The ever intrepid Pepe Escobar penned another barn burner of a post at Asia Times…

Real cowards go to Tehran

…It’s like a pudgy armchair action man mesmerized by a nimble lap dancer. I’m gonna make you mine, honey. It’s regime change time, gotta snuff out the owner of this joint. Otherwise, people will start talking; what kind of chicken global hegemon is this? {snip}

Baby, sanction me one more time

Let’s review some of the latest evidence. Tehran has just sent two of its warships through the Suez Canal towards the Mediterranean; they docked at the Syrian port of Tartus – no less. Not so long ago, disgraced dictator and close House of Saud pal Hosni Mubarak would have probably bombed them… {snip}

Baby, I’m coming to get ya

…So it’s Ouroboros all over again – the serpent biting its own tail. We need to bomb to get regime change, so that oily dancer will dance on our wealthy lap.

The problem is neither the Obama administration nor key Pentagon generals are convinced this is a good deal.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin E Dempsey, thinks, “It would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us.”

And Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress last Thursday, “Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict.” No wonder; Dempsey himself admitted that the leadership in Tehran – contrary to relentless neo-con media spin – “is a rational actor”.

Does this all matter for the neo-cons and their legion of media shills? Not really. Until they find a sucker to fight a war for them – as in a Republican US president – real cowards will keep going to Tehran, all day and all of the night, in their wettest of wet dreams.

I swear Pepe is on fire these days…!

Philip Giraldi also wrote a must read…

AIPAC Declares War

…The American people don’t particularly want a new war in the Middle East, but apparently Congress and Washington’s most powerful lobby do. Thirty-two senators have co-sponsored a resolution that will constrain the White House from adopting any policy vis-à-vis Iran’s “nuclear weapons capability” that amounts to “containment.” The senators include the familiar figures of Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both of whom have persistently called for military action. They and the other senators have presented their proposal in a particularly deceptive fashion, asserting that they are actually supporting the White House position, which they are not. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta repeated on Feb. 16 that Iran does not have and is not currently building a nuclear device. Before Christmas, he stated clearly that the “red line” for the United States is actual Iranian possession of a nuclear weapon. Even Israel’s intelligence services agree that Iran is not building a bomb. What we are seeing play out in Congress is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) position, which is that Iran has already crossed a “red line.” The AIPAC argument will no doubt be spelled out in more detail next month at the group’s annual convention in the nation’s capital, a meeting that will be addressed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and will attract nearly all of Washington’s power brokers… {snip} [Ed:Obama to speak at AIPAC before Netanyahu meeting]

…You might well ask how the United States wound up in such a pickle. Many Americans are beginning to wake up to the fact that it is disgraceful that a small country like Israel should be able to dictate U.S. foreign policy in a key part of the world, but the current situation is actually far worse than that. This is the case of a foreign government’s lobby consisting largely of American citizens using its clout to avoid registering as a foreign agent while narrowing the policy options through its friends in Congress and the media in such a way as to make war inevitable. Some might call it treason. Such people should be denounced and marginalized before they send off another wave of young Americans to die on their behalf while beggaring the rest of us, but instead, senators and representatives will be lining up to cheer them in a month’s time. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison must be spinning in their graves.

Now, some more current news and views on Israel/Iran/Syria…

China warns of severe results for Middle East…

Russia: Israeli strike on Iran would be ‘catastrophic’

Deputy Russian FM warns Israel against striking Iranian nuclear sites, saying Israel must understand consequences of such an action.

FM Lieberman: U.S., Russian warnings against Iran strike will not affect Israel’s decision…

Peres to tell Obama: I oppose Israeli attack against Iran in the near future…

God Help Us All…!