There are not many people in the world who doubt that Israeli secret services are responsible for the assassination of the prominent Iranian physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the “father” of the Iranian nuclear program. Without openly admitting it, the Israelis did nothing to amuse such impressions, instead they “anonymously” admitted their responsibility to the New York Times.
The assassination of the Iranian scientist is, certainly, a blow to the Iranian nuclear program. But of course Tehran will find another scientist to replace him and will continue the program. It is therefore more likely that Israel, that is, Mr. Netanyahu, is trying to provoke a war with Iran by assassinating the Iranian scientist, before Netanyahu’s great protector, Donald Trump, leaves the White House. And this is the most minimalist explanation as nobody can be certain of what Netanyahu, Bannon, Pompeo, Kouchner, Trump and company are preparing not only in the Middle East, but also in the US and worldwide. (Netanyahu has also a very strong personal motivation to wish an “escape to war”, because he behaved for four years as if he had America in his pocket and probably he had it through Trump. Now, strong forces in America, but also in global Judaism, would certainly like to crush him and they wait to do so after Trump leaves. Netanyahu faces also serious corruption charges).
The version of a provocation was also adopted, indirectly still clearly, by the head of the CIA under Obama, Brennan, who proceeded with a completely unprecedented comment on the assassination, absolutely characteristic of the extremely acute atmosphere of “civil war”, waged in the “Olympus” of the western Empire. Mr. Brennan wrote in a tweet that he did not know if any state supported this murder, but, if this has happened, we are dealing with “state-backed terrorism”. He separated the assassination of the Iranian scientist from the assassinations of Al Qaeda and ISIS executives and expressed the hope that Tehran would prove wise enough to wait for “responsible leaders” to come to power in Washington before responding! The only thing the former CIA chief did not do was to ask for the arrest of Netanyahu for terrorism and of Trump for fostering a criminal.
The trip to Saudi Arabia and Tehran’s calculations
Some days before the assassination, Pompeo, the Israeli PM and the chief of Mossad traveled to Saudi Arabia to enlist it in the war effort against Iran, but without success according to Middle East Eye. Haaretz wrote that Saudi Arabia has also canceled, after Biden’s election, the recognition of Israel which it had promised before US elections. Besides, some observers think Bin Salman was probably “warned” to avoid any “adventurism” via drone attacks and the mining of a tanker.
As for the Iranians estimated, already before the assassination, that Netanyahu was probably preparing an attack against their nuclear installations in order to sabotage Biden’s agreement with Tehran. If the Israelis would attack and the Iranians would respond, then Trump would feel free to hit Iran, citing the need to defend Israel.
Of course the problem with such strategies is that everybody knows what Netanyahu wants, so they are less disposed to do what he wants, or waits from them to do.
Pentagon Purge
We must not forget that all this is happening while in Washington Trump proceeded to extensive purges eliminating the Secretary of Defense and replacing people in key positions with Far Right people, unqualified for the positions they occupied but completely obedient to Trump himself. The special operations sector has seen its autonomy enhanced and can be used now outside the usual hierarchy of the US Armed Forces. Recall that, closing his election campaign, Trump went to the Special Forces headquarters in Fort Bragg and had long, no public talks with their officers.
Ezra Cohen-Watnick has now the responsibility for the special operations. He is a 34-year-old far-right operative who came to the National Security Council because of his ties to Bannon, the pro-Israel and anti-Iranian General Flynn and Trump’s orthodox Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner. Retired General Tata, who called Obama a terrorist, a Manchurian and a Muslim, was placed third in Pentagon’s hierarchy. The new chief adviser to Secretary of Defense Miller, retired Colonel Macgregor, has called for martial law and summary executions of immigrants on the US-Mexico border.
It is noteworthy that the top three ousted after the election considered it appropriate, leaving, to remind the US military that they have sworn allegiance to the Constitution. Already last June, the US military refused to take the army to the streets against the protesters, as Trump sought.
For these reasons, one cannot be sure of what can happen in the US, the Middle East and around the world until Biden takes over.
War with Iran means “mini world war”
A war with Iran will not be ‘one of the same’, a repetition of the Iraq invasion. It will engulf the whole of the Middle East and most probably tactical nuclear arms will be used (even the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities will have the same effect as the use of nuclear weapons). A conflict with Iran will be a kind of “mini-world war” with terrible ecological, economic and geopolitical consequences, it will be a heavy blow to the Chinese plan “One Belt, One Road” and, possibly, in its evolution, it may also lead to the involvement of third powers, such as Turkey, Russia and China.
The reason why the “Far Right”, “extremist International” of Trump and Netanyahu (Mondi is also a part of it) wants to proceed with such a plan, despite its enormous and obvious dangers, is very simple. If it does not, the two decades of interventions in the wider Middle East, which began with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003, will have resulted in the strengthening of Iran and its allies in the Middle East! They will have transformed an area dominated in 2000, as never before in history, by the US and Israel, into an area where Vladimir Putin and President Xi, Russian weapons and Chinese funds play a major role. This is not exactly what Richard Perl and Paul Wolfowitz wanted when they drew up, in the 1990s, on Netanyahu’s behalf and with his funding, the war plans that followed.
In addition, such a development in the Middle East will be a precedent for the whole planet. The Middle East is the fractal for the whole world, just as the wars in Yugoslavia were the fractal for the wars in the Middle East. For people like Netanyahu, Pompeo or Bannon, a compromise with Tehran, the kind Obama and Biden want, is a “capitulation”, a “Munich” of Western imperialism with Iran, which leads to an even worse outcome concerning the conflict with Russia and China.
The rival “faction” within the “system” (Obama, Soros, Biden, Merkel, US deep state, etc.) share the goal of neocons for world domination, still they consider their methods adventurous and extremely dangerous.