Asia Times Online :: Morsi delivers his calling card
►http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NH31Ak03.html
By Pepe Escobar / Aug 31, 2012
(...) With just one stroke, Morsi cut off the head of a fake snake being sold to Washington for years by the Jordanian King Playstation and the House of Saud; that of an “evil” Shi’ite crescent from Iran to Lebanon via Iraq and Syria undermining the “stability” of the Middle East.
What Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and Jordan’s younger Abdullah II in fact fear is the unrest and rage of their own populations, not to mention the mere idea of democracy; it’s easy to blame rampant Shi’ism for everything because Washington is gullible - or expedient - enough to buy it.
The “Shi’ite crescent” myth can be debunked in a number of ways. Here’s just one - that I have witnessed in person, on the spot, for quite a while during the mid-2000s. Tehran knows that the majority of Iraq’s powerful clergy are totally adverse to the Khomeinist concept of the Islamic Republic. No wonder Tehran is very much worried about the renaissance of Najaf in Iraq as the premier holy city in Shi’ite Islam, to the detriment of Qom in Iran.
Washington buys this propaganda because it’s right at the heart of the New Great Game. Whatever the administration in place, from Bush to Obama and beyond, a key Washington obsession is to neutralize what is seen as a Shi’ite axis from Lebanon, via Syria and Iraq, across Iran and all the way to Afghanistan.
A mere look at the map tells us this axis is at center of the humongous US military deployment in Asia - facing China and Russia. Obviously the best intel in Beijing and Moscow has identified it for years.
The Russians and the Chinese see how the Pentagon “manages” - indirectly - a great deal of the region’s oil reserves, including the Shi’ite northeast of Saudi Arabia. And they see how Iran - as the gravity center of the whole region - cannot but be Washington’s ultimate obsession. The nuclear row is just a pretext - the only one in the market, actually. Ultimately, it’s not a matter of destroying Iran, but of subjugating it to the condition of a docile ally.
Into this hardcore power play steps in Brother Morsi, reshuffling a deck of cards as lightning quick as a Sheldon Adelson-employed Macau croupier. What might have taken months and perhaps years - the sidelining of the old SCAF leadership, Qatar being privileged to the detriment of Saudi Arabia, a presidential visit to Tehran, Egypt stepping up as a leader of the Arab world - was accomplished in barely two months. (...)
Pour Morsi le changement c’est maintenant.