The painting Die wilde Jagd(The Wild Chase), a work in
the symbolism genre by Franz Stuck, depicts the German god Wotan (Odin) on
horseback leading a spectral procession in a seemingly frenzied pursuit.
In Germanic and Norse
mythology Wotan doubles as a god of war who received soldiers who died in the
battlefield in Valhalla, and as a hunter who embodied the ability to
control life, death and the elemental forces of nature.
It has often been remarked
that the central figure in Stuck’s work bears an uncanny resemblance to Adolf
Hitler who was born in 1889, the year the painting was completed.
And it is claimed that Hitler,
who first saw the painting as a 13-year-old, modelled his adult appearance on Wotan’s
depiction.
Von Stuck became his favourite
painter.
A great believer in
providence, Hitler often spoke of his coming to power, his survival from assassination
attempts and his military victories as manifestations of his worldly destiny.
Some believe that Stuck’s
painting prophesized the rise of Hitler. Mythology had a deep-seated hold on
the German psyche, and this formed the basis of many examinations and prognostications by
philosophers, musicians and writers.
Heinrich Heine, the German
poet and thinker, felt that the Christian religion only kept a tenuous lid on
the darker aspects of the German soul. He feared that the veneer of relative German
pacifism could be broken by the rise of a Germanic demagogue-thinker who would
be able to use his primitive powers to summon up the demonic forces of German
pantheism.
He was perhaps like Stuck’s
painting prophesizing the rise of Adolf Hitler.
NB.
. Stuck was ennobled in 1906 . He died on August 30th,
1928, at the age of 65 . He is buried in the Munich
Waldfriedhof . Die wilde Jagd resides
at the Lenbachhaus Museum in Munich
The English writer Frederick
Forsyth who died recently had a close association with the civil war fought in
Nigeria between federal and secessionist protagonists. At first, he started off
as an observing journalist, covering the conflict as he had done Cold War
politics as a Reuters news reporter earlier in the 1960s. His coverage of the
famous attempt on the life of French President Charles de Gaulle at
Petit-Clamart in 1962 by the renegade O.A.S. inspired his breakthrough novel The
Day of the Jackal. It was initially thought that a subsequent novel The
Dogs of War, which was published in 1974, was a composite of his
observations of European mercenaries he had encountered as a freelance reporter
in Biafra. But the suicide of a former mercenary four years later after a siege
in London’s East End unearthed an extraordinary story which provided a more
accurate source of the book’s inspiration. This was that Forsyth had financed an
attempt to overthrow an African dictator through a mercenary force. Moreover,
the plot of the novel appeared to insinuate the extraordinary motive of
resurrecting the fallen state of Biafra on an island in the Gulf of Guinea and
replacing the overthrown dictator with Biafra’s exiled leader Chukwuemeka
Ojukwu.
The Siege
The discovery of Frederick
Forsyth’s alleged role in masterminding a plot to overthrow the government of
Francisco Marcias Nguema, the dictator of the West Central African state of Equatorial Guinea, began on the Saturday afternoon of March 11th,
1978. Two nine-year-old girls had been invited to play a game of “truth or
dare” in a small bedsitter in Goldsmith Row in the East End district of Bethnal
Green. While inside the girls had been horrified to have seen a gun. They reported
this to the police who sent two officers to interview the tenant, 43-year-old Alan
Murphy.
Detective Constables Ernie
Pawley and Russell Dunlop were walking up Roman Road in the company of the
girls when Murphy was spotted in a car. They approached him and told him they
wanted to search his flat. Murphy consented and was cooperative until Dunlop
began rummaging through a bottom drawer. He placed his left hand on Dunlop’s
shoulder and said: “This is far enough.” Dunlop looked up to find Murphy
pointing a Mauser pistol at his head.
Both constables immediately
sought to reason with Murphy. Dunlop, who was on one knee, asked Murphy of he
could sit on the floor, but Murphy chillingly replied: “No, this is it. This is
the end. I’m going to kill you and, then him, then I will probably kill
myself.”
Thirty seconds elapsed when as
Murphy began to pull back the gun catch, Pawley, who was standing three feet
away, dived at him. Murphy adjusted himself and at point blank range fired at
Pawley, injuring him in the chest. Dunlop scrambled out of the room as Murphy
fired several shots which missed. He then turned his attention to Pawley who
had crumpled to the floor. He shot once but missed and the heavily bleeding Pawley
was able to crawl his way out of the room, tumbling down a set of stairs to make
good his escape. Murphy continued firing at them and miraculously missed.
Dunlop reported the incident
and within minutes the road was cordoned off and a siege commenced by 50
policemen who were backed by the anti-terrorist squad who brought with them a
large quantity of heavy artillery. But there was no further shooting. Nor was
the standard tactic of police calling for the surrender of the gunman through a
loudhailer. More than an hour passed when a gunshot was heard. The police burst
in and found Murphy lying in a pool of blood. He had shot himself in the heart.
The Anatomy of a Coup Plot
In the ensuing investigation
the police discovered that Murphy, known locally as a delivery driver and described
by one neighbour as “very quiet and softly spoken”, had been a professional
mercenary. He had served as a “dog of war” in several theatres which included
the Congo and Biafra.
While as was expected, the
police found a cache of guns and ammunition in the bedsit, it was the
unearthing of a trove of documents which included a diary of Murphy’s mercenary
exploits in Africa and many letters, which startled. One of the letters from
Forsyth revealed the connection between Forsyth and a coup plot which had germinated
in 1972.
But while the plot was
centred on engineering the overthrow of the Nguema regime in Equatorial Guinea,
its motivation led back to Forsyth’s association with the short-lived
secessionist Republic of Biafra.
Forsyth was sent by the BBC
to cover the troubles in Nigeria which led to the secession of the Eastern
region of the country under the leadership of the region’s military governor
Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Ojukwu. It is claimed that the BBC found
Forsyth’s reporting to be biased towards the secessionist side, and he was
recalled to London. Soon after, Forsythe resigned his position and returned to
Biafra as a freelance journalist.
While in Biafra Forsyth
became close to Ojukwu and also got to know many of the mercenaries who fought
for the Biafran’s including Rolf Steiner, the German ex-French Foreign
Legionnaire who commanded the Biafran 4th Commando Brigade.
Steiner’s observations of Forsyth made him reach the conclusion that Forsyth
was working for the British state. He said the following in an interview:
Forsyth was clever and
discreet. He kept his distance from visiting colleagues. He went wherever
Ojukwu went and was familiar with all of Biafra’s political and military
problems.
Steiner proved to be correct.
In 2015, Forsyth admitted that he had been an “asset” of the British Secret
Intelligence Service, MI6, from 1968 to 1988. While British foreign policy
outwardly supported the Federal side, it was keeping a close look at the
Biafran side whose initial territory covered much of Nigeria’s oil-rich areas.
Forsyth proselytised the Biafra cause through newspaper articles, television interviews
and a Penguin book titled The Biafra Story, which was published in June
1969, seven months before the collapse of Biafra.
But
Biafra’s capitulation apparently failed to dampen Forsyth’s hope for a revived
Biafran state. A few short months after his return from Biafra in 1970, Forsyth
was in a small flat in Camden, already plotting the coup which he hoped would
provide a new homeland for the Biafrans. Along with Alexander Ramsay Gay, a
Scottish bank clerk turned mercenary who he had met in Biafra, he decided that the
designated homeland would be the island of Fernando Po, a part of Equatorial
Guinea which Nguema based himself.
Fernando
Po (now Bioko), which is 100 kilometres off the coast of Nigeria, had
functioned as a staging point for flights to and from Biafra. It also had a
large population of Igbos, the dominant ethnic group of Biafra, who since the
1920s when it was under Spanish colonial control had come to the island as
contract labour on its coffee, cocoa and timber plantations.
The
major hurdle which Forsyth and Gay faced, that of finance, was removed when
sales of The Day of The Jackal made Forsyth a millionaire. In Spring of
1972, Forsyth requested that Gay embark for Fernando Po on a reconnoitring
mission. Gay obtained a visa to Cameroon and flew to the island’s capital Santa
Isabel (now Malabo) where he explored possible landing sites and scrutinised
the amount of defences around what was often referred to as Nguema’s palace,
but which in fact was the old Spanish colonial governor’s mansion.
When
he got back to Forsyth, by now a tax exile who divided his residences between
Ireland and Spain, Gay informed him that a dozen mercenaries backed by 40 to 50
former Biafran soldiers could take the island. The operation he estimated would
cost approximately $80,000. Gay then proceeded to sorting out the
preliminaries: acquiring false passports, opening bank accounts, contriving
fake end-user’s certificates and searching for arms dealers. Gay had two
passports issued in the names of Greaves and Muir. They were based on death
certificates in the style that Forsyth had written into the storyline of The
Day of the Jackal. He used the name Henry George Greaves to open a bank
account number 47009081/93 at the Kreditbank, Ostend.
Gay
then proceeded to Hamburg where an arms dealer agreed to supply arms including
Belgian-made automatic rifles, light machine guns, mortars, bazookas and other
arms which would be released to him in Spain by an official of the Spanish
Ministry of Defence who was bribed. The end-user certificate which indicated
that the arms were destined for Iraq was signed by an Iraqi diplomat who was
also bribed. Gay paid the arms dealer a deposit of 120,000 Deutschmarks
($32,000) as the first of several instalments. He also left a telephone number
for his principal, named as “Mr. Van Cleef” whom the arms dealer could contact
in case of any problem. “Van Cleef” was the pseudonym for Forsyth who was
identified in Murphy’s diary as having been present at meetings with the arms
dealer in Hamburg.
Gay’s
next objective was to bring together a group of gunmen, a sea vessel and a
workable plan. He hired 13 mercenaries: nine French and Belgian; three
Englishmen and a Hungarian. One of the Englishmen was Murphy. A converted
64-foot fishing vessel named the Albatross was found in the Spanish
resort of Fuengirola and Gay chartered it for three months at a cost of $3,200
per month. The reason given to the owner was that it was to be used for an oil
survey expedition off the coast of Africa.
The
chronology of the plan to seize the island would, Gay envisioned, start in the
middle of December when the arms would be sent from Madrid to Malaga where they
would be loaded onto the Albatross. And after obtaining further supplies
and equipment at Gibraltar, it would sail on to the Cape Verde Islands where
fresh food and water would be purchased. Then it would journey around West
Africa and stop at Cotonou, Dahomey (now Republique de Benin), the embarkation
point of the 50 Biafran veterans. From here the vessel would time its arrival
at Fernando Po for the dead of night.
The
amphibious assault, consisting of all the mercenaries and half of the Biafrans,
would proceed to the landing site on motorised dinghies with silent motors. The
force would then scale a low cliff before heading to the president’s mansion
where the presidential guard would be eliminated. Once inner sanctum of the mansion
was penetrated, Nguema was to be assassinated. The communique announcing the
overthrow of Don Francisco Marcias would express regret at either his
“accidental death” or his “suicide.”
Success
would guarantee a bonus payment of $30,000. This would partly compensate for a
“no looting” policy, but Gay planned to ransom the contents of the Soviet
embassy to the CIA for one million dollars.
But
things did not go to plan.
Although
advised to keep a low profile, the mercenaries, who had begun to arrive in
southern Spain in late October 1972, stood out from the usual crowd of
tourists. It was reported that one of the mercenaries was spotted walking
around the deck of the Albatross while dressed in military fatigues. Suspicions
regarding the true nature of the enterprise were raised by the cargo being
loaded which included three landing craft, over 10,000 litres of diesel fuel,
and 75 army uniforms. Weaponry such as light machine guns, bazookas and
mortars, along with ten tons of ammunition were smuggled from Yugoslavia to the
port of Valencia where they were stored in a dockside warehouse before being
transferred to Las Palmas in the Canary Island where the cargo would be loaded
onto the Albatross.
Then
in the second week of December, Gay’s plans began to unravel. The corrupt
Spanish official refused to issue the arms export licence because the Albatross
was a private, wooden-hulled craft and not a freighter. So when the vessel
arrived at Malaga on December 16th, 1972, there were no arms to
load. Also, the arms dealer who had bribed the Spaniard refused to refund
Forsyth’s down payment.
Not
giving up, Gay arranged for the Albatross to sail down to Lanzarote in
the Canary Islands while he travelled to Hamburg to arrange for the arms to
leave Spain by another route so that the Albatross could be loaded at
sea. But this was to no avail. He returned to the Canaries on January 15th,
1973, and informed the mercenaries that the operation would be abandoned for
the time being. The next day, orders were sent from Madrid to the Policia
Canaria to seize the Albatross and arrest all the mercenaries on board.
The
unravelling of the mission had been the handiwork of the British Special
Branch, the famed counter-terrorism unit which had been formed in 1883. Its
officers had been tracking Gay’s activities because they were fearful that the
arms shipment he had been arranging was destined for one of the paramilitary
groups in Northern Ireland. When they discovered its actual purpose, they
tipped off their Spanish counterparts.
The
Spanish authorities initially based the arrests on drugs offences which did not
stick. Disinterested in mounting an investigation into the coup plot, they
decided to put each mercenary on a plane flight back to his homeland. Gay was
questioned by Spain’s equivalent of the Special Branch but allowed to leave for
Paris.
The
operation had ended before it begun.
The Dogs of War and Biafra
In April 1972, Forsyth told
the London Evening Standard that he would be flying off to “West Africa
and then on to South Africa to research for his new thriller The Dogs of War”.
The paper reported that like his two previous novels, it would be “part
documentary based on his journalistic experiences, and part fictional.” The
reference to his journalistic experiences pointed to a Nigerian subtext, and he
reflected this when remarking that “I don’t think that I would be exactly
welcome in Lagos.”
It was around this time that
Gay embarked on his reconnoitring mission to Fernando Po and it is likely that
Forsyth was referring to him as much as to himself when speaking of his
impending travels. He had delivered the manuscript to his publisher in the
first months of 1973, and the plot of the resulting book was identical to that
of the planned anti-Nguema mission, apart, that is. from Forsyth turning its
failure into a success.
When the book was published,
both Forsyth and his publishers stressed that the story was about the world of
illegal arms and mercenaries and that his work in Biafra had brought him into
contact with the sort of characters portrayed in the book. He had evidently begun
work on the book while the operation was being planned, and it is clear that
the “Republic of Zangaro” was a representation of Fernando Po and “President
Jean Kimba” the incarnation of Marcias Nguema.
But what of the connection to
the resurrecting of Biafra?
The beginning of the novel
clearly draws upon the fall of Biafra with a group of mercenaries saying their
goodbyes to a general who has just lost a war in West Africa and is flying into
exile with a number of his acolytes. This mirrored the flight into exile of
Ojukwu, a Lieutenant Colonel for most of the war, who was promoted to “General
of the People’s Army” in May 1969. On January 9th, 1970, Ojukwu and a
few others including his army chief Alexander Madiebo embarked on a plane at
Uli Airport destined for the Ivory Coast.
The book ends with the
character “Dr. Okoye”, an academic with an Igbo name who happens to be the
representative of “The General”, assuming power in “Zangaro”. Whereas the
motivation for effecting regime change in this fictional country is for the
coup’s sponsors to take control of Zangaro’s valuable platinum reserves, the
economic benefits of taking over Fernando Po (and the impoverished Equatorial
Guinea) had no discernible long-term benefit. The country was more than a
decade away from the discovery of oil deposits.
What followed were a series
of adamant denials. Charles Clark, the managing director of the book’s
publisher Hutchinson’s responded by saying that a source who he could not name
assured him that if there had been a plot, Ojukwu had not been involved in it
and that he would have “strongly disapproved” of it. Forsyth’s London-based
solicitors, Harbottle and Lewis wrote to the Sunday Times -they claimed
on Ojukwu’s behalf- to state that Ojukwu strongly denied that he “inspired or
was the intended beneficiary” of “the activities of a group of mercenaries” in
a certain West African country.
It should ne noted however,
that after Gay was given a suspended sentence for the illegal possession of
arms and munitions at a November 1973 trial in which Forsyth had given evidence
on his behalf as a character witness, he slipped out of the country and
reportedly headed to the Ivory Coast where he joined Ojukwu who was running a
transportation business.
Would Forsyth have been
inspired to have undertaken such a risky endeavour on behalf of Ojukwu and the
Biafran cause? There is much evidence to suggest that he carried with him an
enormous amount of bitterness at how interests in Britain had, from his point
of view, sabotaged the Biafran project, and it would have given him a great
deal of personal satisfaction to have resurrected in some measure the dream of
Biafra.
When ruminating over whether
Ojukwu had been the intended beneficiary of the coup, the Sunday Times
referred to the former Biafran leader as “Forsyth’s hero”. This was not an idle
description. While being interviewed at his Spanish estate in 1974, Wilfred
De’Ath, who was writing for the Australian newspaper The Age, asked
Forsyth what he thought were the most important human qualities that a man
should possess. Forsyth grabbed De’Ath’s ballpen and wrote the following on a
piece of note paper:
Strength without brutality,
Honesty without priggishness, Courage without recklessness, Humour without
frivolity, Humanity without sentimentality, Intelligence without deviousness,
Scepticism without cynicism.
Then Forsyth added:
The only man I have ever
known to possess all these qualities in full measure was Emeka Ojukwu.
But if Forsyth as the
mastermind of an endeavour with the objective of establishing an Igbo homeland
just a hundred kilometres from the Nigerian coastline, he and Gay had not
reckoned on the backlash that would have inevitably flowed from the deposing of
Nguema. The threat posed to Nigerian security of a hostile government led by
the leader of the Biafran secession would almost certainly have led to a
political and military campaign to bring down such a government.
For many years, public
concern in Nigeria over the treatment of Nigerian labourers on the island had
even led to calls for the country to annexe Fernando Po. A pro-Igbo coup would
also have likely led to inter-ethnic conflict between Igbos and the indigenous
Bubi people and even among other Nigerian-origin peoples from Calabar and Ogoja
who as minorities within the breakaway former Eastern region had been hostile
to perceived Igbo domination of that region and were consequently largely
resistant to Biafra. The taking of Fernando Po would also have provoked
hostility in Rio Muni, the mainland enclave of Equatorial Guinea.
In 1975, thousands of
Nigerian contract works were subjected to continual harassment and beatings. A New
York Times article in January 1976 pointed to the root cause as anti-Igbo
sentiment. It noted that Nguema belonged to the Fang tribe, “which doesn't get
along with Nigeria's Ibos (sic), who traditionally make up the bulk of the
contract labourers.” The Nigerian government acted to evacuate 45,000 workers
between 1975 and 1976.
A mercenary takeover two
years earlier, which would likely have increased anti-Igbo and anti-Nigerian feelings,
would have been a recipe for disaster.
Forsyth consistently denied
any knowledge of a coup being planned and that he had attended the meetings in
Hamburg as part of his research into what he described as “the weapons
(procurement) side” of the mercenary business. He repeated his denials to Adam
Roberts, the author of The Wonga Coup, which was about the failed
attempt in 2004 to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Nguema’s
nephew and successor. He admitted to Roberts that aerial photographs of Fernado
Po had been brought to his flat but that the money he had handed to the
plotters was for information which he required to write the book.
But Forsyth became more
equivocal as the interview progressed, saying that a “still-born attempt” at a
coup had occurred and that he had spoken to several participants including
Alexander Gay. He was also unsure about whether the plot of his novel inspired
the coup or vice versa: “It was a chicken and egg situation.”
In the end, Forsyth admitted
that Scotland Yard contacted him at his Ireland residence and told him never to
try it again.
He did not. But while his
involvement has for long been beyond dispute, questions still linger as to his
motive. For instance, while Equatorial Guinea was not at that time an oil-rich
state, prospecting for oil deposits had begun under Spanish colonial rule in
the mid-1960s. It is possible that a seizure of power would have placed the coup’s
orchestrators in a position to profit from future oil discoveries. This is of
course speculative. It leads back to the audacious motive of resuscitating the
dream of Biafra, which was clearly hinted at in The Dogs of War.
And if one word defined the life
of Frederick Forsyth, it was his audacity.
Adeyinka Makinde is a writer
based in London, England.
Select sources:
Roberts, Adam. The Wonga
Coup: A Tale of Guns, Germs and the Steely Determination to Create Mayhem in an
Oil-rich Corner of Africa. Public Affairs, 2006.
The attack by the State of
Israel on Iran on Friday, June 13th, has been narrated as one that
is based on the threat of the Islamic Republic of Iran acquiring a nuclear
weapons capability. But a closer examination reveals the nuclear issue to be a
pretext for a regime change operation designed both to secure Israel's military
domination of West Asia and to maintain U.S. global hegemony.
The starting point in understanding the conflict lies with the fact that Israel
is an expansionist state which wilfully refuses to constitutionally demarcate
its final borders. It needs to "de-fang" Iran as the last obstacle towards
ensuring its complete military domination of West Asia. Thus, achieving the
destruction of Iran would pave the way for it to expand into territories which
its foundational ideology -Political Zionism- claims was promised to them by
God.
Israel’s longstanding
strategy towards achieving its ultimate objective of truly establishing Israel
on the “Land of Israel” (Eretz Yisrael) has been to find opportunities to
expand through military conquest and by creating the circumstances through
which its neighbours can be weakened and ultimately balkanised.
The theme of weakening
countries who refuse to recognise Israel and who support the Palestinian cause
has been repeatedly addressed over the decades by a litany of policy papers
prepared by the Israeli state, as well as by influential pro-Zionist
think-tanks which are often based in the United States.
In 1980, a paper produced for
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs by one Oded Yinon provided a detailed
rationale for Israel’s interest in balkanising surrounding nations into small
ethnic and denominational statelets. Known as the “Yinon Plan”,AStrategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties
envisioned countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq being divided into
their ethnic or religious component parts. Iraq for example was to be divided
into Kurdish, Sunni and Shia states.
Iran
has always featured prominently in these studies, as well as in the lobbying of
the U.S. government by pro-Zionist intellectuals and the political leadership
of Israel. For instance, in January 2003, when the invasion of Iraq was being
planned, Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli prime minister, called on President
George W. Bush to “disarm Iran, Libya and Syria”. And Binyamin Netanyahu has
since the 1990s been actively calling on the Americans to intervene in Iran, using
its development of nuclear technology and its potential to develop
an atomic bomb as the basis for such intervention.
Iran,
as is the case with the Arab states Israel has targeted, is a heterogenous
mixture of ethnicities and religious sects, and as such is viewed as inherently
vulnerable to the application of pressure intent on fracturing the country. It
formed a central part of the concept of an “Arc of Crisis” in the Middle East.
Devised
by the neoconservative academic Bernard Lewis in response to the Islamic
Revolution in Iran, Lewis believed the coming to power of the mullahs would
inflame the region with religious fundamentalist movements and lead to
increasing anti-Western sentiment. However, he also believed that the West
could use the development as a means of re-configuring the Middle East and
shaping a policy which would direct the embers of raised levels of ethnic nationalism
and religious sentiment towards the Muslim republics of Central Asia on the
southern border of the Soviet Union. At the same time, Iran, with its Azeri,
Baluchi, Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab minorities, would in Lewis’ thinking,
provide fertile ground for stimulating secessionist movements.
Pro-Zionist adherents of the neoconservative movement, whose ultimate mission
would be revealed to be to utilise American military power to destroy the
enemies of Israel, made their first substantive impact on American foreign
policy during the latter stages of the Reagan presidency when they were
involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. They were heavily represented in the administration
led by George W. Bush when the attacks of September 11th, 2001,
occurred.
This tragic event provided
the impetus for what U.S. General Wesley Clark described as a policy coup which
has never been debated by the American public. During the later part of 2002
while visiting former colleagues at the Pentagon as the invasion of Afghanistan
was being planned, a serving general informed Clark of a top secret plan to
knockout 7 countries within 5 years. They included Iraq, Syria, and Libya, with
the final country being Iran.
The clear implication was
that the grand act of terrorism, officially committed by Sunni militants of
al-Qaeda, would be used as a pretext to destroy secular Arab Nationalist
governments and the largest Shia state in the world, each of which had the common
denominator of resisting any accommodation with Israel, as well as supporting
the cause of Palestine.
The fates of Iraq, Libya and
Syria which have left each as dismembered and weakened countries, are of course
a matter of record. Iran thus remains the last nation standing.
The question of Iran developing a nuclear programme and by extension the
likelihood of it developing atomic weapons has always been used by Israeli
leaders especially Binyamin Netanyahu as a pretext to put Iran in the
crosshairs of the United States. Iran, as is the right of all nations has the
right to develop nuclear energy under the terms of the Non-Nuclear
Proliferation Treaty to which it is a signatory state. Iran’s nuclear sites
were inspected in accord with treaty obligations which were continued under the
stringent conditions placed by the stipulations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action (JCPOA). This is in stark contrast to Israel which has secretly
developed a nuclear programme in Dimona which it has steadfastly refused to
submit to international scrutiny.
It is important to note that
Iran’s desire to pursue a nuclear programme dates back to the time of the Shah
when in 1957, it signed a cooperation treaty with the United States Eisenhower
administration under its “Atoms for Peace” policy. With a large population of
over 90 million people, the Iranian nation’s requirement for nuclear energy to
meet industrial and domestic needs is clear.
But while the potential for
extending this to military needs exists, no credible evidence has ever been
presented to show this to be the case. Indeed, after a debate among Iran’s
spiritual, political and military leaders, in October 2003, Ayatollah Khamanei issued
an oral fatwa forbidding the production and use of any form of weapon of mass
destruction.
During the period that has
elapsed, the U.S. Intelligence Community have repeatedly reached the conclusion
that Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon, the latest was being in March
2025 when Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, informed U.S.
senators during a hearing. The book Manufactured
Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare which was written by
Gareth Porter and published in 2014, provided compelling evidence that Iran was
not building a nuclear bomb.
But these findings by the
intelligence apparatus of the American state, a prize-winning investigative
journalist and Iran’s acquiescence to a regime of regular inspections did not
impress Israeli leaders whose object has been to overthrow the government of
the Islamic Republic. The strategy of achieving such regime change can be found
in the 2009 paper-turned-book titled Which
Path to Persia?: Options for a New American Strategy Towards Iran which
was written under the auspices of The Brookings Institution.
The enduring Zionist goal of
regime change as a prelude to balkanisation was reflected in a recent editorial
in the Jerusalem Post. Titled “Trump should use his power
to defeat Iran's regime”, the article called on President Donald Trump to
“embrace regime change as a policy” and to “forge a Middle East Coalition for
Iran’s partition,” while “offering security guarantees to Sunni, Kurdish, and
Balochi minority regions willing to break away.”
Were this to come to pass,
Israel would become the undisputed regional hegemon with a free hand to attempt
the final destruction of the two resistance movements which Iran has supported
in their fight to prevent Zionist designs on their territories: Hamas in Gaza
and Hezbollah, the Shia organisation which has prevented Israel’s claim to
south Lebanon up to the Litani River.
The fall of Iran would also
be of benefit to the United States in retaining its status as the primary
global hegemon. This is because Iran is an important part of the germinating
Eurasian order and stirrings of a multipolar world. It is now a full-fledged
member of BRICS, an organisation undergirded by China and Russia which poses a long-term
threat to U.S. global economic dominance. A powerful BRICS would diminish the
influence of the Bretton Woods institutions, U.S. and Western corporate power
and accelerate the trend of de-dollarisation.
Beleaguered by decades of
U.S.-imposed sanctions, Iran has signed extensive agreements on economic
cooperation with both China and Russia. Iranian and Russian cooperation is
central to the development of the International North-South Transport Corridor
(INSTC) which will serve as an alternative route to the Suez canal, something
which would be of tremendous benefit to China as it develops its "New Silk
Road" under the auspices of its “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI).
Destroying Iran and imposing
a regime favourable to the West -as was achieved after "Operation
Ajax", the joint CIA-MI6 endeavour which in 1953 overthrew the Iranian
nationalist leader Mohamed Mossadegh- would provide the United States with an
opportunity to control and loot Iran's natural resources much as it did to
Russia during the Yeltsin era.
The leaders of Iran are well
aware of this and have responded forcefully and effectively against Israel
since it launched its surprise attack on June 13th. They have
refused President Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender and fight on with
the knowledge that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a captive
of both the United States and Israel.
In an intelligence coup
against Israel, Iran acquired documentary evidence of the IAEA’s collusion with
both America and Israel, the latter of which was furnished with details of the
Iranian programme including the details of scientists who Israel has assassinated
over the years and targeted on June 13th. Iran is also aware through the
utterances of Donald Trump that the United States used negotiations as a cover
to aid Israel in its surprise attack.
Prior to the beginning of
talks, Prime Minister Netanyahu was adamant that only what he termed the “Libya-style”
solution -Iran’s complete disarmament- would present the alternative solution to
the use of force. The implications of this were clear: Iran was being told to
surrender its sovereignty. Moreover, giving up its formidable stockpile of indigenously
developed hypersonic and ballistic weapons would leave in the position of being
destroyed in the manner of Iraq and Libya.
It underscores the overarching
point about regime change being the primary objective of Israel. The parallels
with the Iraq war in 2003 are apparent. The claim that Iran was making a bomb
is analogous to the claim that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was in possession of
Weapons of Mass Destruction. And just as the claims made against Iraq were
proved to be unfounded, those directed at Iran also appear to be false.
Ironically, the pressures exerted
on Iran – a country
which has not attacked another nation for over 200 years- may well convince the Iranian supreme leader to rescind his fatwa and develop
a bomb which would have provided a deterrence against Israel’s June 13th,
attack.
In this existential threat
between Iran and Israel one thing remains clear: If Iran falls there will be little
to stop Zionist Israel in pursuing its foundational objective of expanding its
borders.
U.S. Army Captain Riley Pitts
(1937-1967) speaking to ABC News shortly before being killed in action.
U.S. Army Captain Riley Pitts
was the first African-American officer to receive the Medal of Honor, the
highest military decoration attainable to members of the United States Armed
Forces.
The medal was presented posthumously by President Lyndon B. Johnson on December
10, 1968, for actions in Ap Dong, Republic of Vietnam.
Medal of Honor citation:
Distinguishing
himself by exceptional heroism while serving as company commander during an
airmobile assault. Immediately after his company landed in the area, several
Viet Cong opened fire with automatic weapons. Despite the enemy fire, Capt.
Pitts forcefully led an assault which overran the enemy positions. Shortly
thereafter, Capt. Pitts was ordered to move his unit to the north to reinforce
another company heavily engaged against a strong enemy force. As Capt. Pitts'
company moved forward to engage the enemy, intense fire was received from 3
directions, including fire from 4 enemy bunkers, 2 of which were within 15
meters of Capt. Pitts' position. The severity of the incoming fire prevented
Capt. Pitts from maneuvering his company. His rifle fire proving ineffective
against the enemy due to the dense jungle foliage, he picked up an M-79 grenade
launcher and began pinpointing the targets. Seizing a Chinese Communist grenade
which had been taken from a captured Viet Cong's web gear, Capt. Pitts lobbed the
grenade at a bunker to his front, but it hit the dense jungle foliage and
rebounded. Without hesitation, Capt. Pitts threw himself on top of the grenade
which, fortunately, failed to explode. Capt. Pitts then directed the
repositioning of the company to permit friendly artillery to be fired. Upon
completion of the artillery fire mission, Capt. Pitts again led his men toward
the enemy positions, personally killing at least 1 more Viet Cong. The jungle
growth still prevented effective fire to be placed on the enemy bunkers. Capt.
Pitts, displaying complete disregard for his life and personal safety, quickly
moved to a position which permitted him to place effective fire on the enemy.
He maintained a continuous fire, pinpointing the enemy's fortified positions,
while at the same time directing and urging his men forward, until he was
mortally wounded. Capt. Pitts' conspicuous gallantry, extraordinary heroism,
and intrepidity at the cost of his life, above and beyond the call of duty, are
in the highest traditions of the U.S. Army and reflect great credit upon
himself, his unit, and the Armed Forces of his country.
Captain Pitts was in the news recently owing to recently discovered footage
buried in the vaults of ABC TV.
“David Ben-Gurion”, a woodcut
portrait by Mervin Jules (1912-1994).
The State of Israel has for
long promoted the idea that its armed forces have rigorously pursued an ethical
code when involved in military operations. Alongside the Zionist narrative of Israel
being a democratic nation embedded in the midst of authoritarian states is that
of a country in possession of the “world’s most moral army”. It is a narrative
which has increasingly worn thin during the prolonged campaign against the
Palestinian Gaza strip since 2023. Many are becoming apprised of the fact that
the killing of civilians as a strategy of waging war is deeply ingrained in
Israeli military doctrine. The following letter to the editor of a provincial
American newspaper in 1997 sheds light on an ever present modus operandi which
evolved into the “Dahiya doctrine”, applicable to the destruction of Lebanese
population centres, and the “Mowing the grass” policy which was applied in
Gaza. It is a policy which has now evolved into one with the goal of
exterminating as much of the Palestinian population in Gaza in order to pave
the way for their total removal in accordance with the longstanding aspirations
of Political Zionism.
Editor of the Reformer:
In a recent letter to the
editor, Bob Grossbaum blames the cycle of violence in the Middle East firmly on
the Palestinians.
The picture he paints is of a
plucky and beleaguered Israel constantly “living with border raids by
terrorists, bombings … shootings … minings, etc.”These raids are carried out by Arabs whose
“mindset” is one of hostility to Israel’s “modern ways.”
That there is violence
against Israel is true, of course and is well reported in the U.S. Not so well
reported, however, is the vastly larger scale of violence that Israel delivers
on its neighbors as part of a long-standing policy of intimidation and provocation.
Although it is not well
advertised in the U.S., it has always been Israeli policy to deliberately
target Palestinian civilians in Lebanon and beyond for political reasons. This
policy is independent of, but hides behind, any terrorist attacks on Israel. But
don’t take my word for it. Israeli policy is quite explicitly spelled out in
the various writings and speeches of the policy makers themselves.
In his “Independence War
Diary,” Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion wrote in 1948 that
Israel must “strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise the
action is inefficient. At the place of action there is no need to distinguish between
guilty and innocent.”
The policy was confirmed as
ongoing by General and Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur during Israel’s 1978
invasion of Lebanon. Gur said in an interview in al Hamishmar (May 10,
1978) that “For 30 years, from the War of Independence until today, we have
been fighting against a population that lives in villages and cities.”
Veteran Israeli military
analyst Ze’ev Schiff, writing in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz a few
days later (May 15, 1978), was surprised at Gur’s frankness but didn’t dispute
him: “In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because
they deserved it, … the importance of Gur’s remarks is that the Israeli army
has always struck civilian populations purposely and consciously… even when
Israeli settlements had not been struck.”
Prime Minister Moshe Sharett
lamented Israel’s policy in his “Personal Diary,” published in 1979: “the long
chain of false incidents and hostilities we have invented, and so many clashes
we have provoked.” Sharett himself referred to Israeli policy as a “sacred
policy”. Sharett also quoted another Prime Minister, Moshe Dayan, as saying the
Israeli raids in Lebanon “make it possible for us to maintain a high level of
tension among our population and in the army. Without these actions we would
have ceased to be a combative people.” Sharett wrote that “the conclusion from
Dayan’s words are clear: This state … must see the sword as the main, if not
the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to maintain its
moral tension. Toward this end … it must adopt the method of
provocation-and-revenge.”
The policy was again admitted
by a high-level Israeli government official in 1981. On Aug. 16 in reply to a
letter by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, former U.N. Ambassador and Foreign
Minister Abba Eban wrote in the Jerusalem Post that “the picture that
emerges (from Begin’s letter) is that of an Israel wantonly inflicting every
possible measure of death on civilian populations in a mood reminiscent of
regimes which neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare mention by name.” Eban supported
the policy, though: “there was a rational prospect of the cessation of
hostilities.”
In other words civilians
would be deliberately bombed for political reasons. This is exactly what
happened when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, killing 20,000 people. Almost all
of the dead, and their “afflicted” families were civilians. And again in 1988,
Israeli policy was explained from the top. This time it was by Minister of
Defense Yitzhak Rabin, who we remember now as the recently martyred man of
peace. Rabin said in the Jerusalem Post on Sept. 8 that “We want to get
rid of the illusion of some people in remote villages that they have liberated
themselves,” adding that bombing these villages "will make it clear to them
where they live and within which framework.” Would civilians be killed by these
raids? Not accidentally according to Rabin: “more casualties … is precisely our
aim.”
At this point, readers may be
asking themselves why the Israeli policy is not mentioned much in this
country. The reason is because Americans pay for it. Israel is totally
dependent on U.S. aid, and what is Israeli policy is U.S. policy. Mr. Grossbaum
may prefer to believe that Palestinians are the only ones carrying out terrorist
attacks against civilians. However, Israeli prime ministers, defence ministers,
generals, chiefs of staff, ambassadors, foreign ministers and military analysts
would say this is not so. They would say that Israel conducts an on-going
military campaign of intimidation aimed deliberately and consciously at
civilians and independent of any terrorist attacks against Israel.
Given that the evidence
supports them, I would agree.
Colonel T.E. Lawrence
photographed in 1919 while serving as British Liaison Officer to Emir Faisal at
the Versailles Peace Conference. Photo credit: Imperial War Museum.
Thomas Edward Lawrence, the
famed British Army officer died on May 19th, 1935.
Lawrence was an intelligence officer who became enmeshed in the Arab revolt
against the Ottoman empire. His memoir about his experiences during the Great
War was published in 1926. It was titled Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The
book formed the basis of David Lean’s epic movie Lawrence of Arabia,
which was released in 1962.
Lawrence was a distant cousin of Major General Orde Wingate who as a Captain oversaw
the quelling of the Arab Revolt in Palestine between 1936 and 1939.
Both men are noted for having
innovated distinct forms of irregular warfare.
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