Events in the Middle East are increasingly interconnected. Well, they always have been. It's just becoming more obvious.

Tomgram: Mark LeVine, Chaos Theory and the Middle East

Yesterday, the Israeli security cabinet authorized an expansion of the ground war in Lebanon (while its military suffered 15 dead and 25 wounded, the highest battlefield casualty rate thus far); Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened to "transform our land in the south [of Lebanon] to a graveyard for Zionist invaders" and called on Haifa's Arab residents to evacuate that city; Israeli planes bombed bridges and dropped leaflets warning that "any vehicle on the roads south of the Litani River" might be destroyed, while Hezbollah rained 100 or more Katyusha rockets on northern Israel. In Iraq, the Baghdad morgue released a staggering death toll for the month of July -- 1,815 bodies received (as many as 90% having died violently). As "a new high," this was an ominous sign of the spiraling civil war in the Iraqi capital, while in al-Anbar Province, heart of the Sunni insurgency, three more U.S. soldiers died and two Black Hawk helicopter crewmen were missing and possibly dead. In Afghanistan, the capital, Kabul, is now experiencing an energy crisis which has left its electricity levels at lows equal to that of occupied, embattled Baghdad; while, to the south, the country is experiencing an ever more intense guerrilla war, replete with Iraqi-style suicide bombers and roadside IEDs, led by a resurgent Taliban. These are but signs (along with rising energy prices) of the spreading chaos at the heart of what was once to be a Bush-administration-led American imperium in the Middle East (and energy-rich Central Asia). But this administration's top officials remain remarkably cloistered and undaunted. Only yesterday, according to the New York Times, Vice President Cheney "went so far as to suggest that the ouster of" Senator Joseph Lieberman by Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary in Connecticut, "might encourage ‘al Qaeda types.'"

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Collapse of the Flanks

Today, in an interview with the BBC, Jordan's King Abdullah warned that the map of the Middle East is becoming unrecognizable and its future appears "dim." Washington, which in its hubris ignores both its friends and its enemies, refusing to talk to the latter or listen to the former, does not grasp that if the flanks collapse, it is the end of our adventures in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It is also, in a slightly longer time frame, the end of Israel. No Crusader state survives forever, and in the long term Israel's existence depends on arriving at some sort of modus vivendi with the region. The replacement of Mubarak, King Abdullah, and the House of Saud with the Muslim Brotherhood would make that possibility fade.

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Apocalypse Near
Following intellectuals' letter, Prof. Noam Chomsky explains his doctrine, discusses danger of Israel's nukes compared to 'Iranian threat,' global media's role in escalating Mideast conflict and US's place in picture

"I do not know of anyone foolhardy enough to predict. The US and Israel are stirring up popular forces that are very ominous, and which will only gain in power and become more extremist if the US and Israel persist in demolishing any hope of realization of Palestinian national rights, and destroying Lebanon. It should also be recognized that Washington’s primary concern, as in the past, is not Israel and Lebanon, but the vast energy resources of the Middle East, recognized 60 years ago to be a “stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” "We can expect with confidence that the US will continue to do what it can to control this unparalleled source of strategic power. That may not be easy. The remarkable incompetence of Bush planners has created a catastrophe in Iraq, for their own interests as well. They are even facing the possibility of the ultimate nightmare: a loose Shi’a alliance controlling the world’s major energy supplies, and independent of Washington – or even worse, establishing closer links with the China-based Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Council. "The results could be truly apocalyptic. And even in tiny Lebanon, the leading Lebanese academic scholar of Hizbullah, and a harsh critic of the organization, describes the current conflict in “apocalyptic terms,” warning that possibly “All hell would be let loose” if the outcome of the US-Israel campaign leaves a situation in which “the Shiite community is seething with resentment at Israel, the United States and the government that it perceives as its betrayer.

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The following elaborates on some points Chomsky made above. Iran, here we come!

New Facts Surface

If the celebrated MIT linguist is correct, our US government and media are keeping back vital information from the American public. The key information has to do with Iran’s actual positions regarding its nuclear program, and also its relation to Israel. While the US press has focused exclusively on inflammatory remarks by Iranian president Ahmadenijad, even more important statements by Iran’s head mullah, Ayatollah Khamenei, who is Ahmadenijad’s boss, have never been reported here in the US.

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