Have you wondered, as I have, why the US under “Democrat” leadership is gifting Iran billions of American tax-payers’ money?
Why it appoints Iranian supporters of the Ayatollahs’ regime to high positions in the White House and the Pentagon?
Why the “Biden” administration tolerates attacks on US ships by Iran and its proxies?
What Obama meant by “leading from behind”?
Why the “Biden” administration sabotages Israel’s defensive wars?
Does this article answer those questions?
Excerpts:
According to the U.S. blueprint, the United States and Iran will jointly administer a set of Levantine provinces, including Israel; a future Palestinian state; and Lebanon. Jordan, which is also part of the local geography, is configured as an American protectorate to balance out Syria, which was recognized by Barack Obama, publicly in 2015 and privately in his letters to Ali Khamenei, as an Iranian regional “equity” and will therefore apparently be administered solely by Iran.
Whatever problems may arise between the three Levantine provinces and their local subdivisions are to be adjudicated jointly by the U.S.-Iran condominium, with local governing entities being free to plead their cases in Washington but powerless to take independent action without taking on both the global superpower and its regional partner.
The U.S. plan for Gaza and the Palestinians, which came with the public imprimatur of Barack Obama himself, the leader of the ruling party in Washington. The Obama plan, which begins with ending Israel’s military operation against Hamas, includes international engagement and investment in Gaza, and the formalization of the status of the Palestinian Territories as a proto-state under American management.
[Obama’s] senior adviser, Hochstein, laid out a parallel multiphase plan for the Hezbollah-run country [Lebanon], which likewise features increased international engagement and cover, supplementing the United States’ substantial existing investments in so-called Lebanese state institutions, whose job is to run cover and provide support for Hezbollah.
So what does that [plan] consist of? It starts with U.S. investment and government grants to both countries that dwarf anything that the United States put into Gaza before the war. For Tehran, such investment is a subsidy; for the United States, it is a way of “containing the fallout” from any pesky rocket attacks, since Israel will be naturally constrained from bombing anything built with U.S. money or housing U.S. personnel.
Then, there is active U.S. training and equipment for Lebanese and Palestinian armed forces, which in turn serve as shields and auxiliaries for much larger and more powerful terrorist armies that dominate both societies. Funding these (fictional) entities is like creating a large, heavily armed version of UNRWA, the supposed U.N. “relief agency” that funded Hamas and its tunnels before Oct. 7. Except the human shields these entities deploy will now be American military trainers.
The vision driving policy in Washington since Barack Obama’s first term [is] the realignment with Iran and the reconfiguration of the regional order.
Obama’s division of the region is intended to elevate a regional middle power and inflate its status across the region while orchestrating regional and international investment in its territories so that it can “do its job” as a U.S. partner.
In Obama’s conceptual universe, the special province is recognized as an Iranian satrapy ruled directly by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its local legion—with an accepted American presence, whose function is to provide protection and direct investment, both of which serve in turn to prop up Tehran.
Refracted through this lens, the Obama-Biden [“Biden” is superfluous here, he could contribute nothing – JB] team’s policy in Lebanon offers a sketch of its adapted special province model, which it plans to implement in the Palestinian Territories following the end of Israel’s monthslong incursion into Gaza.
Underscoring the privileged place the Lebanese special province holds in Team Obama-Biden’s regional configuration is the American physical headquarters in the tiny country: the U.S. embassy. The second smallest Arab country is host to the second largest U.S. embassy on earth (the largest is in Iraq)—a 43-acre, $1 billion mammoth.
The new US embassy complex in Beirut under construction
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The obvious question one might ask is: Why would America make that kind of investment in a pseudo-state run by Iran’s local representative? The answer is, precisely because it is Iranian territory.
The purpose of large-scale U.S. investment in Lebanon and its state institutions, as well as the building of an embassy that resembles a LEED-certified version of the Crac des Chevaliers in the hills overlooking Beirut, is not to attempt a hostile takeover or, to use the insufferable jargon of Washington hands, to “compete” with Iran. The last time there was perceived hostility in the American involvement in Lebanon, Iran blew up the U.S. embassy and the Marine barracks and kidnapped and murdered U.S. citizens in Beirut throughout the 1980s. No, the U.S. involvement is understood by all to be friendly and beneficial, aimed not at undermining the Iranian domain but at consolidating it in a joint venture … not for the purpose of managing a declining empire, but for the inverted goal of consolidating the realm of an artificially inflated middle power that will administer the region under America’s aegis, for a price.
If the colossal embassy is the physical marker of the American investment in the Special Province of Lebanon, the principal avenue for U.S. involvement has been in the training and equipping of the security forces. Although they’re called the Lebanese Armed Forces [LAF], internally, the special province’s army performs gendarmerie functions; national security and defense policy and actual military functions are the domain of the Iranian court and its local military force, Hezbollah.
In recent years, however, the Obama-Biden team incorporated the LAF into the American counterterrorism enterprise, which has defined U.S. involvement in the region over the past quarter century. That enterprise is another facet of the American-Iranian partnership. Centering U.S. investment in the LAF on a target acceptable and beneficial to Iran is intended to reassure Tehran as to the shared nature of the force’s mission.
As another token of reassurance, the LAF is deployed along the border with Israel. In addition to playing a support role to Hezbollah in the area, positioning the U.S.-sponsored force in between Israel and the Iranian force means that an Israeli attack would have to target an American asset.
The same model is now being reproduced for the Special Province of Palestine. An ongoing Team Obama-Biden project is to stand up a Palestinian analogue to the LAF—let’s call it the PAF, an enterprise that began well before Oct. 7 under the supervision of the Obama-Biden team’s security coordinator in the Palestinian Territories, Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel. Fenzel is also the administration’s point man in its campaign targeting Jews in Judea and Samaria—the flip side of the PAF policy, both of which are designed to consolidate a nascent Palestinian Special Province.
Initially, Fenzel was said to have been standing up a 5,000-strong force trained and equipped by the United States. The objective of Fenzel’s force is to sharply curtail IDF operations in Judea and Samaria, setting the stage for full Palestinian control of the West Bank under American supervision.
Like its Lebanese counterpart, the PAF has been folded into the U.S. counterterrorism framework.
Being designated a U.S. counterterrorism partner force is code for both guaranteed perpetual American investment and reassurance to Iran that the force will safeguard, not subvert, Tehran’s realm.
The PAF’s job is not to go after Iranian forces, such as Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but to act as an auxiliary force and, by virtue of American sponsorship, as a constraint on IDF activity.
Since Oct. 7, Washington’s plans for the PAF have gone into overdrive. Like the LAF up north, the PAF features prominently in Team Obama-Biden’s “Day After” plan—that is, the formalization of the Palestinian Special Province, with its dual jurisdictions.
Within a couple of months since Oct. 7, the administration was already putting out talkers about the need to “strengthen” and “beef up” Fenzel’s nascent PAF. After a meeting between Fenzel and Palestinian Authority Intelligence Chief Majed Faraj in late 2023, chatter about guaranteeing funding (including salaries) for the force started to pop up in D.C.—again, following the LAF template. It’s said that during a meeting between Fenzel and the commander of the PA’s National Security Forces, Nidal Abu Dukhan, they also discussed U.S. salaries for the PAF.
In Lebanon, the Obama-Biden team has already deployed American trainers and special forces personnel. In fact, the U.S. military routinely docks naval vessels in Lebanese ports and uses an airstrip in the Hezbollah-controlled Bekaa to land airlifts of equipment for the LAF—turning all of these places into infrastructure that is ostensibly part of America’s global counterterrorism efforts. [Is that what it’s all about? - JB]
In addition to Fenzel, the Obama-Biden team is said to be considering appointing a U.S. official to serve as the top civilian adviser who would be “based in the region” and would “work closely with the commanding officer” of a postwar security force in Gaza (which the State Department prefers to describe as a “gendarmerie”).
In the Lebanese Special Province, the United States has assembled a consultative group with the ambassadors of four other nations (France, Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia) to manage the selection of a new “president”—a post that’s been vacant since 2022. The administration’s public pronouncements emphasize the importance of a new “president” for Lebanon. In reality, the administration’s point man on Lebanon, Special Adviser Hochstein, deals with Hezbollah through its ally, Shiite militia leader and “Speaker of Parliament,” Nabih Berri, among other cutouts, like former Director of General Security Abbas Ibrahim. The Lebanese government is a facade, an official channel to funnel U.S. aid and to cover for the fact that the administration is dealing as directly as possible with Hezbollah.
In fact, that’s precisely what the administration did in 2022 when it imposed its maritime boundary agreement, which in reality functioned as an official American designation of the Special Province of Lebanon as a U.S. protectorate, thereby discouraging Israeli military operations in that territory.
Hochstein, then as now, talked as directly as he could with Hezbollah and advanced Iran’s interests, which he then pressed a client minority prime minister in Israel to accept in their entirety. One measure of the authority of this designation is that Israeli operations in Lebanon still haven’t happened, despite the “loss of sovereignty” declared by the U.S. secretary of state—who apparently gets to declare such things without the Israelis feeling able to say “boo". Even after the Majdal Shams slaughter, Hochstein reportedly told Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that the United States opposed a strike on Beirut.
Intensified U.S. meddling in Israeli domestic affairs as well as the direct interference in Israel’s foreign and security policy since the maritime deal was sealed provide insight into where the state of Israel fits in the Obama-Biden team’s regional architecture alongside the joint U.S.-Iranian special provinces.
Israel is a troublesome client, to be managed when possible by the U.S.-aligned faction inside the country, combined with external pressure like having Israel’s prime minister declared a war criminal by the International Criminal Court. [“Biden” did that? Or is it that he could have stopped it but didn’t? - JB]
In the same vein, Washington’s framing of Iran’s April 13 direct missile and drone attack against Israel is instructive. Israel was constrained from retaliating against the Iranians. Instead, the United States made clear that the only legitimate defensive arrangement is one by the American-led integrated regional missile defense, which will effectively calibrate the “hit” that Israel is required to take, while ruling out of bounds any Israeli response to being attacked. That is to say, not only would Israel be denied the autonomous decision-making to go on the offensive, but also, even its defense would be contingent on what the United States deemed acceptable. Accordingly, following Hezbollah’s rocket attack on Majdal Shams, the administration reportedly listed targets in Lebanon that it considers to be out of bounds for Israel, including Hezbollah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
The Obama team sees Jewish sovereignty as a destabilizing factor in the regional arrangement with Iran, which therefore must be constrained, IF NOT OUTRIGHT ABOLISHED. [My capitalization - JB]
To fit in Obama’s “regional integration” vision, Israel has to be reduced to a province, with no sovereign control over its defense policy with regard to the Iranians and their holdings in the U.S.-managed regional architecture, in which you’ll have the subdivisions of Gaza and the West Bank united within “Palestine”. Jerusalem will be a special jurisdiction shared with Israel under international supervision. Within these units, “administrative councils” will be the official governing bodies, which we will refer to as “governments” while actual power resides elsewhere.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/ottoman-american-empire