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, its Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and Hezbollah, which threatens the stability of Lebanon and the broader region.
(2) The threat of an Iranian land bridge through Iraq and Syria-measured both in established influence and a physical presence-has become a reality. Iran's goal for regional hegemony, a strategic plan more than three decades in the making, has come to fruition.

Claims of Iran's state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide.
Except for some tit-for-tat assassinations with Israel, and unproven assertions of sponsoring attacks on U.S. military installations, where has Iran sponsored (the word is sponsored) international terrorism? Where have Hezbollah and Hamas, except for their tit-for-tat machinations with Israel engaged in international terrorism? Besides, just because Iran is friendly with Hezbollah and Hamas, as are many other nations, does this mean Iran promotes non-existent terrorist activities? A discussion between Charlie Rose and Michael Morrell, former deputy director of the CIA, on a PBS Charlie Rose program, highlights the absurd characterization.

Michael Morell: So there's two buckets here, right? One is the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The second is Iranian misbehavior, malign behavior in the region. Their own conducting of terrorism, their support to terrorists, their support to insurgents, their desire for regional influence, their desire that Israel be wiped off the face of the planet…
Charlie Rose: Before you do that, I just want to make sure everybody at home -- when you talk about supporting terrorism. The charge is, against Iran, they're supporting -- they're heavily involved against the Saudis with both having client organization in Yemen, that's one. Go ahead.
Michael Morell: So Iran --
Charlie Rose: Is doing what?
Michael Morell: Iran itself conducts terrorism around the world against Israeli and Jewish targets and against the targets of its neighbors, number one.
Charlie Rose: How does it do that?
Michael Morell: It has an apparatus.
Charlie Rose: What is it doing? I mean, it's one thing to say -- I'm asking because --
Michael Morell: The attempted --
Charlie Rose: Assassinating their --
Michael Morell: Of the Saudi ambassador in the United States several years ago.
Charlie Rose: An action that was not carried out because it was interrupted.
Michael Morell: It was interrupted.
Charlie Rose: Right.
Michael Morell: But there was an attack in Europe several years ago that the Iranians were involved in. So they are the only -- I think it's fair to say they're the only state in the world that still practices terrorism as a tool of state craft, that's one. Two, is they provide support to terrorist groups, Hezbollah, Hamas, and others. Hezbollah could not exist without the support it gets from Iran, so that's two. Support to insurgents in the region who are trying to overthrow Sunni-Arab regimes in Yemen, in Bahrain, eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia, their support for people like President Assad is a whole other issue, right? So that's what I mean by there's regional misbehavior.

Note the sparse evidence to a rash statement - one supposed assassination that never happened, and some "attack in Europe several years ago that the Iranians were involved in." No details. What would Iran have gained with the assassination but worldwide condemnation? Morrel has Iran guilty by association, in which the associates are not proven to be guilty. He mentions Iran allied with other Shi'a. Doesn't the Pope ally with all Catholics?

Examine Iran's supposed military assistance to Yemen. Three conventionally accepted media have this to say:
Foreign Policy: "Until now, and apart from Tehran's strong pro-Houthi rhetoric, very little hard evidence has turned up of Iranian support to the Houthis."
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/27/the-houthis-are-not-hezbollah/

Carnegie Endowment: "Claims of Iran's influence over the Houthis have been overblown. While the Houthis do receive some support from Iran, it is mostly political, with minimal financial and military assistance….The Houthis do not follow the Twelver Shia tradition predominant in Iran, but adhere to the Zaidiya, which in practice is closer to Sunni Islam."
http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/67988

Washington Post: "Tehran's support for the Houthis is limited, and its influence in Yemen is marginal. It is simply inaccurate to claim that the Houthis are Iranian proxies".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/16/contrary-to-popular-belief-houthis-arent-iranian-proxies/?utm_term=.6bab28817369

Claims that Iran gives military assistance to Bahrain militants have more legs but come with a caveat.
Washington Post: '"The problem with Bahrain was that they had so little credibility that it was hard to separate what was real from what wasn't," Levitt said in an interview. But, in the final analysis, he said, the evidence from weapons caches pointed to a real threat: Iranian-sponsored terrorism. "In the case of Bahrain," Levitt said, "there is some 'there' there."'
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-increasingly-sees-irans-hand-in-the-arming-of-bahraini-militants/2017/04/01/be5e61fc-1329-11e7-833c-503e1f6394c9_story.html?utm_term=.aca8e9e1c946

Consider that the Houthi (25% of Yemen population) and Bahrain Shi'a (70% of the Bahrain population) have legitimate grievances, have been under-represented in their governments, and receive insufficient slices of the pies, does helping the oppressed transform them into proxies? Does not assistance to the victimized deserve consideration?

As for the second over-expressed statement, that Iran had "this strategic plan more than three decades in the making," how could Iran know that the U.S. would overthrow Saddam Hussein and allow a Shi'a led government to dominate Iraq? Why would Iran conceive that secular Assad would ally with the holy Islamic Republic? Do not Hezbollah and Iran share similar values and thoughts? Evidently, the U.S. State department designed this so-called land bridge and gave Iran an opportunity it could not refuse.

Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia has two major contributions to disturbing the peace: (1) Previous indirect involvement with international terrorism, and (2) Interference in rebellions in other nations. Although the Kingdom seems to have mellowed and adopted a more positive role in combating terrorism outside its own territory, until 2017, many commentators considered Saudi Arabia as the major sponsor of international terrorism. Read one of the infamous John Podesta emails, which appeared during Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, and was revealed by Wikileaks.

John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, writing to Hillary Clinton: "…we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region."

Other facts
(1) Of the 61 groups designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department, the overwhelming majority are Wahhabi-inspired and Saudi-funded groups
(2) Fifteen of the 19 terrorists in the 9/11 attacks were Saudis.
(3) The 9/11 Commission report found that Saudi society "was a place where al Qaeda raised money directly from individuals and through charities," and that "it was likely that charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to al Qaeda."

A report from the Brookings Institution, The Changing Nature of State Sponsorship of Terrorism, Daniel Byman, May 2008, adds the following:

Despite aggressive stance, the kingdom remains a problem for counterterrorism for three reasons. First, many of the jihadists in Iraq come from Saudi Arabia. Second, the kingdom remains a major fundraising source for jihadists going to Iraq and also for other jihadist causes in general, ranging from insurgent groups tied to al-Qa'ida to radical religious schools in the West and in the Muslim world. Third, the Saudi religious establishment regularly churns out large amounts of anti-Shi'a and anti-Western propaganda.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/05_terrorism_byman.pdf

Saudi interference in the Yemen civil war has brought the strife from a near resolved situation, where the Houthis and the Yemen military were ready to establish a new government, to a murderous situation, where Saudi warplanes pulverize Yemenis, its blockade causes a food crisis, the damage to infrastructure interferes with proper sanitation and collapses the public health system, and the devastation has led to a cholera epidemic that records more than half a million suspected cases in the country and an average of 5,000 new cases each day.

Reuters, October 11, 2017, Special Report: In blocking arms to Yemen, Saudi Arabia squeezes a starving population, Selam Gebrekidan, Jonathan Saul

In the cases of the Kota Nazar and 12 other ships examined in detail by Reuters, the Saudi-led blockade turned away or severely delayed vessels carrying aid and commercial goods before they reached Yemeni ports even though the United Nations had cleared the cargo and there were no arms aboard. Seven of those vessels were carrying medicine and food in addition to other supplies. Aid shipments are caught in the net. One of the seven vessels was carrying antibiotics, surgical equipment and medication for cholera and malaria for 300,000 people. The shipment was held up for three months, during which $20,000 worth of medicine was damaged or expired, according to U.K.-based aid group Save the Children.

In the annual Secretary General Report on Children and Armed Conflict, the United Nations placed the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition on its "blacklist." "In Yemen, the [Saudi] coalition's actions objectively led to the listing for the killing and maiming of children, with 683 child casualties attributed to this party, and, as a result of being responsible for 38 verified incidents, for attacks on schools and hospitals during 2016." More than 7,600 people have been killed and 42,000 injured since March 2015, the majority in air strikes by a Saudi-led multinational coalition that backs deposed President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi.

The Houthis are only defending themselves from a Saudi onslaught that has occurred because the Saudis want the deposed Yemen president returned to power. Compare Saudi Arabia's air invasion of Yemen with Iran's supposed support to the Houthis, and ponder why the Islamic Republic should take the major criticism for "interfering in the Yemen civil war."

Saudi Arabia has also interfered in the Bahrain rebellion. The Kingdom dispatched about 1000 Saudi soldiers to Bahrain, to protect infrastructure, government offices, and industries, and managed to quell the protests.

Fear guides the Saudi kingdom; an apprehension that the oligarchic, top-down state will find the Iran revolution at its doorstep and Iran will come to the assistance of the oppressed Shiite population in Eastern Saudi Arabia, a population that claims to be the indigenous people of the Arabian peninsula and feels vanquished by the House of Saud.

Israel
As shown in the Table, except for interfering excessively in rebellions in other nations, Israel has the most decisive roles in all other activities that have caused war and destruction to the Middle East -- several wars, multiple acts of state sponsored killings, daily expansion on Palestinian lands, and ever increasing military prowess that provokes others to increase their weapons capability. Israel's behavior, as a cause of strife and instability, far exceeds that of Iran and Saudi Arabia combined and yet, except for UN Security Council Resolutions, which the United States always vetoes, no alarm is raised, and no action is taken against Israel. Two brief statements can summarize the ineffectiveness.

If an Israeli is killed, it is a terrorist action.
If Israel kills 100 persons, it is self-defense.

Israel's constant wars, territorial expansion, and armaments build-up receive sufficient attention, but are not reported in their proper context. Except for Mossad targeted killings of Hamas and Hezbollah officials, another side of Israel's state sponsored terrorism is hidden from public view.

NBC News, Feb 9, 2012, by Richard Engel and Robert Windrem

Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel's secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran's leaders. The group, the People's Mujahedin of Iran, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the 1970s and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980. The attacks, which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims' cars.

Country Reports on Terrorism 2013 - US Department of State
https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2013/

The 'Lavon Affair' is an unsuccessful Israeli covert operation, code named 'Operation Susannah', conducted in Egypt in the Summer of 1954. As part of the false flag operation, a group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence to plant bombs inside Egyptian, American and British-owned civilian targets, cinemas, libraries and American educational centers. The bombs were timed to exploded several hours after closing time. The attacks were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian Communists, "unspecified malcontents" or "local nationalists" with the aim of creating a climate of sufficient violence and instability to induce the British government to maintain its occupying troops in Egypt's Suez Canal zone.

The Long Tradition of Killing Middle Eastern Nuclear Scientists, Don Peck, The Atlantic, Jan 12, 2012

Yahya al-Meshad, an important scientist in Iraq's nuclear program, arrived in France to test fuel for the reactor. The morning he was to return home a maid entered his Paris hotel room and found that he had been stabbed and bludgeoned to death Soon afterward workers at firms supplying parts for the reactor began to receive threatening letters from a mysterious group called the Committee to Safeguard the Islamic Revolution. Bombs went off at the offices of one of the firms, in Italy, and at the home of the company's director-general. Over the next several months two more Iraqi nuclear scientists died in separate poisoning incidents. It is of course unlikely that these events were coincidental; most experts today believe that Mossad--Israel's secret service--was behind each of them, though it has never claimed responsibility.

In the late 1950s Egypt launched a ballistic-missile program with the help of German scientists, many of whom were former Nazis. In July of 1962 President Gamal Abdel Nasser unveiled two new test missiles at a military parade, bragging that they could hit targets "south of Beirut." Mossad quickly responded with Operation Damocles, an intimidation campaign targeting the German scientists. One scientist was killed in September, two months after the parade, and in the following months the scientists' families were threatened directly. In November several letter bombs addressed to the scientists were sent to the rocket facilities in Egypt; one of them killed five Egyptians.

Foreign Policy Magazine, False Flag by Mark Perry January 13, 2012

Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives - what is commonly referred to as a "false flag" operation. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children.
Extremist Israelis, mostly settlers, continue "price tag" attacks (property crimes and violent acts by extremist Jewish individuals and groups in retaliation for activity they deemed anti-settlement) in the West Bank and Jerusalem, which are not properties of the nation of Israel, and, technically, are foreign lands. The United Nations (UN) reported 101 incidents of settler violence in 2016, compared to 221 in 2015. Israeli NGO Yesh Din reported 19 incidents of settler violence during the October - November Olive Harvest, compared to 15 in 2015.

All of this planned violence is minute compared to the overall destruction by Israeli authorities of the life, livelihood, institutions, and freedom of the Palestinians. A UN Report at https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/EC880252D6F0CBDF85257FC6006CED54
details the economic and social repercussions of the Israeli occupation on the living conditions of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan. The report summary should drive those, including U.S. legislators, to read it fully and digest its meaning -- the Israel government is a leading sponsor of state terrorism and cleverly shifts the spotlight to Iran in order to distract from its own practices.

The report covers persistent Israeli practices and policies, particularly those that are in violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law and that affect the social and economic conditions of the people living under its military occupation. Israel employs discriminatory policies and practices, excessive use of force and mobility restrictions, including the blockade on Gaza, settlement expansion, property destruction and exploitation of natural resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the occupied Syrian Golan. Impunity is afforded to Israeli security and military personnel and settlers. The cumulative impact of these policies and practices not only violates the rights of the population, but also exacerbates their social and economic conditions.

How has Israel contributed to international terrorism? Osama bin-Laden clarified that conjecture.
Osama Bin Laden Warns America, CBS News by Joel Arak, October 30, 2004

He (bin-Laden) said he was first inspired to attack the United States by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon in which towers and buildings in Beirut were destroyed in the siege of the capital.

"While I was looking at these destroyed towers in Lebanon, it sparked in my mind that the tyrant should be punished with the same and that we should destroy towers in America, so that it tastes what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women," he said.

Bringing War to the Middle East
Examine the results of the upside down perspective of the Middle East nations.
Yemen - The Civil war started in Yemen, without any encouragement from Iran, and would have concluded except for Saudi Arabia's massive air bombings of the Houthis. Iran's contribution to this disaster is only minimal assistance for enabling the Houthis to defend themselves against the Saudi de-stabilizing onslaught.
Bahrain - Shi'a protesters, who are 70% of the population, want the end of the al-Khalifa monarchy, and the establishment of a republic. Their demands are laudatory -- change a system of privileges for a few at the expense of the many to a system of greater rights for all. They almost succeeded in their legitimate protests until Saudi Arabia sent "peace keeping" troops to quiet the rebellion. If Iran were involved in Bahrain's internal affairs, as much as the Saudis have been, the Shi'a majority would now be in power.
Iraq - The U.S. invasion, believed by many commentators to have been engineered by Neocons that were loyal to Israel's agenda, left a legacy of sectarian strife. Because George W. Bush's agreed, Nouri Kamil Mohammed Hasan al-Maliki became Iraq's Prime Minister President and succeeded in stagnating Iraq's economy and debilitating its military, despite the more than $1.6 billion in U.S. arms and training that flowed to the Iraqi army during Maliki's years in office. A U.S. trained Iraqi army of 30,000 in Mosul could not prevent 1200 ISIS militants from capturing the city in June 2014. Not until Iraqi Shi'a militias, the Popular Mobilization Forces, evolved, with some assistance from Iran's Revolutionary Guards, did Iraq exhibit a fighting force that was able to regain territory lost to ISIS. Replacement of Maliki by Haider Jawad Kadhim Al-Abad, who integrated the Shi'a militias into the Iraqi army, proved decisive in the defeat of ISIS in Iraq. Iran played a crucial and positive role, extent unknown, in re-invigorating the Iraqi army to eventual victory and not an interfering role, as western commentators describe.
Syria - In October 2017, ISIS has been almost defeated in Syria and its caliphate greatly reduced in size. With help from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, in October 2017, Syria is more than 50 percent back (70% of the population) to what it was in 2012, except for internal displacement of about 7 million citizens, almost 6 million remaining refugees, and hundreds of thousands dead and wounded. Since June 2017, about 1/2 million Syrians have managed to return home.
If, in 2014, when ISIS captured Raqqa and established its caliphate in Syria and Iraq, US forces assisted the Syrian government, would not ISIS have been defeated before forming, and before three years of bloodshed had occurred? What did Saudi Arabia and the US gain by allowing ISIS and Al-Nusra militants to enter Syria and by punishing Iran and Assad?
Palestine - After 70 years of continuous seizure of Palestinian lands and fallacious recommendations for talks about a two-state solution, Israel rules and decimates the Palestinians at will. Israel has the overwhelming power to force an equitable solution to the conflict, and enable the Palestinians to create a viable state and begin to live in peace and comfort. It is obvious that Israel wants the total destruction of the Palestinian people and absolute control of the entire British Mandate (even to Amman), while pretending it is being terrorized, playing victim in order to defeat the victimized. Israel's policies have enraged the Middle East nations and, unless the policies are changed, that rage will never stop. As Iran becomes more powerful, Israel will become more aggressive. When push comes to shove, Israel will use the Sampson option; unleash nuclear weapons against a geographically large Iran that cannot return the radioactive hazards to a small Israel surrounded by Arab neighbors. Nuclear destruction of the Middle East awaits those who permit Israel to continue the path it has proscribed.

Bringing Peace to the Middle East
The proposition that the international community should firmly confront those who, by a combination of factors, disrupt the peace and stability in the Middle East, engage in aggressive activities, attempt to dominate the entire area, promote international terrorism, foment rebellions in several countries, and provoke an arms race, has merit. Analysis of the situations and the passage of disquieting history indicates that (1) The international community has mistakenly identified the culprits, and (2) as history shows, the mistakes have caused continuous havoc.

Substitute the nation Israel for the nation Iran in each of the salient accusations made against Iran and the accusations become correct. Nowhere do the facts and historical narrative demonstrate that Iran has disrupted peace and stability by any of the combining factors. Israel is omni-present in all the factors. Bet on the wrong horse and you are sure to lose.

Iran has major internal conflicts, has disturbed some nations but not the international community. Rather than destabilizing the region, the Islamic Republic has tried to stabilize its borders -- prevent entry by terrorist groups into its northern area, contain the U.S. fleet in the Persian Gulf, and assure Iraq is a stable and non-threatening nation.
Saudi Arabia has major internal conflicts and has greatly disturbed the international community, going beyond its borders into Yemen and Bahrain and indirectly contributing to international terrorims.
Israel has major internal conflicts with its Palestinian citizens, Palestinians outside its borders, with many nations of the world and, as many UN Security Council Resolutions show, has greatly disturbed the international community.

The United States, which has more than 100 bases throughout the globe, personnel engaged in several known and quiet wars, naval fleets patrolling every ocean and military planes landing in every continent, accuses Iran, which has no real air force or naval armada, and no foreign military bases, of increasing its hegemony. The Islamic Republic must use sleight of hand and card tricks; they certainly do not show much power to influence anyone, except, maybe those living in the Cocos Islands.

Before outlining a plan for obtaining peace in the Middle East, western governments must change their attitude from an agenda that is based on false premises, ultra-nationalism, favoring commercial interests, convoluted perspective, and deceit into one that considers the health and welfare of the global community and places Middle East peace before erroneous concepts and personal interests. Designing a definite plan is beyond the scope of any single person, but recommendations can be made.

Discouraging to note that policies that determine war or peace proceed from agendas and not from facts. Maybe, when the makers and shakers realize their warlike polices will one day result in the eventual nuclear catastrophe, they will have an awakening and comprehend that the quotation, attributed to Plato, "Only the dead know the end of war," is given more meaning by adding, "after you're dead, it's too late for you to stop the war."

alternativeinsight
october 23, 2017

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