Samsons at war

In Winning Modern Wars (2003), retired US army general and former NATO commander Wesley Clark revealed that, shortly after 9/11, a senior Pentagon official told him about a classified plan from the office of the secretary of defence to “take out (destroy) seven countries in five years… starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”.

In his 2020 study for the Pentagon, ‘Strategic Sequencing: How Great Powers Avoid Multi-Front War’, A. Wess Mitchell said the US must stagger its wars with multiple adversaries rather than fighting them simultaneously.

So Iran is only one in the list. The Zionist elite running Israel and the US wants to pick off one by one any country in the region that has the audacity to be sovereign. Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett has labelled Türkiye a threat to Israel. Former Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu warned that attacks on Iran are a move to redraw borders: “The turn will come to everyone one day.” No one is safe in this international jungle that recognises only hard military power.

The February 28 attacks on Iran had been planned for months and the ⁠launch date ⁠decided ⁠on December 29, 2025. The negotiations with Iran were a charade.

On March 3, the US permanent representative to the UN, Mike Waltz said that President Donald Trump intends to conclude the 47-year “endless” war with Iran.

Iran-US relations turned toxic after the Pahlavi dynasty was overthrown in 1979. In 2013, the US government acknowledged the leading role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the coup of 1953 that overthrew democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. The United Kingdom’s foreign intelligence agency, MI6, co-planned and co-managed the coup that had been authorised by US president Dwight D. Eisenhower and British prime minister Winston Churchill.

The UK instigated the coup, codenamed ‘Operation Boot’, to protect British oil interests after Mossadegh nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

Head of Italian state-owned energy company ENI, Enrico Mattei had promoted resource sovereignty in Iran before the coup, persuading the Iranian government to take control of the country’s oil and use it for the good of the people. His approach was based on treating oil-producing nations as sovereign partners rather than subordinate colonies.

Mattei was considered dangerous by the US, the UK and the Netherlands, whose consortium of seven multinational oil companies dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s, controlling 85% of the world’s reserves.

In 1953, the CIA and MI6 bribed public officials, manipulated the media and staged riots to destabilise the Iranian government.

The CIA pushed Shah Pahlavi to dismiss Mossadegh on August 19, 1953.

The rule of Shah Pahlavi brutally suppressed all forms of dissent. By 1975, the shah declared Iran a single-party state, forcing all citizens to join the Rastakhiz Party or face imprisonment. All independent newspapers, trade unions and professional associations were prohibited.

The wealth generated by an oil boom in the 1970s remained concentrated among the royal family and a small elite as many Iranians faced poverty.

Stupid wars

The US and UK ignored the shah’s human rights abuses because he was a reliable oil partner. The CIA even helped train SAVAK in torture techniques.

Having made human rights a central pillar of his foreign policy, US president Jimmy Carter pressured the shah to grant some amnesty to prisoners and allow the Red Cross to visit jails. The opposition to the shah became more bold and mobilised support till he was overthrown 47 years ago.

This war’s first 100 hours have cost $3.7 billion- Evarist Bartolo

It is what the US, the UK and the West did in Iran bet­ween 1953 and 1979 that brought the Islamic Republic into being.

In the 1950s, the West had at least two kinds of relations to build with Iran: the one of Mattei and the one of Churchill and Roosevelt. Mattei treated Iran and all the other countries coming out of colonialism as equal partners and wanted to build business relations with them for the benefit of both sides.

Churchill and Roosevelt wanted the former colonies to remain subservient, for them to continue extracting their resources for the benefit of a few oligarchs in the west. Churchill and Roosevelt prevailed and that has made all the difference.

For strategic sequencing to succeed today, the passive submission of the rest of the world is necessary. Countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are working together to weaken the stranglehold of a few Western oligarchs on them. These oligarchs, allied with those who believe they have a divine right to dominate over others, will not let go easily.

These supremacists are ready to sacrifice even the people of their own countries, not only those of other countries, to make money from wars and other business ventures.

If the war by Israel and the US against Iran continues to escalate it, and any of them feels it is being crushed, it may well cause the ‘Temple’ to collapse to kill the enemy.

Israel’s ‘Samson Option’ is its strategic doctrine to retaliate with nuclear bombs if its military is defeated, its existence threatened and major cities destroyed.

Iran has its own ‘Samson Option’ � shutting down the Strait of Hormuz and using its missiles to destroy the energy industry of the Gulf states on which the Asian and European economies depend for their energy and fertiliser and on which the US economy depends for investment in its stock market.

Trump is also doing a Samson with his voters.

In his 2016 campaign he had promised them: “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes.”

In 2020: “We’ve spent $8 trillion in the Middle East… How stupid. How stupid is it? And we’re not fixing our highways, our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals, even.”

This war’s first 100 hours have cost $3.7 billion. Many Trump voters feel betrayed. Meanwhile, the war is unleashing a global wave of inflation as rising energy prices strangle economies.

Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.