Why Iran Wants Four More Years

by David Jagernauth

The president got an unusual endorsement Tuesday; Hasan Rowhani, the head of Iran's security council, told local media that Tehran's best interest is served by the re-election of George W. Bush. Does it seem strange that a member of the "axis of evil" would support our current administration? Not if you understand the circumstances surrounding our attack on Iraq.

When future historians write about this war, I suspect they will sum it up like this: In the year 2003, neo-conservatives within the Bush Administration were duped by an Iranian double agent into attacking Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein in order to pave the way for a pro-Iran, Shia-controlled Iraq. It was one of the greatest acts of espionage ever perpetrated against the superpower.

Who is this Iranian double agent? His name is Ahmed Chalabi, the founder of the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Congress (INC). The CIA now knows that the INC was either a front for, or had deep links to, Iranian intelligence and that Chalabi was passing U.S. secrets to Tehran. How was Chalabi getting ahold of our secrets? The neo-cons in the Bush Administration were giving our secrets to him!

Who were these neo-cons? Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Dick Cheney, to name a few. Their plans for the invasion of Iraq did not begin after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or even when they took office in 2001. It began in 1997 when they founded the nonprofit organization Project for the New American Century.

The neo-cons laid out their vision for "American global leadership" (i.e. world domination) in their Statement of Principles on June 3, 1997. They wrote: "It is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge" (i.e. military preemption); to "promote freedom abroad" (i.e. occupy totalitarian regimes); and to institute the "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" (i.e. kill Muslims).

In January 1998, members of the Project wrote to President Clinton, urging him to "remove Saddam Hussein's regime from power." They argued that he was responsible for a destabilized Middle East that was putting American troops, Israel, moderate Arab states and oil in jeopardy.

Clinton rejected their argument, choosing a policy of containment over regime change. Containment was effective in keeping WMDs away from Saddam, but sanctions were helping to keep him in power by weakening resistance movements. This angered the neo-cons. Once they realized that the Project couldn't be achieved with Clinton in power, plans were set in motion to steal the 2000 election.

Or so I suspect. There is no smoking-gun proof of this, but if you look at that list of Project signatures back in 1997, you will find Jeb Bush's name right next to Dick Cheney. Could it only be a coincidence that the voter fraud, which ultimately won Bush (and more importantly Cheney) the White House and ensured the implementation of the Project, occurred in the state headed by Jeb Bush, a signatory to the project? Maybe. But I doubt it.

Even before the neo-cons hijacked America, Ahmed Chalabi was their handpicked, pro-U.S. puppet leader primed to assume power through "democratic" elections after Iraq's liberation. Chalabi was the primary, if only, source for the administration's false claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda. He was feeding the administration (and The New York Times, it turns out) the disinformation they wanted to hear. Bush, the neo-cons and the media took Chalabi's chum like a bunch of chumps, ignoring our own intelligence officers who were suspicious of Chalabi and his claims from the very beginning.

Chalabi's lies became the uncontested truth after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The United Kingdom's The Guardian newspaper reports that an Iranian spy (not Chalabi) warned the United States of the impending attacks but was not believed. If true, that means Iran knew about the attacks and, perhaps, even helped to plan and/or finance them. The 9/11 Commission confirmed that Iran has had connections to al Qaeda since 1991.

Iran might have foreseen that the attacks would provide a catalyst for the invasion of Iraq. And now Iran has exactly what they wanted: Saddam is gone and Iraq is up for grabs. If you are afraid Bush will send us to war against Iran, I've got news for you: We already are. The majority Shia population of Iraq is attacking our troops everyday. They are being supported by Iran -- which is 90 percent Shia -- because Tehran wants an ally in the Middle East to help them spread their version of fundamentalist Islam and increase international terrorism.

To summarize: Bush's foreign policy decisions were actually being controlled by Iran through Chalabi. Bush allowed an Iranian spy to access high-level U.S. secrets that more than likely ended up in the possession of al Qaeda terrorists. Hundreds of our troops died doing Iran's dirty work, and now they are killing more Americans everyday without consequence in a power struggle over Iraq.

Is there any wonder why Iran supports the re-election of George W. Bush?