‘A US Show of Force to Deter Iran.’ Deter Iran from What?

And one of the goals it seems with this new kind of Israeli-catering or charm offensive, whatever you want to call it, with the Emirates and with Saudi Arabia is that, so that Israeli fighter jets will form a working relationship with Saudi fighter jets and then UAE fighter jets and they'll form sort of this seamless policy that is in unison of course with the United States that kind of dictates all of this.

And part of this, the interesting part of that is, you realize how really hostile the Arab monarchies are to the Arab people, you know. They are the enemy of the working class Arab as much as Israel is their enemy and the United States.

But the second thing that's going on is if you google this story, the US has a 36-hour mission of, you know, the big, huge bombers that were made famous during the Vietnam era -- they've only been slightly updated -- fly this 36-hour mission across Europe down through the Persian Gulf, then is a show of force, the headline is: ‘A Show Of Force To Deter Iran.’ And I'm thinking to deter Iran from what? Iran hasn't done anything. I mean they invent these narratives. What has actually happened is a series of extraordinary provocations against Iran. They killed the nuclear scientists, they attacked Soleimani and murder him.

It's, you know, a constant source of antagonism to Iran that all of these things take place because there's a whole myriad of secondary provocations that one doesn't hear about cross border clashes and Israeli jets buzz the border region and make incursions and on and on and on.

And, most of those kinds of provocations and sort of micro-aggressions are ignored by the press and the media. And then Iran makes a statement saying we don't accept the idea of Israeli assassins crossing into our country and murdering one of our scientists, and that's. Oh wait, Iran being aggressive and we must deter them. It's really comical for anybody who has followed Middle Eastern politics for any amount of time because the provocations are on the side of the US.

I mean, why did they fly these jets? Why? What's the reason? Iran hasn't done anything. Iran is the victim. They've been attacked. They had a citizen assassinated. They had a general assassinated. And yet, you know, the US claims they are deterring. And it's funny. The first sentence of the story in the AP or Reuters, I forget which, is I'm quoting Frank McKenzie the Brigadier General, saying, you know,” this is a show of force by the US so that everybody knows how powerful the United States military is. We don't seek war but we are blah blah blah...” You don't seek war? And yet you're flying a mission of pure provocation because that's exactly what you hope will happen.

Iran has been extraordinarily restrained, very wisely restrained. I mean these things they know what these kind of provocations are. They know what Israel is doing. They know what the US is doing it of course it's ratcheted up because Trump is a lame-duck president.

Mike Pompeo wants to get in. Everything he can possibly do because he's such a xenophobe and racist and insane. He really, stress not hyperbole, is unhinged. But he wants to get everything that he has wanted to do he wants to squeeze into his remaining couple of months, and then of course he would be relieved of duty, and hopefully walk off into the sunset somewhere never to be seen again, but I doubt that's probably going to happen.

Anyway but this sort of thing has gone on for 25-30 years I mean it was happening in the early 90s. There were jets, a show of force because you know bombers flew around or they sent the Seventh Fleet into the Persian Gulf or the USS Nimitz was appearing on the horizon but the military doesn't have anything to do. They have a lot of money and they have a lot of guns and they have a lot of weapons and they want to fight. They want to kill people they want to use up those bombs, so they can buy more bombs. That's the nature of US imperialism. It's the nature of any imperialism.

So, they've got nothing better to do but to create war games or fly provocative missions near the enemy de jour which right now is Iran, and that's all this is. I mean it's not probably going to come to any.