Above Photo: From Caitlinjohnstone.com
Probably the weirdest, dumbest, most annoying thing about writing on US foreign policy right now is the fact that regime change in Iran and regime change in Syria have been falsely spun into the illusion of two separate issues along partisan lines. People who are more aligned with America’s Democratic Party are a lot more opposed to the overthrow of the Iranian government and a lot more sympathetic to the idea of getting rid of Assad, and with those who are more aligned with the Republican party it’s the exact opposite.
Partisan politics turn people into such drooling idiots. Democratic Party-aligned Americans oppose Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran deal because it was Obama’s baby, while Republican-aligned Americans support it for the exact same reason. This is a deliberate provocation designed to enable crushing economic sanctions, which the US-centralized war machine always uses as a prelude to war, to weaken and destabilize the nation. Plan A will be for imperial intelligence agencies to stage a coup or fund a violent uprising in order to either throw Iran into impotent chaos or replace its government with a puppet regime (either one satisfies Plan A). Plan B will be something more direct.
We’re seeing the reverse in Syria: Democratic Party-aligned Americans are virulently opposed to Assad because Russia is actively fighting on his side, and the Russiagate psyop has Democrats hating anyone who they suspect might have anything to do with Vladimir Putin. They also need to justify the fact that the Obama administration helped stage a premeditated violent uprising and flooded Syria with terrorists with the goal of destabilization or regime change. Trump supporters, meanwhile, oppose regime change in that nation largely because it’s a secular government besieged by violent deep state-funded jihadists.
I am of course painting with a broad brush here; there are Democrats who oppose any kind of interventionism in Syria and there are Trump supporters who oppose it in Iran, but as someone who’s been writing about US-led interventionism in both countries I can say from experience that there is a clear partisan split in public sympathy for each of them. I’m getting liberals agreeing with me about Iran who’ve aggressively denounced my writings on Syria, and a bunch of conservatives who supported my Syria writings now loudly objecting to my writings on Iran. Which is absolutely insane, because it’s the same goddamn war.
Iran and Syria are plainly allies. They are both longtime targets for regime change by neocon think tanks and western defense/intelligence agencies, and they are both being aggressively targeted by Israel and Saudi Arabia. It is very clear that the tightly allied nations on the side of the United States (which I call “the western empire” or the blob) view both nations in the same light. If you ignore the babbling narratives and just look at the behavior of the blob, it is clear that it is working against both nations as though they are a single entity.
If the government of either Iran or Syria falls, it will either be replaced with a puppet government or allowed to collapse into a failed state, in either case unable to assist the other in defending itself from imperial regime change interventionism. Cheerleading for regime change in one nation is necessarily cheerleading for regime change in the other, and all the death, suffering and devastation that necessarily goes with it. You can’t install a puppet regime in one without facilitating the destruction of the other.
Conservatives who support the longstanding neoconservative agenda of regime change in Iran: you are supporting regime change in Syria. You are supporting the installation of a government that will no longer assist Syria in fighting against the western-armed jihadist factions, and you are helping to ensure that Damascus falls to violent Islamist factions. Consenting to American regime change interventionism of any kind in Iran is an endorsement of the enemies that Assad is fighting in Syria.
Liberals who support the longstanding neoconservative agenda of regime change in Syria: you are supporting regime change in Iran. You are supporting the collapse of a key Iranian ally which will no longer be there to help stave off the agenda to plunge Iran into chaos and terror. You are supporting the anti-Iranian agendas of warmongering neocons like Trump, Pompeo and Bolton.
One of the most unforgivably moronic things in US politics is the fact that there’s a partisan split on regime change interventionism in Iran vs regime change interventionism in Syria. Can’t these idiots see that it’s the same imperialist power grab?
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) May 11, 2018
But watch American support for regime change in Iran will grow. Already, polls show more Americans are regarding Iran as a national security threat. https://t.co/jjPZAqwSUY
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) May 12, 2018
Partisan minds may see Iran and Syria as two completely different situations, but the leaders of the western empire see them as one and the same. With the constantly fluctuating political leadership of Official Washington and the continued agendas of America’s permanent government, the unelected power establishment knows that if it takes out one nation it’s only a matter of time before it will be politically convenient to take out the other.
Fox News babbles nonsense about freedom and democracy and Islamic fundamentalism in Iran, CNN babbles nonsense about Assad targeting civilians with barrel bombs and chemical weapons, but this has nothing to do with any of those things. This is about a transnational alliance of plutocrats and intelligence/defense agencies targeting all governments which don’t bow to its interests, with the ultimate goal of world domination. They target the weaker and smaller nations first in order to weaken their bigger allies, Russia and China, which are the ultimate target.
A powerful group of plutocrats have built their kingdoms on a specific status quo, and they are therefore naturally opposed to rising governmental powers like China which threaten that status quo. These plutocrats have built up their power and influence to the point where they are able to use the governments in the western empire as weapons to attack, bully and subvert any potential geopolitical challengers of the status quo.
That’s all this is. All the propaganda, all the nonsense about Mullahs and chemical weapons and Russian hackers, all the war and terror and suffering, is all because a few sociopathic individuals have been able to claw their way up the capitalist ladder to such a height that they can use governments to advance their insatiable power-grabbing agendas. Different political factions are being propagandized in different ways along their respective paths of least resistance into supporting these agendas, but as always the fake partisan divide always benefits the same group of depraved ruling elites.
Oppose these elites by opposing interventionism across the board. It isn’t okay for a few wealthy oligarchs to use governments to destroy and subvert entire nations. It isn’t okay that governments which should be helping their people are instead stretched all across the globe bending over backwards to make sure a few plutocrats don’t get dethroned. It isn’t okay that oligarchic domination has taken precedence over the basic human impulse to survive and thrive. We must all cease consenting to this together, regardless of political ideology.