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What Exactly Was the Plan Here?

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It’s lonely out there, for the freedom fighters.  That’s the line from the neocon think tank Gatestone Institute, which declares the following—presumably with a straight face:

While other countries remain silent, hesitant, or complicit through inaction, the United States and Israel have taken the only path that has a chance of restoring stability, opening the door to freedom and protecting innocent lives…

God bless the United States and Israel — and President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — the only brave leaders standing against this regime of terror. All who care about freedom should align with them at once.

And yet they’re not aligning—at least not in the way Washington and Tel Aviv hoped they would.

The plan/hope was that ethnic minorities in Iran would also do some of the fighting and provide the necessary “boots on the ground.” Thus far, that hasn’t come to pass (more on that below), which is probably why we’re hearing more about the US marching in.

The Gatestone Institute piece portraying genocidaires as innocence-protecting freedom fighters might be ludicrous beyond belief, and US spooks might already be “covering their ass” as it looks more likely the Iran war will be an earth-shattering debacle, but American neocon think tanks and Israeli outlets have for years written about their fantasies of exploiting supposed divisions in Iran to topple “the regime.”

Common among them is the acknowledgement that airstrikes alone would not be successful, that exiled elites backing the Shah’s son are worthless, that support from Iranian minorities in Iran would be necessary. Here are a few recent representative examples:

“Do the Kurds and Baluch Have a Plan Following Israel’s Blow to Iran’s Regime?” by the Zionist Middle East Forum:

Yet this opportunity will mean little without preparation. Resistance alone is not a strategy. If the Kurds and Baluch wish to influence the shape of a post-Islamic Republic Iran—or even secure autonomy or independence—they must unify their political fronts, coordinate across ideological lines, and present a clear, coherent plan for self-governance, territorial security, and international engagement.

Tehran long has exploited fragmentation. Now is the time to correct that. A joint front, even if temporary and tactically aligned, rather than ideologically unified, could tip the balance. It would signal to Tehran and the international community that these groups are not only resisting but ready to govern. The window is narrow. Without a roadmap, others—more organized and less inclusive—will shape the future. Organization is no longer optional—it is existential. Without a political plan and organized leadership, no amount of street protest or armed resistance will bring lasting change.

The burden of completing what outside powers can only begin now rests on the shoulders of Iran’s national minorities. The regime’s foundations are trembling. The question is no longer whether it will fall, but rather who will be ready to shape what comes next.

The Jerusalem Post provided a blueprint in a June editorial titled “Trump must help Israel finish the job to dismantle Khamenei’s regime”.

  1. Embrace regime change as a policy. Iran’s leadership has shown time and again that its ideology is impervious to deterrence; military strikes only feed its propaganda. You should publicly declare that the Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khamenei is an outlaw regime and that its removal is a US strategic objective.

  2. Sharpen economic warfare to knife-edge precision. Existing sanctions must be intensified to target every revenue stream sustaining the regime. Freeze all assets tied to the IRGC and its Quds Force, sanction the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and levy secondary sanctions on foreign banks and firms transacting with Tehran.

  3. Ramp up covert operations inside Iran. If Tehran welcomes violence, let it find the fight at home. Expand cyber offensives to disable IRGC command-and-control networks, disrupt missile guidance systems, and interfere with nuclear control software.

  4. Designate the IRGC a foreign terrorist organization and pursue its global networks relentlessly. Force banks worldwide to choose between processing dollar transactions and facilitating money laundering by the IRGC.

  5. Project overwhelming military readiness. Surge US carrier strike groups into the Persian Gulf, pre-position Aegis destroyers in the Arabian Sea, and deploy long-range bombers to deter any Iranian reprisal.

  6. Forge a Middle East coalition for Iran’s partition. Encourage long-term plans for a federalized or partitioned Iran, recognizing that Khamenei’s theocratic regime cannot be reformed. Offer security guarantees to Sunni, Kurdish, and Balochi minority regions willing to break away.

The six-step program has mostly come to pass except for the final one—a rather large stumbling block.

As Curro Jimenez recently pointed out in a post here at NC, there is support in Iran for some reforms in Iran, but that’s a far cry from armed insurrection. And who in their right mind would believe the US-Israeli genociders are going to help bring a better life?

It’s no surprise that this hope-for uprising of ethnic minorities in Iran is not happening. Let’s take a look at some of the latest efforts to kickstart

The Kurds?

One of the most publicized ops in recent memory is stuck in neutral. With Washington and Tel Aviv’s fondness for transparent head fakes, it’s difficult to completely rule it out, but for the time being, the whole pipe dream is being officially called off:

Unsurprisingly, Kurdish militias wanted guarantees (what good would such promises be?) they wouldn’t be hung out to dry again, and were demanding the US establish a no-fly zone in areas they would occupy.

Burhan N.S. Jaf writes of how joining the US-Israel would mean utter devastation for the Kurds across the region, and yet concludes… it’s a difficult decision.

This time, it must be different. This time, the Kurds must not be the fuel for someone else’s fire. This time, they must demand a place at the table – not as proxies, but as partners. Not as mercenaries, but as a nation. The bombs are falling on Tehran. The old order is dying. What comes next is unknown. But one thing is certain: whatever the new Middle East emerges from this chaos, it must include the Kurds…

The border is open. The offers are being made. The trap is set. The question is whether the Kurds will walk into it, or whether they will finally, after all these years, find a path of their own. I hope, for the sake of my children and for the sake of all those young fighters I once marched with in the mountains, that they choose wisely. They have waited a century. They can wait a little longer for the right moment. But they cannot afford to wait forever. And they cannot afford to make the wrong choice now.

How About the Azeris?

The government in Azerbaijan is certainly doing its part to stir the pot:

Tehran is denying these charges and issuing warnings to Baku:

Is Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev crazy enough to get involved directly?

It’s more likely he’s trying to encourage Azeris in Iran to “rise up”:

The US and Israel are certainly incentivized to make it seem like the Kurds and Azerbaijan are about to join the fight. The hope would be that leads to Tehran to crack down on Kurdish and Azeri populations, thereby helping lead to the resistance they desire. And so we see a lot of unsubstantiated, questionable reports like the following.

Azeris Versus the Kurds?

This one is new and perhaps a sign of growing desperation as I have yet to see any reports that Tehran has taken the bait and begun an overly draconian crackdown on its Azeri and Kurdish population (it has struck spots in Iraq that were allegedly staging grounds for Kurdish/US invasions and has promised to continue to do so). Now we have attempts to sow division between Azeris and Kurds in Iran:

Balochis? Anyone?

A sighting that front is going equally disastrously for the US-Israelis:

If the US-Israel had successfully caused a breakdown in Iran’s government through their assassinations and terror campaign, many of these actors might not hesitate to start fighting the second they think Iran is collapsing and couldn’t inflict serious damage on them.

Even if the US and Israel were getting their tails kicked across the region, there stood a chance of successfully Balkanizing Iran if ethnic minorities and militias did the fighting. As neocon and Zionist outfits previously admitted, this was a necessary step to fulfill their dreams of victory.

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20 comments

  1. Tom Stone

    Plan?
    Start War, Win, hold parade with skittle pooping ponies, Trump gets Nobel peace prize because JESUS IS COMING!
    So much winning it’s unbelievable.

    1. Samuel Conner

      IIRC, back in the first DJT campaign, it was promised that there would be so much winning that Americans would get tired of all the winning.

      He was right — we seem to be tiring of this kind of winning.

  2. Mario

    Aliyev must be wondering what secret clauses were attached to the Iran–Russia Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership from last year.

  3. Louis Fyne

    same lame, lazy playbook as with Russia. This playbook works in a developing country with a splintered elite/leadership, but doesn’t scale up (but the blowback from Ukraine hasn’t destroyed careers or reputations yet). Hence why the retards in DC keep carrying around the book/Powerpoint slides

  4. voislav

    People assign these ethnic labels without regard to the actual situation on the ground. Azeris in Iran are very different from Azeris in Azerbaijan, culturally and religiously, and have no interest in joining Azebaijan. They are interested in self-government, no doubt about that, but they are not interested in being ruled by the Aliyev regime.

    1. Fazal Majid

      And Khamenei (the dead father) was half-Azeri himself. That did not make him favorably inclined towards Azerbaijan, if anything Iran favored Christian Armenia.

  7. jefemt

    Saw Pom-Pom Pete gleeful and enthusiastic on Sixty Minutes, mouthpiece of USrael, last night.
    For a guy who apparently spent time in Afghanipakiraqistania, he sure didn’t seem to learn much about Empirical Leaky Gut.

    Or, he learned all to well… get yer wallet, portfolia, and pockets firmly embedded in the MIC income stream. Like our Men in DC ™, Junior Senator Timmy “The Hit-man” Sheehy, and soon to retire Jar-head thick-necked Seal (arf arf!!) Ryan Zinke.

    Gawd. Pray to Gawd. Like the Iranians, Muslims , and White Christian Nationalists do.
    The Battle for the mind and support of an all – loving interventionist Deity.

    It all makes my head smoke…

  8. ChrisRUEcon

    Two Things:

    1. Trump is the personification of Heath Ledger’s “Joker” (via imgflip.com) … and no, he does not.

    2. W.r.t. Azerbaijan, it’s yet another F1 destination, albeit much later in the season in September.

  9. ISL

    I think the US is finding its primary tool for implementing these types of plans (cue evil laughter) has become a Trojan horse, thanks to Starlink sniffers (or detectors) from Russia. They clearly worked very effectively in Iran, of course, they would work outside Iran – combined with hitting hotels and embassies where the US conducts intel activities and loss of radar and EW listening posts at US bases are degrading US intel with Chinese and Russian help. So Iran is inside the US OODA loop. Prof. Ahmadian in an interview with Jackson Hinkle argues that Iranian, Iraqi, and Yemeni forces can move outside their borders.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYgdaq-vo1o

    yikes – I hit submit before seeing Larry Johnson’s talk with the judge whose title is “US Intel Covering its Backside). Sounds like along the same line – Watching…

  10. The Rev Kev

    It may be that the plan was that after murdering Iran’s leadership, that they would capitulate and this has been confirmed by US leaders. After that, they would create a no-fly zone or something and use the Kurds and the Azeris to break up Iran. Only, Iran did not capitulate and is still fighting much to the frustration of the Trump regime. So what happened is that there has been an attempt to activate the Kurds and the Azeris to bring about victory now but they are not buying it. Not only have the Iranian forces and the Iraqi militias bombed the Kurd militias thinking of doing it, but Israel has been bombing the Kurds too so they are out. As for the Azeris, I would guess that the Russians yanked that country’s leash but hard so they are out. So if Trump want’s Iran’s oil, he is going to have to put boots on the ground which would mean sky high casualties. Trump may have started this war by depending on his instinct but now he does not know how to get out of it. Idjut.

    1. Samuel Conner

      > So if Trump want’s Iran’s oil

      I wonder if it has occurred to anyone in the West that they could, in principle, simply purchase Iran’s oil as it is produced.

      Perhaps in a few weeks this possibility will be given more serious consideration.

    2. Who Cares

      I’d say he’d done it more out of vindictiveness and due to narcissism.
      The narcissism. He is the most impressive president ever, USA is the greatest nation on earth, having the biggest and strongest armed forces. He literally couldn’t comprehend that Iran was serious about resisting due to that, so he threw a, what he’d though was a knockout, blow at them thinking they were bluffing and would fold due to that.
      The vindictiveness. Two components. They dared to resist him, they dared to resist him in 2018/ 2019 and they still dared to resist him in his second term. Resisting Trump means you need to be punished for daring to do so. Then there is the possibility that he was told the assassination attempts on him were done by Iran, this based on him commenting on him killing Ali Khamenei before Ali managed to put Trump 6′ under. And that calls for revenge in the most over the top fashion that is possible.

      1. Fazal Majid

        More likely Netanyahu decided before the midterms was use-it-or-lose-it for whatever kompromat Epstein collected for him on Trump.

  11. lyman alpha blob

    The “sleeper cell” claims are hilarious. And also more projection by the US/Zionists. I see zero evidence of anything like this coming from other countries, and all kinds of evidence that the West does exactly this themselves. Because they quite often openly brag about it, albeit they call it something other than “sleeper cells” when they manage to rile up local opposition as needed in various countries. Those who would sell out their own countries to the US are called “freedom fighters”.

  12. Anthony Noel

    Well actually Trump’s not since The Joker in The Dark Knight is a meticulous planner. Movie starts with a perfectly executed clockwork plan to rob the mob bank. He concocts a impossibly complex plan that involves himself getting captured by the police along with his henchman, one of whom he sewn a bomb into, so that he can A) trick Batman into rescuing the wrong person and having the women he loves (which Joker figured out) die and B) blowing up the Chinese banker in police protective custody. This scene itself is part of another plan, where he gets Harvey to go on a killing spree to break the city’s spirit. As he himself puts it “you didn’t think I’d risk losing the battle for Gotham’s soul in a fist fight with you.” The whole “Do i really look like a guy with a plan?” is a joke. All he does is plan.

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