Zionists and Puppet US Conspire to Control the MidEast for a Greater Israel

L. A. Times
Beyond Regime Change
The administration doesn't simply want to oust Saddam
Hussein. It wants to redraw the Mideast map.
By Sandy Tolan
Sandy Tolan, an I.F. Stone Fellow at the Graduate School of
Journalism at UC Berkeley, reports frequently on the Middle
East. Jason Felch, a student in Tolan's "Politics and
Petroleum" class, contributed.

December 1 2002

BERKELEY -- If you want to know what the administration has
in mind for Iraq, here's a hint: It has less to do with
weapons of mass destruction than with implementing an
ambitious U.S. vision to redraw the map of the Middle East.

The new map would be drawn with an eye to two main
objectives: controlling the flow of oil and ensuring
Israel's continued regional military superiority. The plan
is, in its way, as ambitious as the 1916 Sykes-Picot
agreement between the empires of Britain and France, which
carved up the region at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The
neo-imperial vision, which can be ascertained from the
writings of key administration figures and their
co-visionaries in influential conservative think tanks,
includes not only regime change in Iraq but control of
Iraqi oil, a possible end to the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries and newly compliant
governments in Syria and Iran -- either by force or
internal rebellion.

For the first step -- the end of Saddam Hussein -- Sept. 11
provided the rationale. But the seeds of regime change came
far earlier. "Removing Saddam from power," according to a
1996 report from an Israeli think tank to then-incoming
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was "an important
Israeli strategic objective." Now this has become official
U.S. policy, after several of the report's authors took up
key strategic and advisory roles within the Bush
administration. They include Richard Perle, now chair of
the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; Douglas Feith,
undersecretary of defense; and David Wurmser, special
assistant in the State Department. In 1998, these men,
joined by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (now the top
two officials in the Pentagon), Elliott Abrams (a senior
National Security Council director), John Bolton
(undersecretary of State) and 21 others called for "a
determined program to change the regime in Baghdad."

After removing Hussein, U.S. forces are planning for an
open-ended occupation of Iraq, according to senior
administration officials who spoke to the New York Times.
The invasion, said Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya, would be
"a historic opportunity that is as large as anything that
has happened in the Middle East since the fall of the
Ottoman Empire." Makiya spoke at an October "Post-Saddam
Iraq" conference attended by Perle and sponsored by the
American Enterprise Institute.

Any occupation would certainly include protecting petroleum
installations. Control of the country's vast oil reserves,
the second largest in the world and worth nearly $3
trillion at current prices, would be a huge strategic
prize. Some analysts believe that additional production in
Iraq could drive world prices down to as low as $10 a
barrel and precipitate Iraq's departure from OPEC, possibly
undermining the cartel. This, together with Russia's new
willingness to become a major U.S. oil supplier, could
establish a long-sought counterweight to Saudi Arabia,
still the biggest influence by far on global oil prices. It
would be consistent with the plan released by Vice
President Dick Cheney's team in June, which underscored
"energy security" as central to U.S. foreign policy. "The
Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S. international energy
policy," the report states.

Some analysts prefer to downplay the drive to control Iraqi
oil. "It is fashionable among anti-American circles ... to
assume that U.S. foreign policy is driven by commercial
considerations," said Patrick Clawson, an oil and policy
analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
in an October talk. Rather, Clawson said, oil "has barely
been on the administration's horizon in considering Iraq
policy.... U.S. foreign policy is not driven by concern for
promoting the interests of specific U.S. firms."

Yet Clawson, whose institute enjoys close ties with the
Bush administration, was more candid during a Capitol Hill
forum on a post-Hussein Iraq in 1999: "U.S. oil companies
would have an opportunity to make significant profits," he
said. "We should not be embarrassed about the commercial
advantages that would come from a re-integration of Iraq
into the world economy. Iraq, post-Saddam, is highly likely
to be interested in inviting international oil companies to
invest in Iraq. This would be very useful for U.S. oil
companies, which are well positioned to compete there, and
very useful for the world's energy-security situation."

Indeed, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi, whose
close ties with Perle, Wurmser, Rumsfeld and Cheney predate
the current Bush administration, met recently with U.S. oil
executives. Afterward, Chalabi, the would-be "Iraqi Karzai"
and the hawks' long-standing choice to lead a post-Hussein
Iraq, made it clear he would give preference to an
American-led oil consortium. He also suggested that
previous deals -- totaling tens of billions of dollars for
Russia's Lukoil and France's TotalFinaElf -- could be
voided.

Next month, key Iraqi exiles will meet with oil executives
at an English country retreat to discuss the future of
Iraqi petroleum. The conference, sponsored by the Center
for Global Energy Studies and chaired by Sheik Zaki Yamani,
the former Saudi oil minister, will feature Maj. Gen. Wafiq
Samarrai, the former head of Iraqi military intelligence,
and former Iraqi Oil Minister Fadhil Chalabi, now executive
director of the center.

Fadhil Chalabi estimates that total oil reserves in Iraq
could exceed Saudi Arabia's and that daily production one
day could reach 10 million barrels, making it the world's
largest producer. Hence, on the center's conference agenda
is a discussion of Iraq as a "second Saudi Arabia," and the
prospect of a world without OPEC. Oil executives and
analysts heading to the country retreat will also be able
to purchase the center's 800-page analysis of the prospects
for exploration in Iraq. The cost: $52,500.

But taking over Iraq and remaking the global oil market is
not necessarily the endgame. The next steps, favored by
hard-liners determined to elevate Israeli security above
all other U.S. foreign policy goals, would be to destroy
any remaining perceived threat to the Jewish state: namely,
the regimes in Syria and Iran.

"The War Won't End in Baghdad," wrote the American
Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen in the Wall Street
Journal. In 1985, as a consultant to the National Security
Council and Oliver North, Ledeen helped broker the illegal
arms-for-hostages deal with Iran by setting up meetings
between weapons dealers and Israel. In the current war, he
argues, "we must also topple terror states in Tehran and
Damascus."

In urging the expansion of the war on terror to Syria and
Iran, Ledeen does not mention Israel. Yet Israel is a
crucial strategic reason for the hard-line vision to "roll
back" Syria and Iran -- and another reason why control of
Iraq is seen as crucial. In 1998, Wurmser, now in the State
Department, told the Jewish newspaper Forward that if Ahmad
Chalabi were in power and extended a no-fly, no-drive zone
in northern Iraq, it would provide the crucial piece for an
anti-Syria, anti-Iran bloc. "It puts Scuds out of the range
of Israel and provides the geographic beachhead between
Turkey, Jordan and Israel," he said. "This should anchor
the Middle East pro-Western coalition."

Perle, in the same 1998 article, told Forward that a
coalition of pro-Israeli groups was "at the forefront with
the legislation with regard to Iran. One can only speculate
what it might accomplish if it decided to focus its
attention on Saddam Hussein." And Perle, Wurmser and Feith
(now in the Pentagon), in their 1996 Israeli think tank
report to Netanyahu, argued for abandoning efforts for a
comprehensive peace in favor of a policy of "rolling back"
Syria to protect Israel's interests.

Now, however, Israel is given a lower profile by those who
would argue for rollback. Rather, writes Ledeen, U.S.
troops would be put at risk in order to "liberate all the
peoples of the Middle East." And this, he argues, would be
virtually pain-free: "If we come to Baghdad, Damascus and
Tehran as liberators, we can expect overwhelming popular
support."

Perle concurs on Iraq -- "The Arab World ... will consider
honor and dignity has been restored" -- as well as Iran:
"It is the beginning of the end for the Iranian regime."

Now, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has joined the
call against Tehran, arguing in a November interview with
the Times of London that the U.S. should shift its focus to
Iran "the day after" the Iraq war ends.

The vast ambition of such changes to the Middle Eastern map
would seem an inherent deterrent. But it is precisely this
historical sweep, reminiscent of Sykes-Picot and the
British arrival in Iraq in 1917, that many close to the
administration seek. Publicly, Perle and Ledeen cling to
the fantasy that American troops would be welcomed in
Baghdad, Tehran and Damascus with garlands of flowers. Yet
they are too smart to ignore the rage across the Arab and
Muslim worlds that would surely erupt in the wake of war on
multiple Middle Eastern fronts.

Indeed, the foreshadowing is already with us: in Bali, in
Moscow, in Yemen and on the streets of Amman. It's clear
that even in Jordan, a close ally of the U.S., the anger at
a U.S. attack on Iraq could be hard to contain.

Indeed, the hard-liners in and around the administration
seem to know in their hearts that the battle to carve up
the Middle East would not be won without the blood of
Americans and their allies. "One can only hope that we turn
the region into a caldron, and faster, please," Ledeen
preached to the choir at National Review Online last
August. "That's our mission in the war against terror."