Developing a casus belli to attack Iran: Is the West hunting for a pretext for a new war in the Middle East?

by Adrian Salbuchi, Global Research, 2 December 2011


A string of attacks on Iran, from assassinations of key nuclear and military personnel to attempts to alienate it internationally, ring the bell. Is the West hunting for a pretext for a new war in the Middle East?

We believe that the integrity of embassies should always be honored; there is no justifying any country attacking any other country’s embassy. Even if war breaks out, embassies are the last thread that should be severed.

That being said, and whilst it is unclear who agitated and mobilized Iranian protesters to attack the British Embassy in Tehran, the local police certainly came out in full force trying to restore order in what has become an all-too-common scene throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

First question: who benefits from this attack which the Western media are highlighting in red alert colors and harsh tones? British Foreign Secretary William Hague immediately ordered the closure of the Iranian Embassy in London, whilst US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton condemned this as an “affront on the British, but also on the International Community,” on whose behalf (i.e., the “international community’s”) the US and UK somehow feel they are empowered to speak.

Could it be that the US, UK, the EU and Israel are working hard to gather winds of war against Iran, knowing full well that their credibility is at an all-time low following years of flagrant lying to justify attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and more recently Libya? Attacking Iran won’t be easy to pull off.

This embassy episode brings back memories of the 1979 taking of the US Embassy in Tehran, and even the Iranians are not all that clear as to exactly what is happening. Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani said that this was in part the result "several decades of domination-seeking behavior of Britain." And he is right, considering Britain invaded Iran during World War I, again during World War II, and yet again planned to invade in 1951 over Iran’s nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (aka. BP), but were stopped by then-US President Eisenhower, who feared a close encounter of the violent kind with the former USSR.

Instead, two years later the US’s CIA and the UK’s MI6 executed covert “Operation Ajax” orchestrating a violent coup that ousted the democratically-elected government and consolidated dictator Shah Reza Pahlevi, who – as Hilary would say – imposed “the kind of democracy that we (the US) want to see…”

Second question: Are we seeing a new Pearl Harbor in the making? As with Japan in the ’30s and ’40s, a target country is repeatedly threatened, coaxed, cornered, embargoed, misrepresented and misquoted in the media, sanctions imposed, etc., hoping that one day they get really fed up and do something rash. Like attacking the British Embassy and – presto! – we have another “day that will live in infamy!”

Is this yet another complex war engineering exercise where the target country (Iran) and its allies (e.g. Syria) are exposed to a swarm of controlled and varied attacks?

This time the UK seems to be the spearhead ever since in early November they said they were drafting plans for military attack, supported by Israel. The US is staying a few steps behind knowing that when things get really hot – especially for “little nuclear Israel” – the buck always stops with the US Military.

There is strong evidence that the US, UK and Israel are carrying out very sophisticated covert operations inside Iran with the intent of overwhelming its government. The Israeli press openly admits this. Over the past year, key Iranian nuclear physicists have been mysteriously assassinated; some months ago their nuclear program centrifuges suffered a catastrophic cyber-attack; two weeks ago a huge bomb destroyed a missile facility killing many people, including Iran’s Ballistic Missile Program commander Major General Moghaddem; and only a few days ago yet another bomb severely damaged a nuclear facility in Isfahan.

The Iranians won’t admit this was done by foreign agents, which is understandable from a national security viewpoint (no government likes having to admit foreign terrorists are out of control inside its territory).

Third question: Who could be doing this if not the US, UK and Israeli intelligence services, their private military contractors and a wide array of organizations used, coaxed, subcontracted, controlled and operated by those countries?.

We’ll probably never know for sure. Just as we will never really know what’s really happening inside Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, Libya and so many other target countries throughout Africa, Latin America, South East Asia that have suffered so much imported violence and destruction in recent decades.

But, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, has webbed feet like a duck and goes “quack!” like a duck, what do you think it might be?

And if the US’s, UK’s and Israel’s enemies suffer highly sophisticated terrorist attacks, following patterns that can be related to or back-engineered to State-sponsored terrorism emanating from the US, UK and Israel, then what do you think it might be?



* Adrian Salbuchi is a political analyst, author, speaker and radio/TV commentator in Argentina. His website is: www.asalbuchi.com.ar