Rattlesnake Ridge      

 
      BFF

“Iran has never conducted — or apparently even attempted — an assassination or a bombing inside the US. And it is difficult to believe that they would rely on a non-Islamic criminal gang to carry out this most sensitive of all possible missions. In this instance, they allegedly relied on at least one amateur and a Mexican criminal drug gang that is known to be riddled with both Mexican and US intelligence agents……..”

My ‘educated impression’ is that most people in the ‘wider’ Arab world have strong doubts about all this. By that I mean people from Iraq through Lebanon to Egypt and North Africa. That is among those who care at all: most are too involved in their own struggle against their rulers. Most Saudis tend to believe the story because of the tensions between their country and Iran and also because their major media, like Iranian media, is government-controlled or owned by princes (Alarabiya, Asharq Alawsat, etc, etc). Most people in the Gulf GCC states, with the likely exception of Bahrain, also tend to believe this story. But that is the Gulf: most Sunnis believe anything that is publicized against Iran and most Shi’as suspect anything that is publicized against Iran.
As for myself: some aspects of the story just sound too silly, as if written by someone to raise public anger, especially the quote about “who cares if 100 or 150 innocent people die in the restaurant, f–k them!” I just can’t help thinking of the USS Maine and Havana harbor. (I had a very skeptical American history professor as an undergraduate. He was especially hard on the USS Maine incident and Mr. Hearst and his ‘special little Cuban friend’. He just ‘knew’ how the Spanish-American War started. Fortunately, most history professors in the United States tend to be skeptics as well, a very healthy thing).
(Clearly his ‘true’ history about Havana harbor made a strong impression on me. I won’t tell you what he called President Polk about the Mexican war).
Cheers
mhg


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