From left to right : Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati (President of the Assembly of Experts, the 86 religious sages who preside over Iran) ; Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani (Chief of the Islamic Judiciary) ; Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Supreme Leader of Iran) ; Cheikh Hassan Rohani (President of the Islamic Republic) ; Ali Larijani (brother of the Chief of the Islamic Judiciary and President of the National Assembly).

While the Pentagon is withdrawing from the « Greater Middle East » to invest in the « Caribbean Basin », the White House is getting ready to reorganise its allies in the region. To this aim, a « Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East » will be held in Warsaw on the 14 and 15 February. All the allies of the USA will be participating, but not their partners : neither Russia, nor China.

On 10 January, during a conference at the American University of Cairo, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo set the aims of the Ministerial :
 to oppose the « Iranian regime » and its representatives » ;
 to set up a strategic Judeo-Sunni Alliance against Chiite Iran [1].

The Return of Elliott Abrams

We can only be saddened at the confessionalisation of US foreign policy. It must be connected with the return of Elliott Abrams [2] to the State Department after 30 years of absence. This Trotskyite, rallied in 1980 to Republican President Reagan, is one of the founders of the neoconservative movement. He is also one of the initiators of theopolitics, the school of thought which allies Zionist Jews and Christians, according to which the Earth will know peace only when it has a world government based in Jerusalem [3].

Contrary to a popular idea, the neoconservatives are not the enemies of Iran, and not the friends either. They have always considered that it was necessary to maintain a balance between Arabs and Persians. This was why Elliott Abrams participated in the « Iran-Contras operation », which notably consisted of selling Israëli weapons via Cheik Hassan Rohani (currently the Iranian President) to Ayatollah Hachemi Rafsandjani (who consequently became the richest man in his country) in order to resist the Iraqi attack (which was also commanded by Washington). This operation was carried out without the knowledge of Congress, then condemned, and later amnestied by President Bush Sr.

During this period, Abrams was implicated in several massacres, in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The Trotskyites from the magazine of the American Jewish Committee, Commentary, who rallied, like him, to Reagan, intended both to combat the USSR in order to pursue Leon Trotsky’s struggle against Joseph Stalin, and at the same time to realise a world-wide coup d’état, if this idea even has any meaning. Elliott Abrams thus participated in the creation of the US Institute of Peace (which used the humanitarian platform to promote imperialism) and the National Endowment for Democracy (which orchestrated the colour revolutions) of which he is still one of the directors. This is how we should understand theopolitics, as a religious justification of a world-wide power grab.

The founding Congress of theopolitics was financed by the Izmaïlovskaya, a Russian criminal organisation of which, according to the Spanish Judiciary, Michael Cherney, Oleg Deripaska and Iskander Makhmudov were members at the time [4].

Under the presidency of Bush Jr., Abrams discreetly returned to the White House with Liz Cheney (the daughter of Vice-President Cheney). At the National Security Council, he supervised the coup d’état against the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez [5]. Acting a little late, he opposed the imbalance created by Washington which, by eliminating both the Taliban and President Saddam Hussein, enabled Teheran to impose itself regionally. He worked for the « Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group », and was then tasked with the « (Global Democracy Strategy » [6]. He was the main expert for National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice during the Israëli war against Lebanon in 2006.

The Warsaw Conference

The « Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East » will probably be co-presided by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and by the Vice-President of the Polish government, Beata Szydło, who has no competence in the matter.

Already, considering that the states implicated in the war against Syria will be awarded a privileged status, Israël is claiming responsibility for a number of anti-Syrian operations which it had so far refused to mention. Army Chief of Staff General Gadi Eisenkot has declared that the Hebrew state supported the jihadists from the beginning of the events, supplied them with a quantity of weapons, and had supported them militarily by bombing Syrian forces. All sorts of things that we have been revealing for the last eight years, and which are now official.

Worried about the outcome of the Warsaw meeting, Moscow has sent a high-level delegation to Tel-Aviv in order to probe Israëli public opinion.

The Iranian errors

It is important to keep in mind the fact that the United States has never fought Iran in general, but has always chosen its governors. Thus, in 1941, the US helped the British to overthrow Reza Shah in order to install Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It was the US who, in 1953, forced the Shah to separate from nationalist Mohammad Mossadegh in order to impose Nazi General Fazlollah Zahedi. It was the US who, in 1979, forced the Shah to retire, and organised the return of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini. Etc.

Contemporary Iran is imprisoned in its own contradictions, first of all the discrepancies between its public declarations and reality. The Islamic Republic unceasingly presents Israël and Saudi Arabia as its absolute enemies. However, the facts contradict the rhetoric from Teheran as much as that from Tel-Aviv and Riyadh. For example, the three countries fought together, in 1992-1995, alongside NATO and the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Or again, the company EAPC, which currently manages the Eliat-Ashkelon pipe-line, is the joint property of Iran and Israël [7].

Secondly, even though they stand together against foreigners, the governors of Iran are extremely divided between the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khameney), the President of the Republic (Cheikh Hassan Rohani), and the chief of the opposition (ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been under house arrest for a year, and whose main collaborators were imprisoned after a series of secret trials [8].

At the end of Ahmadinejad’s second mandate, President Barack Obama attended secret negotiations in Oman with the Rafsandjani-Rohani team. The principle for the nuclear agreement was then approved. Ayatollah Khamenei side-lined the candidature of Ahmadinejad for the Presidential election by using Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, and favoured the election of Cheikh Rohani, probably ignoring certain aspects of the agreement he had concluded with Obama. Cheikh Rohani was betting on his secret agreement with the US Democrats. He anticipated the cancellation of US sanctions, and promised a better life for his electors. Once he was elected, he dismantled the system that had enabled Iran to avoid the sanctions, then pretended to negotiate in Switzerland with the major powers the agreement which already been recorded with the USA alone. However, the signature of the 5+1 agreement was not followed by the lifting of sanctions. Since the Iranian economy could no longer avoid them, it collapsed. When Donald Trump entered the White House, he scrapped the agreement with Iran, plunging the Rohani team into panic. Rohani had committed the error of believing that the President would quickly be removed and that the Democrats would shortly be back in power. Iran rejected Donald Trump’s offer of negotiation and is today economically strangled.

Cheikh Hassan Rohani, who campaigned in 2013 by repeating ceaselessly that his country should no longer spend one rial to liberate Palestine and support Hezbollah and Syria, has undertaken nothing with his allies since his election. Progressively, the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution have stopped defending Syria and have only offered their support to Damascus in order to come to the help of the Chiite minority. For almost two years, Teheran has sent no ambassador to Damascus. It was only in 2018 that Iran sent senior civil servants of its government to Syria. They signed economic agreements which had been drawn up five years ago and which no longer correspond to the needs of the Syrian people.

Seeking to convince Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to withdraw the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution from Syria, President Cheikh Hassan Rohani reached out to Turkey (with whom his friends maintained excellent relations) and to Russia. And yet Cheikh Rohani had already negotiated with the United States and Austria for the delivery of Iranian oil instead of Russian hydrocarbons to the Europeans. In any case, the three countries have effectively expressed their points of view. However, the last meeting in Teheran with Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was a failure. It was immediately followed by a meeting between Russia and Turkey where their differences were settled without the Iranians.

Simultaneously, the economic and financial collapse of Iran does not allow the Supreme Leader to support Iran’s militia in Iraq and Hezbollah, which is no longer able to pay wages to its combatants. Only 60 % of their salaries were paid in January.

For several months, Israël has been bombing Iranian targets in Syria without the protection of the Russian defence. Over the last few weeks, Moscow has offered Damascus S-300 missiles which will enable Syria to handle its own anti-air defence. However, the Israëli bombing of the Iranians has continued. At the end of January, according to the Turkish Press agency Anadolu, two units of the Syrian Army were fighting one another. The first was supervised by Russian officers, the second by Iranians.

The Warsaw conference arrives at a time when US Democrats have regained the majority in the House of Representatives, but nonetheless, they will not save Cheikh Rohani. It is probable that his country will pay a hard price for its political incoherence.

Translation
Pete Kimberley

[1Mike Pompeo’s Remarks at the American University in Cairo”, by Mike Pompeo, Voltaire Network, 10 January 2019.

[2« Elliott Abrams, le "gladiateur" converti à la "théopolitique" », par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 14 février 2005.

[3« Sommet historique pour sceller l’Alliance des guerriers de Dieu », Réseau Voltaire, 17 octobre 2003.

[4A Commission from the French Senate is currently working to determine whether the representative for the Elysée, Alexandre Benalla, was or was not being paid by Iskander Makhmudov while he was working alongside President Emmanuel Macron. At this point, only Makhmudov’s payments to Vincent Crasse have been verified.

[5« Opération manquée au Venezuela », par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 18 mai 2002.

[6Coming soon : Before Our Very Eyes, Fake Wars and Big Lies, Thierry Meyssan, Progressive Press, 2019.

[7Israel and Iran collaborate to exploit the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline”, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 9 January 2018.

[8Former President Ahmadinejad’s vice president: Sentenced to 15 years in jail following a secret trial”, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 30 March 2018.