Cheney
Threatens Iran From US Aircraft Carrier In Persian Gulf
By Bill Van Auken
12 May 2007
World
Socialist Web
Underscoring
the essential objective of his Middle East tour, US Vice President Dick
Cheney used the deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis in
the Persian Gulf Friday to deliver a bellicose threat against Iran.
“With two carrier strike
groups in the Gulf, we’re sending clear messages to friends and
adversaries alike, we’ll keep the sea lanes open,” Cheney
said in a speech delivered to ranks of sailors assembled on the deck
in the over-100-degree heat. With the carrier sailing barely 150 miles
off of the Iranian coast, the US vice president declared, “We’ll
stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating
the region.”
Further spelling out his
attack on Iran, Cheney declared, “We’ll stand with our friends
in opposing extremism and strategic threats. We’ll disrupt attacks
on our own forces.” This last remark was an obvious reference
to the drumbeat of unsubstantiated US claims that Iran is training and
supplying weapons to Iraqi resistance forces attacking American occupation
troops. The Bush administration dispatched the two carrier battle groups
to the Persian Gulf at the end of last year in a bid to step up military
pressure against Iran. Meanwhile, in occupied Iraq, US forces were ordered
to seize Iranian diplomatic personnel, some of whom are still being
held prisoner there. At the same time, Washington has pressed for the
United Nations to impose new sanctions against Iran over its uranium
enrichment program. While Tehran has insisted that it is seeking to
develop peaceful nuclear power, the Bush administration has charged
that Iran is trying to obtain nuclear weapons. Washington has imposed
its own unilateral sanctions against Iran and has sought to intimidate
Europe into following suit, pressuring banks and corporations there
to cut ties with Tehran.
The vow to “keep the
sea lanes open” and stop Iran from “dominating the region”
are a reflection of Washington’s real objectives in the region.
It is to impose unchallenged US domination over the region and its vital
oil supplies. The massive American naval deployment is aimed at securing
a US stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz, the sea lane through which
some 20 percent of the world’s oil passes.
Cheney’s appearance
on the Stennis invited inevitable comparisons to the earlier use of
such warships as platforms for the administration’s war speeches.
It was in March 2002 that the American vice president landed on the
same carrier to deliver a speech to a captive uniformed naval audience
in which he vowed that the US would take “decisive” action
to “prevent terrorists, and regimes that sponsor terror, from
threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction.”
In his speech Friday, Cheney
noted his presence on the same warship five years earlier, but, not
surprisingly, offered no explanation for the absence of weapons of mass
destruction and terrorist ties that the administration fabricated to
justify its unprovoked invasion of Iraq in March of 2003.
And, of course, little more
than four years ago President Bush flew out to a returning aircraft
carrier off the California coast to announce—before a huge banner
declaring “Mission Accomplished”—that “major
combat operations in Iraq have ended” and American had “prevailed.”
Cheney’s speech seemed
to unintentionally mock that now infamous assertion. Four years later,
with US casualties steadily mounting, he declared, “We want to
complete the mission, get it done right and return with honor.”
He tried to convince the Stennis crew members that “the American
people do not support a policy of retreat,” despite poll after
poll indicating that the overwhelming majority of the US population
is in favor of pulling all American forces out of Iraq.
“It’s not easy
to serve in this part of the world,” Cheney told the sailors.
“It’s a place of tension and many conflicts.”
Indeed, the American vice
president knows whereof he speaks, having come to the region to whip
up tensions and lay the groundwork for another armed conflict. With
the US intervention in Iraqi having sunk into a bloody disaster, he
and other elements within the Bush administration see the expansion
of the war—this time against Iran—as a possible means of
extricating US imperialism from its deepening strategic crisis in the
region, as well as of rescuing the administration from political disintegration
and ignominy at home.
While Cheney began his six-day,
five-nation tour of the Middle East with a surprise visit to Iraq, his
two days in the US-occupied country amounted to little more than a photo-op
and showing of the flag designed for domestic political consumption.
While going through the motions of pressuring the US-backed Iraqi regime
to meet Washington’s “benchmarks” for “political
progress” in Iraq, Cheney is well aware that the Iraqi regime
is largely powerless and incapable of making any major changes without
risking collapse.
Far more important, from
Washington’s standpoint, is Cheney’s effort to shore up
the shaky alliances with key Arab regimes in order to further its militarist
operations in the region.
US-Saudi tensions
The most critical of these
is the long-standing US ties with the Saudi monarchy. Cheney is set
to meet with Saudi King Abullah on Saturday in the northwestern desert
town of Tabuk, a provincial capital.
The vice president’s
trip was reportedly organized at the end of last month in response to
mounting signs that the Saudi regime has grown increasingly agitated
over the deepening debacle that Washington has created in the region.
In March, Saudi King Abdullah
expressed the displeasure of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family over
the disaster in Iraq by using a speech to the Arab League summit to
describe the US presence in the country as an “illegitimate foreign
occupation.”
Further signaling the mounting
displeasures of the monarchy, last month Abdullah abruptly cancelled
a trip to Washington for a White House dinner, apparently out of anger
over the failed US policy in Iraq.
And there have been indications
that the Saudi regime is failing to toe the American line in the Middle
East. In March, Abullah hosted a state visit by Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, while a month earlier, the monarchy brokered the Mecca
Agreement, forging a “unity government” between the Palestinian
Islamist group Hamas and Fatah, thereby breaking with Washington’s—and
Israel’s—campaign to keep Hamas isolated.
During his last trip to Saudi
Arabia in November, Abdullah reportedly told the American vice president
that if US occupation troops were to pull out of Iraq, the Saudi regime
would consider providing financial support to Iraq’s Sunni population
to wage a civil war against the country’s Shiites.
Cheney has reportedly been
sent to Saudi Arabia to assure the monarchy that the Bush administration
has no intention of withdrawing US troops from Iraq as long as it stays
in office, and to seek its assistance in pressuring Sunni parties in
Iraq to remain in the Maliki government and to support the speedy approval
of a draft oil law that would open up the country’s petroleum
reserves to exploitation by American-based energy conglomerates.
The American message may
not find ready acceptance, however. As David Ignatius, the Washington
Post foreign affairs columnist wrote this week, “Saudi sources
say the king has given up on the ability of Iraq’s Shiite prime
minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to overcome sectarian divisions and unite
the country. The Saudi leadership is also said to believe that the current
US troop surge is likely to fail, deepening the danger of all-out civil
war in Iraq.”
According to Ignatius, the
Saudi monarchy favors Maliki’s ouster and his replacement by former
interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the long-time CIA asset and former
Baathist, described by some critics as “Saddam without the mustache.”
Washington, he reports, opposes such a new attempt at “regime
change,” fearing it would only deepen the chaos and mass opposition
to the US occupation.
The friction between Washington
and the Saudi regime has its source in what is seen by the Saudis and
other Arab rulers as the untenable contradiction in US policy, which
is based on propping up a Shia-dominated Iraqi regime with close ties
to Iran, while at the same time seeking to isolate Iran, roll back its
influence in the region and prepare for possible war against the country.
As investigative journalist
Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker earlier this year, the CIA
has collaborated closely with the Saudis in covert operations directed
at undermining the Shia political movement in Lebanon, Hezbollah, including
through the promotion of Sunni Islamist groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda.
According to Hersh, these operations’ “clandestine side
has been guided by Cheney.”
Also on Cheney’s itinerary
are meetings with United Arab Emirates President Khalifa Bin Zayed Al
Nahyan, Egypt’s President Hosni Mobarak and the Jordanian monarch,
King Abdullah, where he is expected to pound the same war drum against
Iran while seeking the aid of these regimes and their intelligence services
in quelling the insurgency in Iraq.
Cheney’s trip comes
on the heels of last week’s international conference on Iraq held
at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Media reports on the conference
were dominated by speculation about a possible US diplomatic opening
towards Iran and Syria to facilitate an end to the chaos in Iraq—something
that was never substantiated in the furtive encounters between US officials
and their Iranian and Syrian counterparts.
The American vice president’s
speech on the aircraft carrier and his secret talks with Arab monarchs
and despots points to the real thrust of US policy in the region, which
is founded on the continued and escalating use of militarism in Iraq
and potentially against Iran.
One indication of the seriousness
of the threat of a new war came from Bahrain, where the emirate’s
official news service reported that the local regime has been drawing
up contingency plans to deal with Iranian missile strikes and sabotage
attacks in the event of a US war against Iran. The kingdom hosts the
headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet.
“We at the Interior
Ministry have made plan to deal with the possible threats,” Bahraini
Interior Minister Rashid Bin Abdullah Al Khalifa told the agency. Last
month, the Bahraini regime conducted a joint emergency response exercise
with US forces based on the scenario of an Iranian missile attack.
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