Eric Zuesse – Soros and Koch Co-Found New Think Tank to Restore Obama’s Iran Policy

Usually, America’s Republican billionaires are obsessed against Iran, and America’s Democratic billionaires are obsessed against Russia, but nonetheless on June 30th, the Boston Globe’s columnist Stephen Kinzer exaggerated when he headlined, “In an astonishing turn, George Soros and Charles Koch team up to end US ‘forever war’ policy” (http://archive.is/YKUql) and he reported that, “the leftist financier George Soros and the right-wing Koch brothers have little in common. They could be seen as polar opposites.” There actually is no such basic disagreement amongst America’s billionaires regarding foreign policies, as there is regarding domestic policies – on which topics they indeed are as far apart as liberals and conservatives are. Whereas Soros and the Kochs famously disagree on domestic policies, the situation is very different on foreign policies, where they all basically agree with one-another, because they all are neoconservatives. Some may want America to conquer Iran first and Russia second, while others may want to conquer Russia first and Iran second, but all U.S. billionaires are neoconservatives, simply because spreading the U.S. empire until their Government controls every country on earth is just as profitable a policy for America’s aristocrats today, as the spread of Britain’s empire was profitable policy for Britain’s aristocrats, and as the spread of Germany’s empire was profitable policy for Germany’s (but only non-Jewish) aristocrats during the Third Reich – and so on, throughout human history. The big-money people are always pro-imperialist, even if only moderately.

For example, the Koch brothers’ Cato Institute is a propaganda operation for Trump’s policy to grab Venezuela and Syria (https://www.cato.org/blog/five-misconceptions-about-crisis-venezuela); and for Obama’s policy to postpone grabbing back Iran (https://www.cato.org/tags/iran, i.e., to postpone restoring the CIA’s 1953-1979 conquest of Iran); and it blames the “Libya Fiasco” on NATO – basically on Europe (https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/how-nato-pushed-us-libya-fiasco). So, that’s Democratic, instead of Republican – moderate neoconservatism – which Cato is pumping, and that’s also George Soros’s propaganda-line (https://washingtonsblog.com/2015/06/confidential-document-soross-plan-for-ukraine.htm). It is neoconservatism (endorsement of U.S. imperialism), but it’s not consistently the extremist sort such as represented by people (the neocon purists) like Victoria Nuland, Robert Kagan, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Bill Krystol, Nikki Haley, Elliott Abrams, and Eliot Cohen – ones who demand conquest right away. In fact, sometimes Soros does (or his ‘charities’ do) veer into such far-right extremism, promotion of outright genocide (http://www.rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/george-soross-fakery/), which neither of the Kochs (nor any of their ‘charities’) has done; and, therefore, if anything, “the leftist” Soros is actually more of a neoconservative than “the right-wing” Kochs are (https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/russia-not-soviet-union). Soros definitely is more of a neocon regarding Russia than the Kochs are. Perhaps Soros is a heavy investor in firms such as Lockheed Martin, which thrive on wars, and especially thrive on any tensions against Russia, since anti-Russian tensions increase spending on strategic weapons, which are such firms’ bread and butter. But neither the Kochs nor Soros have ever been against American imperialism per se. Kinzer exaggerates their differences – as do most other political commentators.

What, then, is the purpose of this new ‘charity’ to propagandize for restoration of Obama’s policy toward Iran? Kinzer says, “Soros is an old-fashioned New Deal liberal. The Koch brothers are fire-breathing right-wingers who dream of cutting taxes and dismantling government. Now they have found something to agree on: the United States must end its ‘forever war’ and adopt an entirely new foreign policy.” However, FDR’s New Deal was much more drastic than anything Soros has advocated; Roosevelt was dealing with the greatest economic crash in history. There’s no comparison. Furthermore: whereas FDR was passionately opposed to all imperialism and was determined to end the British Empire as soon as the German and Japanese and Italian empires would be defeated in WW II, Soros is a champion of American empire very much in the British mold (http://theduran.com/vladimir-putin-basic-disagreement-with-the-west/). And, to the exact contrary of “the United States must end its ‘forever war’,” Soros is among the champions of intensifying America’s and Europe’s war against Russia. Not only was he one of the principals behind (http://www.rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/george-soross-fakery/) Obama’s February 2014 bloody coup in Ukraine that was hidden behind massive anti-corruption demonstrations (https://off-guardian.org/2017/03/24/what-americas-coup-in-ukraine-did/), but he personally propagandized for, first, an additional $20 billion to go toward Ukraine’s war against the separatist region on Russia’s border, and then a month later hiked that demand to an added $50 billion.

On 20 November 2014, he headlined in The New York Review of Books, “Wake Up, Europe” (https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/wake-up-europe/), and said: “the Russian attack on Ukraine is indirectly an attack on the European Union and its principles of governance.” At the website Live Mint, he headlined on 1 January 2015, “George Soros | Europe at war: Supporting the new Ukraine in 2015 and beyond is the most cost-effective investment the EU could make” (https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/vMhn5F3UZO8miWQ86TnXmK/George-Soros–Europe-at-war.html), and he urged: “Putin’s regime is based on rule by force, manifested in repression at home and aggression abroad. (…) Ukraine needs an immediate cash injection of, say, $20 billion, with a promise of more when needed, in order to stave off a financial collapse. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) could provide these funds, as it did previously, with the EU promising to match the IMF’s contribution.” A month later, on February 5th, at The New York Review of Books again, he headlined “A New Policy to Rescue Ukraine” (https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/02/05/new-policy-rescue-ukraine/), and he more than doubled the amount, to “a new financial package of $50 billion or more. Needless to say, the IMF would remain in charge of actual disbursements, so there would be no loss of control. But instead of scraping together the minimum, the official lenders would hold out the promise of the maximum. That would be a game-changer. Ukraine would embark on radical reforms and, instead of hovering on the edge of bankruptcy, it would turn into a land of promise that would attract private investment. Europe needs to wake up and recognize that it is under attack from Russia.” So, first, his President, Obama, overthrew Russia’s next-door neighbor, Ukraine, and installed there a rabidly anti-Russia regime (https://off-guardian.org/2017/03/24/what-americas-coup-in-ukraine-did/), and then Soros urged $50 billion more in debt to be created in order for Ukraine to grab back the rejectionist region (which had voted over 90% for the Ukrainian President whom Obama had overthrown). And, somehow, this would produce in Ukraine “radical reforms and, instead of hovering on the edge of bankruptcy, it would turn into a land of promise that would attract private investment.”

What, then, about Iran? Kinzer reports: “‘This is big,’ said Trita Parsi, former president of the National Iranian American Council and a co-founder of the new think tank.” So, who is Trita Parsi, and what is his National Iranian Council? Are they progressives, such as Kinzer implies? Here’s from Wikipedia, on both: Parsi(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trita_Parsi)’s relatives aren’t publicly known, but a plug for him (https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/parsi_trita12.html) says: “Founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, Parsi was born in Iran to a Zoroastrian family. His father, a politically active university professor, was jailed twice, first by the Shah and later by the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. At the age of four, Parsi fled with his family to Sweden where he grew up. He came to the U.S. as an adult, and received his Ph.D. from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.” In other words: he got his PhD from the staunchly neoconservative JH SAIS, after his Zoroastrian father, a professor in the U.S.-imposed Shah’s Iran jailed him once, and then the Shiite successor Government under Khomeini also jailed him once, and then the entire family fled to Sweden, and then Parsi came to the U.S. – the land which had overthrown Iran’s democracy and imposed the Shah. It’s unlikely that a person who fled his homeland and now lives and thrives in its imperialistic enemy country that’s trying to grab it back, would be favorable toward that country, and toward its continued independence from its former imperial master. This is especially so if Parsi’s success has come from aristocrats of the Shah’s regime, who were stooges of the U.S. – agents of the exploiting foreign aristocracy (mainly America’s oil aristocrats). On 14 April 2017, the neocon site The Daily Beast posted an 8,000-word article “The Shady Family Behind America’s Iran Lobby” (https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-shady-family-behind-americas-iran-lobby) by “a well-known Iranian dissident who requested that The Daily Beast keep his identity concealed,” and it alleged that the National Iranian American Council had been co-founded by Parsi with money from the family of “Mohammad Bagher Namazi, also known as Baquer Namazi,” who “is the patriarch of the family and formerly the governor under the Shah of the oil-rich Iranian province of Khuzestan.” If that is true, then it’s likely a very wealthy family, part of Iran’s aristocracy under the U.S.-imposed dictatorship by the Shah. And if that’s true, then the American billionaires Koch and Soros are now hiring the Namazi clan’s agent Parsi to lead their new institute, the Quincy Institute, in order to restore Barack Obama’s Iranian policy.

Furthermore, Obama was very hostile towards Iran; his policies simply were less hostile than Trump’s are. Obama and his Administration continued the Clinton and Bush lie that “Iran is the top state sponsor of terrorism” (https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/11/15/how-iran-came-called-top-state-sponsor-terrorism/). Furthermore, it was under Obama that the U.S. Government officially accused – and fined – Iran as having been the state-sponsor of the 9/11 attacks. That lie, and $10.5 billion fine (https://washingtonsblog.com/2016/03/u-s-government-blames-911-iran-fines-iran-10-5b-iran-refuses-pay.html, blaming Iran for 9/11), are neoconservative enough, for most Americans, but not neoconservative enough for America’s Republican billionaires, except now for Charles Koch, Soros’s partner in co-founding what is to be called the Quincy Institute, which will be trying to get Obama’s policy restored.

In an article on 18 February 2019 titled “How America’s Dictatorship Works” (https://off-guardian.org/2019/02/18/how-americas-dictatorship-works) I mentioned another aristocrat under the Shah who had become active in U.S. politics, but this one was the second-biggest donor to incoming Republican President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Committee:

Hushang Ansary of Stewart & Stevenson, at $2 million, (…) [who] had previously been the CEO of the National Iranian Oil Company until the CIA-appointed dictator, the brutal and widely hated Shah, was overthrown in 1979 and replaced (https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=1120120&privcapId=4256818) by Iran’s now theocratically overseen limited democracy. The U.S. aristocracy, whose CIA had overthrown Iran’s popular and democratically elected Prime Minister in 1953, installed the Shah to replace that elected head-of-state, and they then denationalized and privatized Iran’s oil company, so as to cut America’s aristocrats in on Iran’s oil. Basically, America’s aristocracy stole Iran in 1953, and Iranians grabbed their country back in 1979, and U.S.billionaires have been trying to get it back ever since. Ansary’s net worth is estimated at “over $2 billion,” and (https://washingtonsblog.com/2019/01/this-man-donated-2-million-to-trumps-inauguration.html), “By the 1970s, the CIA considered Ansary to be one of seventeen members of ‘the Shah’s Inner Circle’ and he was one of the Shah’s top two choices to succeed Amir Abbas Hoveyda as Prime Minister.” But, that just happened to be the time when the Shah became replaced in an authentic revolution against America’s dictatorship. Iran’s revolution produced the country’s current partially democratic Government. So, this would-be U.S. stooge Ansary fled to America, which had been Iran’s master during 1953-79, and he was welcomed with open arms by Amerca’s and allied aristocracies.

Perhaps Joseph Biden or Kamala Harris or whomever wins the Democratic nomination will be able to get some money from the Kochs, and not only from Soros and other Democratic Party billionaires, but President Trump will likely have on his side plenty of billionaires who simply want the U.S. to conquer Iran (https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/05/29/shifting-blame-how-us-made-iran-responsible-for-9-11/). All of America’s billionaires want to conquer both Iran and Russia, but they disagree with one-another about the order in which it should be done.

The debate between Obama’s and Trump’s policies on Iran is basically a dispute between America’s billionaires. America’s electorate are just observers. The actual decisions will be made by only the big-money people, because they are the gate-keepers to power, certainly in America (http://www.rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/america-is-one-dollar-one-vote-not-really-one-person-one-vote/), even if not necessarily in some other countries.

Originally posted at strategic-culture.org (https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/07/08/soros-koch-co-found-new-think-tank-restore-obamas-iran-policy/).

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 (https://www.amazon.com/Theyre-Not-Even-Close-Democratic/dp/1880026090/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1339027537&sr=8-9), and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q1H4EG).

Meer informatie:
https://robscholtemuseum.nl/?s=Eric+Zuesse
https://robscholtemuseum.nl/?s=George+Soros
https://robscholtemuseum.nl/?s=Charles+Koch