The US in Pursuit of Trilateral Containment of Iran

23 October 2011 | 10:16 Code : 17290 General category
Hassan Beheshtipour, international affairs analyst
The US in Pursuit of Trilateral Containment of Iran

Amid the media blitz, analysis of the reality is very difficult and time is needed to review the revealed aspects of a saga. Nonetheless, the latest scenario against Iran can be viewed from two viewpoints based on the publicized information:

 

a)      Weakness of the main elements of the contrived scenario

 

1-      Gary Sick, the deputy of the US national security advisor at Carter’s times, asks these question: why should Iran perform such an act in the US soil, while it is not at all profitable for Iran? Why should Iran buy the international pressures to achieve nothing? And how can elimination of the Saudi ambassador to the US help the Iranian foreign policy while it is facing the international sanctions?

 

2-      The nature of the groups dealing with the assassination is questioned by the US theorists, since working with a non-Muslim group inside the US is against the Iranian foreign policy.

 

 

3-      The other important thing addressed by the US newspapers and media was that how it was possible to transfer 100 thousands dollars to the US via an Iranian bank, while Iran is facing tight fiscal sanctions and even a hundred-dollar money transfer faces many restrictions?

 

4-      According to the statements of the Mansour Arbabsiar’s friends, he was not at all a political person: he was a used-car salesman and had real estate interests. He was known as a disorganized person. As one of his former business partners said he was “more Mr. Bean than 007.”

 

5-      To cover the inefficiency of its security system, the US needs a foreign enemy and constantly tries to defuse self-made terrorist operations to whitewash the civil rights-violating policies.

 

b)     The US’ likely objectives in devising the scenario:

 

1-      Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the US government used combating against Communism to justify billion-dollar budgets for Pentagon and CIA. From September 2001, it used the same pretext to approve billion-dollar budgets and new scenarios are needed to continue receiving the budget.

 

2-      To affect the news about the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the US needs a new media game, as the US Labor Union joining to the movement made the country worried about the issue; then, it tries to distract attention from the matter and the scenario is a solution to control the media. Passage of time reveals the functionality of the scenario.

 

 

3-      The US started the operation exactly in the season of Hajj (Muslims’ Pilgrimage to Mecca) to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia into confrontation, as it benefits the country. The alleged target of the assassination was the same politician who, according to WIkiLeaks, argued that the US had to attack Iran sooner; i.e. the US has chosen the person it assumed to be despised by Iran, unaware that Iranian officials never took the WikiLeaks documents seriously.

 

4-      Recently, some of the EU member countries’ expressed their doubts about the efficiency of the sanctions against Iran and prepared themselves -overtly or secretly- to resume their economic relations with Iran.  But with Iran’s human rights case in the UN and pressure on IAEA to publicize new forged documents against Iran's nuclear program, the US created a new atmosphere to nullify any doubt about the sanctions and to provide the context for more sanctions against the country. But seemingly the historical memory of people recalls the bogus story of the Saddam producing WMDs. In the world of today, the US and its allies confront with any country not accepting their policy. The fake scenario of Mansour Arbabsiar was set to disrupt Iran.

 

 

It is for more than thirty years that Iran and the US are in a head-on collision. From 2002, following the nuclear case against Iran, the strategy of dealing with Iran entered a new phase called the Chicken Strategy in which two drivers drive towards each other on a collision course: one must swerve, or both may die in the crash, but if one driver swerves and the other does not, the one who swerved will be called a "chicken.”

 

The US follows a trilateral containment policy via international pressures and hopes to encourage other countries like Russia and China to follow it. On the contrary, Iran prepares itself to embrace the sanctions and is planning for the late winter parliamentary election passionately, the measure that can be an indirect referendum to display popular support for resistance against the political and economic pressure of the West.