[News] Morsi delivers his calling card

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*Morsi delivers his calling card*
By Pepe Escobar

8/21/2012  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NH31Ak03.html

You'd better not mess with Muslim Brother Morsi.

Straight out of "communist" China - where he secured a red carpet 
welcome from President Hu Jintao and vice-president Xi Jinping - the 
Egyptian president lands in "evil" Iran as a true Arab world leader. [1]

Imagine conducting a poll in Tampa, Florida, among delegates at the 
Republican convention anointing the dodgy Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan duo as 
their presidential ticket. Chances are Morsi would be ranked worse than 
Hitler (oh no; that was Saddam. Or maybe Osama. Or maybe Ahmadinejad ... )

Tampa-Tehran. Talk about the ultimate snapshot of the current
geopolitical divide. On one side, the 1% crowd yelling for blood - be it 
from Barack Obama or from assorted Muslims. On the other side, the bulk 
of the real "international community", practically the whole global 
South (including observers such as China, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico) 
refusing to bend over to imperial military/financial diktats. 
Reaffirming its impeccable journalistic credentials, US corporate media 
dismisses it all as just "a Third World jamboree".

Anyway, the big news is that Egypt is back. In other news, the 
Washington-Tel Aviv axis is apoplectic.

Morsi may be walking like the proverbial Egyptian in popular 
imagination; sideways. In fact he's advancing all the time. By now it's 
clear that Egypt's new foreign policy if focused on restoring Cairo, 
historically the intellectual hub of the Arab world, to its leadership 
position - usurped by the oil-rich barbarians from the House of Saud 
during those decades when Egypt was a mere lowly servant of Washington's 
geopolitical designs.

Those were the (long gone) days - over three decades ago - when Tehran 
broke relations with Cairo over Egypt's signing of the Camp David 
accords. Morsi's attendance of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in 
Tehran may not yet signal the return of full diplomatic relations, as 
Morsi spokesman Yasser Ali has been spinning. But it's an 
earth-shattering diplomatic coup.

*Enter the new great game *
A quick recap is in order. Morsi's first crucial foreign trip was to 
Saudi Arabia, for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) 
meeting in Mecca. The House of Saud regards the Muslim Brotherhood with 
extreme suspicion, to say the least. Right after that Morsi got a 
personal visit from the Emir of Qatar, and a US$2 billion check with no 
strings attached; then he immediately sacked the old leadership of the 
Orwellian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

Meanwhile, Morsi had already launched Egypt's plan to solve the 
interminable Syrian tragedy; a contact group uniting Egypt, Iran, Turkey 
and Saudi Arabia. No Syrian solution will be achieved without these key 
foreign players - with Egypt being careful to position itself as the 
mediator between Iran and Turkey/Saudi interests (which amount to the 
same; in 2008 Turkey struck a strategic, political, economic and 
security accord with the GCC).

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.

Of course it will all depend on how the Egypt-Iran relationship 
develops, and whether Qatar - and even Iran - are able to help the 
Muslim Brotherhood to keep Egypt from not collapsing (there's no money 
for anything; a $36 billion annual deficit; nearly half the population 
is illiterate; and the country imports half of its food).

*Take me back to Camp David*
The immediate problem with Egypt's contact group for Syria is that 
Turkey - in yet another stance of its spectacularly counter-productive 
foreign policy - decided to boycott NAM. Yet Egypt is undeterred, 
proposing to add Iraq and Algeria to the contact group. [2]

And in steps Tehran with yet another diplomatic "sweeping" proposal, 
according to the Foreign Ministry; a NAM troika of Egypt, Iran and 
Venezuela, plus Syria's neighbors Iraq and Lebanon. So everybody wants 
to talk - apart, given the evidence, from Turkey. Tehran's proposal is 
fully supported by Russia.

And just as US corporate media coverage was reveling in the hate 
speeches at the millionaires' convention in Tampa, "isolated" Iran's 
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei meets with UN Secretary-General Ban 
Ki-moon in Tehran and calls for a nuclear-free Middle East. [3]

Not exactly the stance of a "new Hitler" who wants a nuclear bomb ... 
yesterday, as the warmongering Bibi-Barak duo in Israel ceaselessly 
spin. And certainly a very popular global South denunciation of 
Washington's cosmic hypocrisy of willfully ignoring Israel's nuclear 
arsenal while squeezing Iran for its nuclear program.

Needless to say, none of this has been reported by US corporate media.

Meanwhile, all global South eyes are on Morsi. They way things are 
moving, it's not far-fetched to imagine the Muslim Brotherhood playing 
the Camp David card sooner or later. In that case, expect Washington to 
go ballistic - and even time travel to 1970s Latin America, as in 
promoting (yet another) military coup.

The bottom line is, if the Muslim Brotherhood really articulates an 
independent foreign policy over the next few months, with even a hint 
that Camp David should be renegotiated (over 90% of Egyptians would 
support it), the warmongering Bibi-Barak duo had better get real.

/*Notes:*/
1. See here 
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-08/29/content_15716846.htm> for 
China Daily report.
2. See here 
<http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/egyptian-initiative-banking-syrian-fatigue>
3. See here 
<http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/08/29/258897/leader-calls-for-nuclearfree-mideast/> 


/*Pepe Escobar* is the author of/ Globalistan: How the Globalized World 
is Dissolving into Liquid War 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/simpleproduction/ref=nosim> 
(Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during 
the surge 
<http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-snapshot-Baghdad/dp/0978813898>. 
His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan 
<http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Globalistan-Pepe-Escobar/dp/1934840831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233698286&sr=8-1> 
(Nimble Books, 2009).

/He may be reached at/ pepeasia at yahoo.com
-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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