The Troubled Middle East: An Endless Cauldron of Violence

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

The region suffered hugely from early 20th century power plays by dominant Western countries, aiming to carve out spheres of influence, notably post-WW I. 

America's turn came later, following the second world war to end all wars, the region punished by its presence, along with Israel wanting to be its dominant player, partnered with Washington.

The imperial scheme assures endless wars of aggression, targeting all sovereign independent states for regime change, notably Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, others elsewhere, including Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia and China. 

Iran is the main US/Israeli Middle East target, destabilizing the country with harsh sanctions, cyberattacks, saber rattling, war-mongering, sabotage, subversion, assassinations, and spurious accusations.

Oil is the region's curse, causing it to boil, a modern-day great game ongoing. The previous one pit Britain against tzarist Russia. One powerful empire battled another for 100 years.

Resources became increasingly more important, notably today. World supplies are finite. Major powers scramble for as much as they can control.

Oil is especially valued. No one's sure how much is left. America, China, Russia and other major nations want control over as much as possible. They're going all out to get it.

Middle East countries have over half the world's proved oil reserves. Saudi Arabia's amount is second only to Venezuela's.

In the 1940s, the State Department called access to Middle East oil (notably Saudi's) a "stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history."

The Caspian basin is oil and gas rich. Resource wars are waged in both regions for control. America does it aggressively.

Bush/Cheney, Obama, and now Trump's National Security Strategy (NSS) assert America's sovereign right to wage preemptive wars against perceived threats, along with aiming to control global resources, notably oil.

It powers industry and America's military machine. Candidates Obama and Trump promised peace in our time, their agendas polar opposite, prioritizing endless wars of aggression - pursuing unchallenged global dominance, no matter the human cost.

Post-9/11, US regimes ignored Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty provisions, rescinded the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, violated Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention and Chemical Weapons Convention provisions.

Trump notably abandoned the landmark JCPOA and INF Treaty.

Peace is a convenient illusion. Multiple US-led wars rage for dominance and resource control. Demand keeps growing. Available supplies shrink. 

Oil and gas exploration and drilling intensify. So does competition to control what's left — war America's favored option, the Middle East and Central Asia especially targeted. 

Longstanding US/Israeli plans call for redrawing the Middle East map, replacing sovereign independent governments with pro-Western puppet regimes. 

The scheme involves balkanizing Iraq, Syria, Iran and other regional countries for easier control, looting their resources, exploiting their people.

The region already is cauldron of endless violence and chaos. War on Iran would embroil it in greater mass slaughter and destruction.

Washington and Israel prioritize militarism, conquest, occupation, colonization and exploitation.

In his Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith explained how America operates today, saying:

"All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems in every age of the world to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."

Russia's September 2015 intervention in Syria at the behest of its government represented Washington's first serious regional post-Cold War challenge.

Its regime change agenda sustained a humiliating body blow. It's down, not out, plotting its next moves, against Syria, Iran, and other countries elsewhere, partnered with Israel and other rogue states.

In 1982, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs senior advisor Oded Yinon published "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," still relevant today.

It was translated by noted activist, analyst and outspoken Israeli critic Professor Israel Shahak (1933 - 2001) - retitled "The Zionist Plan for the Middle East." Its premises included the following:

To survive, Israel must dominate the region and become a world power.

Achieving its objective requires dividing Arab nations into small states - balkanizing them along ethnic and sectarian lines as Israeli satellites.

The idea was modeled after the Ottoman Empire's Millet (or nation) system - under which local authorities governed confessional communities with separate ethnic identities.

Israel's 1967 Golan seizure, along with its 1978 and 1982 Lebanon invasions followed the plan. 

Yinon noted "far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967, (created by the) very stormy situation surround(ing) Israel," resurrected whenever it wishes by preemptive belligerence against Palestinians and regional states, wanting them weakened, fragmented, divided, and reconfigured under Israeli control.

Yinon's geopolitical scheme was similar to Nazi Germany's imperial agenda - conquering, occupying and controlling European countries by brute force.

He believed "(t)he existence, prosperity and steadfastness of (Israel) depend(s) upon its ability to adopt a new framework for its domestic and foreign affairs," based on securing its material needs through winnable resource wars and Arab world divisions.

"All the Arab States east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and riddled with inner conflicts even more than those of the Maghreb" (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, and Western Sahara), he said. 

All Gulf states are "built upon a delicate house of sand in which there is only oil." Jordan in reality is Palestine, Amman the same as Nablus.

Other Muslim states are similar, he claimed, notably Arab ones, saying Israel must either dominate them or "we shall cease to exist within any borders."

In 1985, Israeli President/Labor party leader Chaim Herzog sounded like Netanyahu, saying:

"We are certainly not willing to make partners of the Palestinians in any way in a land that was holy to our people for thousands of years." 

"There can be no partner with the Jews of this land," his view like revisionist hardliner Ze've Jabotinsky, in a 1939 letter saying:

"There is no choice: The Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel. It was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples. It is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs."

Ethnic cleansing and slow-motion genocide have been Israeli policies since its 1947-48 aggression, massacring and expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their historic homeland.

Washington and Israel partner to control the Middle East, wars of aggression their favorite strategy - no end of them in sight.

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman). Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

"How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War"

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"Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity"

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