'The Middle East Theatre of War' (GlobalResearch.ca)

When a former Middle East bureau chief of The New York Times is writing that “War with Iran — a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East — is probable by the end of the Bush administration,” we should awaken to the possibility. When he continues, “It could begin in as little as three weeks,” concerned citizens everywhere should resolve to work together to prevent it.

“The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.“

The Strait of Hormuz (Satellite Image: NASA; wikipedia.org)

Known to readers of US Navy News as “a critical chokepoint”, the Strait of Hormuz is a geopolitically stategic bottleneck of ocean through which forty percent of global oil supply travels daily. Disruption of its traffic could send the price of oil soaring (some predictions say to $110 a barrel), causing cataclysmic knock-on effects for the world economy — “very possibly triggering a huge, global depression”, Hedges writes.

USS Eisenhower (IMAGE: navy.mil, wikipedia.org)

USS Eisenhower (planetarymovement.org)

With a Republican sex scandal dominating national headlines, and polls predicting Democrats regaining control of Congress, how will a self-described “War President” — who may or may not have tired of his personal poll-ratings scraping the barrel — react? Is the US planning a military confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz? With a US Navy Global Strike Force closing in on Iranian waters, are we just one “Attack On America” (one ‘Gulf of Tonkin incident’) away from sub-continental armageddon in the Middle East region?

“The extraordinary buildup of European naval and military strength in and around Lebanon’s shores is way out of proportion for the task the European contingents of expanded UNIFIL [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] have undertaken: to create a buffer between Israel and Hizballah.

Close investigation by DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources discloses that ‘Lebanese security’ and peacemaking is not the object of the exercise. It is linked to the general anticipation of a military clash between the United States and Israel, on one side, and Iran and possibly Syria on the other, some time from now until November.

This expectation has brought together the greatest sea and air armada Europe has ever assembled at any point on earth since World War II: two carriers with 75 fighter-bombers, spy planes and helicopters on their decks; 15 warships of various types – 7 French, 5 Italian, 2-3 Greek, 3-5 German, and five American; thousands of Marines – French, Italian and German, as well as 1,800 US Marines.

German Brandenburg Class Frigate en route to Lebanese waters (globalresearch.ca)

French Leclerc armored vehicles en route to Lebanon (globalreseach.ca)

It is improbably billed as support for a mere 7,000 European soldiers who are deployed in Lebanon to prevent the dwindling Israeli force of 4-5,000 soldiers and some 15-16,000 Hizballah militiamen from coming to blows as well as for humanitarian odd jobs.”

US Air Force F15 Strike Eagle (IMAGE: designwallah, flickr.com)

In the context of American aggression and (thus far) non-aggression against its fellow charter members of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil”, how has the leadership of Iran reacted to the dual campaigns of military encirclement and financial isolation being waged against it? How has it reacted to US Special Forces and US-sponsored clandestine commando groups operating within its borders, as revealed by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh way back in January 2005, in an article in The New Yorker dismissed by the US Department of Defense as “rumor, innuendo and assertions”?

“The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia… The President’s decision enables [Secretary of Defense] Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A…. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities… In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “

US Air Force F15 Strike Eagle (IMAGE: Kaddy, flickr.com)

How has the leadership of Iran reacted to the provocation of US war-planes running “simulated nuclear weapons-delivery missions” within range of its radar-space, as reported in Hersh’s more recent New Yorker piece of April 17 this year?

“‘Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran, are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions — rapid ascending maneuvers known as “over the shoulder” bombing — since last summer… within range of Iranian coastal radars.”

“A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was ‘absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb’ if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do ‘what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,’ and ‘that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.’ One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’” [my italics]

“’This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war,’ he said. The danger, he said, was that ‘it also reinforces the belief inside Iran that the only way to defend the country is to have a nuclear capability’…

The adviser added, however, that the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons in such situations has gained support from the Defense Science Board, an advisory panel whose members are selected by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “They’re telling the Pentagon that we can build the B61 with more blast and less radiation,” he said.

The chairman of the Defense Science Board is William Schneider, Jr., an Under-Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration. In January, 2001, as President Bush prepared to take office, Schneider served on an ad-hoc panel on nuclear forces sponsored by the National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. The panel’s report recommended treating tactical nuclear weapons as an essential part of the U.S. arsenal and noted their suitability “for those occasions when the certain and prompt destruction of high priority targets is essential and beyond the promise of conventional weapons.” Several signers of the report are now prominent members of the Bush Administration, including Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

“Early last summer [of 2004], Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved a top secret “Interim Global Strike Alert Order” directing the military to assume and maintain readiness to attack hostile countries that are developing weapons of mass destruction, specifically Iran and North Korea.

Two months later, Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force, told a reporter that his fleet of B-2 and B-52 bombers had changed its way of operating so that it could be ready to carry out such missions. ‘We’re now at the point where we are essentially on alert,’ Carlson said in an interview with the Shreveport (La.) Times. ‘We have the capacity to plan and execute global strikes.’ Carlson said his forces were the U.S. Strategic Command’s “focal point for global strike” and could execute an attack “in half a day or less.”

USAF B-52 Stratofortress Bomber (IMAGE: US Air Force, af.mil, wikipedia.org)

USAF B-2 'Spirit' Bomber (IMAGE: US Air Force, af.mil, wikipedia.org)

In the secret world of military planning, global strike has become the term of art to describe a specific preemptive attack. When military officials refer to global strike, they stress its conventional elements. Surprisingly, however, global strike also includes a nuclear option, which runs counter to traditional U.S. notions about the defensive role of nuclear weapons.

The official U.S. position on the use of nuclear weapons has not changed. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has taken steps to de-emphasize the importance of its nuclear arsenal… But a confluence of events, beginning with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the president’s forthright commitment to the idea of preemptive action to prevent future attacks, has set in motion a process that has led to a fundamental change in how the U.S. military might respond to certain possible threats. Understanding how we got to this point, and what it might mean for U.S. policy, is particularly important now — with the renewed focus last week on Iran’s nuclear intentions and on speculation that North Korea is ready to conduct its first test of a nuclear weapon.

Emblem of US STRATCOM (wikipedia.org)

Global strike has become one of the core missions for the Omaha-based Strategic Command, or Stratcom. Once, Stratcom oversaw only the nation’s nuclear forces; now it has responsibility for overseeing a global strike plan with both conventional and nuclear options. President Bush spelled out the definition of “full-spectrum” global strike in a January 2003 classified directive, describing it as “a capability to deliver rapid, extended range, precision kinetic (nuclear and conventional) and non-kinetic (elements of space and information operations) effects in support of theater and national objectives.”

This blurring of the nuclear/conventional line, wittingly or unwittingly, could heighten the risk that the nuclear option will be used. Exhibit A may be the Stratcom contingency plan for dealing with “imminent” threats from countries such as North Korea or Iran, formally known as CONPLAN 8022-02.

CONPLAN 8022 is different from other war plans in that it posits a small-scale operation and no “boots on the ground.” The typical war plan encompasses an amalgam of forces — air, ground, sea — and takes into account the logistics and political dimensions needed to sustain those forces in protracted operations. All these elements generally require significant lead time to be effective. (Existing Pentagon war plans, developed for specific regions or ‘theaters,’ are essentially defensive responses to invasions or attacks. The global strike plan is offensive, triggered by the perception of an imminent threat and carried out by presidential order.)”

“The enlargement of NATO that began in the 1990s has led to a new system of counter-balancing alliances in Central Asia involving Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgztan in a new organization called the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Recently, CSTO conducted joint military exercises at the same time that Iran staged the largest war games in her history. These collateral military operations between CSTO and Iran were stage-setting defensive manoeuvres in advance of the anticipated American attack against Iran so stridently threatened by the Bush-Cheney White House.”

Seal of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (wikipedia.org)

The independent Quebec-based, non-profit research and media group, the Center for Research on Globalization, has published a table of reported military exercises conducted in the entire Middle East and Central Asian region since mid-August:

“unprecedented joint military exercises involving air, sea, and land forces, which military experts regarded as muscle-flexing by the two nations in order to undermine US influence in the Asia-Pacific region and Central Asia.”

“The only way we stop our governments from going to war is to speak up.” —Kigge Hvid

“How you stop gvernments going to war depends on what kind of government you have. If you have a dictatorship, you can’t stop it. If you have a democratic government, you can stop it by raising your voice, by voting, by protesting, by demonstrating.” —Ervin Laszlo

“There are democratically elected governments and there are governments which are imposed on societies. Concerning the democratically elected governments, the solution is very simple. You have to mobilise the society so they are not re-elected and you have to create an anti-war lobby which, every time when a government decides to go to war, mobilise the people to protest in the streets so that they exert pressure on their government to avoid going to war. And that’s totally feasable. Concerning the non-elected states, the dictatorships, it’s much more difficult as they are imposed on the society, as they are in power against the will of the society and as they wage wars against the will of the society and as they make politics against the will of the society. And that’s a more general combat as it is about fighting dictatorships and to overthrow altogether the autocratic states with a minimum of losses, which means with a minimum of violence.” —Sihem Bensedrine

“We have to organize, we have to educate, we have to persuade people that going to war is not the way of gaining the kind of security that we need.” —Jonathan Granoff

“This [question] needs to be answered practically at the grassroots. It needs to be pursued out on the streets, in independent groups, in places where people can get together and organize movements that show their discontent with policies of war and their opposition to the war machine.” —Sohrab Mahdavi

“By organizing protests in the streets, a protagonist society can and must force their government not to go to war. In order to prevent more wars, the United Nations has established the following law: Respect the national sovereignty and do not intervene in national state affairs. It is very important to strengthen the mandate of the UN in this respect. It is worthwhile to remember the Vietnam War… It was the united American nation itself which managed, by protesting in the streets, to re-establish peace.” —Martin Almada

“Change them… Whether it’s a virtual or real crowd or mob, a show of numbers in any way, shape or form, in opposition to a policy like that is all worth doing on every level… In the United States, the government does not represent the people of the United States. It represents corporate power of the United States. It represents business.” —Robbie Conal

“A country is a highly systemized machine, in which each person is a part. The key is how important you are as a part in this machine. You may slow down the machine, or even stop it from working, if you are important enough.” —Fang Lijun

“I notice that in America where I live that many kids who join the military say, ‘Well, I can’t afford to go to college. The military promises me a college education. That’s why I’m joining up.’ I think that’s disgraceful… It’s a practice that has got to end. Maybe there’s an inner reason too… when we really collectively become more peaceful within ourselves. Enough people, a critical mass of people achieving their inner peace, maybe that will create the possibility for outer peace. Do we get the governments we deserve? Probably.” —Brian J. Weller

“Suppose the government declares war, but nobody goes? Really, just suppose, what would happen then?” —Sanar Yurdatapan

“Wars are traditionally fought by the poor and the uneducated. When you start having the rich and the educated dying in the wars, somehow that seems to be one of the greatest deterrents. I would like to see the Bush twins in Iraq right now and then maybe we will be pulling out our troops a lot sooner.” —Eliot Weinberger

“We can stop our governments from going to war if we can plan for peace in the way we plan for war. We should never forget that there is an organic relation between war and the economics of the country that produces weapons.” —Kamal Boullata

“The political process has lost touch with the reality that the fact of war is only about economics… If you look at World War I, World War II, the military-industrial complex drove most of those wars and in fact immensely profited from them. Now because of the fragmentation that’s going on, the nation-state as we know it is actually an extension of the military-industrial complex. So I tend to think that you need to divorce and fragment things even more, so that the ideology that is linked to the military-industrial complex has to derive its economic gain from other processes. If people can make money selling slurpee, they will. If they can make money selling bullets, they will. The margins are very thin with normal economic processes, but the margin of profit with war is immense because people die and they are output of the system. In economics, they’re just called an opportunity cost, something that not only responds to and has a derivative effect but also has to absorb the economic impact of its action. So it’s a sad situation to say that war is a part of that machine, but at the end of the day the machine can be reprogrammed.” —DJ Spooky

“War and peace is too important to be left to politicians. It should be in the hands, in the minds of the public.” —Sulak Sivaraksa

“Johannes Rau, the former German President, once said: ‘Peace is the case of emergency, not war. War is not the case of emergency, it is simply a catastrophe.‘ This means that it is too late when a war has already begun and then there is no answer any longer. In times of peace we have to take care that no conditions arise which might lead to an escalation, which might lead to a war. We need a totally new approach for this. We should suggest having a new kind of department replacing the department of defense in the individual states: a department for non-violent solution of conflicts. We should train young people how to avoid conflicts… That is what we need. If we are able to send human beings to the moon, we should also be able to solve conflicts in a peaceful way. We know how to do this.” —Hans-Peter Dürr

“Well, I think the first thing we have to do is to try to convince fellow citizens that they can easily be duped by elected officials based on appeals of fear to justify war. The United States just recently went to war based on lies, not just bad evidence. For the set of elites in Washington were intent on going to war and finding any justification they could. I think fellow citizens around the world have to attempt to be truthful with themselves and fellow citizens and fellow human beings around the globe and say that we can, in fact, have a public conversation, shape the climate of opinion in such a way that diplomacy, that negotiation constitutes the primary means by which we wrestle with conflict; and when there is very, very special conditions under which war must take place, it must remain under intense scrutiny with the free press to raise questions to political elites, with fellow citizens raising their voices to constitute conversations — public dialogs — that have questions and interrogate the great process by which we go to war and the conditions under which we remain at war. This has to do with the kind of democratic awakening that is required around the world to attempt to trump any possibility of war.” —Cornel West

“States that use violence should be outlawed by other states.” —Roland Berger

“The only way to keep government from starting or continuing a war is to control your own government and to have a government which is democratically elected, to make government serve people. Then if trouble occurs, it is possible to demand that the government should resign. If an unnecessary war is started — and usually every war is unnecessary, in a hundred cases out of a hundred — the government should resign, elections of new authorities would be called, and new government would be elected. —Irina Yasina

“The best method all women of the world can use is that they shouldn’t give away their children for some purpose which makes soldiers and killers of them. Common endeavors of all women around the world to interdict states starting wars and to interdict states that make men into murdering soldiers could be a good way to stop wars.” —Valentina Melnikova

“A woman, whether she’s from north, south, west and east, will not go on the frontline to kill, because she will remember her own children. Men do… At the minimum, if we did have at least 50 percent of all the governments composed of women, I am convinced — and I would want to be held accountable if this does not happen — that we are going to have no war. Governments full of women cannot war. We must bring women into the positions of power, to determine the priorities of where development should go. And I insist that women must be in the political spaces so that the war can stop.” —Esther Mwauru-Muiru

“How can we stop our government? By having a true representative government.” —Benjamin Fahrer

“First of all, let’s not give up. We saw massive peace demonstrations before the last wars. We saw that in many countries the majority of people were opposed to the Iraq war. And yet, governments went ahead and supported it. This doesn’t mean that that will be the situation forever. The growth in solidarity across the divide — between east and west, north and south — was truly astounding. And it was very, very inspiring to see something of the order of 30 million people marching against the last Iraq war across the world. The idea of linking these demonstrations so that they all happened on the same day was also very wise and very strategic. We mustn’t give up hope. Ultimately the numbers are on our side.” —Helena Norberg-Hodge

“I think when your country enters into war, resistance doesn’t stop right at the point of ‘we failed, they’ve already invaded.’ At all levels there must be resistance.” —Thenmozhi Soundararajan

“We cannot bend the powers above, we cannot fight directly our government, so our job is to change the forces of the underground. To tremble in them, to work on the unconscious of people, to tell them ‘we are different.’ We cannot stop the guns with our bodies, but we still should put our bodies in front of the guns.” —Udi Aloni

“Not putting our heads in the sand when we see the ramp-up to going to war. Expose the lies and expose the injustice. Tell the story. Be more outreached citizens… We’ve lost our connection to our responsibility for what our governments do… We move into a denial of what’s happening and how it will affect us. We all think that we can continue to live our safe and happy lives while war is erupting all around us and that the effects of war don’t last for generation after generation. Wars are funded with our taxes… How little we as citizens are willing to engage with or participate in that process. And in that non-participation we’re culpable but we do not tell that story. We do not want to be confronted with that story. Until citizens of nations that are powerful — that can wage war with the drop of a hat, that do steal our money from taxes — rise up and take responsibility, wars will continue.” —Jodie Evans

“If everyone would stop paying taxes they [governments] would not have the money to wage war.” —thedoc

“How do we stop our governments from going to war? There is only one way, or two ways. By disobedience and by strike.” —Tamas St. Auby

“Overthrow the governments. They are not our governments. In many countries our goverments don’t represent the men, the women, the children, the elderly and the teenagers. Those are imposed governments that came out of deceitful election campaigns. They are mafias that have nothing at all to do with the feelings and desires of the peoples. Hence, they are not our governments…. Therefore, what we have to do to ensure that those governments don’t start a war is to overthrow the governments, create a new kind of democracy where the governments are of the people and not of a few entrepreneurs and politicians who talk and decide in our name.” —Oscar Olivera

“As long as you recognize a government as your own and you are yourself a creature of violence, you’re a creature that deems itself fit to stand on the shoulders of others, that deems itself fit to bathe in other people’s blood, there is no stopping of government from going to war. The only way to stop that government from going to war is a total destruction of that government, the total absolute overhaul of structures that make it possible to have governments that are in a position to wage war in the first place. If a government is emasculated, if a government has its knees cut out from underneath it, if it is unable to engage in acts of aggression against others, then there is no need to stop it from going to war because it will be unable to go to war.” —Lesego Rampolokeng

“If we are intolerant, self-righteous, convinced of our unique position in the world, the governments created in our image will be governments that go to war, governments believing in the just application of their self-interest by utilizing whatever element of power and violence they have under their control. We are our governments. At least we can be our governments. We are the ones that must determine how our governments behave… The power of the weaponry and the sophistication of the techniques of application of violence have increased so much that we have in Iraq, that we have potentially battles in Iran, we have in Lebanon, we have these disasters in which, in a very short period of time, a massive amount of destructive power can be brought to bear. The governments doing this must be replaced. The leaders individually responsible for these actions must be held to justice. We have seen a wonderful trend in the past 20 years with General Pinochet and a number of others whose actions led to genocide, led to disappearances, led to death, being brought before world courts of justice. So, we must move to a world in which every leader is held accountable in the same way, with a feeling that their actions will be judged.” —John Gage

“The governments need us to go to war for them. The only way we can stop them from going to war is by refusing to go for them… War, and the instrument of war, is a necessary ancillary to individuals who have indeed lost the ability to negotiate… We go to war: you, me, us. Governments don’t go to war. Governments send us to war. We pay the price. And the price that we pay is not only physical. The price that we pay is psychic. We lose our moral groundedness. We lose ourselves. That’s who goes to war. So we should decide not to do this. That’s the only way that we can change it. And we should also understand by not going, we may have to pay a price for not doing that. But if you go to war you lose yourself anyway. So you might as well lose it for a reasonable, a higher purpose.” —Andries Botha

“The fight for peace must grow and become more militant but without using violence. Just like Jesus, Gandhi and Einstein understood it and like they fought for it. We have to wage peace on the violent and profit-seeking powers on Earth, just like they waged war on our peace… If we were ten or one hundred people we could stop a soldier killing someone. And if we were one thousand or one hundred thousand people we could force a plane with bombs not to take off. We always have to believe that we are the majority.” —Galsan Tschinag

“The first thing is not to use violence against your government but to demonstrate and to oppose… If you have a brother who’s a soldier, you have a sister who’s a soldier, talk to them… Convince them. Maybe try to block the roads that are used to drive the war-machines… Take it personal. Be courageous. And show your government that the war is not needed… Try everything you can.” —China Keitetsi

“The only way out is the people’s power. The people who don’t believe in war have to speak out firmly, strongly. They have to come together from all parts of the world. Today, luckily, we are living in the era of globalization of knowledge and information. We have huge information technology and powerful communication systems. So, we must make use of that. It’s always easy to preach something. But, when it comes to act, the people are not really proactive in most cases. So one has to be proactive to oppose war. And we have to build a worldwide momentum against war.” —Kailash Satyarthi

“We have taken away the credibility from the Bush administrations by denouncing its actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq. But we do know that war has become a way of oiling the wheels of this economic system, which the invasion of Iraq is really about — the interests of the Bush administration. And I feel one way to deal with it is also through a preemptive strike. No, I am not talking about Bush’s idea of a preemptive strike; but if it is the way to grease the wheels of an economic system, what if each one of us refuse to go to work that day? What if we bring the economy to a standstill? What if teachers say we will not be teaching in the classrooms, but we will be out in the streets with our children, with the school students? That can say no to this war. What if people who run the railways say, ‘Well, no train is going to move which is going to allow further movement of goods?’ What if the truckers say that no truck is going to cross the border till this war stops? What if our soldiers walk away saying, ‘We will not fight this unjust war’. So I feel like what we have to do is launch a preemptive strike around the world when the powers and the superpowers decide that they want to go and launch war so that they can continue to build their empires further.” —Anuradha Mittal

“In the end, I suppose, it is up to all of us to do what we can to try to stop our governments from going to war… In the end it means that there’s a responsibility that falls on all of us. And we all need to do our bit.” —Simon Retallack

What are you prepared to do to avert the prospect of a region-wide nuclear war in the Middle East and central Asia in the near-future?

In the face of impending World War, how can concerned global citizens organize a pre-emptive global STRIKE to bring the world economy to a standstill?