Death by Proxy By Douglas McIntosh
stevequayle.com
November 19, 2009
There is geopolitical reality; then there is the illusion of geopolitical reality; finally, there is fantasy, delusion and denial of geopolitical reality. The various peoples of the MidEast, that hunk of land from the Tigris to Gaza, have been gleefully killing each other for thousands of years now. It is the supreme illusion of United States foreign policy to think the USA can have any long term impact on the so called "middle eastern peace process." All the USA can do is buy off the actors from time to time, with the sole purpose being to avoid immediate chaos. I call it the "not on my shift syndrome." President Carter's attempt with Sadat and Begin at Camp David is a prime example. Less of a peace treaty than a bribe, it has had little impact, other than to deprive American taxpayers of multiple billions to both Egypt and Israel. It bought a few years, which was the whole point of the thing.
Arafat, the Palestinian child lover and crook, took the money at Oslo and ran to his villa. The funny thing about the PLO is how little of the multiple billions paid to the elite ever reached the impoverished masses. Hamas of Gaza has exploited that fact very well indeed. At any rate, after all that diplomacy; all that American taxpayer money, the Palestinians are going to now openly declare statehood and throw both the monkey and the wrench into the spokes of this so called "mideast peace process." The "mideast peace process" will then be flattened until it resembles a waffle. We may sure the chattering classes will go into hysterics on the Sunday talk shows. The brie cheese and white wine peace now crowd will shift their feeble brains from Darfur to the West Bank again. Israel, whose mouth is attached to the American taxpayer teat tighter than a lamprey eel, will require more economic and military assistance. The Palestinians will probably be bought off again, or at least the elite's bank accounts in Switzerland will grow fatter; then, everything will go back to what passes for normal in the Middle East; namely, mindless violence, hate, corruption and greed.
Only not this time I am thinking. For one thing we have open combat inside Saudi Arabia with an Iranian proxy force. The Shia forces in Northern Yemen have been engaged in a low level civil war since 2004. The official Yemen government, taking time off from fighting Al Qaida in southern Yemen where they planned the attack on the USS Cole, decided to invade the northern mountains and crush the Shias. Given the incompetence and corruption of Yemen's military it is not surprising they failed miserably. The result of that failure has been the direct intervention of the Saudi Arabian military. Me and my proxy meets your proxy kind of thing. We now have a situation in Yemen where the middlemen have been removed. Saudi Arabia's proxy, the government of Yemen, failed. Saudi Arabia has now picked up the slack. This includes evacuation of its border area, as well as air raids, missile strikes and ground operations inside of Yemen. In other words, the war in Yemen is now the war in both Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Iran, which may or may not have been supplying the Shia rebels in northern Yemen with arms and supplies before, depending on who you believe, will now do so. Iranian statements of the last few days now assure this. In response the Saudi navy is now patrolling off Yemen to interdict the flow of Iranian support. Again, we now have a major expansion of the Yemen internal war into a broader geographic area. This is bad news for a lot of reasons. One of the big ones is the war is still spreading. Once restricted to northern Yemen it is now deep inside Saudi Arabia itself where it could easily explode into a civil war inside Saudi Arabia between the Sunni majority and the Shia minority in eastern Saudi Arabia. Relatively close to the oil shipment and refining areas on the Persian Gulf. Besides that, there are large Shia minorities in most of the Gulf states which could become involved as well. Further, Iran would become even more involved if that happened.
There is a process involved here. It is the process of chaos instituted by Iran in response to Saudi Arabian support of Sunni fundamentalism and terror groups. A while back a Sunni fundamentalist group in eastern Iran killed several Revolutionary Guard generals. At the time I realized that Iran would not let that pass. The comments Iran made at the time told me there would be payback. We are now seeing that payback in Yemen. Iran is now directly fighting a proxy war against Saudi Arabia using the Shia of northern Yemen. When the Shia did a cross border raid into Saudi Arabia, the event which sparked the Saudi military intervention, this was not a random event. I believe this attack was at Iran's behest in order to draw Saudi Arabia into the war. The reason for doing so was to destabilize Saudi Arabia prior to any attack on Iranian nuclear plants. I try to look at the big picture. It is all about context. I would make a very good CIA analyst, except my views would be ignored, much as my economic ones are ignored by the powers that be. What we are seeing here is the opening gambit of Iran's response to a western attack upon itself. For instance, by destabilizing Saudi Arabia Iran would make it very difficult for Israel to use Saudi airspace to bomb Iran. The Iranian strategy has been to surround Israel with well armed hostile forces. You have Hezbollah in southern Lebanon who are Shia. Neither Hamas or the PLO are Shia, but they do hate Israel and will respond if Iran is attacked. Further, you now have a Shia uprising in northern Yemen, which has now spread inside Saudi Arabia. You may rest assured that if Saudi Arabia allows Israel to use its airspace, the Shias in both eastern Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states will rise up. Saudi Arabia in particular might not survive that. The Gulf states would certainly be in trouble.
All of this ties into Iran's greater strategy of creating bases in Eritrea, across the Red Sea from Yemen. It is rumored that Iran is basing long range missiles there. Israel has its subs off the coast of Iran, complete with nuclear tipped missiles. And now Iran has Hezbollah to the north of Israel and Eritrea to the south, all armed with advanced missile technology. Between them, and also assuming either, or both, Hamas and the PLO got involved, Israel would find itself in dire straits indeed. Which brings us back to Yemen's expanding war. I believe the political reason behind this Iranian proxy war is to deny Israel the use of Saudi airspace. Given the events on its southern border with Yemen, Saudi Arabia will think twice before it risks its eastern section going up in Shia flames. Since Obama won't let Israel fly over Iraq, nor will a newly hostile Turkey, or a Georgia in fear of Moscow, only Saudi Arabia is left. Iran is making sure it is off the table too.
A wise man once said that war was politics using a different method. He was correct. What we are seeing in Yemen is the first phase of the Iranian war.
The real danger is one of miscalculation. One random event, a steak of chaos with unintended consequences and results can now bring on a much wider war in Yemen. All the players are in motion now. The game pieces are being moved about freely. Keep your eyes on Yemen. It is the rogue factor in the Mideast now in my view. A war of proxies that has now become a war of the powers behind the proxies. The string pullers, the puppet masters are fighting openly now. Iran is fighting for time to further develop its nuclear arsenal. While Iran has had nukes since she bought them from the collapsing Soviet empire back in the early and mid 1990's, she is now seeking to perfect that which she has had for over 15 years now. By my count, there is war in both Iraq and Afghanistan; war in Yemen and Saudi Arabia as well as various conflicts in other parts of North Africa. The game is afoot. With very little direct cost Iran has countered Israel shrewdly in Yemen and Turkey, as well as played Obama like a fiddle. The next phase will begin soon enough.
Doug McIntosh has a blog at www.preparingforthefuture.org on a donation basis. Go to the web site and find the select a forum button. Scroll down till you come to DOOMER DOUG forum. The information for gaining access to the blog is listed there. |
