General attack in the Middle East TAKIS FOTOPOULOS

In the Middle East, a generalised crisis has blown up as a result of the systematic effort of the transnational elite led by its Anglo-American section to fully integrate the region into the New World Order of capitalist neoliberal globalisation and to ensure the necessary energy resources for the continuation of the market economy expansion, at a particularly critical time when oil stocks are heading for exhaustion. The crisis in the Middle East, which culminated in the rapacious invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the brutal occupation of these countries by the armed forces of the transnational elite, is expected to worsen even more in the near future. This is made evident from a series of recent events, such as:

The blatant contempt of popular will shown once more by the US elite that dominates the transnational elite, which, ignoring the mass rejection of its Iraq policy in the mid-term elections, decided an extra surge of troops, recruited, as usually, mainly from the American lumpenproletariat.
The rejection of the proposals of the less aggressive sections of the transnational elite, which, as the Baker committee proposals showed, would have been ready to accept, through negotiations with Iran and Syria, a form of joint control of the Middle East. On the contrary, it is evident that a path leading to a collision with Islamist Iran was decided, under the pretext of its program of nuclear energy.
The unscrupulous support by the entire transnational elite of its protégé Siniora regime in Lebanon, despite the fact that the vast majority of the Lebanese people support the Hezbollah demand for a government of national unity to ensure the country’s national independence.
The side-stepping and economic strangulation of the Palestinian government, (which was elected on the basis of all the requirements of representative "democracy"), and the consequent encouragement of Abbas to illegitimately call for early elections.

In all these crucial cases, the Anglo-American leadership of the transnational elite, despite the reservations of some of its other members regarding the tactics that should be pursued, adopted the collision path, which, by enhancing the civil war tendencies in each country, aims at the following goals:

a) the creation of an informal protectorate in Iraq which – essentially trisected - will be controlled by a government absolutely dependent on the transnational elite, which would be relying on the Iraqi Kurds, the conservative Shias of Ayatollah Sistani (after Sadr’s militant Shias will have been subjugated) and the anti-Baathist Sunnis. A basic means for the achievement of this objective has been the decisive dissolution of the Baathist Party —a task for which the US Congress provided $128m for investigations and prosecutions of Baathist officials [1]. The reason for the US elite’s determination to crush the Baathist Party was not only because this Party had introduced widespread reforms in the 1970s, among which was the crucial nationalisation of the Iraqi Petroleum Company (set up by British colonialists in order to pump cheap oil to the West), an act which financed —using the soaring oil revenues resulting from the 1973 oil crisis— investments in industry, education and healthcare, raising Iraq's standard of living to one of the highest in the Arab world[2]. It was also because this secular party was the basic foundation for a united multicultural Iraq that had prevented the development of irrational religious conflicts, which have led Iraqis to their present mutual slaughter. Today, after the systematic destruction of the Baathist Party —which culminated in Saddam’s lynching[3]— has been completed, the Anglo-American elite considers that the road is open to get hold of oil control. Thus, a draft of a new law would give Western oil companies a massive share in the third largest reserves in the world. The system envisaged by this law will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs), which are highly unusual in the Middle East where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled. PSAs allow a country to retain legal ownership of its oil, but gives a share of profits to the international companies that invest in infrastructure and operation of the wells, pipelines and refineries. Furthermore, foreign companies have no restrictions on taking their profits out of the country, and are not subject to any tax when doing this. Finally, according to this law, oil companies will be allowed to take up to 75 per cent of the profits until they have recouped their drilling costs. This is a complete reversal of the 1970s legislation introduced by the Baathist regime.[4]

b) the subjugation of the Islamic regime in Iran, or, in the last resort, it’s overthrowing. Thus, while US troop reinforcements roll up in Iraq and the Persian Gulf, the new American Secretary of Defence declares, “the US military build-up was intended to signal American determination to remain a dominant player in the region."[5] It seems that this collision tactic has already borne some fruit, with the Islamic government reportedly asking the mediation of Saudi Arabia, while the "intransigent" president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has fallen in disgrace, with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was hitherto loyal to the president, reportedly blaming Ahmadinejad for the December 2005 UN resolution imposing sanctions over Iran's refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment[6]. Needless to add that, if the regime does not demonstrate the required, by the transnational elite, willingness to “adapt”, it is highly likely that, on the pretext of the nuclear issue, at some time in the near future, a bombing attack will be attempted, possibly by the Zionist elite with direct US backing. Such an attack would be designed to function as a catalyst for a conflict of the “Yugoslavia type", which is hoped that, in the end, will turn the "modernizing" elite against the Islamic elite and lead to the imposition of a regime dependent on the transnational elite.

As soon as the two aforementioned objectives will have been achieved, the transnational elite hopes that the road will have been opened for the complete imposition of the New World Order in the Middle East, which will be dominated by informal protectorates (Iraq, Afghanistan), and a series of regimes, either directly dependent on the transnational elite (Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Emirates etc) or indirectly (Iran, Syria, Lebanon etc). The elites of all these regimes have anyway received a very clear message from Saddam’s assassination, which of course did not aim at the punishment of an ordinary local ruler. Thus, in a complete reversal of the Nuremberg trial, in the "trial of Baghdad", those in the dock were not the people responsible for an aggressive transnational war that has already led to death hundreds of thousands Iraqis, tens of thousands Afghans and thousands of people in their own countries (see New York, London, Madrid etc), that is to say, Bush, Cheney, Blair and company, but a local nationalist despot —although himself also a political criminal at a much smaller local scale— and some fellow Baathists.

Needless to add that all the above plans of the transnational elite may prove to be pipedreams, as they ignore the peoples’ resistance.

* The above text is an extended version of an article which was first published in the fortnightly column of Takis Fotopoulos in the mass circulation Athens daily Eleftherotypia on 20/01/2007

[1] Rory Carroll, "Dictator on trial for his life as Iraqi court faces ultimate test", Guardian, 19/10/05
[2] "Saddam’s life and times", BBC NEWS SERVICE-posted 30/12/06
[3] see T. Fotopoulos, "The Significance of the Assassination of Saddam by the New World Order", The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 3 - No. 1 (January 2007)
[4] Danny Fortson et.al., “Future of Iraq: The spoils of war”, Independent, 7/1/07
[5] Julian Borger, “We are not leaving, Gates warns Iran as troop surge begins”, Guardian, 16/1/07
[6] Robert Tait, “President's future in doubt as MPs rebel and economic crisis grows”, Guardian, 16/1/07