A Superb Analysis and Highly Recommended Readingby Mahdi Darius NazemroayaGlobal Research, January 17, 2008
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The Presidential Tour of George W. Bush to the Middle East: A New Cold War?......
The U.S. President’s tour is part of an exhorted effort to replace Israel with a vilified Iran as a looming threat to the Arab World. This undertaking which is part of America’s Project for a “New Middle East” was initiated after Israel’s war against Lebanon in July of 2006.
Balkanization and the Muslim Divide: Shiite Muslims versus Sunni Muslims......
Aside from fuelling ethnic tensions, such as those between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq, a sectarian divide is being deliberately cultivated within the ranks of the people of the Middle East which consider themselves Muslims. This divide is being fostered between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims.
These divisions have been fuelled by the U.S., British, and Israeli intelligence apparatus. The intelligence agencies of Arab regimes within the Anglo-American orbit have also been involved in the construction of these divisions. This divide is also being cultivated with the help of various groups and leaders in these respective communities......
The interests of many of the corrupt Arab elites, the self-proclaimed cream of the crop within the Arab World, and autocratic Arab authorities have historically convened and adhered to Anglo-American and Franco-German political and socio-economic interests.
The House of Saud, the Hariri clan of Lebanon, and the absolute rulers established throughout the Arab World all share common financial and economic links with the Project for the “New Middle East.” They have a vested interest in the promotion of the economic and political model that the U.S. wishes to entrench in the Middle East.
The “Shia Crescent” and the Phantom Iranian Conquest of the Middle East .....
Arab leaders also have an easier time controlling their populations when they are fighting amongst each other and diluted through divisions. Sectarian and ethnic division also create confusion within the various populations, distracts them from their problems at home, and projects their animosity towards their leaders on others. Fear or anger towards the “Other” or the “Outsider” has always been a form of manipulating large groups and whole segments of societies.
With the peoples of the region divided against each other, their resources can be controlled and they themselves governed and further manipulated with greater ease. This
has been part of the objective of British and American foreign policy all along.
In this effort, local rulers and foreign forces have been partners.......
“
The Coalition of the Moderate” in the Mid-East and the manipulation of the Arabs“We [Israel] must clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia so that it also persuades the U.S. to strike Iran.”
-Brigadier-General Oded Tira, Israeli Military.....
....Revealing the author, these were the words of a man who has been inscribed into the pages of history as a legendary figure and as a hero to the Arabs.
In reality he was an agent of British imperialism that misled the Arabs with the help of of corrupt local leaders. His name was Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence or, as most people know him, “Lawrence of Arabia.”
The 27 Articles of
T.E. Lawrence (August 20, 1917) is where these words can be found for all to scrutinize.
Thus started the road down to the modern entanglement of the Arab masses to colonial masters and handpicked Western vassals......
The Arab elites are being marshaled into formation yet again to do the dirty work of foreign powers. Once again, Arab leaders are also accessories to the agenda of foreigners in the Middle East against their own people. This has repeatedly been warned by uninhibited Arab analysts......
Israel is the socio-political model for the Middle East, whereas Dubai is the socio-economic model for the Middle East. Both models also bare staggering social ramifications.
The Israeli model, which is being moved forward is not based on any democratic values, quite the opposite.
It is predicated on ethnocentrism and discrimination. The Middle East is being reconfigured in Israel’s image as a region with homogenous states and this is evident in Iraq and a reason for the tensions being fanned by foreign influence in the multi-confessional Lebanese Republic. Just as Israel is considered the “Jewish State” the Project for the “New Middle East” wants to establish a whole series of single-identity states in the ancient region.
The socio-economic model of Dubai and the GCC is based on a
vertical mosaic.....
Israel, NATO, and the Arab Regimes: A Nexus against ResistanceThe House of Saud and Saudi Arabia have emerged as the main force in configuring a public embracement between Israel and the Arab World under the auspices of the 2002 Arab Initiative. [4]
This Saudi-proposed initiative is deeply tied to the Project for a “New Middle East” and allows Israel to integrate its economy with that of the Arab World and allows for the creation of an alliance between Israel and the Arab regimes against any forces in the Middle East resisting America, its allies, and more importantly their political and socio-economic model.....
Israel has always considered the leaders of Jordan as important assets and allies to pacify the Arabs. On April 18, 2007 King Abdullah II of Jordan reconfirmed this publicly known Israeli secret.
King Abdullah II told a visiting Israeli delegation that Jordan and Israel were allies, emphasizing that he not only spoke for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan but for Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Arab Sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf......
Turning the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf into NATO LakesNATO is expanding, but not only in Europe and the former Soviet Union. There have been longstanding plans to turn the Mediterranean into a
permanent “NATO lake” and an arena closely linked to the European Union. The Russian naval build-up in the Eastern Mediterranean and off the Syrian coast is a move to challenge this process....
The
expansion of a mandate for NATO in the Persian Gulf has been in motion for years and has followed behind NATO’s objectives in the Mediterranean Sea. NATO influence in the Persian Gulf effectively allows the area
to fall under the joint management of Franco-German and Anglo-American interests. It is
no coincidence that Nicholas Sarkozy started his presidential tour of the Middle East in the same window of time as the U.S. President nor is it a twist of fate that France and the U.A.E. signed an agreement on January 15, 2008 allowing France to establish a permanent military base in U.A.E. territory on the shores of the Persian Gulf.
The Real Divisions in the Middle East: Indigenous Forces versus Foreign ClientsIn
Palestine, during past demonstrations in 2006, the press reported that
small groups of Fatah supporters chanted “Shia, Shia, Shia” in mockery of Hamas because of its political links to Tehran, because Iran is a predominately Shiite Muslim country.[10] This was a dismal sign of the growing animosity that has been inseminated in the Middle East.
Yet, it also reflects that the divisions in the Middle East, such as the Shiite-Sunni divide, are manufactured and artificially engineered......
In reality, the regional differences in the Middle East are between the independent and indigenous forces, regardless of religion, politics, and/or ethnicity, in the region and the client forces and governments in the region that serve Anglo-American and Franco-German foreign policy and economic interests......
It is clear that
there is an agenda to redraw the borders of the Middle East in order to institute lasting economic policies that benefit Anglo-American and Franco-German interests, along with their Israeli bulldog in the Middle East.
The Syrians and the Iranians are well aware of the plans to divide their home region and to play the peoples of the Middle East against one another.
Tehran and Damascus too have been guilty of playing the same game for their own interests, but what America and its allies envision is a far broader partition and reconfiguration of the Middle East, which also places Syria and Iran in the sights of this historic struggle.
The question here is:
are these efforts to divide the Middle East (into “moderates” and “radicals”) part of a policy of containment, a war strategy, or something far more sinister?The intentions of people-based resistance movements like those of the Iraqi Resistance are simple and mostly clear,
but state-based resistance — if it can really be called that — is often ambivalent in its intent.
Are Iran and Syria genuinely resisting the “New Middle East” which in the end serves the Washington Consensus? The ongoing economic reforms including the privatization programs in both Iran and Syria suggest that these countries are not totally opposed to the dominant neo-liberal agenda, which characterises Washington’s expansionary policies. [16]
It is no sin to question motives, especially when circumstances call for it, but it is a sin and a crime to mislead the masses. As developments in the Middle East unfold, the political stance of Iran and Syria will become clearer."
