For many years, Clark and others have argued publicly that the targeted states were part of a neo-conservative agenda led by men like Dick Cheney, former US Vice-President, Donald Rumsfeld, former US Secretary of Defence, and Paul Wolfowitz, former US Deputy Secretary of Defence which sought to control and dominate WANA through the might of the US’s military power. Apart from serving the hegemonic interests of the US, the agenda was totally committed to enhancing Israel’s position in the region in the name of protecting its security. It was an agenda that was pursued through the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) which had as its articulators, individuals such as Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Peter Rodman, Richard Perle, and Elliot Abrams, among others.
If there was a common thread running through the 2001 Pentagon list, it was the reluctance of the states mentioned — Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria — or of forces within them to yield to US- Israel power. Indeed, a number of them were actively involved in the resistance to their hegemony. This was the primary reason why they became targets for attack by the US and its allies in the West and within the region in subsequent years stretching right up to the present.