“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The evening seemed to be quite warm and humid. It wasn’t quite dark yet. “Just for kicks,” I told Jane, “I almost asked Seth to say something about Israel and Iraq, but I didn’t....” We’d read late this afternoon, then saw on the TV news as we ate supper, that on Sunday Israeli warplanes had destroyed the almost-completed nuclear reactor at Baghdad, Iraq. “The Iranians must be jumping for joy,” I said to Jane when I first saw the headlines in the newspaper. Iran is at war with Iraq. “You’ve got to give the Jews credit,” I added. “When they see what they regard as a true danger to their homeland, they do something about it, no matter what others may think.” I thought of their daring raid to free their countrymen and women held hostage at Entebbe, Uganda, a few years ago; that event was also mentioned in tonight’s newscasts.

Historically, the animosity between Iran (which until 1935 was called Persia) and Iraq goes back to at least the seventh century, when Arabic conquests brought Islam to the area. A major difference between the two countries is that Iran is Indo-European, and Iraq is Arab. [...] But this great split is also a factor in the current challenges being explored by the two nations: Iran is ruled by Shiite Moslems, Iraq by the Sunni.

[...] One of the complications I didn’t mention is Iran’s deepening confrontation with Iraq, another Moslem nation on Iran’s western border. Currently the two are arguing over territorial rights concerning a waterway between them that flows into the Persian Gulf; Iran and Iraq have exchanged border clashes for several months now, and each country has threatened heavier military action against the other.

[...] Evidently Iran wants to bring the hostage crisis to an end because of the economic boycott the Western world has imposed upon it, because in January it will have to deal with a new United States president, and because of the military pressure being exerted against it by Iraq. Iraq invaded Iran on September 23; on November 4 also, the president of Iraq proclaimed that his country is prepared to fight a long war for the recognition of its “rights” by Iran.

[...] Iran’s economy is actually at a very low point because its leaders have squandered much of its already reduced oil income on the war with Iraq, and on revolutionary institutions and food imports, while devoting little to the nation’s long-term interests. [...] The United States doesn’t want either Iran or Iraq to win their war. In the grimmest of political realities, our side is using Iran to block Russian expansion into the Middle East, and is using Iraq to block Iranian domination of its other, weaker oil-producing neighbors. [...]

[...] At the same time, Iran’s mullahs want a continuing war with Iraq to help consolidate their total power; they do not want victorious, high-ranking military leaders back home from the front to challenge their undisputed power (as internal resistance groups like the Mujahedin-e Khalq are doing). [...] With equal fervor they demand the downfall of the United States, France, Russia, Israel, and Iraq, among other nations. [...]

2. “The killing in Iran continues—and hardly just because of that country’s war with Iraq,” I wrote in the opening notes for Session 936, in Chapter 11 of Dreams. Some three months later the killing goes on, and with even more ramifications of violence, intrigue, and power politics—involving not only Iran but that unhappy country’s neighbors in the Middle East.

3. When the leaders of Iraq ordered the invasion of Iran 14 months ago, they expected to win the war in three weeks. They proclaimed that the war had really begun over 1,300 years ago, at the battle of Qaddisiya in A.D. 637, when Moslem Arabs drove the Persians, who are Indo-European, from Iraq. (Iraq was called Mesopotamia then, and until 1935 Persia was the name for Iran.)

[...] Now Iran is ruled by the Shiites, and is religiously oriented; Iraq is ruled by the Sunnis, and is more secular and socialistic. Iranian leaders emphasize the religious aspects of the war, Iraq the ethnic. [...] Iraq has been accused of using chemical warfare (courtesy of the Russians) against its enemy. [...]

[...] Before going into our chronology of personal events for those three months, however, I want to continue my brief study of the affairs—really the consciousnesses—involving Three Mile Island, Iran, and the war between Iran and Iraq. [...]

[...] See Note 1 for Session 919, in Chapter 7 of Dreams, wherein I reviewed not only Iran’s concern over the Russian invasion of its eastern neighbor, Afghanistan, in late December 1979, but also Iran’s border clashes with its western neighbor, Iraq, during the past year. Finally, on September 23 [day 325 of the hostage situation], the inevitable happened in the very unstable Middle East: Amid that explosive mixture of secular and religious national consciousnesses “at work” there, Iraq launched an outright invasion of Iran. Quickly Iraq began to gobble up large portions of Iranian territory. [...]

One of the tactics leaders in the West are still pursuing is to organize world opinion against the Soviet stay in Afghanistan and the war between Iraq and Iran. [...] A look at a map will show what I mean: Iran has Iraq and Turkey on its western border, with Russia to its north and Afghanistan on its east; Pakistan lies on Iran’s eastern border also; south of Iran, across the narrow Persian Gulf, cluster the mix of large and small wealthy states on the Arabian peninsula. The Moslem Kurds of Iran and Iraq, minority peoples with strong roots in eastern Turkey, are rebelling against the military forces of their respective countries; and Pakistan has become a place of shelter for refugees from Afghanistan. [...]

[...] “If it works out and you have a minute tonight, and if you’re in the mood to say something about Israel and Iraq, it would be interesting,” I told Jane. [...]

[...] When you look at world events, however, the present world situation for example (the war between Iraq and Iran, which began a few days ago), try to enlarge the scope of your intellectual reach, so that you consider world events as living multidimensional “novels” being formed in the present in response to both future and past triggers. [...]

[...] They also accused Iraq, with whom Iran is at war, but it’s almost certain that one of the dozen or more Iranian underground revolutionary groups is responsible. [...]

(To Pete.) Over here we find a connection with Iraq, a strong psychic ability and you hide behind words often, to avoid experience. [...]

[...] We followed the news accounts of the negotiations between the United States and Iran for the release of the hostages, and of the war between Iran and Iraq. [...]