General Wesley Clark gave an interview to Democracy Now!, in which he claimed inside information of a neoconservative agenda dating back to September 2001 involving much of the Middle East, “starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and back to Iran.”
Given that the United States is overextended, it is hard to see how it can possibly pull this off. Even if the plan were just for Iran, Iran is a larger country with harder anti-U.S. sentiment than Iraq. Says Clark:
If you were Iran, you’d probably believe that you were mostly already at war with the United States anyway, since we’ve asserted that their government needs regime change, and we’ve asked Congress to appropriate $75 million to do it, and we are supporting terrorist groups, apparently, who are infiltrating and blowing up things inside Iraq — Iran. And if we’re not doing it, let’s put it this way: we’re probably cognizant of it and encouraging it. So it’s not surprising that we’re moving to a point of confrontation and crisis with Iran.
Clark also attributes to the Saudis a need to “find someone to fight the Shias.” That someone presently is the U.S. with its saber-rattling against Iran and Syria; if the U.S. were to pull out, Clark thinks the Saudis would turn to al qaeda-affiliated groups, “intensifying the threat against us of a super powerful Sunni extremist group, which was now legitimated by overt Saudi funding in an effort to hang onto a toehold inside Iraq and block Iranian expansionism.”