Let’s see, before a war begins on Iran, who the culprits may be.

There are the Likudniks, of course. Is Richard Pearle still around? I vaguely recall seeing him, though I avoid MSM typically. Neo-cons are everywhere, as always; god bless them!, The Israeli think tanks, AIPAC pundits, Sheldon Adelson, Rupert Murdoch’s/Fox’s Roger Ailes. All these overlap, needless to say.

The Republican candidates, as the Koch brothers say, are mere actors. So who is really behind them?

Given a population three times that of Iraq, and the overwhelming support, easily three million may die. Whose land-forces will end up being involved? Where?

As always, The Real News’s Lia Tarachansky provides valuable insight into Israel. In the following, we see that the Israeli military and intelligence are against it. It comes down to 2-3 guys: Netanyahu, Lieberman, Ehud Barak!
Of particular interest is the analysis of Alex Fishman, the journalist with Yediot Ahronot. Though factually incorrect on the issue of Iran’s stance with respect to negotiations, he does raise a key point. He dismisses the nuclear casus belli and says that this is mere geo-politics, trying to block Iran’s moves on the chess-board of the Middle East and North Africa.

The whole issue has to do with how to get Iran out of the Middle East. Iran is not peace with the Palestinians. It’s the contrary. Iran opposed the Shalit deal, the Oslo Accords. Iran was opposed to any agreement with the Palestinians. It’s connected more to Iranian involvement in Egypt, in the Islamic groups of the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s connected to the Iranian involvement in Libya. It’s connected to the Iranian involvement in Syria, and they’re major supporters of the regime there. It’s connected to Iran’s attempt to enter Yemen, or Iran’s attempt to undermine the Iraqi leadership once the Americans leave, or their involvement in the attempted revolution in Bahrain. And it’s connected to Iran’s involvement here, too.

So this is what American men and women, and Iranian men, women and children, are going to die for.
And, afterwards, Iran will go nuclear, and its government will be strengthened.

Update, 20 Jan. 2012: Pulse Media is a good starting point for the recent Mark Perry article tying Israel to terrorism in Iran. The +972 Magazine articles pointed-to are also informative. Israel is trying to pull the US into war.

Update, 23 Jan. 2012: Gareth Porter,on the issue of war on Iran. This quote is key:

But it seems, now, that the Obama administration has concluded that Israel’s strategy is indeed one of primarily trying to raise tensions between the United States and Iran, with the intention of hoping that there will be an incident that will spark off escalated violence and ultimately a war between the United States and Iran.

to which Paul Jay responds by referring to Leon Panetta’s statement that US will defend US forces.

JAY: The last time we talked about this, not—just last week, it was after Leon Panetta, the secretary of defense, and we kind of—had spoken on a television show, Face the Nation, and we parsed his speech. And one of his answers when asked what would United States do if Israel attacked Iran on its own, he was very specific, saying we would defend our forces, not we would defend Israel. And you and I talked about the implications of this.

Update, 23 Jan. 2012: MJ Rosenberg’s question is tenchant:

Why is it relatively uncontroversial to negotiate with the Taliban – who harboured the terrorists who killed 3,000 US citizens on September 11, 2001, and who have terrorised millions of Afghans for decades – but the idea of talking to Iran is considered beyond the pale?
The answer should be obvious. AIPAC and its congressional cutouts go wild at the thought of negotiating with Iran (or Hamas, for that matter) but are relatively indifferent to the Taliban who, of course, are far from Israel.
So we can talk to the thugs of the Taliban to bring about some sort of settlement. But we can’t even consider talking to the government of Iran.

Update 1 Feb. 2012: It has to be asked: What is the media’s interest in pushing for war? For the war on Iraq, they claimed that they were misled; what is their excuse now? Why is it happening all over again, in the media? Whatever one may say about the Likudniks and the Christian evangelists and (let’s bring-in the usual suspect of the Whatchamacallit Formerly Known as the American Anti-War Movement) oil interests,  the media is left with no clear explanation for why it is foaming at the mouth!

Update 13 Feb. 2012: I’ve thought of the fact that, though crime rates fall, the media continue to push related hysteria. So, not to be trite, but is this just media sensationalism? Hard to believe that that habit can kick in for even a war! And before even your other wars are over! … No, deliberate omission, done in article after article, is not motivated this way.

Update 3 Feb 2012: Sheldon Adelson leads to other actors. Near the bottom of this article, Max Blumenthal discusses the drive for war on Iran.

Also, the elephant in the room: Philip Weiss ties the Iraq war to the threats against Iran. It links to an interview with Keith Weissman, done by the great Robert Dreyfuss. Dreyfuss wisely avoids pointing out the  contradictions in Weissman’s account, letting the reader figure out Weismann’s apparent rewriting of history.

Update 13 Feb. 2012: And this is the other half! The rabid Likudnik billionaires are one half (of the push for war on Iran), and these nutso Christian Zionists are the other. Courtesy of Max Blumenthal.

But far better is this fascinating discussion of the (extent of the) role of Christian Zionists. See the comments section. They even compare Maddow and Hayes, like I have.

Mind you , I do not yet entirely buy their arguments; I’ll need to scrutinize the numbers, first.

Update 17 Feb 2012: Activist and writer Charles Davis suggests that Haim Saban is pushing for war on Iran, via a purchase of the Spanish language network Univision. Haim Saban is the Arab Jewish millionaire mentioned alongside Sheldon Adelson and Friess. Davis’s article carries a quote from Saban which is particularly instructive with respect to the question of the media’s role:

at a 2009 conference in Israel he outlined “three ways to be influential in American politics,” which according to New Yorker magazine consist of “mak[ing] donations to political parties, establish[ing] think tanks, and control[ing] media outlets.”

Really sums it up, don’t it! The New Yorker says that he has been repeatedly trying to buy the Los Angeles Times. It reminds me of Eric Margolis’s suggestion to the Arabs that they buy some newspapers. Of course they won’t; a newspaper of any credibility would attempt to at least pretend to glance back at the Arab dictators. As I’ve often thought, democracies make the most resilient empires!

Update 18 Feb. 2012: Larry Wilkerson is discussing Iran, on The Real News. He talks of an inexorable drive, similar to how the American war on Vietnam started. But I am left with no solid reason for it all.

WILKERSON: There are three aspects of it to me that were disconcerting. One is a constant admission from both Republican and Democrat alike that the political space is very, very small, if at all, for maneuver. That has a lot to do with the herd mentality, and especially the herd mentality vis-à-vis Israel. That is to say, almost no one is really willing to lead the way in a charge that could be interpreted in any way, fashion, or form as being even neutral, let alone against Israel. So that’s complicating matters for having maneuverability.

JAY: Does this have to do with funding or actual votes?

Whose votes? Just how many votes (by regular citizens) are there for such lunacy! Really, in the middle of all that is happening to the American public, Iran is the issue? They continue:

WILKERSON: I think it has to do with actual votes. When you start looking at some of the—for example, some of the harebrained proposals to amend the current banking legislation, things like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and her staff suggesting that we put a part in there that says no U.S. citizen, period—diplomat, soldier, Marine, admiral, anyone—can talk to an Iranian, that it’s material support to terrorism, if you will, and punishable, these are the kinds of lunacies that more sober, sane people have had to deal with on the staff in drafting some of this sanctions legislation.

JAY: So this is like a competition to show how militant you are [crosstalk]

WILKERSON: Precisely. …

Who are they trying to show this to? Clearly, Iran is not what most Americans have at the top of their minds: debt and jobs are. So why is your local representative going out of his/her way for this? It seems like we’re back at “funding”, for the culprit.

I’d like to think that Saudi Arabia is part of the push (it certainly is so with respect to the assault on Syria, and that whole chess game), but their US moves are absent. So only Israel remains. … Like Bill Clinton excalimed, “Who is the superpower here!”

The Likudniks seem insane. Just how do they think their country is going to survive in that part of the world! (No wonder so many Israelis emigrate!) And even this part is being torn apart!

And, once again, why is the media pushing this? Even RT (Russia TV) is stoking the fire. … But the question one cannot escape is why the entire apparatus of a drowning superpower has come together to serve the interests of a bellicose, foreign country!

Update 22 Feb. 2012: I’ve been coming across other references to the same question of why the media is pushing for war on Iran. In true form, Glen Greenwald is the best:

with Iran, the American media actually seems out in front of the U.S. Government in the propaganda effort rather than in their normal position of submissively marching behind.

The question he does not ask, excplicitly, is why.

Update 28 Feb 2012: A comment I posted to mondoweiss, on both neo-cons and AIPAC wanting war, is apt with respect to why the Likudnik frenzy continues with such irrational intensity:

“AIPAC stayed on the sideline because it was not needed.”

Indeed. So many people around Cheney and Rumsfeld! But I also wonder why, despite the fact that the neo-cons and AIPAC do not surround President Cheney anymore, they have become more brazen. Is Obama particularly weak, or is the target (Iran) easier to turn into a menace? You’d think that the sheer disaster that has befallen the States would make them ease down, but no!
The explanation might be simpler, though: once you’ve hired rabid war-dogs (see the Jeffrey Wiesenfeld article) to push your war, it’s hard to pull them back from the frenzy.

Update 10 March 2012: On The Alyona Show, Alison Weir, of the Council for National Interest, says that the Israel lobby exceeds contribution limits by creating numerous other PACs with innocuous-sounding names. This would explain why so many Senators and Congresspeople have been at the AIPAC trough!