Bolton
is likely to push for the creation of a new sectarian state out of
Syrian and Iraqi territory, now that the groundwork has been laid and
the path largely cleared to building a “new Middle East.” Iran is
currently the only country in the region with the potential to foil
that plan.
by
Whitney Webb
Part
5 - Bolton’s Iran plan
Though
some may dismiss Parsi’s response as exaggerated or bombastic,
Bolton’s actions and rhetoric over the years have made it clear
that he is adamant in his desire to topple the current government of
Iran by any means necessary.
Indeed,
Bolton’s past indicates a near obsession with clearing the way for
U.S. military action against Iran. As journalist Gareth Porter
recently noted, from 2002 to 2004, while he was the Bush
administration’s key policymaker on Iran, Bolton — by flouting
State Department protocol and taking several unannounced trips to
Israel — “actively conspired […] to establish the political
conditions necessary for the administration to carry out military
action.”
Bolton’s
behind-the-scenes dealings led Iran’s nuclear program to become a
matter overseen by the United Nations Security Council, as opposed to
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He engineered that
handoff because the then-director general of the IAEA, Mohamed El
Baradei, posed an obstacle to framing Iran as a nuclear weapons
threat. Bolton eventually used fabricated evidence, provided to
him by an Iranian terrorist group that Bolton still openly supports,
to convince the United Nations that Iran was secretly developing a
nuclear weapon.
That
terror group, Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK), was listed a “Foreign
Terrorist Organization” by the United States government from 1997
and 2012 and, in the past, has conducted terror acts to accomplish
its goals, killing Iranians as well as Americans in the process. More
recently, MEK has worked with Israeli Intelligence to murder Iranian
scientists. Since its removal from the government’s terror group
list, MEK has sought to reinvent itself as a “moderate” Iranian
opposition group even though it has next to no support within Iran
and has consistently been characterized as both “cultish” and
“authoritarian.”
In its
bid to become the likely successors to the current Iranian government
were Western-backed regime change to take place, MEK has garnered a
slew of admirers across both parties of the U.S. political
establishment due to its generous speaking fees. That is especially
true in the Trump administration, as several key figures in his
cabinet and advisers to the President have been linked to the group.
For instance, Elaine Chao, Trump’s Transportation Secretary,
received $50,000 in 2015 for a five-minute speech.
Bolton
is just one more of the group’s many high-profile “admirers” in
the U.S. At a MEK gathering in France last year, Bolton told
supporters and members of the group: “The declared policy of the
United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in
Tehran. […] The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not
going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the
regime itself. […] And that’s why, before 2019, we here will
celebrate in Tehran!”
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