Netanyahu lands Trump in a quagmire as ‘Shock and Awe’ strategy boomerangs in Iran

By Iqbal Jassat

"They promised us in the last war in Iran in June that we destroyed the majority of the infrastructure for the ballistic missiles and the nuclear plan of Iran. Then in nine months, [Iran rebuilt] everything from scratch? I don't understand that. I feel that they are lying to us."

These are the words of Israeli journalist and activist Anat Saragusti, whose apartment building in central Tel Aviv began to shake as she ran to seek shelter from Iranian missiles targeting the city following the US-Israel aggression against Tehran that morning.

The "Shock and Awe" tactic used by the George Bush administration to bomb, invade and occupy Iraq in 2003 rode on the back of a deliberately constructed lie about so-called "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD).

The driving force behind the myth of WMD has been Benjamin Netanyahu.

Almost a quarter century later, the same Zionist leader, who in the interim has had a warrant of arrest issued against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC), pressured the Trump administration to join him by using all of America's military power and assets to attack Iran.

The number of myths created by him this time varied from "nuclear bomb" to "imminent threat."

However, to the disappointment of Netanyahu and his pedophile buddy Trump, the strategy of "Shock and Awe" has been turned on its head by the Islamic Republic of Iran. It has instead become a strategic instrument in Iran's retaliatory strikes against the Israeli military sites and the US military bases and assets scattered across the region.

The controversy surrounding these lies has resulted in damning questions by lawmakers at a US congressional hearing. Since the unlawful military aggression on Iran in late February, the hearing became the first public briefing on intelligence.

The key question was why the US struck Iran and whether Trump and his war cabinet were aware of potential backlash in the form of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has advanced many irrational different things, including making wholly contradictory arguments to justify the unjustifiable and illegal war, which featured in the hearing by his intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard.

Appearing alongside the heads of the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, Gabbard declined to answer when asked repeatedly by Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, about whether she had viewed Iran as an imminent threat.

"The only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president," she said, passing the buck to Trump, who ordered the war based on lies.

Yet the inescapable fact is that the US bought into Israel’s false claims, attacked Iran and now is desperate to seek an off-ramp to exit an unwinnable war.

Given Netanyahu's criminal record and the multiple lies he has peddled in order to justify the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, hardly anyone outside his Zionist circle believes that Iran was developing nuclear weapons or posed an imminent threat to the US.

Indeed, to add salt to Netanyahu’s self-inflicted wound, hours before the hearings, Joe Kent resigned from his role as director of the national counterterrorism center, saying in a publicly posted resignation letter that Iran had posed "no imminent threat" to the US and criticising Trump for the illegal and unnecessary war.

In addition, US journalist Tucker Carlson insists the war on Iran contradicts the principle of "America First", stating that Israel chose its timing, not the US.

Kent’s resignation is not an anomaly but an alarm: elite dissent is surfacing early because this war is built on deception, observes Ramzy Baroud, editor of Palestine Chronicle.

All the while, in desperation and bitter frustration, Netanyahu has been seeking to pour cold water on widely held public opinion that Israel had influence over Trump's decision to launch the so-called Operation Epic Fury in Iran.

Despite his Hasbara attempts, he has not been able to quell widespread criticism and debates within the US media and intelligentsia over the reasons why the US entered this war in the first place, and the role Israel played in it.

That debate reached a fever pitch with the resignation of Kent, given the fact that he was known to be a longtime Trump ally and veteran of the US special operations community.

The sting in his bite, which Netanyahu cannot cope with, is Kent's statement: "It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby".

We learn from media reports and from a flurry of social media posts that Kent expanded on his assertions in a subsequent, two-hour-long interview with Carlson, saying that "Israel drove the decision".

He also declared quite emphatically that "Israeli officials were circumventing normal channels to influence US lawmakers to push for war".

Facing these substantially critical charges of subordination to Netanyahu, Trump took to social media to deny previous reporting that the US had prior knowledge of an Israeli attack on Iran's South Pars field - a message which some interpreted as "frustration" by the US president.

What is clear is that Netanyahu has landed Trump in a quagmire.

A dangerous place indeed: like the muddy shoreline of a pond, will Trump be able to climb out? Only time will tell.

Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of the Media Review Network, Johannesburg, South Africa.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)

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