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Aram vs. Iran
Posted on August 11, 2011
Iran is an ancient, yet very ambitious neo-colonial, imperialist
power that seeks regional and eventually global hegemony. Teheran’s
strategic fixation on enmity towards the external Dhimmis of the
United States and Israel, a certain predisposition which it
inherited politically from the Soviet Union, can hardly be
overstated since this determined and consistent hostility is at the
very center of Iranian regional strategies. The conventional,
stereotypical, Anti-American depiction of US Near Eastern foreign
policy has long been that the US has really only two concerns in the
region, “oil and Israel.” Therefore, Iranian policy is highly
focused on these two areas for which Shia Islamist identity politics
is strategically mobilized in the Levant region and the Gulf region
respectively. Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, Alexander Haig
famously remarked that “Israel is the largest American aircraft
carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one
American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American
national security.” This is indeed parallel to how Teheran has since
come to perceive Grand Liban, as an emerging Iranian military
mega-base in the making.
Teheran thus seeks Israel’s destruction as well as complete control
over all Gulf energy resources, after which energy importing
countries in regime Islamist thinking subsequently can be
increasingly, effectively reduced to Islamist colonies subservient
to Persian and Muslim imperialism. While the Iranian polity borders
the misnamed “Persian Gulf” as most of its shores on both sides are
inhabited by non-Persian speakers of Amian, Teheran’s political
gambit in the Levant is to gradually turn Grand Liban into an
Iranian military base where eventually hundreds of thousands of
Iranian troops can be gradually amassed and permanently stationed,
waiting and preparing to invade Israel at a strategically convenient
opportunity as on Yom Kippur, October 6, 1973.
Iran’s colonialist and imperialist activities in its efforts to take
over Grand Liban and turn it into a colony of Iran have in recent
years hardly received the serious international diplomatic attention
these unacceptable ambitions indeed deserve. Teheran views its
strategic takeover of formerly majority-Christian Grand Liban as a
model for its intended future colonial relations with predominantly
Christian countries in the Americas and Europe. For Teheran, there
is little strategic difference between terrorism, oil and weapons of
mass destruction; all can be deployed for political extortion to
enforce colonial subservience. Iran’s significant and growing
activities in Latin America must thus be understood in this
strategic context. Yet, as Iran seeks a strategic foothold from
which to invade and strategically overwhelm Israel – unlimited
military access to any territorial neighbor of Israel would be
wholly sufficient for this purpose from the perspective of the
tyrants in Teheran. Indeed, Israel’s successful Mediterranean
peacekeeping naval mission has so far prevented this from becoming
reality in the Gaza region. The extensive efforts by Iranian
intelligence in hijacking the revolution in Syria, as Teheran
succeeded in doing in Bahrain, must therefore not be underestimated.
The Alawi elite in Syria always knew that their political control
over most of Syria would end one day and they of course prepared and
planned accordingly. Teheran was thus intended for the role of
mandatory-style protector of the seceding Alawi region once the
predominance of the Alawi political and military elite in Syria had
ended. Hafez al Assad was completely unaware of the true, yet then
extremely secretive nationality of his Crypto-Jewish ethnic group,
yet he sought to use politically the absurd pretension that Alevis
sometimes display as religious dissimulation, by posing as Twelver
Shias. The Alawi political elite thus sought to ensure protection by
a new mandatory power in the image of colonial France. The
Anti-Western stance of Damascus was therefore, aside from its Cold
War context, very much due to the experience of having in effect
been geopolitically abandoned by France. The Alawi leadership under
Hafez al Assad believed that Iranian regional ambitions -unlike
those of France- were sustainable over time and that clerical Iran
was thus in this sense geostrategically sound and reliable as a
post-partition geostrategic patron. Yet, significant economic
interests held across Syria effectively prevented the Alawi
political elite from using its internationally recognized control
over the country’s sovereignty, to partition that French colonial
construction that is Syria. Israel was considered strategically weak
and politically unsustainable by the Alawi elite and Teheran thus
became the strategic partner of choice of the largely Alawi
political and military elite in Syria. Of course, the Jewish
nationality of Alawis and of Alevis generally is no longer a secret
and sovereign Israel is obviously the appropriate political partner
for the Crypto-Jewish Alawi community, a relationship which
crucially would not be one of domination, but of equality,
federalism, incremental civic evolution and gradual, mutually agreed
integration.
Jerusalem and Amman should move discreetly to offer legal immunity
from prosecution as well as protection of all local economic assets,
to those in the Syrian political and military elite who would make
every effort to ensure and facilitate the necessary peaceful
transition & partition. It would no doubt be preferable if Syria and
Grand Liban were to be divided by treaty in an orderly fashion
rather than through chaotic disintegration.
The Alawi political and military elite used to believe that it would
be in their interest if Iranian intelligence managed to hijack any
future, predominantly Sunni Amian revolution against them and they
thus for many years effectively facilitated the extensive strategic
penetration of Syria by Iranian intelligence and not merely clerical
missionary activity to convert Sunni Amians in Syria to Twelver Shia
Islam. Syria’s political elite never permitted large-scale
deployment of Iranian forces in Syria and also made sure to keep the
peace on the Golan, despite Iranian desires to deploy significant
military forces in Syria against Israel. Domestic political
legitimacy among the 60% Amian majority in Syria and the
relationship with Teheran were thus ensured through the increasing,
effective Iranian military presence in Grand Liban rather than in
Syria.
The looming threat of political takeover in Amian areas of Syria by
the Iranian-influenced Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is thus
particularly serious considering that it would inevitably lead to
outbreak of major regional warfare since Israel would have no other
reasonable strategic option than proactively preempt an Iranian
invasion from Amian parts of Syria. Indeed, Syria and Grand Liban
need to be partitioned in an orderly and peaceful fashion that will
ensure national unity, self-determination, federalism and civic
evolution for all. It would better for all peoples of the region if
this was indeed to happen peacefully and by agreement without a
regional confrontation between Iran and Israel in the Levant. Make
no mistake, Israel is militarily prepared for this confrontation,
Iran is not yet so as their intended military presence is not yet
fully in place. Although Teheran effectively occupies much of Grand
Liban with its local Shia mercenary forces, Iran has not yet reached
the level of political intimidation against the Sunni Amians and
Crypto-Jewish ethnicities of Grand Liban that would permit
large-scale build-up of non-Lebanese Iranian military forces inside
Grand Liban in preparation for a large-scale military invasion of
sovereign Israel.
Islamist movements do not only pose a menace due to their ambition
to introduce metaphysically justified Muslim clerical rule
everywhere on this planet, but also because they are essentially
intelligence assets and political proxies of Riyadh and Teheran. The
relationship between Riyadh and Teheran exists at multiple levels
between different intelligence agencies and clerical elites of both
countries. The Saudi polity has thus long maintained a particularly
peculiar policy which has allowed Riyadh’s proxies to partially
align with Teheran as well. Teheran has in contrast not exhibited
similar “generousness” towards Riyadh regarding Teheran’s own
proxies abroad. This Saudi policy ensures a wider range of
diplomatic, political, operational, military and terrorist options
while maintaining sufficient plausible deniability for the ruling
criminal clan in Riyadh.
Yet, at different political levels, these two powerful Islamist
imperialist powers are mortal enemies and bitter rivals that seek
regional and global domination, including crucially at each other’s
expensive. The Iranian polity is since the death of Ayatollah
Khomeini trisected into three depths of power, (1) the official
regime, (2) the Iranian revolutionary guards with their SS-style
parallel military forces and (3) Iran’s secretive clerical deep
state. The Saudi ruling criminal clan shares political power with a
powerful state hierarchy of Wahhabi clerics whose political clout
and influence over Saudi regional and global strategies tend to be
severely underestimated. It is precisely the elaborate political
division of power inside these two Islamist imperialist regimes that
has allowed them to be simultaneously allies, rivals and foes.
Indeed, a different, yet still elaborate structure of power-sharing
was instituted for post-Hafez Syria on Iranian suggestion. Yet, it
is this complex, elaborate structure of multilateral balances of
power within Syria between different sects and between different
state institutions, which were instituted precisely to prevent any
kind of internal coup from within the regime against the
presidential successor, which indeed has resulted in a political
situation where effectively no one is fully in charge and the
coordinating president’s public decisions are blatantly disobeyed by
other Syrian governmental centers of power.
The political situation in Syria is thus particularly complex and it
is easy to understand that the Islamist regimes of Ankara, Riyadh
and Teheran would want to reintegrate secular Syria once more into
their regional Islamist nexus of power. Washington in this and the
prior administration has in effect remained rather passive towards
the incremental Islamist takeover in the Gaza region, Grand Liban
and Turkey. It is hence crucial that Jerusalem, Amman, Brussels and
Washington provide credible ironclad, legally binding guarantees
that Syrian leaders who play constructive roles in peaceful
transition & partition will not be prosecuted and that their
properties across Syria will indeed be fully protected
post-partition.
This is especially true with regard to influential and prosperous
members of Syria’s indigenous Christian community who indeed need to
be assured that a state of Aram will be simultaneously established
to a partition of Syria and to which they will hold automatic
immigration rights while completely protecting all present private
and church properties of indigenous Christians in Syria. It is
certainly entirely understandable that influential and prosperous
Syrian leaders from its Crypto-Jewish Christian communities would
indeed be particularly concerned about their future, yet
simultaneous partition in both Syria and Grand Liban is ultimately
the only way to effectively alleviate these very real concerns. Yet,
such important leaders are unlikely to fully cooperate with a
peaceful transition & partition in Syria unless they are indeed
assured that Grand Liban will be simultaneously partitioned and that
a state of Aram is established in which they would be entitled to
citizenship by default. Agreed transition in Syria will not work
unless prominent leaders from its Christian communities are assured
that partition in the two countries will indeed be simultaneous and
orderly, that Christians in Syria will not have to face the terrible
destiny of their ethnic kin in Iraq and that all property owned by
indigenous Christians inside Syria will be fully and completely,
legally and physically protected.
Yet, it is precisely the scenarios of disorderly transition that
pose a strategic and existential threat to Syria’s Judeo-Christian
Aramean indigenous community. The international community needs to
understand that this is a matter of personal survival for Syria’s
indigenous Arameans and that the policies of America and Europe so
far with regard to safeguarding the interests of Christians in the
region as well as with regard to the effective European and American
tolerance of Islamist takeover throughout West Asia, does not
particularly inspire confidence in the stateless people of Aram
which is increasingly persecuted and dispersed across the world. Yet,
considering that Syria under the present president is a place where
Iraqi Christian refugees seek refuge, why would political and
military Christian leaders of Syria commit to an orderly transition
unless the self-determination of Aram is assured and Christian
property in Syria is properly protected? Considering the full
political and economic context and the tremendous political and
economic risks involved for the predominantly Christian Aramean
community in Syria; why would anyone expect influential and affluent
indigenous Arameans to consent to once more serve the role of the
region’s perpetual political suckers who tend to be forced to pay
the political price for strategic blunders committed by powers from
within and outside the region?
aram-vs-iran
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