As alliances shift, Iran wins. Again

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"The George W Bush administration promoted a Turkey-Israel axis, a Sunni Arab "axis of fear" and then a Saudi-Israeli nexus, always trying to isolate Iran. None of these concoctions has worked, and there are even hints that Washington and Tehran have concluded a secret deal brokered by Saudi Arabia to hammer out contentious issues. This might be fanciful, but the bottom line is that Iran sees itself as the ultimate victor of the US war on Iraq....

These two overlapping developments have alarmed Israeli intelligence - which believes that Washington and Tehran have concluded a secret deal brokered by Saudi Arabia. That's what's being spun, for instance, by the Debka website - which is basically an Israeli military intelligence outlet.....

According to a frightened Debka, Israel's "special relationship with the United States has collapsed amid its worst foreign policy debacle in decades. The Olmert government is paying the price for the military and diplomatic mismanagement of the war against Lebanon's Hezbollah of 2006".....

The Israeli right clearly knows what Asia Times Online has revealed - that Bush approved a dirty Palestinian civil war, a lethal mix of the Bay of Pigs and Iran-Contra supposedly to be implemented by the State Deptartment to overthrow Hamas shortly after Hamas won the free and fair January 2006 parliamentary election in Palestine. (See Document details 'US' plan to sink Hamas May 16, 2007 and No-goodniks and the Palestinian shootout January 9, 2007.)....

Hanif Ghaffari, writing in the Farsi-language, conservative Iranian daily Resalat, has pointed out how the recent, very successful Ahmadinejad trip to Iraq had to be considered in the context of "Iran after the Iraq war" and "Iraq after occupation by America". The message could not be more graphic. When Bush went to Iraq he saw an ultra-fortified military base, and that was it. Ahmadinejad went everywhere in broad daylight, welcomed like a brother. This is how Tehran sees itself - as the ultimate victor of the US war on Iraq. And no "surge" or spin - not to mention Israeli paranoia - can or will make it go away. "