Neocon “Scholars” Target Iran’s Oil Infrastructure

	Iran’s "decision calculus" may very well result in deadly missile salvos against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and smoldering oil tankers clogging up passage of the Persian Gulf. If the neocons have their way, you will be paying $10 a gallon or more at the pump for gasoline.

The L.A. Times’ Babylon & Beyond blog reports on “a serious recommendation made by two neoconservatives in case sanctions fail to persuade Iran to abandon its enrichment of uranium, a process that can be used to make nuclear weapons or fuel for peaceful energy production.” Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt, described as two “scholars” working for the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, have suggested taking out Iran’s oil infrastructure.

Because the ultimate goal of prevention is to influence Tehran to change course, effective strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure may play an important role in affecting Iran’s decision calculus. Strikes that flatten its nuclear infrastructure could have a demoralizing effect, and could influence Tehran’s assessment of the cost of rebuilding. But the most effective strikes may not necessarily be against nuclear facilities. Iran is extraordinarily vulnerable to attacks on its oil export infrastructure…. The political shock of losing the oil income could cause Iran to rethink its nuclear stance — in ways that attacks on its nuclear infrastructure might not.

Or it may move Iran’s “decision calculus” in a different direction — deadly missile salvos against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and smoldering oil tankers clogging up passage of the Persian Gulf. If these two criminal minds have their way, you will be paying $10 a gallon or more at the pump for gasoline. No problem for the WINEP “scholars,” who write:

To be sure, in a tight world oil market, attacking Iran’s oil infrastructure carries an obvious risk of causing world oil prices to soar and hurting consumers in the United States and other oil-importing countries…. If the choice is between higher oil prices and a Middle East with several nuclear powers, higher oil prices and reduced economic growth are not clearly the greater evil.

Talk about hubris. But then neocons are more than comfortable with imposing economic hardship on you, considered a lowly commoner and easily distracted chump by the neocons and their globalist associates. It should be remembered that the neocons consider themselves “philosopher-kings,” a self-appointed elite, and advocate benevolent dictatorship – a process well underway — although it remains to be seen how benevolent it would be to freeze to death thousands of people unable to heat their homes or starve them to death because the cannot afford to drive to work.

“They have contempt for the masses, and feel utterly justified in wisely misleading those masses into a roadmap for global peace on their terms,” notes Gary Leupp. In the neocon “perverse view of the world, if America fails to achieve her ‘national destiny’, and is mired in perpetual war, then all is well. Man’s humanity, defined in terms of struggle to the death, is rescued from extinction,” explains Straussian scholar Shadia Drury.

In fact, the neocons, well steeped in Straussian fascism — the Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt, after all, was Leo Strauss’ benefactor — prefer the hoodwinked masses suffer. “The combination of religion and nationalism is the elixir that Strauss advocates as the way to turn natural, relaxed, hedonistic men into devout nationalists willing to fight and die for their God and country,” or rather fight and die for the neocons and Israel.

“In 1985, Martin Indyk, former research director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), founded WINEP. While AIPAC focused its lobbying on Congress, WINEP was founded as a think tank that would primarily interact with the executive branch to set U.S. policy toward Israel and the Middle East,” writes IRC-Political Research Associates.

Through their overlapping staffs, WINEP is closely associated with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. The longtime director of the Jaffee Center was Maj. Gen. Aharon Yariv, former Israeli government minister and director of intelligence who died in 1994. Funds for the Jaffee Center were “provided mainly by members of Jewish communities of the United States who have proved aware of and sensitive to the need for such an institution in Israel.” According to Jaffee’s website, the center conducts research on Israeli national security and aims “to contribute to the public debate and governmental deliberation of issues that are—or should be—at the top of Israel’s national security agenda.”

Is it “at the top of Israel’s national security agenda” to destroy the U.S. economy? It looks like it may be, if we are to believe Clawson and Eisenstadt. For these two “scholars” — basically two psychopaths on the loose, allowed to preach their murderous “scholarship” — the “potential risks, challenges and consequences of prevention… are daunting, the risks and challenges of deterrence are even more so,” thus killing untold numbers of Iranian grandmothers and toddlers and wrecking the pathetic remains of the besieged American economy are worth it.

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
June 20, 2008