One of the things that our intel agencies do to push lies into the public is to use the magic word “earmarks.” For example, the infamous 51 spies who lied about Hunter’s laptop—even though the FBI and the CIA knew it was real—used the weasel phrase that the laptop had “the classic earmarks” of a Russian operation. That was a lie. But here’s an “earmark” sentence that may be true: Iran has all the earmarks of a USA-intel client state. Much like Ukraine. Or, more accurately, like North Korea vis-à-vis China.
Most historians trace the US’s influence over Iran to the 1953 Mosaddegh coup, when, reportedly, the fledgling CIA overthrew the democratically elected nationalist (and possibly communist-adjacent) prime minister and installed the Shah as the actual ruler. In this recounting, America stepped into the void left when the British Empire retreated to control oil supplies and stabilize the Middle East.
This influence over Iran would last a couple of mostly quiet, if morally dubious, decades before the Ayatollah returned from his French exile and crafted a coup of his own, culminating in a regime of murderous mullahs that bedevils the West still today, everything from sponsoring most modern Muslim terrorism to the October 1, 2024, ballistic barrage attack on Israel.
Khamenei and his military leaders (edited). YouTube screen grab.
However, upon closer inspection, America’s relationship with the Mullahs has all the earmarks of patron-client rather than enemy-enemy.
In 1973, following the Watergate investigations’ revelations, the disgraced and deposed CIA Director, Richard Helms, was downgraded from that position of supreme importance to the seemingly minor posting of Ambassador of Iran. In his memoir, which recounts snippets of this oft- ceremonial position, Helms adds a striking tidbit: While he was ambassador, Helms was incensed to discover that the Shiite Shah had been making peace feelers to his Sunni neighbor/enemy, Iraq. Peace?! The nerve!
Shortly thereafter, Khomeini would leave the hospitable French for a triumphant return. A little bit of perfidious killing of his secular allies, winks/nods to a student takeover of the American embassy, and all-out war with Iraq (finally! phew!), and the mullahs were comfortably in charge. Soon, they began developing a Shiite Crescent to overlay much of the region, beginning with sponsoring Hezbollah in Lebanon, eventually including Iraqis, Houthis, and Hamas.
Yet even after Hezbollah succeeded in barrack-bombing hundreds of US and French troops in Beirut in 1983, America didn’t reprise its Mosaddegh coup. While it levied economic sanctions and publicly inveighed against Iran, behind the scenes, it countenanced the fundamentalist regime.
It allowed commodities traders like the later-pardoned Marc Rich to run the sanctions blockade. It sold weapons to the mullahs for its war with Iraq, then using the proceeds to fund the rebels in Nicaragua, a peculiar bit of arms legerdemain known as the Iran-Contra Affair. It allowed Hezbollah to grow into a mini-state of horror. Most crucially, it gave a screaming yellow light to Iranian nuclear aspirations, a gathering storm that Bibi Netanyahu has been cautioning against since the 1990s.
How exactly? I mean, Iran was weak enough to spend a decade locked in a lethal stalemate with Iraq, a country that America twice shocked and awed to submission without a sweat. Why would America allow clerics believing in accelerating the revelation of an End of Days Hidden Imam to survive and even thrive?
The answer, per a ‘between the lines’ reading of Helms and an in-the-line reading of Kissinger and others, is ‘regional balance.’ Oh, also ‘managed conflict.’. Also, a tad of that original sin of the CIA, namely, ‘acceptable antisemitism.’
The antisemitism element is a matter for another time and essay. As for the realpolitik posturing, let us stipulate that in a Cold War bipolar superpower world, tamping down tensions that could escalate into nuclear war had some logical basis. However, in the wake of world order reshufflings every few years, it would seem most practical to restrict nukes proliferation as much as possible.
Which brings us inexorably to the Deep State’s true raison d’etre and the explanation for its oft-puzzling/irrational actions:
$$$$$.
Regional balance, which means having opposing camps of nations facing off in a perpetually simmering, low-grade conflict, is a cash cow—at least, for some people.
Weapons manufacturers, for example. To choose from endless examples, Iran’s two recent airstrikes against Israel totaled some 300 missiles. In both cases, incredible air defenses prevented the weapons from striking any of their targets, prompting plaudits. There are now reports various nations are lining up to order these systems. It’s almost as if the potentially deadly attack against Israel was actually a sales pitch. As proof, recall Biden’s debate-night Freudian slip, where he commented with pride that no Israeli was ‘accidentally’ killed by Iran’s attack. That is, the Americans and Iranians had coordinated an attack that would save the Persian face while not killing the Israeli body.
Haliburton-type engineering multinationals are another example of beneficiaries. Iraq and Afghanistan wars were boons, but the well had to run dry at some point. Hence, Biden’s cut and run from Kabul was promptly followed by his ‘minor incursion’ assent to a Putin invasion of Ukraine. For every city razed by war, a reconstruction specialist behemoth stands ready to raise the city back to pre-war status. Someone is poised to make bank on Gaza and Lebanon assuredly.
General grafting types, are another example of chronic wars’ beneficiaries. These are the political lobbyists, politicians, and NGOs associated with skimming humanitarian donations off the top, and the gangster types receiving the aid and taking a cut. There is a long and noble history to this scam, coinciding with the advent of the UN and its first efforts at assistance.
Per journalists like Mark Gayn, whose papers I’ve researched, the China civil war of the late 1940s was marked by warlords demanding a 10-20% cut from aid sent to the starving Chinese. For that matter, the entire UN enterprise has ‘the earmarks’ of an endless scam.
Thus, perpetual conflict is the plan. The feature not the bug, as the saying goes. Iran’s regime is nothing if not flexible, amoral, and accommodating. The mullahs merrily play along and have been doing so since ‘79, notwithstanding the occasional opprobrium lobbed their way by occasional American critics. They make bank, survive, and cleverly push/pull/push their way to nuclear power and consequent terminal immunity.
Alas, Biden is not that talented a puppeteer—fittingly, since he is actually Obama’s marionette. Biden lets things slip, talks a poor game, and generally acts in such an inane fashion that relatively astute amateur onlookers have figured out the game.
Every Houthi outrage impeding shipping, every report of Iranian plots to kill Trump, and every leak of Biden offering Israel money and other prizes to refrain from reprisals, in particular against Iran’s nuclear installations—all awaken more people to the glaring conclusion: America has an interest in the mullah’s survival. The US’s perpetual political class is protecting, even promoting Iran. It is, to paraphrase Sharon Stone’s escort-esque character in Casino, Iran’s ‘sponsor.’
Iran is America’s client: used to foment low-grade ‘manageable’ conflict and to ‘counter’ Israel’s and the Sunni countries’ regional supremacy. $$$$.
Or, to paraphrase the 51 intrepid intel types: America ‘has all the earmarks’ of being Iran’s sponsor.
The writer’s name, Norman Krieg has all the earmarks of being a pseudonym created by someone with a cursory knowledge of German.
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