Persian Gulf Option One: A False Flag
“Remember the Maine!”, was the cry back in 1898 from William Randolph Heart’s New York Journal – a forerunner the modern Murdoch press. Then, some 274 men lost their lives as a result of the explosion which sunk the USS Maine in Havana Harbor.
Hearst even told a story of how the enemy had planted a torpedo beneath the Maine and detonated it from shore. The only problem was – it never happened.
Nonetheless, the event used as the popular pretext for the United State’s entry into the
Spanish-American War,
and ultimately, the acquisition of Cuba itself by the US. This was now
the modern blueprint for using propaganda in conjunction with, what is
accepted by many historians, a type of
false-flag event.
Some 70 years later, on June 8, 1967, during the
Six-Day War, a
similar event took place off the coast of Egypt.
It could well have
been, “Remember the Liberty!”, following an event which saw 34 US men
killed and 170 wounded when the
USS Liberty was attacked by both the Israeli Air Force and Israeli Navy torpedo boats. History now reveals that
Israel’s slaughter of the USS Liberty crew
was designed as a false flag event, but luckily Russia intervened at
the last minute before Israel could sink the decorated American ship.
Had it worked, it could have been used to drag the US and her allies
into a new regional, or even a
third world war - with who knows what consequences.
If a conflict is to ignite in the Persian Gulf in 2012, it is highly
likely that the US or Israel will use the false flag option. Two reasons
support this. Firstly, Iran lacks a motive to want to engage in a
suicidal first strike against the axis powers – a move which would no
doubt cost them thousands of innocent lives and billions in
infrastructure. Frankly, it’s safe to say that it’s not at all in the
Iranian national interest to start such a conflict. History does show
however, that the US and Israel can – and will, employ the technique of
the false flag attack, where they would engineer an incident and then
blame it on the Iranians. By all accounts, this is also how the US was
able to fake their way into the costly and bloody Vietnam War, via the infamous Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
Recent weeks have seen a massive build-up of naval assets in the
Persian Gulf by both the US and the British. The irony of surface naval
power in the 21st century is that it is only good for one thing, and
that is the ‘projection of force’. In fact, Naval Power ceased to be a major factor geopolitical power-play since the dawn of the 20th century, when it was usurped by Air Power.
As Great Britain learned in the Falklands War back in 1982, even a
single French Exocet missile can sink a battleship, or aircraft carrier.
Iran has more than this capability, so for all practical purposes, any
American ships in the region are nothing more than bait – large, slow sitting targets. Which begs the obvious question: why would the US be sending its soon-to-be decommissioned, rusty chess piece – the 50 year old nuclear-powered USS Enterprise carrier into the line of fire in the Persian Gulf?
A very large and expendable, floating museum, and one which,
interestingly enough with its six on board nuclear reactors… would
probably cost a fortune to dispose of.
If other sides are drawn in to a conflict, most experts agree that it
has the danger of escalating into a WWIII situation, and both sides
would surely be losers in such a scenario, not to mention the global
economy.
However, we have the ideal set of conditions for a New Cold War to
emerge in the early 21st Century – one where the Western Axis powers of
the US, Europe, Israel and GCC countries sit on one side, and with
Iran, Syria, Pakistan, China, and perhaps Russia sitting on the opposite
side. This New Cold War will be more about the projection of power and
securing sub-regional dominance in terms of economics – natural gas,
mineral and trade relationships, as well as petroleum – than it will
about the political ideologies that seemed to dominate the previous 20th
Century Cold War.
On the surface, this latest spat between the US and Iran looks like a
step closer to war, but on closer examination however, the present
conditions are not at all ideal for a preemptive strike against Iran by
the US, or Israel. Why? In a time when fuel consumption is down
worldwide, and oil supplies are high, oil prices are defying economics
and maintaining strength above $100 per barrel. It’s also worth noting
that defense contracts – particularly in the GCC countries – are way up,
meaning there is still much money to be made from this current crisis
– on both sides, including Iran.
Still though, we must keep our eyes open for that false flag from the west.
