By Aaron Kesel

The U.S. is hell-bent on regime change in Iran; so much so that John Bolton, whose life goal has been arguing for regime change in the Middle East in both Iran and Syria from administration to administration, is now the sitting U.S. National Security Advisor.

In November 2016, way before Trump even considered Bolton for National Security Advisor, Bolton stated that regime change in Iran was the only way.

“The ayatollahs are the principal threat to international peace and security in the Middle East,” Bolton told Breitbart News Daily, a radio program run by the hard-right website with close ties to Donald Trump. “Now, their ouster won’t bring sweetness and light to the region, that’s for sure, but it will eliminate the principal threat.” […] “I think the people of Iran would long for a new regime,” Bolton continued, later suggesting that the U.S. should support opposition groups looking to overthrow it. “I don’t think the regime is popular, but I think it has the guns. And I think there are ways of supporting the opposition that does not involve the use of American military force, that does involve helping the opposition to get a different kind of government.”

But that’s far from the only pawn in place for regime change in Iran and another war — Mike Pompeo is now U.S. Secretary of State. War hawk Pompeo previously downplayed the cost of bombing Iran:

In an unclassified setting, it is under 2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity. This is not an insurmountable task for the coalition forces.

Even further, in his statement on July 14, 2015, the day the nuclear accord was reached, then Rep. Pompeo argued that Iran “is intent on the destruction of our country,” and said “this deal allows Iran to continue its nuclear program – that’s not foreign policy; it’s surrender.”

If Pompeo needed to be any more blunt, one of his tweets from before he became CIA director is a tell-all of his plans as Secretary of State.

The now deleted tweet stated:

I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.

Pompeo also introduced several bills intended to further divide diplomacy with Iran, including one that passed the House which would block the U.S. from purchasing heavy water from Iran; and another that would effectively impose further sanctions than existed prior to the deal under the disguise of targeting Iran’s ballistic missile program, which would directly violate the deal.

That’s right, the two people in charge of foreign policy in the U.S. (excluding CFR members) are in agreement and anti-Iran. That means that more than likely Trump’s administration will be the one that starts war with Iran, unless some miracle happens.

Besides the Trump administration, there has always been an element within the government that was working towards the “5 years 7 countries plan” plotted by high top brass at the Pentagon in 2001 mere weeks after 9/11, that 4-star General Wesley Clark warned about in 2007. Clark warned that the U.S. would invade 7 countries within 5 years with the last remaining country being, you guessed it, Iran!

But even before powerful men we never voted for sat around a table and plotted future wars (which is a form of treason), U.S. policy towards Iran has always been murky and hostile towards the country.

Let’s take a look back at the history of the U.S. foreign policy in Iran plagued with deceit and setups. To begin let’s look at the Iranian 1953 coup.

As The Intercept notes:

Iran did have a secular, democratic government, led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh between 1951 and 1953 — but Mossadegh was removed from power in a coup organized and funded by the CIA and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.

A declassified document made public in March of this year, alleges that senior Iranian clerics received “large sums of money” from U.S. officials in the days leading up to the August 19th, 1953, overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, The Guardian reported.

Ultimately, as The Intercept article goes on to detail, the coup (Operation Ajax) allowed the rise of Iran’s ayatollahs and the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

“Possibilities of blowback against the United States should always be in the back of the minds of all CIA officers involved in this type of operation,” noted an internal CIA lessons-learned report on Mossadegh’s fall in 1954. “Few, if any, operations are as explosive as this type.”

A key fact that a lot of people don’t know is that in 1952, TIME magazine named Mossadegh “Man of the Year” because he had nationalized Iranian oil and kicked out the British.

The next key move by the U.S. was in 1981 giving Saddam Hussein chemical weapons to attack Iran as a 2002 Washington Post article by Michael Dodd documents:

the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and the bubonic plague.

If you dig deeper, then you will find that the CIA helped Iraq gas Iranians by feeding intelligence to Iraq.

U.S. officials gave Saddam’s army details about the whereabouts of Iranian forces in 1988 knowing that he would deploy chemical weapons, Foreign Policy magazine reported, which contradicts that America didn’t know about the attacks.

Iraq used mustard gas and sarin in early 1988 in four major offensives which helped bring about the end of the eight-year conflict. During the whole war, up to 20,000 Iranian troops were killed by mustard gas and nerve agents from Iraq and 100,000 were wounded.

Then along came the exposure of former National Security aide, Oliver North, the man accused of being the heart of the 1986 Iran-Contra affair. The case first came to light in November 1986 when a Lebanese newspaper reported that the U.S. government had been secretly supplying arms to Iran. It grew into a scandal when North revealed under questioning from the Attorney General, Edwin Meese, that money from the Iran arms sales had been diverted to the Contras as part of a wide-ranging illicit effort to avoid the scrutiny of Congress, The Guardian reported.

More recently, there is the fraudulent evidence that Iran had nuclear weapons that whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling exposed, detailing a plot named Operation Merlin by the CIA to forge evidence for military action in 2000. The plan involved a disaffected Russian scientist codenamed Merlin. In other words, a false flag operation to garner support by Congress for war.

Ironically, despite the treasonous plot to spin the American people into another perpetual war, the CIA didn’t get in trouble and Sterling was imprisoned for revealing the dark secret of the deep state under the Obama administration. While the effort was billed to stunt the growth of Iran’s nuclear program, its real purpose was likely to frame the Iranian government with blueprints of a nuclear weapon.

That brings us back to modern day. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is now parroting once again that Iran has nuclear weapons, presenting what he called “new and conclusive proof” of violations. Coincidentally enough, this came just a few weeks after a major geopolitical move by Iran to drop the U.S. dollar for the Euro in foreign trade transactions. A huge deal…

One month prior, Iran did the unthinkable by banning the U.S. dollar in trade, setting the groundwork for replacing it in foreign trade transactions. It’s a move that has been in the works and was attempted last year when Trump sanctioned the country mere days after Iran said it would stop using the U.S. dollar in response to President Trump’s previous travel ban.

That means that Iran finally pulled the trigger and dumped the U.S. dollar. Israel responded with “Intel” that Iran has nuclear weapons. In short, most well-developed nations in the world have nuclear weapons. While some have signed the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel has not. So for Israel to worry about Iran having the nuclear capability is a joke because Israel itself has nuclear weaponry, as Iran claimed in 2015.

It’s laughable that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become everybody’s nonproliferation guru. He is sitting on 400 nuclear warheads, nuclear warheads that have been acquired in violation of the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty].

Whether the number of 400 nuclear weapons is too high or not doesn’t matter; it’s a fact that Israel has WMDs which was well established by the U.S. government in a 1999 DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) report.

You can see where this is going if you follow the pattern of “country rebels against USD as a result (country) gets invaded by Uncle Sam’s military.” It’s a pattern that comedian and journalist Lee Camp has also noticed: “it’s all about the banking.” To make a comparison, remember Muammar Gaddafi’s speech at the UN to replace the USD in African nations with a gold African dinar. As Iran now prepares to defy the central banks and moves toward testing an experimental Iranian fiat cryptocurrency, banning the USD from trade and shifting to the Euro, one can only expect coming tension from the United States.

Just like Iran and Libya, Iraq attempted to move away from the U.S. dollar to the Euro for trade — the result was the invasion of the Middle East. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein announced Iraq would no longer sell Iraqi oil in dollars. According to The New American,

Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein, once armed by the U.S. government to make war on Iran, was threatening to start selling oil in currencies other than the dollar just prior to the Bush administration’s ‘regime change’ George W. Bush mission.

In the year 2000 a TIME article stated that Saddam’s purpose for making the change was for Iraq to no longer deal “in the currency of the enemy.”

Then in 2006, just prior to Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad being called by U.S. officials a genocidal war criminal who needs to step down, the Chicago Tribune reported:

Syria has switched the primary hard currency it uses for foreign goods and services from the U.S. dollar to the euro in a bid to make it less vulnerable to pressure from Washington. The decree signed by Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otari on Monday ordered government bodies and public-sector companies to use euros to pay for foreign transactions.

Returning to Iran, some even suspect that the recent protests in Iran were manipulated by U.S. intelligence agencies. WikiLeaks provided potential evidence that this is the case, documenting the fact that UK security agency GCHQ – who works with the NSA and what’s known as the FIVE EYES surveillance countries – was caught running fake personas on Twitter targeting Iran.

UK spy agency GCHQ caught running fake personas on Twitter targeting #Iran. https://t.co/qDoUzJ8CNq pic.twitter.com/N2j1GbkmUV — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 2, 2018

If that wasn’t enough, journalist Caitlin Johnstone pointed out in January this year that last year the CIA set up a new organization tasked with focusing on Iran.

“Back in June the Wall Street Journal published a report saying that America’s Central Intelligence Agency had set up a new organization whose sole task would be to focus on Iran under the direction of “Ayatollah Mike” D’andrea, an aggressive Iran hawk,” Johnstone wrote.

In the very least it shouldn’t surprise anyone if Iran’s protests really were manipulated, as it’s a tactic the CIA and other Intel agencies around the world have used time and time again to control populations. The tactic has now evolved to include cyber warfare in the age of Internet “astroturfing” which is then subsequently reported as a consistent narrative in the mainstream media.

In fact, right after the protests took place, the U.S. state department jumped into PR mode calling the regime “a rogue whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos.”

U.S. strongly condemns arrest of peaceful protestors in #Iran, urges all nations to publicly support Iranian people. As @POTUS said, longest-suffering victims of Iran’s leaders are Iran’s own people. #Iranprotests pic.twitter.com/mUTObTeHft — Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) December 29, 2017

If things continue how they are with the rhetoric against Iran, we can surely expect war in the coming months and an increase in propaganda.

Trump has repeatedly openly stated his intention to scrap the Iran deal, denouncing it as “the worst deal ever.” In a January speech, Trump even went as far as to accuse his predecessor of having “curried favor with the Iranian regime in order to push through the disastrously flawed Iran nuclear deal.”

However, European powers including Britain have responded saying the Israeli prime minister’s claims reinforced the need to keep the deal. Iran itself has denounced the U.S.’s need to be involved in the nuclear deal.

A Guardian report recently revealed that Trump’s aides contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.

Trump has given a deadline of May 12th for a final decision on whether or not to keep the Iran deal. But has recently tweeted that tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. EST he will make his decision.

I will be announcing my decision on the Iran Deal tomorrow from the White House at 2:00pm. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2018

UPDATE: As expected, Trump has withdrawn from the deal:

BREAKING: Trump: Iran nuclear deal is ‘defective at its core,’ announces US withdrawing from global agreement. — The Associated Press (@AP) May 8, 2018

Meanwhile, an economist has warned that oil prices are indicating a worst-case scenario on the outcome of the Iran nuclear deal, climbing as high as 2014 levels of $70 a barrel, CNBC reported.

“Anything that’s slightly less than that — by which I mean he may delay his decision, or he may not impose the same amount of sanctions previously — I think markets would react favorably to that, given that markets are currently pricing in probably the worst-case scenario,” Tim Fox, head of research and chief economist at Emirates NBD, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection.” U.S. sanctions on Iran could slash global oil supplies by 800,000 barrels per day, according to a report by Emirates NBD.

In fact, the United States is already preparing for potential conflict with Iran — last year the U.S. silently introduced H.J.Res.10 “Authorization of Use of Force Against Iran Resolution.”

This resolution “authorizes the President to use the U.S. Armed forces as necessary in order to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.”

Tehran itself has recently expressed that it can remain in the deal even without the U.S.

“We are not worried about America’s cruel decisions…We are prepared for all scenarios and no change will occur in our lives next week,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said. “If we can get what we want from a deal without America, then Iran will continue to remain committed to the deal. What Iran wants is our interests to be guaranteed by its non-American signatories…In that case, getting rid of America’s mischievous presence will be fine for Iran.” “If they want to make sure that we are not after a nuclear bomb, we have said repeatedly that we are not and we will not be,” Rouhani said, who engineered the nuclear accord to ease Iran’s isolation. “But if they want to weaken Iran and limit its influence whether in the region or globally, Iran will fiercely resist,” Rouhani said.

I’ll leave you with this thought, while there are dozens of organizations classified as terrorists, one has to wonder why the CIA hasn’t been added to that list when they gave Saddam Hussein chemical weapons to attack Iran, overthrew the government of Iran, and forged evidence on Iran all in the past decade. And that’s just what the CIA has done to the single country of Iran to destabilize it. That’s not adding the torture element of human rights violations. Listen to former CIA agent Miles Copeland explain what the CIA wanted to do to Syria and read my previous article: “History Of CIA Attempted Coups In Syria And How They Created ISIS.”

#DisbandTheCIA

Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Steemit, and BitChute. Ready for solutions? Subscribe to our premium newsletter Counter Markets.

Image credit: The Anti-Media