The Coming Attack On Iran

Note: This essay was originally written and published on Global Research in 2013. Over a decade later, from the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPoA to escalating sanctions, covert operations, and open military aggression, events have unfolded exactly along the lines analyzed here. The myth of Iran’s “nuclear threat” has continued to serve as a pretext for imperial aggression, while the real issue—control over resources, regional power, and resistance to U.S. hegemony—has only become more pronounced. This essay stands not as a relic, but as a confirmed diagnosis of an ongoing imperial project.

By Prince Kapone

| June, 2013

According to Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (N.P.T.), all signatory member nations possess the “inalienable right” to “develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.” As a signatory nation, the Islamic Republic of Iran is entitled to this most basic right, just like any other nation. However, the U.S. and its allies are seeking to infringe upon and limit Iran’s right to produce nuclear energy for civilian purposes, asserting that the Iranian government is using its civilian nuclear program as a smokescreen for an alleged covert nuclear weapons program. These assertions are backed by no credible evidence, just the assurances of the U.S. and Israeli governments respectively. It is further insinuated that once Iran develops nuclear weapons, it will certainly use them to “wipe Israel off the map of nations.”

Despite the belligerent public tone of the U.S. government, however, its intelligence community has consistently reported to Congress that Iran’s military strategy is strictly geared towards “deterrence, asymmetric retaliation, and attrition warfare” (emphasis mine). Even the US National Intelligence Director, James Clapper, recently admitted to Congress that “we do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons” and implicitly confirmed that Iran is not presently seeking to do so. In spite of all this, President Obama maintains that “all options are on the table” to thwart Iran’s nuclear program, including a potential military strike. As we shall see, the U.S. is merely using Iran’s nuclear program as a pretext to justify further military intervention in the region as part of a larger plan to redesign the geopolitical landscape of West Asia in order to secure the continued global hegemony of the U.S. empire.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. remained standing as the world’s lone superpower. In 1991, President Bush declared the establishment of a “New World Order”, that is, a unipolar global system completely subjected to the imperial dictates of the United States and it’s junior partners. Foreign policy experts and government policy think tanks immediately began mapping out blueprints for a new century of what can be called trilateral imperialism, a concept aligned with the work of the Trilateral Commission and theorized by Samir Amin.

To this end, the Bush I administration called for “the integration of the leading democracies into a U.S-led system of collective security, and the prospects of expanding that system, (to) significantly enhance our international position and provide a crucial legacy for future peace,” as outlined in Dick Cheney’s Regional Defense Strategy. Within this collective framework, the U.S. would act to “preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the United States and our allies.” In other words, the imperialist West should unite under the leadership of the United States to dominate and exploit the resources of the Global South (cheap labor, oil, cobalt, etc.), while preventing any other power from emerging which could disrupt this neocolonial relationship.

At the time, Russia was understood within U.S. strategic circles as the only military force capable of potentially deterring American imperial expansion. Thus, during the late 1990s, Council on Foreign Relations member and Clinton foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski argued that a “decentralized Russia” would be “less susceptible to imperial mobilization,” and that a “loosely confederated Russia” would be easier to integrate into a U.S.-dominated Eurasian order. In other words, weakening Russia internally was key to extending U.S. domination over the Caucasus and Central Asia—regions long identified as decisive in the struggle for control over Eurasia. The NATO-led “humanitarian intervention” in the former Yugoslavia must be understood in this light.

West Asia has long been assigned a narrow role within the imperialist world system because of its vast oil and gas reserves, which Washington has treated as resources to be secured and managed in accordance with U.S. interests. In NSC 5428, “United States Objectives and Policies With Respect to the Near East”, the U.S. government described the region as containing “the greatest petroleum resources in the world” and warned that American security would be “critically endangered” if it did not remain under Western influence and control. More broadly, postwar U.S. policy sought to maintain an “open door” for Western access to West Asian energy, deny control of these resources to rival powers, and contain the rise of nationalist regimes advocating economic independence and resource sovereignty—policies viewed as threatening precisely because they aimed to direct oil wealth toward domestic development and the improvement of popular living standards rather than integration into a Western-dominated system.

In the bipolar world of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was able to counter U.S. ambitions in Western Asia, supporting various secular nationalist regimes relatively hostile towards U.S. imperialism. After the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent isolation of Russia however, the U.S. was in a position to fundamentally alter the political map of West Asia so as to “ensure that the enormous profits of the energy system flow primarily to the United States, its British client, and their energy corporations, not to the people of the region” or potential rival powers. It is in this light that we must view the recent wave of “humanitarian interventions” conducted by the U.S. and NATO in Western Asia and North Africa, as well as the current confrontation with Iran.

In 2000, the Project for a New American Century published a report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century”, which was extended and adopted as official national security policy in 2005. Drawing on the themes of the first Bush administration and Brzezinski, the report recommends that U.S. military forces become “strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.” As noted above, there was nothing new in this goal of American hegemony per se, but what was new was the emphasis placed on “transforming” the political landscape of Western Asia.

Using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a pretext for this grand imperial project, the Bush administration outlined a list of seven “rogue states” targeted for regime change, a plan publicly exposed by General Wesley Clark in 2007. Those seven countries were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. Of course, Iraq was invaded, occupied and democratized by the U.S. in 2003. The threat of Hezbollah in Lebanon has been satisfactorily neutralized as a result of Israel’s 2006 invasion, the Jamahariya government of Libya was utterly destroyed by NATO and Al Qaeda in 2011, the Assad regime of Syria is on the verge of collapse today as it is under attack from NATO and its Islamic mercenary forces, while there are ongoing covert military operations being conducted against Somalia and the Sudan. Only Iran remains intact as a nation-state out of the seven countries targeted by the U.S. for regime change.

The current U.S. propaganda campaign would have us believe that the U.S. is targeting Iran because it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons with which it will destroy Israel. As we have seen however, U.S. intelligence – that is, the agencies responsible for obtaining such information – does not have strong evidence to prove that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Further, in its assessment, Iran’s military strategy is not geared towards aggression or the offensive, but strictly deterrence and defense. Therefore, there must be some other reasons why the U.S. is gearing up for war against Iran.

In light of U.S. policy objectives to dominate global oil supplies and to subvert or overthrow “nationalist regimes” that seek to use their natural resources to benefit their domestic populations or to promote independent development, it should be fairly obvious that Iran is a target because its oil is nationalized and it pursues a program of independent development. Indeed, when Iran first nationalized its oil in 1953 under Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, the CIA and British MI6 quickly organized a coup d’état to overthrow Mosaddegh and reprivatize Iranian oil, as further documented in historical analyses of Operation Ajax. The oil industry wasn’t nationalized again until the 1979 Islamic revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, which quickly set Iran on a path of independent nationalist development.

Also of grave concern to the U.S is Iran’s growing commercial and economic relations with Russia and China. Iran exports 22% of its oil exports to China, as reflected in data showing that China accounts for a major and growing share of Iran’s oil exports, while it has cultivated a strong economic relationship with Russia on various fronts, especially in military equipment and nuclear infrastructure. The Iranian government’s independence from Washington has afforded Russia and China a foot in the door of West Asia, which hinders the ability of the U.S. to completely dominate the region and prevent the rise of potential rival hegemons in the world system, perhaps the greatest threat posed by Iran.

Iran itself is deemed as a threat to U.S. interests in West Asia, as it is devoted to “countering U.S. influence” and becoming a regional hegemon. To this end, Iran has been fostering political, economic and security ties with other actors in the region, appealing to Islamic solidarity and resistance to imperialism. Iran has become influential in both Iraq and Afghanistan, undermining U.S. objectives in those countries, and has maintained its support for the Assad regime in Syria, thwarting NATO’s efforts there. All of these factors make Iran a formidable obstacle to U.S. objectives in Western Asia, halting Washington’s ability to totally redesign the political landscape of the region.

Iran also gives financial and military support to various politico-military organizations in the region. As the U.S. considers many of these organizations “terrorists”, Iran is then a “state sponsor of terrorism” for supporting them. Most of its support is channeled to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Both of these groups are opposed to the Zionist colonization of Palestine and to U.S. imperialism in the region more generally. Through Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran is able to exert its influence throughout Western Asia, creating political “destabilization” in Lebanon and Palestine. The continued existence of such armed groups is considered a threat to U.S. objectives in the region and is another main reason why the U.S. is seeking to attack Iran.

When we place the current threats towards Iran in their proper geopolitical and historical context, it becomes clear that Iran’s nuclear program is not the real reason why the U.S. is gearing up to attack it. In fact, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the alleged threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program is merely a propaganda fabrication designed to garner popular support for the immanent invasion of Iran, similar to the lie that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. In truth, Iran was targeted for regime change at least ten years ago, but because of its resistance to the “Washington Consensus,” its economic nationalism, its growing commercial and economic ties to Russia and China, its potential to become a regional hegemon, and its support of politico-military organizations opposed to the U.S. and Israel, not because of its nuclear program.

The drums of war are now beating in America as Washington prepares to launch the final phase of its grand strategy to remake the Middle East. This plan is merely one component of a much larger plan to maintain the world system of trilateral imperialism. In order to maintain the global supremacy of the West, the U.S. and its junior partners are determined to prevent the rise of Russia and China to hegemonic status. Thus, an attack on Iran will surely be viewed as an indirect attack on both Russia and China. A war on Iran may very well quickly escalate into a global military conflagration, consuming other states in the region, as well as Russia and China. To prevent such a scenario from unfolding, revolutionaries must dispel the propaganda about Iran’s nuclear program and expose the imperialist ambitions behind the U.S. government’s agenda to the American people.

Annotated Bibliography

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Article IV
https://www.un.org/en/conf/npt/2005/npttreaty.html
Establishes the legal foundation for Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. This document is critical in demonstrating that Iran’s nuclear program is not inherently illegitimate, and that U.S. opposition represents a political, not legal, position.

U.S. Department of Defense, “Iran Military Power” (2012)
https://www.iranwatch.org/sites/default/files/us-dod-iranmilitarypower-042012pdf.pdf
Provides official U.S. intelligence assessment of Iran’s military posture, emphasizing deterrence and asymmetric defense rather than offensive expansion. This undermines claims that Iran poses an imminent military threat.

George H.W. Bush, “New World Order” Speech (1991)
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-6-1991-address-joint-session-congress-end-gulf-war
Articulates the ideological framework of post-Cold War U.S. unipolar dominance. This speech marks the formal declaration of U.S. global supremacy following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Dick Cheney, “Defense Planning Guidance” (1992)
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA268979.pdf
Outlines U.S. strategy to prevent the emergence of any rival power. This document is central to understanding the long-term continuity of U.S. imperial policy in maintaining global hegemony.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A Geostrategy for Eurasia” (1997)
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/1997-09-01/geostrategy-eurasia
Lays out the strategic importance of Eurasia in global dominance and emphasizes the need to manage or weaken rival powers such as Russia. Provides ideological continuity for U.S. expansion into Central Asia and the Caucasus.

NSC 5428, “United States Objectives and Policies With Respect to the Near East” (1954)
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v09p1/d219
Explicitly identifies West Asia as strategically vital due to its petroleum resources. Demonstrates early U.S. commitment to controlling regional energy resources and suppressing independent nationalist development.

Defense Planning Guidance (1992–1999)
https://dn790001.ca.archive.org/0/items/DefensePlanningGuidanceFY1994-1999/Defense%20Planning%20Guidance%2C%20FY%201994-1999.pdf
Details U.S. strategy to maintain dominance in key geopolitical regions following the Cold War. Reinforces the doctrine of preventing rival powers from gaining influence in critical areas such as West Asia.

Project for a New American Century, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (2000)
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
A blueprint for maintaining U.S. military supremacy into the 21st century. Advocates military transformation and strategic dominance, particularly in regions critical to energy and geopolitical control.

Wesley Clark Interview (2007)
https://youtu.be/6Knt3rKTqCk?si=hfrZxwpat2z5zNz2
Reveals internal U.S. plans to target multiple countries in West Asia for regime change following 9/11. Serves as a rare public admission of strategic intent behind U.S. military interventions.

Monthly Review / Anti-Imperialist Analysis on Resource Control
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2348448918795778
Provides a theoretical framework linking imperialism to the suppression of nationalist regimes seeking control over natural resources. Supports the broader argument that Iran is targeted for its economic independence.

Libcom, “The Iranian Coup of 1953”
https://libcom.org/history/iranian-coup-1953
Documents the nationalization of Iranian oil and the subsequent CIA/MI6 coup. Illustrates how resource sovereignty directly triggered imperial intervention.

Iran Primer (USIP), Iran’s Support for Regional Actors
https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2014/apr/30/us-report-iran%E2%80%99s-support-extremism
Provides empirical data on Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas. Demonstrates how U.S. designation of “terrorism” is tied to geopolitical alignment rather than neutral criteria.

CSIS / Energy and Trade Analysis on Iran-China Relations
https://www.csis.org/analysis/crink-economic-ties-uneven-patterns-collaboration
Examines Iran’s growing economic ties with China, particularly in the energy sector. Highlights the emergence of alternative economic alignments outside U.S. control.

Science & Diplomacy, “Iran’s Flourishing Regional Influence” (2013)
https://www.sciencediplomacy.org/article/2013/irans-flourishing-regional-influence
Analyzes Iran’s expanding regional influence through political and security networks. Supports the argument that Iran acts as a counterweight to U.S. dominance in West Asia.