… D’ailleurs, les neocons nous ont avertis

Comme pour renforcer la thèse de Parsi concernant la véritable raison de la crise iranienne, qui est la compétition pour l’hégémonie entre les USA et l’Iran, Gareth Porter rappelle (le 13 septembre, sur Information Clearing House) que l’argument est développé de façon très claire par les néo-conservateurs eux-mêmes. Cela montre qu’ils sont loin d'être l'accident malheureux de la politique US qu’on a si souvent voulu en faire. Porter estime que la majorité politique à Washington partage désormais cette vision de la nécessité d’assurer par tous les moyens l’hégémonie des USA sur la région : «The entire spectrum of political leadership in this country now appears to accept that idea, which is an indication of just how far U.S. military dominance has tilted the policy debate in this country.»

Porter développe cet aspect de la confrontation entre les USA et l’Iran, en la faisant remonter à 1992 pour ce qui en concerne l’inspiration, et effectivement venue des néo-conservateurs. Cela rejoint le schéma historique que nous propose Parsi puisqu’il s’agit de la concrétisation de la politique US après la disparition du Shah et la disparition de la nécessité d’une stratégie anti-soviétique, — les deux arguments qui firent que les USA évitèrent tout risque de confrontation directe avec l’Iran jusqu’à cette date. Les néo-conservateurs sont alors confirmés comme les concepteurs à visage découvert, y compris historiquement, d’une politique générale d’hégémonie US que tout le monde, à Washington, soutient aujourd’hui.

«That quest for dominance over all other states in the Middle East can be traced back to the 1992 Draft Defense Planning Guidance, drafted by Paul Wolfowitz's staff at the Pentagon — Zalmay Khalilzad and Scooter Libby. It said, “[We] must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”.

»For the neoconservatives and their allies, that has meant that Iran could not be allowed to emerge as a power center in the Middle East. Of course the Bush administration has had cover their designs in a fog of propaganda portraying Iran as the worst thing to come along since Hitler. But at least one insider in neoconservative circles has been honest enough to reveal the real problem the hawks in the administration have with Iran.

»Tom Donnelly was the main author of the neoconservative September 2000 blueprint for military policy in the Bush administration, “Rebuilding America's Defenses” which involved four prominent figures on the neoconservative right who would take prominent positions in the administration: Libby, Wolfowitz, Stephen A. Cambone, and John Bolton.

»In a chapter in the book “Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran”, published in 2005, Donnelly admitted that, contrary to the official U.S. line depicting Iran as a radical state threatening to plunge the region into war, Iran was “more the status quo power” in the region in relation to the Bush administration's “project of regional transformation”. The problem with Iran, he explained, is that it “stands directly athwart this project of regional transformation”.

»The Bush project for bringing the magic of advanced capitalist democracy to the benighted Arab states of the Middle East has proven to be a neoconservative pipe dream in Iraq, Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories. But forget the “spreading democracy” ploy and think of that “regional transformation” as simply another layer of justification for exerting military pressure and, if necessary, war on states that refuse to fall in line. Donnelly cut through the façade of official propaganda to write that the prospect of a “nuclear Iran” was unacceptable to the Bush administration mainly because of “the constraining effect it threatens to impose upon U.S. strategy for the greater Middle East”.

»In other words, Iran could not be allowed to have even the option of a nuclear weapon capability, because the United States had to be able to operate with a completely free hand militarily in the region. What Donnelly did not say, but which follows from that posture, is that even a non-nuclear Iran that has links to strong allies such as Hezbollah and Hamas, could not be allowed to be a regional power.»

(Peut-être les Européens pourraient-ils prendre un peu de temps pour penser à cet aspect de la crise iranienne? Non, il ne semble pas qu’ils aient beaucoup de temps libre.)

Mis en ligne le 14 septembre 2007 à 10H13