Islamophobia: The West’s Crusade Against Muslims

Kourosh Ziabari writes in "Global Research",

Despite constituting a significant minority in western countries, Muslims around the world are subject to disproportionate, unjustifiable bias. Such attitudes distance them from their most fundamental social rights by portraying them as extremists and fanatics. The group is represented as able to endanger the interests of Europe and America.

As reported by the German Central Institute Islam Archive, there are 53 million Muslims living in Europe (excluding Turkey) who represent some 7.2% of the continent’s population. According to a Pew Research Center 2011 demographic study, globally Islam has 1.6 billion adherents, making up 23% of the world’s population.

Muslims coexist with other groups in peace and tranquility. Nobody can claim that Muslims have been dangerous or harmful to the security of the western countries, because there’s no evidence to confirm this claim.

The mass media of European countries regularly and recklessly insult Islamic religious symbols, especially the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The most prominent example of these insults was the publication of 12 blasphemous editorial cartoons by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September, 2005 which prompted international anger. Many understood that such actions result in continued antagonism and bitterness, serving only to add fuel to the fire of anti-Islamic sentiments.

The term Islamophobia, which is described as an irrational fear of Islam and Muslims and prejudice against and hatred of them, came into common use following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. In actuality, the term was spread by the US government which launched two military expeditions in the Middle East for the alleged purpose of combating what they termed “Islamic fundamentalism” and terrorism.

As a result of media propaganda, Muslims in some countries are demonized and ostracized, unable to attend or perform prayers in public, assume government positions, pursue their social rights on equal terms with other citizens or adhere to their preferred dress codes.

It was recently revealed that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has been engaged in widespread religious and ethnic profiling and the monitoring of Muslim communities and houses of worship in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. A coalition of social activists in the US is calling on the Senate, the Department of Justice and the US Marshals Service to take action in response to the illegal police monitoring of the Muslims in greater New York.

The revelations are contained in documents obtained by the Associated Press (AP) showing that undercover NYPD officers in a “Demographics Unit” targeted the Muslim communities with the assistance of individuals linked to the CIA. NYPD officials are denying the Demographics Unit ever existed, despite the publication of an NYPD presentation that described the mission and makeup of the unit.

Independent sources, including Islamophobia Watch have reported that the monitoring of mosques and the daily affairs of Muslims in the United States has intensified since the 9/11 attacks; the CIA has been carrying out underground intelligence operations to scrutinize the daily life of Muslims within the country.

According to Islamophobia Watch, the CIA has dispatched undercover officers to public places such as bookstores, shops and cafes to keep an eye on the daily affairs of Muslims. It has also used informants known as “mosque crawlers” to monitor sermons delivered by Muslim Imams and take action when necessary.

While in western detention, Muslims are treated inequitably and unfairly. Several reports have been published which detail how Muslim prisoners of the United States and Europe have been subject to torture, mistreatment and abuse. Babar Ahmad, a citizen of south west London, is one of several Muslim detainees who are being held in European and American jails without being charged in a court hearing.

Ahmad was arrested on August 5, 2004 on charges of providing materials to a website which supports Chechen and Taliban insurgents. Since then, he has spent seven years in prison without trial.

Since his detainment, Ahmad has been subjected to torture and humiliation by the UK police. Scotland Yard officers have beaten him, stomped on his bare feet with boots, sexually abused him, mocked his Islamic faith by placing him into a Muslim prayer position and taunting, “Where is your God now?!” and applied life-threatening neck holds to him.

Muslims in the West are deterred from wearing clothing expressive of their faith, another representation of Islamophobic and xenophobic sentiments. A law in Belgium can fine and imprison for up to seven days a woman wearing burqa or niqab, a fabric covering for the lower face. In France, since April anyone wearing niqab or burqa in public is subject to fines of 150 euros and “citizenship training.” Moreover, an Italian parliamentary committee has drafted a law which bans women from wearing items that cover their faces in public.

Overall, what is clear is that Muslims in the West are treated as second-rate citizens; their social rights and freedom seem to be confiscated. Western mainstream media regularly associates terrorism with Islam and attributes terrorist activities to Muslims. The European governments overtly express their disdain for Islam and the Muslims, allowing the enactment of laws which limit and restrain social liberties of Muslims.

Islamophobia is a modern crusade against Muslims by societies which boast of being liberal and democratic, but in practice are xenophobic and intolerant. How can a truer image of Islam and Muslims be demonstrated to the West?

A Theologian’s Response To “Innocence Of Muslims”

Karen Leslie Hernandez writes,

As we are all aware, the recent outbreak of violence in many Arab-Muslim countries because of the film Innocence of Muslims, is on many people’s minds and hearts around the world.

With the deaths and injuries of several Americans since last week, and Al Qaeda using this film as an impetus for violence against Americans worldwide, it seems this crisis is far from over.

I am here to simply ask when this madness will stop—when is it enough? When do we stop killing each other? When every American is dead? When every Muslim is dead?

I am not denying that this film is incredibly blasphemous, and portrays the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) in a less than favorable light. I am disgusted at the film maker’s message, which at the beginning of the film is sent with visionary images of Jesus situated in a humble, Christian home, as Muslims attack outside.

I am disgusted at the inaccurate use of scripture. I am disheartened at the incorrect, historical references to the Qur’an, to the downright wrong portrayal of historical events in Islamic exegesis. I am appalled that anyone would make such a film, with little regard about the group of people it is attacking.

As a Christian and as a Theologian, I condemn this film.

We have a lot of people here in the United States with this kind of agenda against Muslims.

Islamophobes who hold events such as Islamofacist Awareness Week, to books written by Americans entitled, Stop the Islamization of America, and much more. America is alive and well with fear and hate. However, what is important to note is that hate in America is not just directed at those who are Muslim.

Who faces hate, racism and intolerance here in the United States? Everyone! Who are the perpetrators of this intolerance? Everyone! This is to say that no one in America is capable of complete tolerance.

Complete tolerance of our fellow human beings is not something any human maintains, in any country, anywhere, because if we did have complete, even unconditional tolerance, we wouldn’t have war, poverty, and inequality worldwide.

Not Justified…

I must point out something to those who are enacting out their rage right now in Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan, and elsewhere. This film is atrocious, yes, but, in all sincerity, your actions are not justified.

For one, this film, if you have watched it, is so poorly made and acted, and the cinematography is that if a seven year old’s work. Two, this film is one of many that have depicted Islam and the Prophet in a negative light.

I understand how you must be insulted, but to hurt people, to pursue violence in the name of Islam, or to pursue violence in the name of any religion, is not condoned in any of our holy texts.

This brings me to my third point. In your religion of Islam, there are people who are considered Islamic extremists who have made other kinds of films which are just as derogatory and hurtful to people. Lest we not forget the film of Journalist, Danny Pearl, and his beheading, lest we also not forget the films made by other Islamic extremists such as Al Qaeda that illustrate hate and intolerance, and call for the death and destruction of Christians and Jews.

Extremism in All Religions

I also note here that there are religious extremists in every religion, whose agenda is to simply hurt people, in any way possible. No religion is immune from this type of ignorance and misunderstanding. This is important to recognize if we are ever going to coexist on this increasingly globalized planet of ours.

When I watched this film, I was also reminded that this type of rhetoric is not new. One can view films made by the Third Reich during World War II that illustrate the Jewish religion and those who practiced Judaism, as dirty and as rats. As well, during World War II, the United States put all Japanese Americans in internment camps—you can easily view photos online of how these American citizens were portrayed during that time in America.

It seems the film maker of Innocence of Muslims has not read his historical fact sheet on the Crusades, or the Rape of Nanking, or the Rwandan Genocide—all incidents of violence where women were mercilessly raped and millions were killed. It is a fact that in almost every war on our planet, religion and culture were the driving force.

My message here is simple. We must stop hating, because of hate. We must stop holding anger, because of anger. Have we not all had enough of this? Will inciting violence for violence solve these issues? Will making films such as Innocence of Muslims do any kind of good for our world? Will killing people because of an ignorantly made film, make anyone feel better?

What will, however, ease this sense of exclusivity, is a sense of viewing each other as humans first, with respect, wonder, and awe. Recognizing that we all are here on this planet, and we all must view each other through God’s lens and not our own lens, is imperative.

We must treat people as we want to be treated. The Golden Rule exists in almost every major faith in the world. 

In Judaism, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole of the Torah; all the rest of it is commentary.” Talmud, Shabbat, 31a.

In Christianity, “In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” Matthew 7:12.

As well as in Islam, “Not one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”  Prophet Muhammad said in a Hadit.  (An-Nawawi)

This is easy: love each other, as God loves us. All of us!

Again, as a Christian and as a Theologian, I condemn the film, Innocence of Muslims. However, I also condemn hatred, violence, intolerance, retaliation, and anything that harms any person.

As a fellow human being, I implore you to reach beyond your self-made boundaries and I hope, regardless of what religion you are, what the color of your skin is, and what country you are from, you join me, and condemn not only this film, but religious intolerance all together.

Karen Leslie Hernandez is a Theologian with a focus on Christian-Muslim Understanding, as well as religious fundamentalism and extremism. She writes, teaches and lectures on Islam, Christian-Muslim relations worldwide (past and present), Jesus in the Qur’an, Al Qaeda, Islamophobia, and theological responses to terrorism.  Karen has a Master of Sacred Theology in Religion and Conflict Transformation, Boston University School of Theology; a Master of Theological Research in Christian-Muslim Understanding, Andover Newton Theological School; and a BA in Peace and Justice Studies with a concentration in Islam, Wellesley College.  

Via: "The American Muslim"

Muslims Are Being Provoked

As A French Magazine Publishes Cartoons Of The Prophet Muhammad, We Ask If This Is Freedom Of Expression Or Provocation. 

A French satirical magazine called Charlie Hebdo has published cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad - a decision that could anger Muslims already furious about a recent anti-Islam video trailer.

The weekly magazine printed the images or caricatures on Wednesday. Muslims consider any representation of Prophet Muhammad offensive.

Stephane Charbonnier, the magazine's editor, says the decision was well within the law, and that that is what really matters.

"We're in a country of the rule of law. We respect French law. Our only limit is French law. It's that which we have to obey. We haven't infringed French law. We have the right to use our freedom as we understand it," he said.

Despite concerns over a possible backlash, Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French prime minister, has defended France's tradition of free speech.

"If people's convictions have really been offended that laws have been breached, we are in a lawful state, laws must be totally respected, then they can go to the court. That has already happened with this weekly. Then there is the issue of respect, whether the directors of this weekly decide to it or not," he said.

But some have criticised the decision to publish the cartoons.

Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, seemed to contradict Ayrault by saying the publication of the images is a provocation and that people should exercise responsibility.

"Is it pertinent and intelligent in this context ... to pour more oil on the fire? The answer is 'no'. But we don't want to say to these people 'we're infringing on your right to free expression'. So there's a balance that has to be struck," he said.

Last year, when Charlie Hebdo did something similar, its offices were firebombed.

This latest incident follows violent protests across the Muslim world over an anti-Islam video trailer made in the US.

On this episode, Inside Story asks: Are these cartoons meant to provoke Muslims? Is this freedom of expression or provocation?

Joining presenter Shakuntala Santhiran for the discussion are guests: Houmi Mikidache, a journalist and political analyst; Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, a columnist and political commentator; and Naveed Ahmad, an investigative journalist.

"We have to re-define the identity of people everywhere in the world because there is a crisis of identity .... We also have to re-define secularism. It's actually a huge problem because there are many aspects that are not explained."

Houmi Mikidache, a journalist and political analyst

The only Surprise IsTthere Aren't More Violent Protests In The Middle East

The Muslim Eruption Reflects A Deep Popular Anger and Blowback From US Intervention In Both Libya and Afghanistan

Seumas Milne writes,

The US-British invasion of Afghanistan was of course launched in response to the 9/11 attacks: the poison fruit of US-led support for the Afghan mujahideen war against the Soviet Union. Why do they hate us, many Americans asked at the time, oblivious to their country's role in decades of coups, tyranny, sanctions regimes and occupations across the Middle East.

In the aftermath of the killing of the US ambassador to Libya and assault on the consulate in Benghazi, as protests against a virulently Islamophobic US-made video spread across the Muslim world, Hillary Clinton echoed the same sentiments. "How could this happen in a country we helped liberate?" she asked, "in a city we helped save from destruction?"

She was referring to Nato's decisive role in winning power for the Libyan rebels who first took up arms in Benghazi last year. But just as the mujahideen the US backed in Afghanistan later turned their guns on their imperial sponsor in the form of the Taliban and al-Qaida, so many of the Islamists and jihadists who fought against Gaddafi with Nato air cover have their own ideas for the future of their country.

This is the start of the blowback from US and western attempts to commandeer the Arab uprisings. 

Something similar is likely to happen in Syria. The invasion of Afghanistan more than a decade ago not only didn't destroy al-Qaida, it spread it into Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and north Africa, and today the flags of its offshoots are flying across the Arab world.

In Libya, Nato's intervention sharply escalated the death toll, triggered large-scale ethnic cleansing, spread war to Mali, and left thousands in jail without trial and the country in the control of multiple armed militias. 

But their man, a former Gaddafi minister, has now been defeated for the job of prime minister by an independent Islamist, while the British ambassador's convoy, the Red Cross and UN have been attacked and Sufi shrines destroyed. Meanwhile, the Nato-backed authorities are threatening military action against jihadists in Benghazi, as American warships and drones patrol Libya's coast and skies.

The fact that the attack on the US consulate, along with often violent protests that have spread across 20 countries, was apparently triggered by an obscure online video trailer concocted by US-based Christian fundamentalists and émigré Copts – even one portraying the prophet Muhammad as a fraud and paedophile – seems bafflingly disproportionate to outsiders.

But in the wake of the Rushdie affair and Danish cartoons controversy, it should be clear that insults to Muhammad are widely seen by Muslims as an attack on their collective identity and, as the Berkeley-based anthropologist Saba Mahmoud argues, a particular form of religiosity that elevates him as an ideal exemplar.

But it would be absurd not to recognise that the scale of the response isn't just about a repulsive video, or even reverence for the prophet. As is obvious from the slogans and targets, what set these protests alight is the fact that the injury to Muslims is seen once again to come from an arrogant hyperpower that has invaded, subjugated and humiliated the Arab and Muslim world for decades.

Since launching the war on terror, the US and its allies have attacked and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq; bombed Libya; killed thousands in drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia; imposed devastating sanctions; backed Israel's occupation and dispossession of the Palestinians to the hilt; carried out large-scale torture, kidnapping and internment without trial; maintained multiple bases to protect client dictatorships throughout the region; and now threaten Iran with another act of illegal war.

The video is manifestly only the latest trigger for a deep popular anger in a region where opposition to imperial domination is now channelled mainly through the politics of Islam rather than nationalism. The idea that Arab and Muslim hostility to the US would have been assuaged because it intervened to commandeer Libya's uprising (an intervention most Arabs reject) is absurd.

About two-thirds of people in the Middle East and North Africa say they distrust the US, polling shows, rising to more than three-quarters in Pakistan. After 11 years of the war on terror, following decades of baleful intervention, the only surprise is that there aren't more violent anti-US and anti-western protests in the region.

Western war in the Muslim world has also fed a toxic tide of Islamophobia in Europe and the US. What is it about Muslims that makes them so easily offended, Europeans and Americans commonly demand to know – while Muslims point to cases such as the British 19-year-old who was convicted in Yorkshire last week of posting a "grossly offensive" Facebook message that British soldiers in Afghanistan "should die and go to hell", and ask why they're not afforded that protection.

The events of the last week are a reminder that an Arab world which has thrown off dictatorship will be more difficult for the western powers to hold in thrall. 

The Economist called the deadly assault on the US consulate in Libya an example of "Arab dysfunction" and urged the US not to retreat from the Middle East but go in deeper, including in Syria. As Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya have already shown, that would only bring disaster.

Via: "The Guardian"

Embassy Protests and Middle East Unrest In Context

Stephen Zunes writes,

It seems bizarre that right-wing pundits would be so desperate to use the recent anti-American protests in the Middle East—in most cases numbering only a few hundred people and (except for a peaceful Hezbollah-organized rally in Lebanon) in no cases numbering more than two or three thousand—as somehow indicative of why the United States should oppose greater democracy in the Middle East. 

Even more strangely, some media pundits are criticizing Arabs as being “ungrateful” for U.S. support of pro-democracy movements when, in reality, the United States initially opposed the popular movements that deposed Western-backed despots in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, and remains a preeminent backer of dictatorships in the region today.

For years, the Christian right ... sought to provoke extremism and hatred as part of an effort to seemingly validate the stereotypes.... 

As Hani Shukrallah remarked about the film in the leading Egyptian newspaperAl-Ahram, “The obvious, outward motive of such attempts is not difficult to discern: to show Muslims as irrational, violent, intolerant and barbaric, all of which are attributes profoundly inscribed into the racist anti-Muslim discourse in the West. And, it’s a very safe bet that there will be among us those who will readily oblige.”

last week’s tragedy in Libya should raise questions about the wisdom of backing such armed uprisings, even against a brutal dictator. In Egypt and Yemen, where dictatorships were overthrown largely through mass nonviolent action not supported by Washington, the worst damage protesters at the U.S. embassies could do was to seize parts of the grounds and burn the American flag. In Libya, where the dictator was overthrown in an armed revolution that wassupported by Washington, two consulate buildings were destroyed and four Americans were killed in a coordinated assault with automatic weapons, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades. Historically, autocratic regimes overthrown by armed struggle are far more likely to descend into violence and chaos (and/or a new dictatorship) than authoritarian regimes toppled through largely nonviolent methods.

In a country of barely 6 million people, more than 200,000 Libyans are armed members of militias outside the control of the Libyan government. Even though the recent Libyan elections appear to have been free and fair, and the winners largely consisted of moderates open to a democratic political system, the legacy of the war and the NATO intervention will likely remain a problem for some time to come.

In short, anti-democratic forces in both the United States and the Arab world want to discredit the pro-democracy struggles in the Middle East: on the one hand, Republicans and others who unconditionally support pro-Western dictatorships, U.S. interventionism, and the Israeli occupation; and, on the other extreme, radical Islamists who want to counter their increasing marginality. Fortunately, the reactions by these chauvinistic forces are more a relic of the past than they are a harbinger of the future.

In thinking about an appropriate U.S. response, it is important not to repeat the mistakes of U.S. policy in recent years. It is extremely unlikely that such vitriolic anti-American protests would have taken place were it not for decades of U.S. support, during both Republican and Democratic administrations, of allied dictatorships and the Israeli occupation, not to mention the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the ongoing military strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. Indeed, interviews with demonstrators in Yemen and elsewhere not surprisingly found grievances towards the United States that went far beyond the film itself.

It is also noteworthy that the apparent producer of the offending film was a Coptic Christian immigrant who presumably developed his extreme hatred toward Muslims as a reaction to the persecution of his fellow Copts in his native Egypt. Much of that persecution was a direct result of the U.S.-backed Mubarak regime’s attempts to deliberately foment hatred and division between Egyptian Muslims and Christians. Despite the regime’s discrimination and oppression against the Copts—including the infamous 2010 bombing of a Coptic Church in Alexandria by agents from Mubarak’s Interior Ministry, which killed dozens—both Republican and Democratic administrations provided the Mubarak dictatorship with tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military and financial backing.

It is particularly tragic, then, that the victims of last week’s upsurge in violence included Ambassador Christopher Stevens, one of the United States’ most knowledgeable and respected diplomats. The outpouring of grief and remorse from Libyans and others indicates that most Arabs, despite their understandable resentment of U.S. policy, recognize that there can still be good individuals representing the United States abroad.

The best thing that can be done in the memory of Stevens and other victims, then, is to redouble efforts to end U.S. support for Arab dictatorships and Israeli occupation forces. Indeed, the best defense against extremists are political systems that honor people’s demands for freedom and justice.

The Prophet Muhammad faced worse defamation in his lifetime but refused to curse his enemies, following the words of the Qur’an to “Repel evil with something that is better, lovelier.”

Via: "Foreign Policy In Focus"

A Rich Tradition Of Provocations

By Ivan Eland, 
February 15, 2012 
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

The apparent Israeli-U.S. covert operations to inhibit Iran’s missile and alleged nuclear weapons programs — using assassinations, computer worms, faulty parts, exploding factories, etc. — very likely has a secondary objective as well. When Iran haplessly and publicly vows revenge and retaliates — as it seemingly has with ham-handed attempts to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in the United States and car bombings of Israeli embassy personnel in the countries of India and Georgia — it allows Israel and the United States to further hype the limited Iranian threat to either country. By inflating the threat, both countries can better justify any future military strike on Iran.

Contrary to popular belief, the data show that democracies don’t go to war any less frequently than autocracies. But when they do, unlike authoritarian regimes, they need to win public support for the war effort by attempting to show that their opponent started the dustup.

In American history, there is a rich tradition of tricking enemies into starting conflicts. Before the Mexican War, President James Polk blockaded the Rio Grande (an act of war), sent troops into disputed territory on the Texas-Mexican border to which the Mexicans had a better claim, and falsely claimed that the Mexican response had killed American soldiers on U.S. soil. In reality, Mexico had refused to sell what is now the southwestern United States to Polk, so he decided to beat up on a weaker country and steal one-third of its land by armed force.

In 1861, Abraham Lincoln could have withdrawn federal forces from Fort Sumter, which had no military value, as all of his senior military advisers had advocated, and pursued a compromise with South Carolina and other seceding states. Because an earlier resupply ship and a wayward merchant ship had been fired on by Confederate batteries in Charleston Harbor, Lincoln knew exactly what would happen if he tried to resupply, instead of evacuate, the fort. In fact, to make sure the Confederates wouldn’t miss the chance to start a massive Civil War, he announced to them that a resupply mission containing only food was on the way, instead of trying to secretly slip the supplies through to the fort. Lincoln even admitted that he was trying to provoke the Confederates to start hostilities, by firing upon bread, in order to win over world and Northern public opinion.

Despite protests from the leading naval commander on the scene that the explosion on the U.S. warship Maine didn’t happen because of foul play (which recent research has supported), the U.S. government falsely blamed the Spanish, thus contributing to war hysteria in the United States. The Spanish-American War ensued.

In 1941, long before Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to provoke Adolf Hitler into declaring war on the United States by actively helping the British to sink German U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean. Hitler refused to take the bait until his ally, Japan, bombed Pearl Harbor. FDR knew it was likely that Japan would attack the United States somewhere. FDR had cut off Japanese oil supplies, motivating them to invade what is now Indonesia, which was oil-rich. But the U.S.-occupied Philippines would threaten their line of supply. So Japan attacked the Philippines and the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor simultaneously.

In 1964, the U.S. was secretly raiding the coast of North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese were then alleged to have launched, with patrol boats, two retaliatory attacks on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The second alleged attack was nonexistent. Nevertheless, President Lyndon Johnson ordered retaliatory airstrikes, got Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution providing an open-ended authorization for hostilities in Southeast Asia, and then escalated the Vietnam War.

In other chicanery, President Ronald Reagan invaded the island of Grenada to “rescue endangered medical students.” The students were hardly endangered; Reagan’s real intention was to remove a pro-communist government. During the first Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait, was massing troops to invade the crown jewel of the oil world, Saudi Arabia. This claim was used to justify sending U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia and eventually to attack Iraq. The problem was that Soviet spy satellites and the Saudis’ investigation of their border with Iraq and occupied Kuwait discovered no Iraqi troop buildup there. And we all remember the second Gulf War, in which President George W. Bush used the threat of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion and occupation of Saddam’s Iraq.

Thus, given America’s rich history of goading its foes into warfare, watch closely for continued Israeli and U.S. attempts to provoke Iranian countermeasures, which then could be used to help justify a future military attack.