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December 21^st passed without hardly anyone thinking of the tragic event of an American airliner falling out of the sky in the early evening in a sleepy Scottish town in 1988. And yet the event, which could arguably be called the greatest western intelligence cover-up ever is linked to a number of other key news items in recent weeks leading some to ask is history repeating itself, when we examine the West’s relationship with Iran. The overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria, Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, the death of Jimmy Carter are all linked to Lockerbie.

As the BBC, Sky Atlantic and others continue the trend however of making dramas about Lockerbie, part of the whitewashing which has succeeded in making it such a seismic cover-up of the truth is to trivialize it. British media is complicit in the truth never really being examined and so now a drama about the event, seen through the eyes of one of its victims – Dr Jim Swire – is soon to be broadcast which might at least touch on some of the unpalatable truths about the downing of flight Pan Am 103 which killed Dr Swire’s daughter. Although, a quick glance at its reviews suggests that the British press is doing all it can to serve its U.S. masters in that it has trashed the production – which has Colin Firth playing Dr Swire – and so the drama may result in doing just the opposite. Is it possible that this production was made with the intention to make a caricature out of Dr Swire and therefore debunk his claims that Iran commissioned the Lockerbie attack and a Palestinian group carried it out – due to the bungling of DEA and CIA officers who were using the flight to allow Iranian groups in Lebanon ship heroin to the U.S. in exchange for keeping U.S. hostages alive?

Jimmy Carter’s death made a number of us think about what was the former U.S. president’s legacy. From the point of view of other, subsequent U.S. presidents, Carter’s mishandling of the Iranian hostage crisis set a precedent. Mess with Iran and you can bet you’ll end up a one-term president. This was Reagan’s greatest fear when he took office in 1980. Barely days after entering the Oval Office he ordered the bombing of Syria to send a message to the Soviets that he wouldn’t tolerate Hafaz Assad’s meddling in Lebanon which both supported what is today Hezbollah but back then threatened America’s and Israel’s hegemony in a country which they both thought they could simply buy like a shirt at Walmart. But Reagan did something else. Long before sold American-made assault rifles to the new Islamic regime in 1985, he was already allowing ‘controlled flights’ from Lebanon to the U.S. – civilian flights which had drug shipments on board which were protected from scrutiny with the sole purpose of allowing their entry into the U.S. market so that groups in Lebanon – who held U.S. hostages – could acquire funding for their operations. By doing this, Reagan effectively provided the seed capital for Hezbollah today. Back then he was panicking about the hostages and thought this was a way of keeping working relations with the Lebanese group ticking over, allowing discussions to continue. The Lockerbie attack was a direct consequence of both this erroneous decision and perhaps, more ominously, America’s gung-ho, reckless cavalier approach in the region. In 1988, after suffering the humiliation of U.S. marines pulling out of Lebanon, a captain of a U.S. ship in the Persian Gulf took the decision to shoot down an Iranian airliner killing all civilians and crew on board.

Such an act of rank irresponsibility had to be dealt with by Iran and so they set out to teach the Reagan administration a lesson with Lockerbie, when their intelligence had already alerted them to the gift of the controlled flights. How hard would it be to smuggle a bomb on such a flight? Hardly a stroke of genius but what perhaps was, was the knowledge that Iran’s ultimate ace – to commission such an act of terrorism with plausible deniability – would be actually supported by the West. Reagan blamed Libyan “mad dog” leader Ghadaffi knowing full well that it was Iran who carried Lockerbie out. He blamed Libya as its country and its leader would prove to be such a formidable scapegoat for all of Reagan’s foreign policy gaffes, when in reality, both Reagan and George Bush senior both feared Iran and Syria and were so scared of their wrath that they carried out the cover-up for many years to follow. Lockerbie was a revenge attack, a reminder to the West what horrors Iran can have in store for an inattentive, belligerent western pact that choses to underestimate its ability to strike back.

Has the fall of Syria meant that the axis of resistance is now over? In Giorgio Cafiero’s superb analysis, he asks a number of top middle east analysts the same question. Their replies might shock the cabal of experts who are now circling Trump, emboldened with a certain zeal to advance Israel’s regional ambitions.