The tortuous path to avoiding war with iran

Edited from a listserv discussion...

Here we are, possibly even on the brink of a global nuclear war which could kill all of us and all of those responsible, and we are talking about (an allegation about CIA) ... perhaps, if God exists and the CIA exists, they might be paying more attention to that right now, and not at all to ... Even I am tracking it, and am deeply sad we live in a world which now limits discussion of a path to avoid the worst, just as economists in China have been silenced re the huge immediate economic problems which China now faces which could have been avoided... Dialogue is perhaps the most important variable which separates the realm of destructive groupthink and real collective intelligence; new mechanisms which block dialogue threaten our very survival for that reason. 

"But why digress to such small things as all of humanity dying, and the role of the actions of the mind in affecting the probability of that? Why not get back to the subject, the really important thing, ... (ego stuff)". 

...

Since I have wandered the world quite a bit by now, I have probably been in the company of all kinds of intelligence operatives from many countries. When ... speculated (in a typical random episode) that I am an "agent of the deep state," he seemed to feel ... And once I was an employee of the US government.

Just as sinister folks are trying to manipulate US and Iran into an all-out war now, they were doing the same back at the start of the Iraq war, when I was an NSF employee. (No security clearance, but still in the government.)

I remember very well the day when our Indian division director asked for a little meeting in a small conference room. 'We have received a warning through the chain. One of you has severely overstepped his bounds -- not violating any laws, but seriously getting in the way of the plans (of Cheney). You need to know you are being watched, and are not appreciated." At that moment, a guy named Larry Goldberg smiled a smile full of joy and said that yes he had opposed the plans for a war in Iraq very loudly and unmistakably. "They recognize me! they recognize me!" But then she (the Division Director) sadly said"No, not you, Larry..", and she turned towards me with a sad nod. Larry practically blew up: "HIM???? You can't even tell whether he's a Republican or a Democrat, or which side he is on.... why would HE get this honor?" She sadly, softly said: "The difference, Larry, is that there are people who actually listen to him." Well, that was another time. Like Pandolfi, I had an official position which did give me some access to speak to some people, but neither of us was in charge. (I never met Pandolfi, so far as I know.) But even now, I suggest to people who send me emails to allow for the possibility that anything they send will end up in the files of Google, NSA and China, and perhaps others as well, and that I have enough of a history of being interesting that someone might actually read them. That does inhibit me a bit, not only on the less important subject of ...,  but on the more important subject of whether we get drawn into a bigger war than the Iraq one. 

One key thing I don't know: has Khamenei been driven into a state of insanity (e.g. Quds doing to him what Chris has sometimes done to Jack) that he really did choose to start a war? Or is he telling the truth that he did not order the crime in the Gulf (or sane enough to act as if that were true)? If MBS had a little talk with him, in a place safe from Quds ambush, would he agree to a joint effort to root out, expose and terminate the criminals? (Attempt to create a world nuclear war is not a mere venial sin.) 

Whatever.

Back to trying to make sense of a much greater level of weirdness.

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Later I asked a group of folks:

Please forgive my taking up your time with a question, but the question is of some importance to us all, even those of us who like me get no income from thinking about it.

Does anyone here know of any credible serious intuition about who recently destroyed the tankers in the Gulf?

It is clear that someone with strong means and opportunity deliberately tried to start a war between the US and Iran, or at least to"show them we mean business" in a way which has the same implications. It is scary to me that we do not really know who it is, let alone how to stop them and prevent what could become global nuclear war. I see five obvious general possibilities, and really do not know.

(1) Trump has given full support and free rein to folks who say that Khamanei ordered it. Though Kahamanei denies it, Trump says he has evidence, and expects Kahamanei to lie in any case either for political advantage or as a Middle Eastern way of saying "in your face" to add insult to injury. Maybe. That belief could lead to a new war sooner than most of us expect, just like the WMD story which led to the previous war in Iraq. 

(2) Khamanei hints that Trump did it, in much the same way. After all, even few Republicans in Congress expect Trump's words always to be literal exact truth. Maybe, but I tend to doubt it. Still, who knows? It would not be SO far from various things in the Mueller report.

(3) What serious analysts in the US tend to gravitate towards: could it be that the Quds force of Iran simply acted on its own, without authorization, in part to force Khamanei to give them more power, and in part to express a kind of millennialist narcissistic self-image similar in nature to what moves some guys to be flashers? Maybe.

(4) What of the mirror image of (3), a kind of "American Quds force," NOT the deep state as Bannon imagines it, but something of that flavor? Some people I know have referred to that as "the gestapo," but my wife rightly points out that this tends to lead to gross misunderstanding as bad as Bannon's. I do not picture such a thing as being either unfunded, or as funded from Russia or Israel; there are other more realistic possibilities.

(5) What of a "third party" such as a salafist equivalent of the Quds force, equally fundamentalist and equally ruthless and even better funded from all the oil money sloshing around in the Middle East?

 The uncertainty here suggests it would be ever so important to get an international investigation going with the power not only to track down the culprit but to eliminate their ability to cause this kind of trouble in the future. But who is it? Where should people even look? 

My fun and games with intuition, such as they are, point to (5), which is not what I would have expected before fun and games. I would be very interested to hear what others feel, with of course the caveats that any rational person would have in such a situation.

Best regards,

   Paul

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The most interesting feedback was, roughly, "Your list is incomplete. Quds has been sending lots of very advanced weapons to Houthis, who, like the Syrian militias who went over to ISIS, may be trading withpirates. Think Somalia."

Of course, it could actually be a situatoin fitting three of the six options, mutually consistent... ust as Syria is inherently multifacted.

What level of advanced technology should anyone rightly let out in such situations?

As I watch this on France24, and also note the coverage of the Morsi event (which very much connects with what I picked hp before I sent out this question)... I am surprised about the false assumptions taken for granted both about Erdogan and about the rest of the Moslem Brotherhood. It was never just a political party in Egypt, as even a simple web search should show.

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The day when Trump announced he had decided FOR NOW not to push the button... and one of the folks told me about it... I replied:

That's step one. But now can US split Quds from Khamenei and president of iran? Are we so skillful? Or can a serious investigation get going, such as my MBS/Khamenei suggestion with support? What of MB and US Quds?

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Later, a further discussion on this:

On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 1:09 PM ...  wrote:

Paul,

  .. just figured out that MSB means the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Which reminds me that my understanding of the motives of him and of his counterparts is rather muddled.

  This principally stands on the mystery of the Sunni and Shiite division, the causus belli at the root of this confusion. Why the respective religious leaderships cannot entertain a future with harmony is really beyond me.

I sometimes think of a movie "Being There" recommended to me long ago from an old friend, one of the two or three who was fluent in Aramaic, his native language. It depicts a billionnaire type very well meaning but a bit out of touch with regular life. One of the great pillars of the MB is exactly that kind of money going to old guys out of touch -- and MBS does seem to be quite aware of that.

But Erdogan and many of his minions oppose it very violently and successfully, and folks like France24 somehow swallow what should be such transparent propaganda. We seem blind to 

how serious the internal war is for the soul of Sunni Islam. 

I received some very severe objections today from one of the oil folks working in the Gulf. Can I prove all this more than I have? Well, when I encountered the bad guys (especially shocked on 7/14/14), and learned of many others who had, first hand, a friend urged me to put documentation with lots of detail on the secure web, and make it available to a very few very trusted friends. I really do not plan to get into it, but if I have misjudged how short my leash is as a US citizen not employed by anyone, folks will know. It is not speculation, and understated not exaggerated, 

 

  Some may imagine or even know there are evil motives in the US and Israel to sustain and rip this divide. None more than Israel, cognitively & existentially threatened by the union of two branches of Islam.

Whoever the bad guys are, they exaggerate both Israel and Russia (and play on naive fellow travelers who echo that, and play on Putin's love of being depicted as all powerful) -- just one more distraction technique, not all that original. (Choosing Jews as scapegoats and illusory dreams of empire are SUCH boring Jaws 15 reruns... !!)

 

  It is no doubt the Moslem Brotherhood (MB) has played a long and stealthy game, and it is also no doubt they serve as a stick that stirs the imagination since their covert behaviors, as much of Islam's traditions of taqiyah (systemic lying to protect the faithful), establishes the large theater of conspiracies that plays out widely in South Asia, Africa, and Europe. 

  The hyper-intense surveillance state behavior of China wrt the Uighurs has made 10 or 20 Turkish citizens in China disappear. 

  One may not wonder at that and the larger concentration camps of Uighurs if the tea leaves of the MB are seen in every reading.

Many Chinese do have sources of information other than Fox News, CNN and France24. I remember discussions with them in Xian of what they have tracked traveling along the silk road, and I have been confronted very directly and personally by political operatives from the Middle East in Xinjiang. I still remember when my wife said: "Paul, you have no ability to handle THIS kind of situation. Let ME go out there.." God, I am so grateful she puts up with me.. 

But Han China has its own very serious internal problems. Even as US, Sunni Islam and Iran are at risk from evil subversive internal wolfpacks, China has lots of scary tigers, which remind me a lot of their number one classic novel Journey to the West. They too are caught up in the same global time of troubles, when no one really believes anything seriously, and even MB survives based on its use of minions aiming for money and rape and violence. This and Easter Island are not the only examples in human history of this kind of time of troubles! Spengler discusses misplaced and futile classicism in many decaying civilizations/cultures; it is amusing see to see Maoism and Marxism-Leninism taking over the same role that Hinayana Buddhism had in Journey to the west!!!

And it certainly affects India as well, with many species beyond wolves and tigers, as Ghandhi's resignation warns us. 

 

  It is apparently the case that the Chinese government wants to know what everyone is thinking, or rather, believing. That will provide a satisfactory outcome for stability, the primum bonum of the Party, and no wonder given the MB stealth that you ID.

  On global problems of immigration, the arms merchants of our day are revealed by Hasan Minhaj's Netflix episode on the NRA. The NRA is revealed as the political force promoting gun sales to Central and South America by circumvent of regulations. This pipeline is the one that bad policy built by exporting gang members rather than incarcerating them. 

  The gun trade in the Americas and Africa is similar to the opium trade by the Brits and others in 19th Century China built on the effective enslavement of the Indian producers (read the Ibis Trilogy, Amitav Ghosh).  The mendacious care only for their own wealth, not the pain of others, not the disruption and impoverishment of the exploited African and Central American republics.

When the big animals create chaos, little rats and leeches can have local feasts. I was sad to hear of how certain movie makers may have blocked efforts to create the kind of secure social contract we need on the It side to reduce the criminality (especially bad uses of big money) emerging everywhere...  Dialogue and new foundations MIGHT be enough for us to muddle through.. if we face up to the need for more momentum to get past periods when there is no solution based on any kind of static stability.

As for the Party -- whatever they say, people in China know that they are now primarily the Cocktail Party. Needs a new Journey to the west...