UK Govt Sources Confirm War With Iran Is On

[Demeter]

OpEdNews.com

Original Article at http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_nafeez_m_060723_uk_govt_sources_conf.htm


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July 23, 2006

UK Govt Sources Confirm War With Iran Is On

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

UK Govt Sources Confirm War With Iran Is On
In the last few days, I learned from a credible and informed source that a former senior Labour government Minister, who continues to be well-connected to British military and security officials, confirms that Britain and the United States

"... will go to war with Iran before the end of the year."

The Monterey Institute for International Studies already showed nearly two years ago in a detailed analysis that the likely consequences of a strike on Iran by the US, Israel, or both, would be a regional conflagaration that could quickly turn nuclear, and spiral out of control. US and Israeli planners are no doubt aware of what could happen. Such a catastrophe would have irreversible ramifications for the global political economy. Energy security would be in tatters, precipitating the activation of long-standing contingency plans to invade and occupy all the major resource-rich areas of the Middle East and elsewhere (see my book published by Clairview, Behind the War on Terror for references and discussion). Such action could itself trigger responses from other major powers with fundamental interests in maintaining their own access to regional energy supplies, such as Russia and particularly China, which has huge interests in Iran. Simultaneously, the dollar-economy would be seriously undermined, most likely facing imminent collapse in the context of such crises.

Which raises pertinent questions about why Britain, the US and Israel are contemplating such a scenario as a viable way of securing their interests.

A glimpse of an answer lies in the fact that the post-9/11 military geostrategy of the "War on Terror" does not spring from a position of power, but rather from entirely the opposite. The global system has been crumbling under the weight of its own unsustainability for many years now, and we are fast approaching the convergence of multiple crises that are already interacting fatally as I write. The peak of world oil production, of which the Bush administration is well aware, either has already just happened, or is very close to happening. It is a pivotal event that signals the end of the Oil Age, for all intents and purposes, with escalating demand placing increasing pressure on dwindling supplies. Half the world's oil reserves are, more or less, depleted, which means that it will be technologically, geophysically, increasingly difficult to extract conventional oil. I had a chat last week with some scientists from the Omega Institute in Brighton, directed by my colleague and friend Graham Ennis, who told me eloquently and powerfully what I already knew, that while a number of climate "tipping-points" may or may not have yet been passed, we have about 10-15 years before the "tipping-point" is breached certainly and irreversibly. Breaching that point means plunging head-first into full-scale "climate catastrophe". Amidst this looming Armageddon of Nature, the dollar-denominated economy itself has been teetering on the edge of spiralling collapse for the last seven years or more. This is not idle speculation. A financial analyst as senior as Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan's immediate predecessor as chairman of the Federal Reserve, recently confessed "that he thought there was a 75% chance of a currency crisis in the United States within five years."

There appears to have been a cold calculation made at senior levels within the Anglo-American policymaking establishment: that the system is dying, but the last remaining viable means of sustaining it remains a fundamentally military solution designed to reconfigure and rehabilitate the system to continue to meet the requirements of the interlocking circuits of military-corporate power and profit....The highly respected US whistleblower, former RAND strategic analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who was Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam conflict and became famous after leaking the Pentagon Papers, has already warned of his fears that in the event of "another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country, detention camps for middle-easterners and their quote 'sympathizers', critics of the President's policy and essentially the wiping-out of the Bill of Rights."




Authors Website: www.independentinquiry.co.uk

Authors Bio: Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (London: Duckworth, 2006). He teaches courses in International Relations at the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, where he is doing his PhD studying imperialism and genocide. Since 9/11, he has authored three other books revealing the realpolitik behind the rhetoric of the "War on Terror", The War on Freedom, Behind the War on Terror and The War on Truth. In summer 2005, he testified as an expert witness in US Congress about his research on international terrorism

[dipsydoodle]

1. Do not fall into the trap

of associating that site with that of The Independant.

[kenny blankenship]

2. Normally I would discount stories like this 100%, except anyone can see

that something very abnormal--or at least nightmarishly exagerrated--is afoot in US foreign policy since Bush took office.
I'm not sure whether it's desperation as alleged--or just malignant greed.

[msongs]

3. who is the "credible' source, his cat? his dog? his ouija board?

this guy clearly has an agenda, whether it is valid information or not is questionable.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[Demeter]

4. Author Is UK Equivalent of Juan Cole

Professor, author, and interested party.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. 'Professor' isn't right - he's a PhD candidate

as it says at the base of the article. He's in his twenties. He's a political analyst. Someone in military/political circles told a former minister, who told someone else, who told Ahmed, that there is going to be an invasion. It's a long chain of unattributed remarks.

[bananas]

6. His book is praised by John Pilger, Gore Vidal, and Howard Zinn

He's 27 - what's your point about his age?

http://www.independentinquiry.co.uk/about_author.html

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed has written three books since the 9/11 attacks tracing the real politics beneath the rhetoric of the War on Terror: The War on Freedom, Behind the War on Terror and The War on Truth. He lives in North London.

Praise for Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's previous work:

"Nafeez Ahmed's understanding of the post 9/11 power game, its lies,
illusions and dangers, is no less than brilliant"

John Pilger

"On the subject the best, most balanced report, thus far, is by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed"

Gore Vidal

"I wish every American who still believes in the good intentions of our government would read this book. Drawing upon his impressive research into recent history, Nafeez Ahmed skilfully exposes the real motives behind the war on terrorism" and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq"

Howard Zinn

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. That his experience is nowhere near that of Juan Cole

To whom he had been compared.

[OneBlueSky]

8. we've known this is coming for a long time . . . haven't we? . . .

there now appears to be some confirmation from people in the know . . .

I'm not at all surprised . . .