Is The United States Pushing For A Militarist Iran?

By Theodore Shoebat

The United States pulling out of the Iran Deal and expressing aggression towards Iran, has left many people with the impression that the US planning a war with Iran. But, is it possible that what we are actually seeing is the US pushing for a more militarist and nationalistic Iran?

As the Iranian economy free falls, as Iranian nationalists want another revolution, and as more and more Iranians see their government as incompetent, the fanatics of Iran are gaining more influence and political leverage, and radical nationalists like the MEK (People’s Mujahideen of Iran) are gaining support from Capital Hill. One thing that violently intensifies fanaticism is economic diminishment, and the radicals and hardliners of Iran are capitalizing on this. What is causing the economic disaster are all of the sanctions imposed by the US. One must ask, are all of these sanctions meant to punish Iran or are they a means to accelerate militarism in that country? There are several possible scenarios:

1. The US is sanctioning Iran to cause economic depression in hopes that it would provoke a revolution backed by Washington
2. The US wants Iran to become more and more hardline in order to justify a war against Iran
3. The US wants a militarist Iran that will have a war with Saudi Arabia that the US and other Western countries could profit on through arms sales

I am sure there are potential situations, but these are the ones that come to mind in light of America’s history of doing these exact same things (Iraq in the 2000s, Iran in 1953, Syria and Venezuela today) and in light of the fact that Giuliani declared that economic diminishment is the goal to spark revolution in Iran:

“freedom from oppression always comes through economic want, through human want. Thats what happened in the French Revolution, thats what happened in the Russian Revolution — the original one, and the second one —, and thats whats happening right now in your homeland.”

One thing that we can be certain of is that the US is not interested in peace in the Middle East. From arms sales and distribution in Syria and Libya, backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and making arms deals worth billions to Saudi Arabia as the kingdom slaughters the Yemini people (remember Trump said: “I don’t like the concept of stopping an investment of $110 billion into the United States”), the US has shown repeatedly that it does not give a fig about peace in the Middle East. Any talk of peace is subterfuge. The US slaughtered Nazis and then invited their scientists to the US for big yearly salaries; the US invaded Iraq in the name of peace and democracy and the country is in the most horrific condition that it has even been in since the First World War.

During the Iran Deal, Iran was contained by having to follow rules and regulations. On March 5, 2018, the director of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, confirmed that Iran was honoring its part of the deal:

“Our inspection work has doubled since 2013. IAEA inspectors now spend 3,000 calendar days per year on the ground in Iran. We have installed some 2,000 tamper-proof seals on nuclear material and equipment.

We have carried out more than 60 complementary accesses and visited more than 190 buildings since JCPOA Implementation Day.

We collect and analyse hundreds of thousands of images captured daily by our sophisticated surveillance cameras in Iran – about half of the total number of such images that we collect throughout the world.

We collect over one million pieces of open source information each month.

All of our activities are supported by state-of-the-art technology, including data collecting and processing systems. Our current verification capability is much stronger than it has ever been.

As of today, I can state that Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments. It is essential that Iran continues to do so. If the JCPOA were to fail, it would be a great loss for nuclear verification and for multilateralism.”

The Iran Deal was containing the country, but now that the US has walked away from the deal (not surprising at all since the US has a history of dishonoring deals. Just look at King Gojong), what reason does Iran have to even respect the United States and not go down a path of militarism? Officials in Iran presented themselves as being favorable towards negotiation with the US, but now engagement with the Americans is vehemently unpopular. On July 19th, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zariff said:

Engagement has lost credibility at home. People don’t look at engagement with the international community—the United States, for one reason, for not keeping its word; the Europeans for another reason, for not being able to stand on their word. So, yeah, engagement is losing credibility, and by extension, I am losing credibility.

Hossein Shariatmadari, the representative for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the Iranian newspaper, Kayhan, has accused Zariff of deceiving the Iranian people by signing the Iran Deal and requested the parliament and the judiciary to punish him along with other politicians.

So the mainstream officials in Iran are losing credibility while the fanatics are getting more political leverage.

The US has had almost a love hate relationship with Iran. While Iran did help the US in her Afghanistan war, in 2005 George W. Bush included Iran in the current day “axis of evil”.

If the US’ plan is to have a controlled Iran then it would have continued to maintain the Iran Deal (as it has been maintaining the Two China perception). But it has not done this. Rather the US has said things and done things that only exasperate the situation. So we have to ask the question:

Does the US want a militarist Iran?