Thursday, May 31, 2007

Paving The Way for Attack on Iran

Recently a wonders in diplomatic history grew larger. US foreign officials met their Iranian counterparts for the first time in nearly 3 decades. Since the Iranian revolutionaries took 80 American citizens hostage, United States of America cut all its diplomatic ties with the Iranians and shut its Embassy there (although the embassy was shut practically when the revolutionaries captured it).
So what’s so unusual about Americans going to visit Iranians in a third country?
Right there is nothing unusual, but unusual is the timing.
Iran has been labeled as the forbearer of the axis of evil group, a nation who thinks helping terrorist is legitimate, a nation bent upon destroying Israel, etc.
When America attacked Iraq it forgot that it lacked many basic necessities and lacked ground realities analysis.
Iran used all this in its favor and provided the insurgents the ammunition it required. This helped the insurgents to keep the US military engaged in urban battle in the Iraqi cities.
So their military casualties mounted and still are mounting. In the meantime US had not let the axis of evil rhetoric down and thought that Iran would succumb to it, but not so happened. USA had also finalized the decision that it will attack Iran on one pretext or the other under the “Principle of Pre-emption”.

Iran used its oil manipulation card and nuclear card at the right time and got to the extend of labeling Israel its target and the wish to wipe it off the world’s map.
Now Israel entered and thought that it would be a child’s play to destroy the Irani nuclear facilities like it had done with the Iraqi nuclear reactors.
Iran, to threaten Israel continued progress of its long range missiles and also helped Hezbollah get the latest anti-tank, short range missiles and other necessary sophisticated weapons in the Israeli neighborhood of Lebanon.
Some analysts say that last year attack on Iran was eminent. But hats off to Irani tactics i.e. it let Hezbollah (the Middle Eastern guerilla warfare giants) kidnap the Israeli soldier on the issue of which Lebanon was attacked by Israel.
And the rest is history. Israel had to face the one of the most embarrassing military defeat in its military history.

It all summed up in the larger picture for American policy makers that
i) Unless America withdraws and regroups its military, it lacks the military muscle to effectively attack Iran so as to cripple its nuclear facilities.
ii) Until the Hezbollah is disarmed with its sophisticated weapons Israel cannot be regarded as safe.
Now suddenly, one and a half month before US agreed on what Iran was saying for years that talks with it can help US out of Iraq safely.
On Monday the 28th of May 2007 the meeting took place which continued for hours.
More importantly Lebanese Army (which did not fire a single shot in the last years war with Israel) got the teeth and will power it needed to take on a local militant organization predominantly composed of Palestinian refugees.
Lebanese Army is considered as an ally of Israel (for anyone who did not know) and there are trustworthy intelligence reports that American C-130 are dumping huge quantities of weapons (which may include some that are capable of taking on Hezbollah).
Not to forget that soon after Hezbollah-Israel war US had sanctioned the transfer of bunker busting bombs in huge quantities worth hundreds million of dollars.

Now with all said and done where will the US regroup its forces.
Answer; Maybe in Qatar (which has been made its regional headquarters after Saudi-Arabia declined to extend its stay) or Kuwait( unless Americans don’t mind getting fried in this tiny oil rich kingdom by Irani nukes) or maybe they will take them all back to the mainland US and launch a special force operations.
Billion Dollar Question: When will the attack begin?
The answer is simple but a for anyone who can understand crude oil based economies.
It will happen whenever the oil prices are low or whenever the America’s oil need season is off-season or whenever they have stored enough oil to last the unimaginable price per barrel of oil age that will soon follow.
As far as I can analyze is that the Iranians know that they are on the hit list of America and they also know that it would be largely directed on their nuclear installations.
They are also conducting their diplomacy with the utmost guile they can manage to delay the inevitable.

Are the Iranians going to fall for this bait i.e. retrieval of US forces from Iraq and will they let them regroup?
Only time will tell.

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