[Peace-discuss] Riding That Af/Pak Train

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Riding That Af/Pak Train
	Posted: 26 Oct 2009 08:43 PM PDT

October 18th’s suicide bombing in Iran near the Pakistan border was the subject 
of the top three articles in October 20th’s Asia Times.

“Conventional wisdom suggests that the terrorist strike by Jundallah in 
southeastern Iran on Sunday might have had the backing of the United States or 
Britain,” M K Bhadrakumar opens the first.  Yet “clearly,” he concludes, Obama 
would have to be “out of his mind to have his intelligence agencies mount a 
terrorist attack on Iran which would torpedo his own gameplan to address the 
Iran nuclear file at the present sensitive juncture” (Saudi-Iranian hostility 
hits boiling point).

In the second, Pepe Escobar cautions ”but one thing is the Obama 
administration’s priorities; another is the agenda of ‘full spectrum dominance’ 
types at the Pentagon and the CIA…Chaos in Iranian Balochistan derails the 
[Iran-Pakistan] pipeline – something that is an absolute priority for full 
spectrum dominance: Washington wants its horse, the Trans-Afghan (TAP) pipeline, 
to win at all costs. A ‘victory’ of the IP pipeline means Gwadar port in 
[Pakistani] Balochistan falling into China’s orbit, not the US’s”  (Jundallah 
versus the mullahtariat).

In the third, Kaveh L Afrasiabi quotes a Tehran professor, “‘There is now a 
serious crisis of Iranian confidence in Mr Obama and many people are asking: is 
he really in charge and who calls the shots on US policy in the region? Did 
Mossad pull this off without notifying the White House, or in cahoots with them 
[the US]?’” (Iran’s nuclear talks also hit)

Here at Antiwar, in Our Two-Faced Iran Policy, Justin Raimondo raises the 
possibility that the U.S.’s “terrorism” complements its ”talk,” the idea being 
“to keep the Iranian regime off-balance, and make them more amenable to 
compromise…In any case, we are walking a tightrope” and the presence of ”the 
very powerful Israel lobby” is a major reason why ”military conflict with Iran 
may be unavoidable.”

With the suicide bombing in Iran occurring as the Pakistan situation degenerates 
(and now, Baghdad blasts echo far and wide), Reuters blogger Myra MacDonald is 
almost reduced to prayer:  “In my 25 years of journalism, I’ve rarely seen a 
situation move so quickly.  I’d like to think there is someone in power who is 
not only keeping pace, but keeping ahead”  (Afganistan, Pakistan … and all the 
other countries involved).

“Someone in power?”  How about Osama bin Ladin!  Or, more benevolently, keeping 
behind, the late Peter Sellers not as Dr. Strangelove but as the PM of The Duchy 
of Grand Fenwick?

Okay, leaving aside the question of who, if anyone, is at the controls, to where 
is the train hurtling? What humongous wreck awaits?

The U.S. falling off the “tightrope” into an Iranian “quagmire” is one 
possibility, but even as I write, the words “unprecedented” and “spin out of 
control” appear in a Reuters article, the subject of which is “India-China 
tensions” (Afghanistan in focus at trilateral meet in India).  For a bigger dip 
into an ”electrified” atmosphere, with a similar warning that “an accidental 
slip or go-off at the border would erode into war,” see M K Bhadrakumar’s The 
dragon spews fire at the elephant.  For a treatise on how “the wider struggle 
between the powers of Eurasia and the nations of the Periphery, led by the 
United States,” could manifest itself in a nuclear war, there’s Mahdi Darius 
Nazemroaya’s Geo-Strategic Chessboard: War Between India and China?