Russiagate Regrets: Why Washington Remains Focused on the Wrong Foreign Influence
Lyle J. Goldstein
Security, Americas
Washington, Moscow and the world will be harvesting the foul fruits of the Russiagate debacle for decades.
The coincidence of impeachment proceedings and the assassination of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani have more than a few people talking about dark conspiracies. Most obvious of such hypothetical subversive plots would be an attempt by the current administration to distract from the Senate trial by ramping up tensions with Tehran. While that “wag the dog” scenario, unfortunately, cannot be dismissed, it seems rather more likely that President Trump was trying to fend off the plethora of Iran-hawks in his Administration for months, but finally relented and allowed them to “reestablish deterrence” against Iran. The ridiculousness of very nearly provoking a war to prevent a war does not seem to have occurred to the authors of this highly dubious venture.
Yet, as America turns a page on yet another unseemly episode in the Middle East (with many more bloody pages now almost certain to follow), one may also consider additional shadows of Russiagate on the current Iran Crisis. Beyond the distraction hypothesis, there is also the likelihood that the attack on Soleimani was undertaken in an attempt to patch up the rather ghastly and unprecedented quarrel between the White House and the CIA. What better way make nice with the spooks at Langley than to place dark arts and particularly “wet work” (i.e. assassination) at the very center of U.S. foreign policy?
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