Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog has a lengthy and (not surprisingly) well-informed analysis of the Franklin-Israel spy saga. He says Franklin was part of a "cell" that planned invasions of both Iraq and Iran.
"These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv"Cole's comments link various threads of the Franklin case, showing links with Silvio Berlusconi's government and the Niger nukes fiasco:
"The Niger forgeries also try to implicate Iran. Indeed, the idea of a joint Iraq/Iran nuclear plot was so far-fetched that it is what initially made the Intelligence and Research division of the US State Department suspicious of the forgeries, even before the discrepancies of dates and officials in Niger were noticed."He also explores the neo-cons link with the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization or MEK, one of those dirty, secretive relationships which lets so many terrorists operate around the world with US taxpayers funds (including, once, Osama Bin Laden):
"When the US recently categorized the MEK as a terrorist organization, there were howls of outrage from "scholars" associated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a wing of AIPAC)... MEK is a terrorist organization by any definition of the term, having blown up innocent people in the course of its struggle against the Khomeini government."He says the Iranians were" willing to give up 5 key al-Qaeda operatives, whom they had captured, in return for MEK members." Franklin's cell stopped that trade.
Cole's conclusion:
"Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a rightwing conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East, and of the Neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the US government on behalf of a foreign power or powers."
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