In the first part of this article that appeared yesterday, I said the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) report on Iran’s nuclear program refuted its own previous conclusions of 2005. The reversal of conclusions resulted from a dramatic shift in the balance of forces within the US government and in particular the strengthening of the US military elite versus the pro-war Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC).

A key factor in pushing the US intelligence agencies to break with their past subjugation to White House manipulation and intelligence fabricated by Israeli-Zionist lobby was the repeated failures and incredible stupidity of the Israeli intelligence agencies — leading to a loss of their credibility. Israeli intelligence blundered and miscalculated on the strength of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. Israeli estimates on Iraqi capacity to resist invasion has led to a war of attrition in Iraq with no end in sight. Israel’s claim to have detected a nuclear facility in Syria, which it bombed, was an international joke.

Learning from Israeli intelligence agencies’ tendency to feed disinformation to its clients in the US government, the US national intelligence community asserted its independence and published its report denying each and every Israeli-White House assertion concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons program and, in particular, pointing to the end of research into nuclear weapons as far back as the fall of 2003.

While governments, the United Nations and experts around the world recognized the rigorous, systematic, comprehensive methods used to compile the data leading to the report declaring that Iran was free of nuclear weapons programs, one and only one state objected: The Jewish State of Israel. And in the USA only one nationwide configuration of organizations refused to reconcile itself to the absence of any Iranian military threat to Israel and that was predictably the Zionist Power Configuration, specifically the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CoP).

Speaking for the Israeli government, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said: “We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth (sic) even from our greatest friend”. Though the NIE may weaken the White House drive to war, the fact that Israel rejects the report means that its war preparations will continue.

Following Orwellian logic, the Israel lobby AIPAC twisted the NIE report to fit Israel’s rejectionist lead (as it never fails to do) by arguing that the report bolsters the case for continued confrontation, belligerency and isolation (Jewish Telegraph Agency, Dec. 4, 2007). In fact according to the perverse argument of AIPAC spokesman Josh Block, the absence of any Iranian nuclear weapons threat should result in greater pressure on Iran!

Once again the Israel Firsters defy all logic, and reject the most comprehensive and in-depth empirical intelligence report of the US in favor of the propaganda emanating from the failed Israeli intelligence agencies and the Israeli regime.

But the euphoria of anti-war critics who claim the NIE report laid to rest the threat of a US war with Iran is premature, as is their idea that the “Israel Lobby” has been dealt a decisive blow.

Internationally, British Foreign Secretary David Millband, a long-time supporter of Israel, in all but name dismissed the NIE report and emphasized the need to “keep the pressure on Iran”. He accused Iran of being a major threat to the international community because it produces what he called “fissile material” and “missiles” — ignoring that every large and medium size country in the world produces enriched uranium and possesses missiles.

In France, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner immediately picked up the Israeli line, dismissing the NIE report and calling for new economic sanctions even as the original justification (Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program) was found to be a lie. The NIE report made liars of the White House and Congressional Democrats and the CoP who “knew” Iran had a nuclear weapons program. Even more revealingly, it demonstrates that for the warmongers, nuclear weapons are not the motivating force for their drive to attack Iran. It is abundantly clear that attacking Iran through sanctions and military threats is deeply rooted in the Israeli priority of destroying that country as an adversary to its Middle East power grab and its assault and territorial dispossession of Palestinians.

But their efforts to push for a third round of UN sanctions is likely to be rejected. On Dec. 4, China’s UN Ambassador Wang Guangya announced that the NIE report called into question the need for new sanctions. The case can be made that Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, will follow China’s lead and object to new sanctions. Nevertheless, the US Congress and in particular its influential committee chairpersons continue to blindly follow Israeli Prime Minister Olmert’s pronouncement: “It is vital to pursue efforts to prevent Iran from developing a capability like this (sic) in the United States.” Pro-Israeli Thomas Lantos, convoked a congressional hearing on the NIE Report and invited two pro-Israeli ex-government advisers David Wurmser and Martin Indyk to testify.

There is no question that the anti-(Iran) war groups in the US military and intelligence agencies have struck a serious blow to the ongoing war plans of the White House.

Will this lift the US Congress off its collective knees to finally address US interests in the Middle East? Will it reawaken a currently moribund peace movement? Will it allow Congress and the US public to challenge the ZPC’s stranglehold on US Middle East policy? Will the public in UK and France dare to challenge their governments’ stand on Iran?

Surprisingly it is not liberal or leftist opinion leaders who have raised the relevant issues pertaining to the questions of war and peace in the Middle East. It is the spy agencies in the US and their allies in the US military, the paragons of past wars and present destabilization campaigns (read Venezuela). It is an irony of history. But just the same, this is the real world in which we live, where Western intellectuals and cultural heroes have abdicated their responsibility to challenge the Zionists operating on behalf of an aspiring Middle East colonial power.

— James Petras is Bartle professor emeritus at Binghamton University. His latest books are The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press 2006) and Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists and Militants (Clarity Press 2007)