Trump-Pence-Pompeo Nexus
While the assassination of Soleimani created shock waves around the world, the American president immediately claimed that this targeted attack was an execution of his order. At the same time, Vice-President Mike Pence stated, “Americans are safer after Soleimani’s death”; Secretary of the state Mike Pompeo mentioned that Trump can take decisive action to control Iran. When most of the congressmen and senators were criticizing this awful incident, Trump and his colleagues Pence & Pompeo were justifying this act. So,What motivated Trump administration to take this vicious action?
How Trump-Pence-Pompeo’s nexus and Soleimani assassination are aligned and how religious authoritarian states are aligned ?
Pompeo’s Islamophobic Ideology
Soleimani’s death was not planned overnight. He had been in the target list of Washington DC since Trump captured the white house in 2016. After Trump won the 2016 presidential election, he appointed Mike Pence as Vice-President of USA which is second most powerful position after President. Then, Trump’s loyalist Mike Pompeo was appointed as a Director of CIA in January 2017 and a year later, he was promoted as the secretary of the state, which is the most powerful position considering its influence in America’s security and foreign policies. Mike Pompeo has been known for his Islamophobic views & Anti-Iran stands as early as his term as a congressman from Kansas state during 2011-2017. During this period, he was appointed as a member to the “Bengasi committee” which investigated the attack on US embassy located in the Bengasi city of Libya. Bengasi committee’s report suspected that Iran could be a mastermind behind attack on embassy. An Anti-Islamic remark by Pompeo after 2013 Boston bomb blast was also heavily criticized by many lawmakers and fellow citizens.
Evangelical’s Influence in The White House
The Evangelical Christian advocacy and lobbyist group CUFI (Christians United for Israel), based in the United States having 50 million members, is believed to be the most influential lobbying group in the White House. This CUFI organization was founded by Pastor John Hagee in 2006 at Texas. The objective of this organization is to influence the USA administration to work in favor of Israel and expand the Jews territory in the middle east by oppressing the Muslims in Libya, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon. Many of the US senators and congressmen are working closely with this Pro-Israeli group.
CUFI’s Engagement in 2008 Presidential Election
The CUFI organization started influencing the American presidential election since 2008. In 2008, CUFI’s supremo John Hagee endorsed republican candidate John McCain for presidential candidate, as McCain was believed to be a religious and his opposition for the nuclear deal proposed by Obama, during the campaign. John McCain first accepted and then rejected Hagee’s endorsement. His refusal was damaging to the political neophyte and a brave stance by McCain against fringe elements within the GOP’s evangelical base.
The CUFI’s annual summit held on July 2008 in Washington DC was attended by three congressmen. One of them is current Vice-President Mike Pence. Before, he was a house of representative from Indiana state. Pence has a good relationship with CUFI and pastor John Hagee and he is more influenced by evangelical Christian ideology. CUFI had sponsored all the expense of Pence Christmas visit to Jerusalem with his wife in 2014.
However, the presidential election results favored democrat Barack Obama. Few years after, Obama administration had signed US-Iran nuke deal and revoking the nuclear sanctions on Iran. Israel believed this deal would be dangerous to them as this deal would lead Iran to be nuclear super power in middle east which could destroy Israel’s dream of expanding its territory in middle east. Since then, Israel started working effectively with CUFI thru the pastor Hagee to regain their influence in Washington DC.
CUFI’s Pro-Israel Plan of Action & Progress
Israel administration started executing its action items thru the pastor John Hagee more viciously than before. Below are the open agenda of Israel with the context of Evangelical policy:
Bringing an evangelical and pro-Israel candidate to the Head of The United States
Appointing Anti-Iran bureaucrats for the powerful positions in Washington DC administration.
Lobbying to scrap the US-Iran nuke deal
Making, evangelical Christians holy place Jerusalem, as a capital of Israel and expanding the Jews territory in middle east
All the above dreams of CUFI had come true after 2016 presidential election. CUFI had gone to the tremendous growth in 2016. It merely had few thousand members when it was started in 2006. In ten years, this right wing pro-Israeli organization had attracted 20 million members across United states. It had spread evangelical ideology to most Americans and influenced them to elect white supremacist Donald Trump to the head of the state. CUFI used social and other media, especially Facebook, as a key to promote their ideology in 2016 presidential election, whose impact was reflected in the results. (Facebook also helped to promote Trump’s justification on killing Soleimani by spreading 800 unique advertisements in the FB timeline). Followed by Trump’s victory, his loyalists Mike Pence was appointed as Vice-President and Mike Pompeo as CIA director and subsequently as the Secretory of the state.
Few months after Trump took control of White House, CUFI’s annual conference took place in the month of July 2017. Vice President Pence participated in that event and delivered an open statement: “I support Israel because I’m a Christian”. The Secretary of the State Pompeo visited Israel in April 2018 and met Prime minister Netanyahu and discussed about to terminating the US-Iran nuke deal. Soon after this meeting, President Trump withdrew from the US-Iran nuclear deal on 18th May 2018. Trump justified his action by mentioning Iran’s violations of the term and conditions in the deal. However, International Arms Control Association refused Trump’s claim and stated that Iran has adhered to all the terms of the deal. Based on the above circumstantial evidences, it can be proven that Targeting Iran was not an overnight show, rather it was planned very well right from the 2016 presidential campaign by CUFI.
CUFI’s moved forward to its next agenda i.e. destabilizing Iran economically and politically. As per this Plan, Trump administration was targeting the Iran’s economy by imposing the sanctions on importing Iran’s oil and pressing American allies to follow this stand. The White House anticipated a regime change considering Iran’s economy. However, this plan did not turn out as expected. Never in the history of Iran, the economy skewed to 6% and un-employment reduced to 3.4%. Israel was very nervous after the growth of Iran by the leadership of its president Hassan Rouhani and quad Leader Qassim Soleimani. Development of Iran wouldn’t be a welcoming scenario for Israel, as it would lead to further strengthening of its rivals such as Palestine, Syria, Libya & Lebanon. So, no wonder why Soleimani’s life came to an end by aerial attack from US drone.
Meanwhile Israel & CUFI never failed to accomplish their other agendas i.e. expanding its territory in middle east. Israel successfully managed to get America’s recognition on making Jerusalem as a capitol of Israel and moving US embassy to the new capital in April 2018. CUFI’s leader John Hagee had participated in the opening ceremony and conducted the prayer mass in the new embassy. Israel also reached to its another milestone of grabbing Syria’s Golan height and was able to get recognition of the United States. Now, their next agenda would be obtaining the legitimacy over Westbank of Palestine. Hamas and Hezbollah of Palestine and Lebanon have been consistently fighting against Israel’s invasion in middle east and Soleimani’s quad team has helped these organizations regardless of their Shiya-Sunni internal conflicts. Based on the above facts, anybody can understand who instigates US-Iran unrest and how USA has been used as a handmaid of Israel.
India’s Hindutva Ideologist Interference in Middle East Policy
Traditionally, India had been maintaining good rapport with Palestine and Iran. However, since 2014 India’s Hindu nationalist political party took over Delhi, there has been a drastic change in foreign policies over middle east. For an example, ever in the post-independence history, India voted for Israel on the resolution against Palestine based human rights organization “Shahed” in May 2019 at UNHRC. None of the Asian countries voted for Israel on this resolution.
After the victory of Narendra Modi, there were lot of efforts to refresh the relationship with Israel One of them is, Germany based “Indian for Israel” group. This pro-Israel lobbyist group established by businessmen, columnist and Hindu ideologist “Vijeta Uniyal” consistently work towards India-Israel benefits. For an Instance, When Israel-Palestine issue were going high in UNHRC session in 2015, Some Hindu fringe groups like RSS, VHP, ABVP & BJP party people were trending hashtag #IndiaWithIsrael in twitter. Based on this Pro India-Israel subject, an article was written by Uniyal and heavily circulated in some of the mainstream media of Israel. The context of the article is to show Israelis and the world that Majority of Indians are Hindus and all of them are supportive to BJP Govt’s Pro-Israel stance.
In 26th August 2019, another event was organized to strengthen the Hindu-Zionism relationship. In this event, ruling Hindu BJP party’s leader Subramanya Swamy and Tel Aviv university professor participated and gave a join statement that Islamism, communism and socialism are the biggest threat to the Hindu-Zionism ideology. Hindu and Zionism unity are nothing new, the notion of strengthening Indo-Israel was influenced from Hindu ideologist’s root organization RSS from 1930’s. Hinduism and Zionism are aligned on Islamophobia viewpoint. One of the Hindu Extremist group founding father “Savarkar” mentioned that “If the Zionists’ dreams are ever realized – if Palestine becomes a Jewish state – it will gladden Hindus almost as much as our Jewish friends.” Also, he stood against then Indian Prime Minster Nehru for supporting Palestine in 1950’s UNGA. Another important note is ruling BJP party planning to move its embassy to Jerusalem.
Not only with Zionist, but Hindutva group also aligns with Srilanka based Buddhist extremist group “Bodhu Bala Sena” (BSS) who were a major reason for the slaughtering of 150,000 ethnic Tamils in northeastern part of Srilanka (“Eezham”). RSS also joined with Sri lanka’s BSS group to establish its “Shakas” (Training Centers) to wipe out ethnic Tamils and Tamil-Muslims.
Revoking Article 370 from Kashmir and curbing the oil import from Iran has already created a little rift on Iran-India relationship. Even though India building a Chabahar port, Iran should not take this Indian project easily. Iran is on the embargo list of USA and trade tie-up with Iran are subject to be banned as per the US sanction guidelines. however, Washington DC gave waiver to India for this port development alone. It also assured 89 million USD financial assistance for this project. Americans never give anything for free of cost, every deal with them has their own economical and geo-political interest. In this context Chabahar port would be used as a counter for China’s Gwadar port development in Pakistan shore which is located less than 100 nautical miles from Chabahar port. In future, there are chances for USA to use this as naval base indirectly thru India.
Future of Middle East
On One hand, China building its infrastructure in Indian Ocean, Africa and European region thru its “One Belt and One Road” Initiative and it connects south Asian, European and Middle East countries by road and maritime routes. On Another hand, Iran is developing its economy and modern missile technology.
This geo-political dynamic would create panic situation for Israel, therefore to create uncertain situation in Iran, Israel may insist strong economic sanctions, internal conflicts & regime change or war with Iran thru its proxy America.
What Tamils Should Do?
Ruling Hindutva BJP government is trying project its 1 billion people as Hindus, and it is trying to show the world that all Indians are in support of Hindutva ideology and their sole representative is Modi. Millions of dollars are being spent on social media and its proxy media networks to spread this propaganda. India has many ethnic groups each of them have their unique identity, culture, customs, language, history and heritage. The fascist Hindutva govt. forcibly consolidating all the indigenous ethnic groups by pushing Hindu identity on them for their long-term bhraminical Hindutva benefits.
One side, India’s Hindutva Govt. aligning with Evangelical and Zionist group against Muslims and other side, they are joining hands with Sinhala Buddhist groups to oppress ethnic Tamils and Muslims in Srilanka. Tamils should not be stuck into this crossfire between all right-wing elements and Islamic forces. Trapping of Tamils into the image of Hindutva built by Indian bhramical regime would be a setback to their sovereignty and freedom.
Reference
1. https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/mike-pence-mike-pompeo-address-christian-pro-israel-summit
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/killing-of-soleimani-follows-long-push-from-pompeo-for-aggressive-action-against-iran-but-airstrike-brings-serious-risks/2020/01/05/092a8e00-2f7d-11ea-be79-83e793dbcaef_story.html
3. https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-and-netanyahu-discuss-critical-issues-after-iran-missile-strikes/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
4. https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/13/politics/hagee-jeffress-us-embassy-jerusalem/index.html
