Two weeks ago, IAF jets performed a bit of sonic boom terrorism on Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, as he kicked back at his palace in the city of Latakia in northwestern Syria. "The IDF said the flyover, carried out by four planes flying in a low-altitude pattern, was a part of an overall IDF operation aimed at pressuring the Syrian leadership to expel Hamas Politburo chief Khaled Mashaal from Damascus," reported the neocon Jerusalem Post at the time.

Maybe, but it is more likely the Israelis wanted to send a message to al-Assad that they can get him, no matter where he is. Bashar al-Assad may be cringing in a bunker soon, in three days or two weeks.

Meanwhile, "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today an Israeli strike on Syria would be considered an attack on the whole Islamic world that would bring a 'fierce response’, state television reported," according to the Age. "If the Zionist regime commits another stupid move and attacks Syria, this will be considered like attacking the whole Islamic world and this regime will receive a very fierce response,'’ Ahmadinejad declared in a telephone call to al-Assad.

"We now in the Middle East have an axis of terror and hatred comprising Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah, which is trying to attack Israel and prevent peace in the area," Israel’s consul general in New York, Arye Mekel, told the Forward, a pro-Zionist newspaper, an absurd declaration considering Israel attacked Lebanon, not the other way around.

According to Mekel, in January 2006, "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [went] to Damascus, during which he met Syrian President Bashar Assad, as well as the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, and two other terrorist groups: Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command." From this "terror summit," we are expected to believe, the kidnapping of the IOF soldier Gilad Shalit was cooked up." Moreover, Mekel tells us, "Syria and Iran have a vested interest in keeping the Palestinian issue alive, and use the Hamas government as a beachhead."

As usual, the Israelis and their devotees in the corporate media expect us to believe the Palestinians are nothing if not Stepford terrorists, mindlessly obedient Pavlovian dogs ready to jump through hoops upon receiving commands from their evil Iranian and Syrian taskmasters. Never are we told the Palestinians are responding to more than fifty years of brutal and racist occupation. Never are we told that the Palestinian issue is at the heart of the crisis in the Middle East. It’s those damn Iranians and Syrians, who want a "beachhead" in Palestine because, of course, they are attempting to "prevent peace in the area" (i.e., Israeli hegemony and the mandatory subservience and acquiescence of the Arabs) and, it stands to reason, are itching to push all the Jews into the sea.

Israel is not interested in peace, and it has never seriously considered making peace with its neighbors, although this fact is never mentioned in the pro-Israel corporate media. "In his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches: 'From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates,’" Israel Shahak wrote in 1982, as Israel invaded Lebanon on a previous occasion. "Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared in his testimony to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 1947: 'The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.’"

As noted in the neocon "Clean Break" document, essentially the Rosetta Stone of the Likudite-neocon master plan, "Israel can shape its strategic environment … by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria… [because] Syria, and Iran, [are] principal agents of aggression in Lebanon… [and] Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil." Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser, principal architects of the A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm white paper (originally crafted for incoming Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu), proposed "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper." Of course, as there are no longer any "Syrian military targets in Lebanon," the obvious step is to blitzkrieg Syria directly.

In an earlier post, I made a comparison between Germany’s Operation Barbarossa and the current Israeli effort. According to the late Shahak, Israel’s "plan follows faithfully the geopolitical ideas current in Germany of 1890-1933, which were swallowed whole by Hitler and the Nazi movement, and determined their aims for East Europe. Those aims, especially the division of the existing states, were carried out in 1939-1941, and only an alliance on the global scale prevented their consolidation for a period of time."

Obviously, in regard to Israel’s current invasion, potentially more disastrous than any previous invasion of Lebanon, there will be no "alliance on the global scale," as most of the world (outside of the Arab and Persian Middle East) is intimidated by Israel, although a handful of European and United Nations politicos are now remonstrating weakly, in fact absurdly, over the organized slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese, a calculated act of serial murder and destruction of civilian infrastructure wholeheartedly supported by the Bushites, that is to say the neocons in control of the Bush government.

Ahmadinejad’s warning comes at a critical time in the invasion, as Israel is emboldened, realizing small resistance to its criminal provocation, beyond Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. It remains to be seen what Iran can accomplish, beyond further support for Hezbollah.

However, if Iran does manage to make the going tough for the Israelis, and the region explodes further, chances are high the United States will be sucked in, as eventually China and Russia will be, as both have considerable interests in the area. Russia, China, Israel, the United States, and Pakistan, another possible candidate for involvement (if Musharraf is deposed), all have nuclear weapons.

Welcome to World War Three—or as the neocons call it, World War Four.

Addendum

Just in case you doubted Israel is serious about dragging Iran into its Lebanese adventure, Fox News is reporting that it was not a Katyusha rocket that hit Haifa, but an Iranian missile with a longer range, courtesy of Iranian Revolutionary Guard units operating in southern Lebanon. See the Fox News report on this blog (video). Naturally, you can always count on Fox to spread baseless stories and do its part to kick off World War Four, otherwise known as Armageddon.