A Thought Experiment: Iran

By Gonzalo Lira

A whole bunch of American ships are headed to Iran, including one aircraft carrier. Some claim this deployment is “normal”, while others think it might be the first move in a U.S. offensive against Iran, either actual or diplomatic.

From the Iranians’ point of view, there’s only one way to look at this deployment: As another provocation.

American leadership—educated at the best schools and colleges, multi-cultural up the wazoo—don’t have a clue why Iranians feel besieged. They have no idea why Iran acts the way it does. They don’t even realize that they don’t understand Iran’s motivations.

There has been a complete lack of imagination, in America’s dealings with Iran—and that failure of imagination is why things are so f***ed up in the Middle East. (Is there any other way to characterize the whole mess? False politesse does not capture the sheer f***ed-up-edness of the situation.)

Iran: The failure of imagination has been Iran.

So perhaps a thought experiment is in order—for once, let’s try looking at the world from the Iranians’ point of view:

To begin: Let’s imagine some obscure Brazilian terrorist attacks China, way on the other side of the earth, literally. This Brazilian and his minions blow up the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, in one fairly spectacular terrorist attack.

We’re in America—this shouldn’t involve us. But as a consequence of these terrorist attacks, the Chinese—screaming for vengeance—deploy their sophisticated weapons and their millions of soldiers, and invade Canada. Supposedly, this Brazilian terrorist who attacked China is hiding out in the Great White North—which is why the Chinese are invading Canada.

We Americans express genuine sympathy for the Chinese’ loss. We decide to actually help the Chinese find the Brazilian terrorist! We even decide to help the Chinese with their conquest of Canada! That’s how much we repudiate this cowardly terrorist attack.

But then, out of the blue, the Chinese leader—in a carefully choreographed official speech—declares our country part of an “axis of evil”. And with no provocation on our part—indeed, after we have helped the Chinese conquer Canada—they vow to wipe us out at the slightest provocation, presumably with nuclear weapons.
Then, the Chinese start to claim that Mexico, of all countries, was involved in the terrorist attacks against China. Nevermind that the Mexican leadership hates and fears the Brazilian terrorist. Nevermind that the Brazilian is an ultra-Catholic, who hates and distrusts the Mexican leadership for being born-again Baptists. Nevermind that there’s no rhyme or reason for this alleged collusion.

The Chinese use trumped up and extraordinarily dubious “evidence” to back up this claim of collusion—they even claim that the Mexicans are developing WMD’s that they intend to use on China, which stirs the Chinese populace into a frenzy.

Then, the Chinese illegally invade Mexico, and outright occupy the country.

Our nation now finds itself besieged: There are a hundred-thousand odd Chinese troops in Canada to the north, and another couple of hundred thousand odd Chinese troops in Mexico to the south—all of them armed to the teeth. And back in China, they’re hysterically screaming for “regime change in America”.

We in America know what the Chinese really want—they want our food. We’re the world’s breadbasket. And while China has plenty of food, they want more. They are unwilling to make their citizens pay fair market prices for food—so they want to capture our food, so they can feed their citizens at our expense.

Meanwhile, Venezuela—a country one tenth the size of the U.S. in terms of territory and population—is hell-bent on regional hegemony. Venezuela consistently antagonizes and provokes the U.S. with their undeclared nuclear weapons.

But what can we do? The Chinese support Venezuela with weapons, billions of dollars in aid money, and the full weight of their political and military power. Venezuela provokes us constantly, to the point of stationing three of their submarines—loaded with nuclear missiles—not fifty miles off America’s East Coast. In easy striking distance of America’s major cities.

Meanwhile, back in China, the woman who is the current Foreign Secretary not only openly hates us, she once said that even a minor skirmish with Venezuela would result in the U.S. being “wiped off the face of the map”—meaning, presumably, a nuclear response.

We have no nuclear weapons. But we do have a whole lot of hate for both China and Venezuela—justifiable hatred.

America’s history (in this thought experiment) is inextricably tied to China’s foreign policy. Back in 1953, China forcibly overthrew the democratically elected government of Dwight Eisenhower, in a covert operation known as Operation Ajax.

Then, China installed their puppet-dictator, Richard Nixon, who ruled for 25 years with an iron fist, using the SAVAK—Nixon’s feared secret police, trained by Venezuela’s Mossad security agency, and China’s own CIA.

China and Venezuela kept the puppet-dictator Nixon in power for 25 years, using SAVAK to kidnap, torture and kill American freedom-fighters. Great American men and women were lost. People like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, Gloria Steinem, David Halberstam, Woodward & Bernstein, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Paul Newman, Francis Ford Coppola, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Naom Chomsky, Jonas Salk, Harper Lee, even poor Rosa Parks and countless others were all tortured and/or killed by SAVAK, often with the assistance of Venezuela’s Mossad and China’s CIA.

While the flower of America was being tortured and killed, America’s breadbasket was being raped by Chinese and Venezuelean interests—from 1953 to 1979, they took our food and didn’t pay a dime for it. Or else they “paid” for it by giving their puppet-dictator credit to buy Chinese weapons—weapons which their puppet-dictator then used against American citizens!

Finally, we Americans—after tremendous struggles—managed to overthrow the Chinese puppet-dictator in 1979. (And where did the murderous bastard seek asylum? His patron-state, of course—do we need any more evidence that he was their marionette?)

China declared us a “rogue nation” after we overthrew the dictator who had repressed us so horribly. Since then, 30 years later, the Chinese have been consistently trying to undermine our economy with sanctions and United Nations embargoes.

They’ve succeeded, too—our economy is not a fraction of what it could have been, had the Chinese not had this vendetta against us. They choke our economy, while threatening us with their overwhelming military power, and goad us with the Venezueleans just to annoy and humiliate us.

All because of our resources—the Chinese are so insane to possess what is ours that they will do whatever is necessary to take it away. That is why they hate us. That is why they have interfered unforgivably in our history. That is why they want to destroy our country, and turn it into their “protectorate”—so they can once again rape our land, and take away what belongs to us, and to our children.

They openly say that they want a “Chinese-friendly regime change”. They say they want “moderate Americans” to control our country—but the people they refer to as “moderates” are people who worked for the bloody dictator we overthrew. Our current leaders—members of the America-First/America-Free party, good Mormons one and all—sometimes are over-the-top, no one will deny it: Sometimes they say stupid things. But we trust them. We know they are our representatives—not Chinese puppets, like Nixon and his goons.

The Chinese claim that they invaded Canada and Mexico in order to find this Brazilian terrorist—but with all their power, they still haven’t found him after almost ten years. Was there ever a terrorist? Or was it a false-flag operation? Did the Chinese themselves blow up the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, in order to have an excuse to invade the North American continent? Some of their own people publicly believe that the Chinese government staged the terrorist attacks as an excuse to invade the region—that should tell us something.

The Chinese plan to invade and/or destroy us—that is obvious. So we won’t give them the chance: Instead, we’ll help the Mexican and Canadian insurgents. We’ll give them weapons and money, so we can buy time. Soon, our scientists will develop nuclear weapons of our own: Then neither the Chinese nor the despicable Venezueleans will ever again hold their nuclear sword to our throats with impunity. Soon, we will be able to strike back—and if they provoke us, we will strike back. Even if it means our own destruction.

After all, it’s a thousand times better to die free than to live on your knees. Living under the Chinese-controlled puppet-dictatorship taught us that. We won’t let it happen again.

Here ends the thought experiment—but not the questions.

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First of all, the more you think through America’s provocations and interference in Iran’s history, the more you can’t help but be impressed by Iran’s self-control. They’ve played their cards much better than either the U.S. or Israel.

Precisely because of all the foolish, pointless tauntings and provocations by the U.S. and Israel, I think it’s likely that—regardless of what they say—Iran is very busy trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

Israel’s and the U.S.’s nuclear taunting guarantees that the only thing that will give Iran’s people and leadership peace of mind is a few dozen nuclear-tipped rockets. And they will in all likelihood acquire them—one way or another. Fear will drive them.

For now, Iran’s strategy of quietly but steadily fomenting insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine is the only sensible approach Iran can take. It has to keep America pinned down in those two quagmires while it develops nuclear weapons.

Because that’s Iran’s ultimate goal—obviously: From the point of view of Iran’s leadership, any other strategy would be irresponsible and foolish. The Iranian leadership want to protect their population from both the U.S. and Israel. From Iran’s point of view, only the acquisition of nukes guarantees their safety.

However, a nuclear Iran isn’t a disaster—on the contrary: My own sense is, if and when Iran actually acquires nuclear weapons, regional tension will paradoxically ease—think India/Pakistan. And Iran is a far more stable country than Pakistan, with none of the territorial ambitions or frictions.

If and when Iran acquires nukes, the U.S. will realize it can’t f*** with Iran anymore—it has to negotiate. The same conclusion will be arrived at in Tel Aviv.

The danger zone, I think, will be that uncertain period before Iran for-sure has nuclear weapons—in other words, the period we are living in now.

It is conceivable that Israel will stupidly launch a pre-emptive strike, in a misguided attempt to “protect Israel” from Iran acquiring nukes. In fact, I would argue that this is a very possible outcome. This pre-emptive strike will bring about a nuclear retaliation by Iran—they’ll simply buy a few from Russia (which would be happy to sell them, if Israel starts launching nukes helter-skelter), and that will be that for Israel. Israel is smaller, and more concentrated. In any nuclear war, Israel will lose.

Now is the danger-time. And it will be the Americans and the Israelis—not the Iranians—who will pull the trigger on the regional suicide.

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