by Justin Raimondo
www.antiwar.com
In public, when it comes to the Iranian question, President Obama is all sweet reason and kissy-face. His recent video message to the Iranian people was just what the doctor ordered. However, this public performance is severely undercut by an ongoing covert program aimed at regime-change in Tehran – or, at least, at undermining the Iranian regime to such an extent that it must respond in some way.
This covert action program, reported by Seymour Hersh last year, was started by the Bush administration and funded to the tune of $400 million. The U.S. is, in effect, conducting a secret war against Tehran, a covert campaign aimed at recruiting Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities – who make up the majority of the population in certain regions, such as in the southeast borderlands near Pakistan – into a movement to topple the government in Tehran, or, at least, to create so much instability that U.S. intervention to "keep order" in the region is justified. Given recent events in Iran – a suicide bombing in the southeast province of Sistan-Baluchistan and at least two other incidents – the effort is apparently ongoing.
A suicide-bomber blast, which occurred inside a mosque in the city of Zahedan, killed at least 30 people: a rebel Sunni group with reported links to the U.S. claimed responsibility. The Iranian government immediately accused the U.S. and Israel of being behind the attack. The violence was very shortly followed up by attacks on banks, water-treatment facilities, and other key installations in and around Zahedan, including a strike against the local campaign headquarters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Add to this an attempted bombing of an Iranian airliner, which took off from the southwestern city of Ahvaz, and you have a small-scale insurgency arising on Iran’s eastern frontier.
The Iranians, confronted with peace overtures from Washington, can be blamed for wondering if the war against them has already begun.
punditman says...A classic example of the difference between a nation's overt, transparent foreign policy and its covert, hidden foreign policy. These can appear at odds with one another and sometimes are: one part of the US government wants to negotiate with Iran on US terms and the other wants to bomb them to smithereens while pretending to negotiate. Which side of the Iran debate will win within the Obama administration? The real hawks or the fake doves?
Or, these "two factions" can be considered part of an overall two track, carrot and stick approach—the end game to which is in flux. I think.
