Seymour Hersh Agrees With Me on Iran!

Below is a Seymour Hersh article, in the New Yorker, reporting that the US is using Iranian minority groups to undermine the authority of the government of Iran. In August 2006, I predicted this would happen in an online letter to Salon commenting on a Joe Conason article To Iran with Love. See my letter: American Neocon Dreams and the New Middle East, August 25, 2006.

I wrote a similar letter in response to a Juan Cole article, also in Salon, called Partitioning Iraq. See my letter: Neocons Dream On, Oct. 30, 2006.

And finally I posted the same article to my website with a link to a Washington Post opinion by Joe Biden, The Minimum Necessary. See my post: The Balkans and Iraq, Nov. 20, 2006.

When I have time, I will write about how I accurately predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall to a friend during a skiing weekend just before Gorbachev was scheduled to address the East German Communist Party Congress in 1989. Her parents were originally from Dresden and they were going to visit West Germany in the next week. I suggested that they should postpone the trip to Christmas, at which time, they could visit Dresden since the Berlin Wall would have been torn down by then.

I swear, CSI should really do a story about my telepathic abilities!

THE NEXT ACT

Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more?

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

New Yorker, Issue of 2006-11-27

Another critical issue for Gates will be the Pentagon’s expanding effort to conduct clandestine and covert intelligence missions overseas. Such activity has traditionally been the C.I.A.’s responsibility, but, as the result of a systematic push by Rumsfeld, military covert actions have been substantially increased.

In the past six months, Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as “part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran.” (The Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluchi tribesmen, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime’s authority in northern and southeastern Iran.)

The government consultant said that Israel is giving the Kurdish group “equipment and training.” The group has also been given “a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S.” (An Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel was involved.)

The Balkans and Iraq

Neocons Dream Sweet Dreams

Below is a link to Senator Joe Biden's latest plea in the Washington Post to set the stage for the partition of Iraq. He is really starting to annoy me. I'm not sure if Uncle Joe is actually conspiring with the Neocon's or whether he is just too naive for his own good, but I would like to make a prediction, that the future Bush policy in the Middle East will be one of destabilization, not democracy. This is based on my "telepathically communing" with the Neocons in the White House and also based on my knowledge of what has happened in Yugoslavia.

The preview of this new policy was the 2006 war in Lebanon, where the bombing of Beirut was designed to ignite a civil war against the Shia (Hezbollah) by the Sunnis and Christians. Fortunately, the Sunnis and Christians have seen that movie before, knew how it ended and decided not to play the part that was scripted for them by Olmert and Bush.

Even though it didn't really work that well in Lebanon, destabilization will be retooled for Iraq, Syria and Iran.

For Iraq, the first step will be to promote tripartite "federalism" dividing Iraq into three distinct federal units which has been championed by US Senator Biden (NYT Op-Ed, May 1, 2006, WaPo August 24, 2006 ironically named "A Plan to Hold Iraq Together"). This is basically, partition lite, because Iraqis will have to define new boundaries for each of the three provinces. This process, in itself, will be the catalyst for ethnic cleansing on a massive scale.

Pundits will not have to ask whether Iraq is in a state of civil war. Like the war in Bosnia, it will be easy to determine when Iraq slips into civil war. The Kurdish Members of Parliament will leave for Kirkuk; the Shias MPs will leave for Basra; the Sunni MPs will leave for Fallujah. There will be convoys of people on donkeys leaving mixed neighborhoods for ethnically pure neighborhoods. Baghdad will look like Beirut or Sarajevo.

Then American politicians will say "things have changed"! The will ask now ... "who do we support, who do we betray"? (The Kurds had better hold on to their hats because US policy can change on a dime.)

This is the "Lord Owen" solution, which was applied during the Bosnian war when he proposed new internal borders for Bosnia that recognized ethnic cleansing as "the facts on the ground". This in turn led to a new round of ethnic cleansing, especially between Croats and Bosniaks.

For Syria, it means the overthrow, with the aid of some bombs, of Assad regime and his minority Alawite religious group and handing power the Sunni majority. This should pry Syria away from the hold that Iran has on it and stop the shipments of arms from Iran through Syria to Hezbollah.

Iran is the hardest nut to crack. It would be too costly, in terms of manpower and money, for the US to attempt to get ride of the Iranian mullahs by itself. Instead, using Yugoslavia as a model, the US will bomb Iran, giving cover to local separatist groups such as the Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis and you guessed it the Arabs bordering on southern Shia dominated Iraq (where all the Iranian oil is). When Washington makes it known to all concerned that it will break Iran into pieces, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iraqi Kurdistan, and you guessed it the Shia in Iraq will join the US and all descend on Iran to get their part of the spoils. Similar to the German invasion of Yugoslavia during WW2.

See the ethnic map of Iran: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/iran_ethnoreligious_distribution_2004.jpg

Iran's infrastructure will be destroyed, it oil province gone. Its Persian population representing 60% of current Iran will have lost the will to carry on. (Let that be a lesson to those call Bush the evil Satan.)

So what kind of Middle East will we have? There will be no talk about democracy in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Lebanon will have a cowed Hezbollah, which will have lost access to Iranian money and weapons. A Sunni lead Syrian government will be crippled after a civil war with the Alawites. In Iraq, after a protracted civil war three separate states will emerge: Kurdistan, Shia Iraq and Sunni Iraq. Finally there will be a rump Iran that has lost almost half of its territory and population. Everyone will be at each other's throats and all will look to the US to find favour so that each country can get whatever scraps the US will through at it.

Just like in the Balkans. Just like Yugoslavia.

Turkey will be the wild card. Will it try to intervene to stop the emergence of an independent Kurdistan. I don't think so. The US will make it clear that it is in the US national interest that these countries should "liberated". Turkey will be given the option of being with the US or against it. I think that Turkey will go with the US.

The Minimum Necessary
By Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Wahsington Post
Sunday, November 19, 2006

First, Baker-Hamilton must tackle the issue of U.S. troop deployments. Most Democrats believe we should begin the phased redeployment of our troops in the coming months but not set a hard deadline for their withdrawal. We would refocus the mission of those who remain on counter terrorism, training, logistics and force protection.

Macedonia takes Care of Its Own

The Macedonian government must be feeling strong enough to dare suggest that it has a role to play in protecting minority rights for Macedonians in other Balkan countries. My thought, without any proof, is that it has gotten the green light from th EU and the US to pursue this course because support for the Greek position is not viable. With Kosovo about to get its independence and Cyprus coming to a head, they need stability in the Balkans. Giving Greece a kick in the pants is one way to accomplish this.

Makfax vesnik Skopje /25/10/

Macedonian government is concerned with the situation of the Macedonian minority in the neighboring countries, however, it restrains from crossing the point of meddling in internal matters of other countries.

Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Miloshoski said this in the interview with Makfax and the biweekly magazine on Euro-integrations "Macedonia in Europe".

"In line with the constitutional commitment, Republic of Macedonia is concerned with the treatment of the Macedonian minority in the neighboring countries, however, all actions relating this do not exceed the limits of internal affairs of the respective country".

Wikipedia on Macedonians

These two Wikipedia links to Macedonian information are great. Wikipedia is a user generated encyclopedia in which individuals can submit their own articles. I'm not sure exactly how they manage "the Macedonian question", but the information seems to be reliable, with the exception that you can obviously tell the bias of the person submitting the article. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. Wikipedia is important in relaying the fact.

An example is the listing of Macedonians in various census around the world. I did not know that Bulgaria (5071) even allowed Macedonians to be identified as such. Who new their were there were so many in Serbia (25,847) or that Australia (81,899) had more Macedonians that Canada (31,265) and the US (42, 812) combined. The Greek (962) census only recorded those migrants who hold Macedonian citizenship.

Wikipedia - Macedonians (ethnic group)

The Macedonians (Македонци, Makedonci) - also referred to as Macedonian Slavs ^[1] - are a South Slavic ethnic group who are primarily associated with the Republic of Macedonia. They speak the Macedonian language, a South Slavic language, and most of them are part of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. The overwhelming majority of ethnic Macedonians live in the Republic of Macedonia, although there are also minority communities in neighboring Serbia, Greece (in Greek or Aegean Macedonia where the overwhelming majority Greeks also refer to themselves as Macedonians), Albania and Bulgaria, as well as in other diaspora communities in a number of other countries

Slavic language (Greece)

Slavic (Greek: Σλάβικα Slávika, reported self-identifying names: makedonski, bugarski, balgarski [1]) is the term sometimes used to designate the dialects spoken by the Slavophone (i.e. Slavic-speaking) minority of the region of Macedonia in northern Greece; other names include Slav-Macedonian or Dopia. Linguistically, these dialects are classified as Bulgarian or Macedonian Slavic depending on the abstand (distance) of each dialect from the standard languages