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IPFS News Link • Trump Administration

Neocons Point Housebroken Trump at Iran

• https://www.lewrockwell.com

The Trump administration's growing use of military force in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen has neoconservative hawks rooting for an armed confrontation with what they view as the root of all evil in the Middle East: Iran.

Many of these armchair warriors recently cheered President Trump's decision to take on the Assad regime — and Moscow — by firing 59 Tomahawk cruise missile at a Syrian airbase alleged to be the source of a chemical weapons attack. But they urged him to do more.

Weekly Standard editor William Kristol tweeted, "Punishing Assad for use of chemical weapons is good. Regime change in Iran is the prize."

Kristol co-founded the infamous Project for the New American Century in 1997 to promote American "global hegemony" and "challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values." It began lobbying for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as early as 1998 but always kept Iran in its sights as well.

With Saddam dead and Syria's Assad stripped of much of his power, Iran is now at the center of neocon crosshairs. Kristol-linked his recent tweet to a Washington Post column by two stalwart advocates of ousting the mullahs in Tehran: Reuel Gerecht and Ray Takeyh.

Titled "How Trump Can Help Cripple the Iranian Regime," their article called for putting the nuclear arms deal with Iran at risk in order to "stoke the volcano under Tehran and to challenge the regime." The centerpiece of their bizarre argument was that the Iranian people would gratefully welcome the United States imposing "crippling sanctions" to destroy their economy in the name of "human rights."

The authors were vague as to the details but suggested that Iran's ruling clerics would quickly succumb to a "popular rebellion" by "Iranian dissidents," particularly if the United States sent "more American troops [to] both Syria and Iraq" to reinforce its message.

Gerecht, a died-in-the-wool neocon, was a former director of the Project for a New American Century's Middle East Initiative. In 2001, he wrote, "Only a war against Saddam Hussein will decisively restore the awe that protects American interests abroad and citizens at home."

In 2002, he further touted a U.S. invasion of Iraq as a way to "provoke riots in Iran — simultaneous uprisings in major cities that would simply be beyond the scope of regime-loyal specialized riot-control units." Instead, the subsequent U.S. invasion backfired by putting a pro-Iran regime into power in Baghdad.

Iran in the Crosshairs

Today Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neocon think tank dedicated to waging war against "militant Islam," with a focus on Iran. Heavily funded by gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson, the Foundation was originally created to promote the agenda of hardline Israeli hawks.

The Foundation fought bitterly against the Iran nuclear deal, lest it open the door to a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. Gerecht, in particular, demanded that the United States attack Iran rather than pursue diplomacy. "I've written about 25,000 words about bombing Iran," he boasted in 2010. "Even my mom thinks I've gone too far."


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