by Helen Tansey at The T-Room.us
While reading through the comments by some of the most insightful national security/foreign policy posters over at Moon of Alabama, many were encouraging folks to watch and read the latest interview and article by Alastair Crooke, former British diplomat and founder of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum. Their suggestions were spot on.
Crooke has become a regular on Judge Napolitano’s Judging Freedom show where he provides commentary on global affairs with his specialty being the Middle East. Strategic Culture Foundation also publishes his columns regularly. Very informative pro.
Judge Nap raised the question about whether the bigger question on the Israel and now Gaza tragedies is really all about targeting Tehran –
Judge Nap: Do you think that President Biden is under pressure from the globalists and neocons around him to take this as an opportunity, once and for all, to destroy the regime and its nuclear capability in Tehran?
Alastair Crooke: I think so, yes. I think there’s pressure. I’m not saying he’s succumbed to it. I’m not saying it will prevail, but you have to look at it from the other end of the telescope too. In the region, people look at this huge build-up and they see, is America preparing for World War III?
WATCH:
Escalations Cannot Be Stopped — The White House Is Rattled; Escalation Might All Fuse Into ‘One’
by Alastair Crooke at Strategic Culture Foundation
The reality of the necessity of war is permeating widely the consciousness of the Arabic and Islamic world.
Tom Friedman uttered his dire warning in the New York Times on Thursday last:
“I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now [unilaterally] to destroy Hamas — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests”.
“It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the U.S. has built…I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
“Unfortunately, the senior U.S. official told [Friedman], Israeli military leaders are actually more hawkish than the prime minister now. They are red with rage and determined to deliver a blow to Hamas that the whole neighbourhood will never forget”.
Friedman here is talking, of course, about an American alliance system, pivoted around the idea of Israel’s military prowess being invincible – the ‘Little NATO’ paradigm that acts as the essential substrata for the spread of the American-led Rules Order through West Asia.
It is analogous to the substrata of the NATO alliance, whose claimed ‘unchallengeability’ has underpinned U.S. interests in Europe (at least until the Ukraine war).
One Israeli Cabinet member put it to the veteran Israeli defence correspondent Ben Caspit that Israel just cannot permit its long-term deterrence being undermined:
“This is the most important point — ‘our deterrence’”, the senior war Cabinet source said. “The region must quickly understand that whoever harms Israel the way Hamas did, pays a disproportionate price. There is no other way to survive in our neighbourhood than to exact this price now, because many eyes are fixed on us and most of them do not have our best interests at heart”.
In other words, the Israeli ‘paradigm’ hinges on manifesting overwhelming,…
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