Noam Chomsky: The Next War in the Middle East Will Be the Worst One Yet
By Fariba Pajooh, Lobelog
24 March 18
Noam Chomsky is a linguist and an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy.
This interview took place on February 28 in his office at the University of
Arizona's Department of Linguistics in Tucson, Arizona.
Fariba Pajooh: Your views on US foreign policy are well known. Even when
President Obama was in office, you criticized components of his foreign
policy. In terms of the current Trump administration, I'd like to know your
thoughts on his foreign policy, especially concerning the Middle East.
Noam Chomsky: He's lined up closely with Saudi Arabia and with Israel, which
is basically an alliance, and he is bitterly opposed to Iran. [U.S.
Ambassador] Nicky Haley spoke at the UN about Iranian violations of the
accords. However, the US is violating them all the time. Nobody talks about
this. The accord is explicit in terms of the requirement that the
signatories do nothing with Iran's commercial relations with the outside.
The US is doing that constantly. Even under the Obama administration, there
were radical violations of the agreements. Trump is trying everything that
he can to destroy the accords. You probably saw this morning the Europeans
trying to offer some conciliatory measures to keep Trump from pulling out
entirely. This will probably fail.
I don't think there is a coherent foreign policy. He's been very critical of
Pakistan. Pakistan is reacting by stepping up bombings by the Taliban in
Afghanistan. There is a significant likelihood that real hostilities will
break up between Israel and Hezbollah, which will probably mean the invasion
of Lebanon by Israel. Israel will bombard Lebanon, which will mean the
destruction of Lebanon. Israel is committed to their Dahiya doctrine, as
they call it, which means they will go to war against any provocation. And
it could just blow up the Iranian installations which are not too far from
the Israeli border. Israel won't allow anything near its borders. So, I
think that is a very volatile and dangerous situation.
Some observers, such as the knowledgeable analyst Nicholas Noe, are
predicting, with a degree of certainty, that a serious war could happen.
That is an ugly situation. And, of course in Yemen the U.S. and Israel with
British backing are just destroying the country. They are blaming Iran, but
it's basically U.S. and Saudi bombings. So that situation is extremely
dangerous and vulnerable. On the other side, Turkey is attacking Syria in
order to keep any Kurdish groups as far as they can from their borders.
You may have seen this morning that [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan
told a six-year-old girl she would be honored if she was "martyred." I can't
imagine what is going on in their minds. They are very unpredictable and
dangerous people. Similarly, in Israel, [Israel Prime Minister Benjamin]
Netanyahu is in serious trouble and it's possible that he will try to
salvage his situation by undertaking some violent act. All very dangerous!
Lebanon will likely be a major victim.
Pajooh: Do you predict that we will have another violent war in the
Middle-East?
Chomsky: If there is another war, it will be even worse than the last one.
The reason is that Hezbollah by now, according to reports at least, has a
very significant missile capacity which Israel won't be able to stop. If
they start hitting Israeli targets, Israel will just go "all out" without
any restraint. They might go as far as bombing Iran.
Pajooh: I want to talk about the future of the Iran deal. President Trump
has threatened to kill the Iran deal. He has imposed a travel ban,
restrictions that affected me personally, and now they are pushing Europe to
reconsider their relationship with Iran. How likely it is for Trump to
undertake military action in the region of Iran? What do you think is the
end game for the Iran deal?
Chomsky: The Europeans are trying almost desperately to save something. I
doubt very much that Iran will accept the new proposals that they announced.
It seems very unlikely. I am sure that the European negotiators know that
Iran can't reject them. If the U.S. also reject them, which is very
possible, one conceivable outcome is that the U.S. would just withdraw, and
the rest of the P5+1 will maintain some kind of relationship with Iran. They
don't want to break their relationship with the U.S. either. So, they are in
a very difficult situation. They don't want to abandon Iran and on the other
hand, they are very frightened about the U.S. for good reason. Russia and
China will maintain a relationship with Iran, but they can't compensate for
Western relations. And Iran, of course, has plenty of internal problems. Not
just social and political, but also ecological and climatic concerns.
Pajooh: President Trump tasked Brad Pascale to run his political campaign
for 2020. Do you think he has a chance to be re-elected in 2020?
Chomsky: I think has a very good chance. His popular base is fanatic. They
are just dedicated to him. He could be God, as far as they are concerned.
They are immobile no matter what happens. A lot of them are evangelical
Christians. The secular state doesn't mean anything to them. They are
working for Jesus, and Jesus says support Trump. That's probably 25% of the
American population. The very rich support Trump. The Trump administration
operates on two planes. On one plane, Trump's role is to attract media
attention to make sure he is in the headlines every day. He is the first
thing to see on the television every day. That's why he is doing one crazy
thing after another. It's not what it looks like. The media criticizes
Trump, which fires up his base, because they regard themselves as under
attack by the liberal media. So, he plays that game.
Underneath, the real villains Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are busy
dismantling every aspect of the government that might be of benefit to the
general population. They are serving their real constituency, the rich and
the corporate sector, with abject dedication to sheer robbery. The tax bill
was a massive gift to the super rich, with a few pennies to the others just
to keep them quiet. Ryan and McConnell want to have a huge deficit so that
gives the pretext to dismantling social security, Medicaid, Medicare, and
food stamps-anything that benefits the general population. In the meantime,
keep the base fired up with white nationalism, racism, religious extremism,
and so on. It is a very dangerous situation.
Also, as you probably saw around the country, it is a very violent country.
There are heavily armed militias all over the place. They are better armed
than the state police. Angry people ready to go to war. If Trump hadn't won
the election, we might have had a civil war.
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner