The Fateful Triangle The United States,Israel,& The Palestinians - By Noam Chomsky

or some time, I’ve been compelled to arrange speaking
engagements long in advance. Sometimes a title is requested for
a talk scheduled several years ahead. There is, I’ve found, one
title that always works: “The current crisis in the Middle East.”
One can’t predict exactly what the crisis will be far down the road, but
that there will be one is a fairly safe prediction.
That will continue to be the case as long as basic problems of the re-
gion are not addressed.
Furthermore, the crises will be serious in what President Eisenhower
called “the most strategically important area in the world.” In the early
post-War years, the United States in effect extended the Monroe
Doctrine to the Middle East, barring any interference apart from Britain,
assumed to be a loyal dependency and quickly punished when it
occasionally got out of hand (as in 1956). The strategic importance of
the region lies primarily in its immense petroleum reserves and the
global power accorded by control over them; and, crucially, from the
huge profits that flow to the Anglo-American rulers, which have been of
critical importance for their economies. It has been necessary to ensure
that this enormous wealth flows primarily to the West, not to the people
of the region. That is one fundamental problem that will continue to
cause unrest and disorder. Another is the Israel-Arab conflict with its many ramifications, which have been closely related to the major U.S.
strategic goal of dominating the region’s resources and wealth.
For many years, it was claimed the core problem was Soviet subver-
sion and expansionism, the reflexive justification for virtually all policies
since the Bolshevik takeover in Russia in 1917. That pretext having
vanished, it is now quietly conceded by the White House (March 1990)
that in past years, the “threats to our interests” in the Middle East
“could not be laid at the Kremlin’s door”; the doctrinal system has yet to
adjust fully to the new requirements. “In the future, we expect that non-
Soviet threats to [our interests will command even greater attention,” the
White House continued in its annual plea to Congress for a huge military
budget. In reality, the “threats to our interests,” in the Middle East as
elsewhere, had always been indigenous nationalism, a fact stressed in
internal documents and sometimes publicly.
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A “worst case” prediction for the crisis a few years ahead would be a
war between the U.S. and Iran; unlikely, but not impossible.
Israel is pressing very hard for such a confrontation, recognizing Iran
to be the most serious military threat that it faces. So far, the U.S. is
playing a somewhat different game in its relations to Iran; accordingly, a potential war, and the necessity for it, is not a major topic in the media
and journals of opinion here.
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The U.S. is, of course, concerned over Iranian power. That is one rea-
son why the U.S. turned to active support for Iraq in the late stages of
the Iraq-Iran war, with a decisive effect on the outcome, and why
Washington continued its active courtship of Saddam Hussein until he
interfered with U.S. plans for the region in August 1990. U.S. concerns
over Iranian power were also reflected in the decision to support
Saddam’s murderous assault against the Shiite population of southern
Iraq in March 1991, immediately after the fighting stopped. A narrow
reason was fear that Iran, a Shiite state, might exert influence over Iraqi
Shiites. A more general reason was the threat to “stability” that a
successful popular revolution might pose: to translate into English, the threat that it might inspire democratizing tendencies that would
undermine the array of dictatorships that the U.S. relies on to control
the people of the region.
Recall that Washington’s support for its former friend was more than
tacit; the U.S. military command even denied rebelling Iraqi officers
access to captured Iraqi equipment as the slaughter of the Shiite
population proceeded under Stormin’ Norman’s steely gaze.
Similar concerns arose as Saddam turned to crushing the Kurdish re-
bellion in the North. In Israel, commentators from the Chief of Staff to
political analysts and Knesset members, across a very broad political
spectrum, openly advocated support for Saddam’s atrocities, on the
grounds that an independent Kurdistan might create a Syria-Kurd-Iran
territorial link that would be a serious threat to Israel. When U.S.
records are released in the distant future, we might discover that the
White House harbored similar thoughts, which delayed even token
gestures to block the crushing of Kurdish resistance until Washington
was compelled to act by a public that had been aroused by media
coverage of the suffering of the Kurds, recognizably Aryan and portrayed quite differently from the southern Shiites, who suffered a far worse fate
but were only dirty Arabs.
In passing, we may note that the character of U.S.-U.K. concern for
the Kurds is readily determined not only by the timing of the support,
and the earlier cynical treatment of Iraqi Kurds, but also by the reaction
to Turkey’s massive atrocities against its Kurdish population right
through the Gulf crisis. These were scarcely reported here in the
mainstream, in virtue of the need to support the President, who had
lauded his Turkish colleague as “a protector of peace” joining those who
“stand up for civilized values around the world” against Saddam
Hussein. But Europe was less disciplined. We therefore read, in the
London Financial Times, that “Turkey’s western allies were rarely comfortable explaining to their public why they condoned Ankara’s
heavy-handed repression of its own Kurdish minority while the west
offered support to the Kurds in Iraq,” not a serious PR problem here.
“Diplomats now say that, more than any other issue, the sight of Kurds
fighting Kurds [in Fall 1992] has served to change the way that western
public opinion views the Kurdish cause.” In short, we can breathe a sigh
of relief: cynicism triumphs, and the Western powers can continue to
condone the harsh repression of Kurds by the “protector of peace,” while
shedding crocodile tears over their treatment by the (current) enemy.
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Israel’s reasons for trying to stir up a U.S. confrontation with Iran,
and “Islamic fundamentalism” generally, are easy to understand. The Is-
raeli military recognizes that, apart from resort to nuclear weapons,
there is little it can do to confront Iranian power, and is concerned that
after the (anticipated) collapse of the U.S.-run “peace process,” a Syria-
Iran axis may be a significant threat. The U.S., in contrast, appears to
be seeking a long-term accommodation with “moderate” (that is, pro-
U.S.) elements in Iran and a return to something like the arrangements that prevailed under the Shah.