Marching toward a wider war in the Middle East
14 June 2017
Behind the bitter political warfare in Washington and the endless media flogging of hysterical claims of Russian interference in the election with the supposed collusion of Donald Trump, very real wars in the Middle East are threatening to coalesce into a regional and even global conflagration with ominous implications for the peoples of not only the region, but the entire planet.
These two fields of battle are by no means unconnected. The US ruling establishment is bitterly divided over US foreign policy and, most decisively, its war strategy. Behind the anti-Russia hysteria, the opposition to Trump on the part of the Democratic Party and significant layers of the Republicans is bound up with a determination to prevent him from in any way weakening the escalation of US aggression against Moscow, in particular over Washington’s drive for regime change in Syria.
The Trump administration and the cabal of recently retired and active duty military officers who effectively steer its foreign and military policy have spelled out with increasing clarity a policy directed at planning war with Iran in preparation for confrontation with China. This was the unconcealed agenda of Trump’s trip last month to Israel and Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s two major regional enemies.
The administration’s stated aim of forging an anti-Iranian, NATO-like alliance with the Sunni oil sheikdoms of the Gulf Cooperation Council has translated into a de facto state of war imposed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt against Qatar, which has been subjected to an all-out economic blockade. The Saudi monarchy, the principal ideological and financial sponsor of Islamist extremism, has—with Trump’s blessings—absurdly cast its…