There is a grim inevitability about the developing war aimed at overthrowing the Iranian government. It might not seem this way for the millions of Westerners who have become indoctrinated through propaganda to believe that all events in the world have nothing to do with “us.” I suspect that our legacy media (formerly known as the mainstream or corporate media) will naively present current events as some kind of reasonable military action aimed at deterring Iranian nuclear capability. It was always, of course, about much more than that and, most importantly, the ongoing conflagrations are the direct result of “our” geo-political machinations.
What follows is an antidote to the propaganda, and one that might fall on more open minds now that the harsh geopolitical realities of Western imperial belligerence are once again in the spotlight.
During the 1990s, flushed with the perceived victory over the Soviet Union, power blocks within the West sought to exploit its military advantage to shore up Western hegemony. The Former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, Wesley Clark, recalled a conversation with Paul Wolfowitz from 1991 and just after US forces had defeated Iraq in the first Gulf War:
And he said, but one thing we did learn, he said, we learned that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East and the Soviets won’t stop us. He said, and we have got about five or ten years to clean up those all Soviet client regimes; Syria, Iran, Iraq, – before the next great super power comes along to challenge us…. (quoted in Mondoweiss)
The planning and organisation for a fresh round of imperial belligerence manifested itself in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a cohort of ideological extremists determined to exploit US military capabilities in order to secure strategic dominance in the 21st century (see for example Scott’s The Road to 9/11 and Griffin’s The New Peal Harbour).
In 1996, the strategy paper titled “A Clean Break: A Strategy for Securing the Realm”, written by several PNAC members and published by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies for the incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recommended an aggressive posture toward Syria and Iran and aligning US and Israeli security policies more tightly, particularly around pre-emptive action.
In 1998, Philip Zelikow, who later served on President George W. Bush’s transition team and Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) and then as his hand-picked executive director of the 9/11 Commission, co-authored the suspiciously prescient 1998 Foreign Affairs paper describing a possible “catastrophic” act of terrorism that would create a “watershed event in American History.” Was Zelikow’s paper a conceptual roadmap for neoconservatives planning the next paradigm shift away from a strategy of containment? In 2000, the PNAC report Rebuilding America’s Defenses warned (one year before the 2001 event) that the necessary transformations in US capabilities would likely be slow “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
As if on cue, 9/11 provided precisely that, with what was presented as a staggeringly brazen terror attack carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Publics were urged to accept the narrative that a group of young Muslim men (inexperienced pilots) from a terror group called Al Qaeda had taken over four US airliners and used them to conduct kamikaze attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings in New York and the Pentagon, bringing down both WTC towers (designed to withstand such impacts) and a third tower, Building 7, which was not hit by a plane.
Among rational scientists, scholars and other concerned citizens who demand empirical evidence for claims of truth, there is no doubt that 9/11 was a false flag event orchestrated by elements with the US so-called “deep state,” in co-operation with a range of allies that likely includes Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Britain and Israel. An exhaustive body of work over the last 20 plus years has clarified the patent falsity of the official narrative and highlighted, in particular, overwhelming evidence that confirms the buildings in New York could not have collapsed due to the impacts of two airliners and were, in fact, deliberately demolished. Beyond the impossibility that three skyscrapers in New York City could have each defied the laws of physical motion described by Isaac Newton, citizens cite the mountains of testimonial evidence that contradict the official report as well as various other unacceptable absurdities.
Taking advantage of the shock and awe created by the 9/11 event, the US and its allies implemented their “regime change” war policy immediately. Even before the day had ended, the US government was declaring a “war on terror” and noted countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan and Iran as being culpable for what had transpired in New York and at the Pentagon (see Ryan and Robinson, 2024). Wesley Clark famously revealed in 2007 of having been informed during a visit to the Pentagon days after 9/11 that a plan was being implemented to attack seven countries in five years. He identified Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran as the countries targeted for “regime change.” Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell) states unequivocally that these plans to attack multiple countries were in place prior to 9/11. Documents published as part of the UK Chilcot Inquiry revealed communications between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush shortly after 9/11 in which they discussed phases one and two of a “war on terror,” including when to “hit” Iran, Syria and Iraq (see Robinson, 2017).
Started by the big lie about what happened on 9/11, the ensuing wars were to be accompanied by a familiar pattern of propaganda campaigns and strategic deceptions. A bogus intelligence assessment, the Taylor Report, was delivered to NATO countries weeks after 9/11 in order to legitimate the attack on Afghanistan. The attack swiftly followed and, in the coming months, led to the overthrow of the Taliban and the start of the 20-year war in Afghanistan. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates the death toll, conservatively, at around 176,000.
By 2002/3, sights were set on attacking Iraq, and the now notorious lies regarding alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were used to sell that invasion to Western publics. No such weapons ever existed and the ensuing conflict in Iraq is estimated to have killed at least 300,000 people.
In 2011, the opportunity to attack two further competitor nations, Libya and Syria, emerged. In the former case, NATO attacked Libyan forces under the deceptive auspices of a “humanitarian intervention,” based in part on deceptive propaganda claiming that Libyan forces were attacking civilians. The government of Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and the country descended into a long period of conflict and chaos. The war against Syria took longer. The14-year destruction of that country, involving the largest ever covert CIA operation, Timber Sycamore, working alongside an alliance of belligerents — UK, France, Israel, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia — ultimately led to the overthrow of the Assad government in 2024 and the installation of an al Qaeda-linked force led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani. Throughout, Western publics were propagandised by lies about Syrian chemical weapons use and, during the years of conflict, at least 269,000 people were killed. The West and its allies enabled the rise of brutal and extremist groups such as Al-Nusra Front and ISIS. During this period the war against Yemen, prosecuted largely by the West’s regional ally Saudi Arabia, killed more than 100,000 people.
It should not be forgotten that whilst the power projection by way of war impacted the lives and fate of the peoples of West Asia, the US’s parallel strategy of increasing pressure on its former Cold War adversary, largely through the unjustified Eastward expansion of NATO and the proxy war in Ukraine, has brought the West to the brink of war with the Russian Federation.
And now, this belligerent policy of creative destruction, designed to keep at bay the reality of a changing world in which the West no longer dominates, has possibly arrived at its end point, the destruction of the existing Iranian government. Talk of preventing Iranian nuclear capability is simply another variation of the deceptions used over Iraq (WMDs) and Syria (chemical weapons). The concern is not with whether Iran has the bomb, the concern is with removing a government that opposes the regional hegemonic ambitions of Israel and the global hegemonic objectives of the West.
Where this all goes from here is unknown. Will the Iranian government stand or fall? How will the major global players, especially Russia and China, respond? Will Israel stand or fall? Are we faced with a regional war or World War III? Will Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian people continue?
Whatever happens, Western publics should be under no illusion as to how this situation has come to be. The conflicts are the direct consequence of our governments and their associated military industrial complexes pursuing policies of war and, to do so, engaging in covert actions and major deceptions, which include the 9/11 false flag as well as the utilisation of brutal extremist groups in countries such as Syia. The death toll from these conflicts runs well into the millions while the misery is incalculable.
Propaganda, deception and lies, all in the name of war, are becoming firmly established as the parting legacy of the Western empire.
Dr. Piers Robinson is research director of the International Center for 9/11 Justice, co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies, and co-editor of Propaganda in Focus. This article is co-published with Propaganda in Focus.
