Coming War With Iran - All Iran News Here

[Dan]

The House resolution calls for "stringent inspection requirements" of all goods entering or leaving Iran. The Senate resolution does not call for the inspection of all goods but joins the House resolution in calling for an embargo of refined petroleum products to Iran, which lacks the refining capacity to meet its need for gasoline. [\quote]

WHO THE F#%K do we think we are?  (Americans that is)  Who the F are we to inspect products going in or out of another country?  And to prevent refined patroleum from reaching their shores? 

quote]Achieving either goal would require a naval blockade — a de facto act of war on the part of the United States, though paradoxically both resolutions explicitly exclude authorization for military action.[\quote]

A naval blockade is useless without the authority to act against persons trying to break the blockade.  Saying that we do not authorize the use of force, but authorize the use of naval units to block the transport of goods is an oxymoronic statement.  You can only enforce a blockade with the use of force!!!  That is why they call it ENFORCE!!!!!!!

Other provisions call for an economic embargo of banking operations, with the House resolution adding a prohibition of international movement on the part of Iranian officials.[\quote]

Again, what are we going to do?  We have been embargoing their banks for near ten years.  All they did was switch their monetary unit to the Euro, not the dollar.  And the prohibition of international movement on the part of Iranial officials?  What does that mean exactly?  They are not allowed to leave their country?  What are we going to do....Arrest them if they do?  WTF?

Both resolutions have begun to cause alarm throughout the United States, and have caused several representatives to withdraw their cosponsorships. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., summed up the concerns in an article for the Huffington Post: "It is clear that despite carefully worded language in H. Con. Res. 362 that ‘nothing in this resolution should be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran’ that many Americans across the country continue to express real concerns that sections of this resolution will be interpreted by President Bush as ‘a green light’ to use force against Iran."[\quote]

This is their way of giving Bush what he wants without actually saying it.

Both Wexler and Frank are assuming some risk, because they are opposing the powerful American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which had a strong hand in the drafting of both resolutions. Just days before the resolutions were introduced, AIPAC issued a memo outlining what should be done to put more pressure on Iran. The language of the memo mirrors the language of the resolutions. The introduction of the resolutions also conveniently coincided with AIPAC’s annual policy conference during which it had more than 7,000 people on Capitol Hill to lobby.

Who the F is running this country?  It sure as hell is not the people.  And definatley not the peoples' elected representatives.  F'n lobbyists.  F! F! F! F! F! F! F!

Dan

[bigron]

  September 6, 2008


Sarkozy: Israeli Attack Inevitable

 
by Gordon Prather

While the Republicans were nominating Sarah Palin – who reportedly believes the Bush-Cheney war of aggression against Iraq was inevitable, part of "God's plan" – French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in Damascus, warning the "leaders of Syria, Turkey and Qatar" that an Israeli attack on Iran also appears to be inevitable.

In comments broadcast on Syrian television, Sarkozy said

"One day – whatever the Israeli government – we could find one morning that Israel has struck.

"The question is not whether it would be legitimate, whether it would be intelligent. What will we do at that moment?"

Now, it is somewhat encouraging that Sarkozy apparently doesn't agree that illegitimate irrational acts are parts of "God's plan."

But, according to Sarkozy, there seems to be nothing we mortals can do to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran.

However, the Russians just may have seriously upset their plans.

According to UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave, the special relationship Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has with the Cheney Cabal and with certain Israelis resulted in a secret agreement "earmarking" two military airfields in southern Georgia for regular use by Israeli unmanned aircraft for spying on Russia and Iran, and for special use by U.S.-supplied Israeli fighter-bombers, in the event the paranoid Israelis decide to launch an illegitimate (under international law) attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, all currently subject to a Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

But, in driving Georgian invasion troops out of Ossetia, pursuing them back into Georgia, proper, the Russians briefly occupied those two military airfields and reportedly destroyed most of the U.S. and Israeli equipment they found there (and elsewhere), perhaps creating serious obstacles to the near-term implementation of the Israeli "bomb-bomb Iran" game-plan.

You see, the new "sovereign" state of Iraq had prohibited the Israelis from penetrating Iraqi airspace in order to attack Iran. However, if the Israelis could launch and recover their fighter-bombers from airfields in Georgia, they could avoid Iraq and the distance they would have to cover to their targets would be sharply reduced.

Of course, to utilize the Georgian airfields, the Israelis would have to over-fly Turkey.

However, the Turks didn't lodge a formal complaint when the Israelis penetrated their airspace last year to destroy – in violation of international law – a site in Syria where the Israeli paranoids suspected ten-foot-tall North Korean scientists and engineers had been busy since 2001, replicating their Soviet designed/supplied nuclear reactor, in order to produce plutonium for the Iranians.

The IAEA has since visited the site in Syria the Israelis destroyed and – as of this writing – have no reason to suppose the Israelis are anything but paranoid.

Here are excerpts from UN Security Council Resolution 487, condemning the attack on, and destruction of, Iraq's IAEA Safeguarded facilities by Israeli paranoids back in 1981;

"Fully aware of the fact that Iraq has been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since it came into force in 1970, that, in accordance with that treaty, Iraq has accepted IAEA safeguards on all its nuclear activities, and that the agency has testified that these safeguards have been satisfactorily applied to date ...

"Strongly condemns the military attack by Israel – in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct;

"Calls upon Israel to refrain in the future from any such acts or threats thereof;

"Further considers that the said attack constitutes a serious threat to the entire IAEA safeguards regime, which is the foundation of the non-proliferation treaty."

Of course, the entire IAEA Safeguards regime – which serves as a guarantor to all signatories to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – has been under sustained attack ever since the Cheney Cabal came to power.

In a letter of March 25, 2008 sent by the Foreign Minister of Iran to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and forwarded to the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran challenged the legality under the UN Charter of certain resolutions passed by the UN Security Council – at the insistence of the Cheney Cabal – which relate to certain resolutions improperly passed by the IAEA Board of Governors, also at the insistence of the Cheney Cabal.

In particular, on March 3, 2008, the UN Security Council – allegedly "Acting under Article 41 of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations" – perversely proceeded to "reaffirm" its "decision" of 23 December 2006 that Iran "shall, without further delay, suspend"

"a) all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the IAEA; and

"(b) work on all heavy water-related projects, including the construction of a research reactor moderated by heavy water, also to be verified by the IAEA"

Which prompted the Iranians to send that March 25, letter to the Secretary General, explicating the largely successful efforts of the Cheney Cabal to not only corrupt the IAEA Board of Governors and UN Security Council, but to undermine the IAEA Statute, the NPT and UN Charter, itself.

In particular, Iran correctly notes that

"Involvement of the Security Council in the Iranian peaceful nuclear program is in full contravention with the organizational, Statutory and safeguards requirements governing the IAEA practices and procedures.

"Furthermore, the substantive and procedural legal requirements, that are necessary for engaging the Security Council in the issues raised by the Agency, have been totally ignored in this regard.

"The Security Council has never determined Iran's Nuclear Program as a threat to international peace and security under Article 39 of the UN Charter and, thus, it could not adopt any measures against the Islamic Republic of Iran under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

"The Security Council, as a UN organ created by Member States, is subject to legal requirements, and is obliged to comply with the same international normative rules that the Member States are bound to.

"The Council shall observe all international norms, in particular the UN Charter and the peremptory norms of international law, in the process of its decision making and in its taking actions.

"Needless to say that any measure adopted in contradiction to such rules and principles will be void of any legally binding effects."

Now comes a statement from the Ministerial Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement – which includes Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bolivia, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, et al. – wherein the Ministers

"reaffirmed the basic and inalienable right of all states" – including, by name, the Islamic Republic of Iran – to the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, "without discrimination"
"recognized the IAEA as the sole competent authority for verification of the respective safeguards obligations of [NPT] member states"
"reaffirmed the inviolability of peaceful nuclear activities," whether operational or under construction, against "attack or threat of attack," either of which "constitutes a grave violation of international law, principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations and regulations of the IAEA."
Okay, the rest of the world is in Iran's corner on this issue. So, the question is – what will they do if the paranoid Israelis attack Iran and "we" are viewed as having enabled them?
 
 
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=13418 
 

[thadividedsky]

good find bigron. What people need to remember is that Israel is not a member of the NPT (nuclear non-proliferation treaty) so is not bound by the NPT's safeguards, regulations and so-on. The U.N. is a joke and have no influence with Iran. What the Georgian president did to south ossetia was an international crime, but the U.N. and most of the world don't give a damn. But then they say that Russias responce was in violation of international law. If that's so, our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan are also violations of international law. How f**king hypocritical. I think we're on the cusp of all out war with Iran, Pakistan, Syria and Russia. To top it off, we could piss the chinese off when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are nationalised this weekend and causing the Chinese to lose over $800,000,000,000. Who would NOT be pissed off over that type of loss?

[chirhonius]

Congress is a mean bunch of warriors...Is anyone taking the Russians seriously in there alliance with the Iranians?..this wont be a pushover like Iraq...

Congress ain't the "barbarian" class that has to fight the wars, they just have to start them.

[Sasha]

Report: Russia considering increasing nuclear aid to Iran

Sunday Times reports Kremlin discussing sending teams of nuclear experts to Tehran, inviting Iranian nuclear scientists to Moscow for training, in response to US call for NATO expansion eastwards. 'Russia may respond by hitting America where it hurts most – Iran,' Russian source says

Ynet Published: 
09.07.08, 09:32 /
Israel News
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3592993,00.html


Russia is considering increasing its assistance to Iran’s nuclear program in response to The United States' call for NATO expansion eastwards, the London-based Sunday Times has reported.

Moscow has been angered by Washington's renewed support for attempts by Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO and by the presence of US Navy vessels in the Black Sea delivering aid to Georgia following the war in the Caucasus.

According to the report, the Kremlin is discussing sending teams of Russian nuclear experts to Tehran and inviting Iranian nuclear scientists to Moscow for training.

The report quotes a source close to the Russian military as saying that “everything has changed since the war in Georgia. What seemed impossible before, is more than possible now when our friends become our enemies and our enemies our friends.

According to the source, “Russia will respond. A number of possibilities are being considered, including hitting America there where it hurts most – Iran.”

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hinted last week that Russia would respond quietly to the numerous NATO ships entering the Black Sea.

Russian news agency Interfax reported at the time that Putin had said during a visit to Uzbekistan that "the response will be clam and not hysterical, but a response will come." Asked about its nature, he responded, "You'll see."

France: Sanctions could backfire on Europe
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told Newsweek on Saturday that imposing sanctions on Russia could backfire on the European Union, which depends on Moscow for its oil and gas.

EU leaders declared this week that the relations with Russia were at a crossroads, but did not decide to impose sanctions. Kouchner added that the EU's relations with Russia were also important in terms of the Iranian nuclear plan.

US Vice President Dick Cheney said Saturday that "Russian arms-dealing has endangered the prospects for peace and freedom in the region (the Middle East)."

Speaking at global conference of political and business leaders in Cernobbio, Italy, Cheney lambasted Moscow's policies using pointedly harsh rhetoric.

Russia has sold advanced weapons to the regimes in Syria and Iran. Some of the Russian weapons sold to Damascus have been channeled to terrorist fighters in Lebanon and Iraq," said Cheney.

The vice president later met in private with President Shimon Peres on the sidelines of the conference. Cheney added that Moscow was selling the arms to Iran and Syria knowing full-well it is intended for Hizbullah and the terror organizations in Iraq, Peres' aides said.

[bigron]

Israel’s senior ministers confer urgently on Iran as US masses air-naval might in Middle East waters


DEBKAfile Special Report
http://debka.com/headline.php?hid=5572

September 10, 2008, 11:57 AM (GMT+02:00)

 
USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier joins American Middle East armada
Prime minister Ehud Olmert summoned defense minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Tzipi Livni for an urgent consultation on Iran Wed. Sept. 10, as the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier headed out to the Mediterranean for missions “in support of maritime security.”

Its arrival will bring the number of US aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea to four, compared with two Russian warships. Most of the Russian fleet in the region is concentrated in the Black Sea whence it has easy and rapid access to Middle East waters.

The Roosevelt will be followed by its strike force, which includes the guided missile cruiser Monterey , the guided missile destroyers Mason and Nitze , with 7,300 sailors and marines aboard, and the attack submarine Springfield .

Our sources report that the USS Ronald Reagan carrier and its strike group began engaging in assault and support missions for US and NATO forces in Afghanistan on Aug. 28.

The Iwo Jima carrier group, whose decks carry 6,000 sailors, air crews and marines, supports the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and Fifth Fleet in the Gulf with a massive amphibious capability.

The USS San Antonio amphibious transport dock ship is the first vessel of its class to be deployed in the region as a platform for supporting Marine movements and operations ashore.

The USS Peleliu carrier patrols the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. It is escorted by vessels carrying a large Marine contingent.

Monday, Iran launched a three-day naval-air-missile exercise to practice defense tactics for its nuclear sites.

[bigron]

Iran 'master of asymmetric naval warfare' 


11/09/2008 11:58:00 AM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=160318


 
 A U.S.-based think tank says Iran's navy forces are capable of waging a unique asymmetric warfare against larger naval forces.


The report by The Washington Institute for the Near East Policy authored by Fariborz Haghshenas, an expert on the Iranian military, says that in the two decades since the Iran-Iraq War, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGCN) has been transformed into a highly motivated, well-equipped, and well-financed force.

The study sheds light on the historical evolution of Iran's approach to asymmetric warfare, assessing its naval forces and evaluating its plans for a possible war with the US.

The report says Iran, with such a strong navy force, is effectively holding the world's oil lifeline, the Strait of Hormuz.

The study concludes that Iran is capable of taking preemptive action in response to a perceived threat of imminent attack.

In the event of a US attack, the scale of Iran's response would likely be proportional to the scale of the damage inflicted on Iranian assets, the report says.



-- Press TV

 

[Boubear]

Iran 'master of asymmetric naval warfare' 


11/09/2008 11:58:00 AM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=160318


 
 A U.S.-based think tank says Iran's navy forces are capable of waging a unique asymmetric warfare against larger naval forces.


The report by The Washington Institute for the Near East Policy authored by Fariborz Haghshenas, an expert on the Iranian military, says that in the two decades since the Iran-Iraq War, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGCN) has been transformed into a highly motivated, well-equipped, and well-financed force.

The study sheds light on the historical evolution of Iran's approach to asymmetric warfare, assessing its naval forces and evaluating its plans for a possible war with the US.

The report says Iran, with such a strong navy force, is effectively holding the world's oil lifeline, the Strait of Hormuz.

The study concludes that Iran is capable of taking preemptive action in response to a perceived threat of imminent attack.

In the event of a US attack, the scale of Iran's response would likely be proportional to the scale of the damage inflicted on Iranian assets, the report says.



-- Press TV

 

I wonder if they will take advantage of the situation, since Iran had a very bad earthquake there yesterday, in that very region!!

[bigron]

Is an Israeli strike on Iran imminent? 

15/09/2008 01:06:00 AM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=160403

 
 Not necessarily, due to a fear of retaliation on the part of Israel and its allies.


By Jalal Alavi

The answer to the above question would very much depend on what sorts of issues and constraints are taken into consideration.

To be sure, the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program has been the focus of much international attention ever since it came to light in 2002, the sort of attention, of course, that has so far led to three devastating rounds of economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the United Nations Security Council.

Though the Islamic Republic is maintaining that its interest in developing nuclear technology is solely for peaceful purposes, the Bush administration has, albeit unsuccessfully, strived hard to prove otherwise.

A recent assessment by sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies of the true nature of the Iranian regime’s nuclear program is but one example of such lack of success on the part of the United States and its allies for substantiating the defense-related nature of Iran’s nuclear program, one that has rendered the Islamic Republic’s research and experimentation in the realm of nuclear technology as quite legitimate ever since 2003.

Perhaps one could even arrive at the conclusion that it is as a result of such careful assessments as the above that a Bush administration pre-emptive (or rather preventive) strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities has hitherto been deterred.

Whatever the reasons behind such a lack of interest on the part of the Bush administration for attacking Iran, one thing is for certain: the war drums of the Israeli hawks are getting louder by the day, and for good reason: it was the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who declared only a few weeks ago, in July, that the United States would not stand in the way of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities due to Israel’s sovereign nature.

It was John McCain, the now Republican presidential nominee, who, when asked about what to do with Iran’s nuclear program, sang “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” suggesting not only the possibility but also perhaps the feasibility of a U.S. military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

And let us not forget the more recent remarks by Barack Obama and Joseph Biden, the Democratic nominees in the race for the White House, with the former calling the Islamic Republic a "Shia terrorist" entity worthy of eventual destruction [1] and the latter calling Israel a sovereign state free to make its own security decisions, thereby providing Israel with both the pretext and the permission necessary to go to war with Iran.

It may be said, therefore, that, in tune with French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent remarks, which called upon the Islamic Republic to reconsider the scope and potential ramifications of its nuclear drive for fear of an Israeli strike, the stage is nowadays set, or at least appears to be so, for Israeli military action against Iran, especially during such time as George W. Bush is still president.

Does all this, however, mean that an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities is in the offing? Not necessarily, due to various reasons the most important of which would have to do with a fear of retaliation on the part of Israel and its regional allies. This, of course, is a legitimate concern that was made public just a few days ago by Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Another important factor which, if adhered to by the U.S. foreign policy establishment, would have a direct effect on potential Israeli plans for striking Iranian nuclear facilities would be the realization by U.S. policymakers that U.S. national interests must take precedence over those of Israel.

To this end, a simple calculation of what the U.S., and indeed the entire planet, can expect in terms of the economic, political, and environmental ramifications of a potential Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities is all it should take for the United States to appreciate the strategic unfeasibility of such adventurism.

The European Union’s hitherto reluctance to militarily side with the U.S. in case there is an escalation of the standoff with Iran, and Russia’s re-emergence as a global player worried about a wider U.S. presence in its vicinity (as reflected by its Georgia offensive) must also be kept in mind when considering the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Accidents and miscalculations aside, it may be concluded, therefore, that an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is not as imminent as some would want it to be, again, mainly because the United States lacks the sort of credible evidence that would compel it to side with Israel in taking military action against Iran.

And this indeed is the kind of support that Israel would not be able to do without if it were to attack Iran anytime soon. Of course, for those who wish to see the nuclear standoff with Iran escalate into a violent means of removing yet another Islamist dictatorship from power, the above conclusion is no consolation.

Let us hope, however, that a democratic Iran will eventually emerge as mainly a result of the efforts of its enlightened citizens and a sincere international community.

[1] See the rush transcript from The O’Reilly Factor, September 4, 2008. Available from: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,417563,00.html . Obama’s plans to go after Iraqi oil dollars in order to pay for the costs of the US occupation of that country might also be of interest to viewers of this transcript.

-- Jalal Alavi is a sociologist and political commentator residing in Britain.




-- Middle East Online

 

[bigron]

U.S. spawns prospect for Israel war on Iran 

14/09/2008 07:02:00 PM GMT
 
http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=161395


The U.S. will reportedly equip Israel with highly advanced smart bombs capable of taking out fortified nuclear installations in Iran.

The 'bunker-buster' bombs, the Guided Bomb Unit-39 (GBU-39), have been developed to penetrate fortified facilities located deep underground - such as Iran's nuclear facilities.

Despite escalating speculation that Tel Aviv plans to launch attacks against Iran, Haaretz reported that the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed on Friday that it would sell 1,000 GBU-39 units to Israel.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested last week that should Iran continue with its uranium enrichment program, it could be attacked by Israel.

"We could find one morning that Israel has struck (Iran)," said the French president, adding that no one would question the legitimacy of such an act of aggression.

U.S. President George W. Bush and upper echelons in Tel Aviv have repeatedly threatened Iran with war under the pretext that Tehran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), seeks nuclear weaponry.

This is while the UN nuclear watchdog, which has extensively monitored Iran's nuclear activities and has been inspecting the country's nuclear installations since 2003, said in its most recent report that there is no link between the use of nuclear material and the 'alleged studies' of weaponization that Western countries attribute to Iranian sites.

The UN body has also confirmed that Iran enriches uranium-235 to a level of only 3.7 percent - a rate consistent with the construction of a nuclear power plant. Nuclear arms production requires an enrichment level of above 90 percent.

Israel, however, is determined to use 'any option' to stop Iran's nuclear work, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in early September.

The small size of GBU-39, which has been designed to enable jet fighters to carry a higher number of bombs in place of a single one-ton bomb, will allow the Israeli Air Force to hit more of Iran's 'numerous, distant, and fortified' nuclear sites than currently possible.

The bombs are capable of penetrating 6 feet (at least 1.8 meters) of reinforced concrete and more than 3 feet (approximately 1 meter) of steel-reinforced concrete.

An unnamed Pentagon official revealed to the Sunday Telegraph in July that US commanders have had 'little confidence' with 'no guarantee' that Israel would be able to destroy the Iranian nuclear program.

An Israeli Air Force equipped with GBU-39s, however, may be able to provide the 'guarantee' the US has been seeking.

Meanwhile, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Friday that he would not accept any military action against Iran.

In the past decade, Russia has helped Tehran in the construction of a 20,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in the southern Iranian city of Bushehr.

Electricity shortage has forced the government in Tehran to adopt a rationing program by scheduling power outages - of up to two hours a day - across both urban and rural areas in the country.

A source close to the Russian military said last week that Moscow is considering providing Iran with more nuclear assistance amid Russia's escalating tensions with the US over the August crisis in the Caucasus - which Russia says was orchestrated by the Bush administration.



-- Press TV

 

[bigron]

September 12, 2008, 9:50

US to invade Iran any day now?

http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/30312

A few weeks ago the Russian newspaper Izvestia, a well-known and authoritive daily published nationwide and abroad, came forward with something that would have been looked upon as a conspiracy theory if published by a tabloid.
 
The paper suggested that by attacking South Ossetia, the Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had badly damaged a planned U.S. military operation against Iran. In the newspaper's opinion Georgia was supposed to play the role of another "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for the U.S., i.e. an operational and tactical base for U.S.
aircraft that would be making bombing raids into Iran. Something akin to what Thailand was in the Vietnam war.

Thailand certainly benefited from the arrangement, and Georgia would have too, insists the paper, if its President hadn't put his ambitions above the US national interest and ended up beaten, disarmed, chewing on his neckties and totally incapable of providing whatever the U.S. needs from him.

That's why, according to Izvestia in yet another article on the matter, the U.S. response to the Russian retaliation was harsh in words but very mild in action. The latest on the issue suggests that Mikhail Saakashvili may be replaced any day now by direct order from Washington.

Having read the story in Izvestia I decided to try to figure out the extent of improbability and impossibility of the assumptions. As I was doing that, I remembered that early in August CNN had started showing U.S. generals who cried for more troops and hardware for Afghanistan which, in their opinion, was rapidly becoming a more intensive conflict than Iraq.

Shortly after that, a phone call came from a college friend who had just come back from Kandahar in Afghanistan, where he had seen American battle tanks being unloaded from a Ukrainian-registered Antonov-124 "Ruslan", the heaviest and largest cargo airplane in the world. The friend asked if I had any idea what tanks would be good for in Afghanistan, and I said I didn't. It's an established fact from the Soviet war in Afghanistan that tanks are no good for most of the country's mountainous territory. They are good for flatlands, and the main body of flat land in the region is right across the border in Iran.

Later in August there was another bit of unofficial information from a Russian military source: more than a thousand American tanks and armored vehicles had been shipped to Eastern Afghanistan by Ukrainian "Ruslans" flying in three to five shipments a day, and more flights were expected.

Somehow all this, together with the series of articles in Izvestia, the information that all U.S. troops in Afghanistan are going to be reassigned and regrouped under unified command, the arrival of NATO naval ships in the Black Sea, the appointment of a man used to command troops in a combat environment as the new commander of the US Central Command and other bits and pieces. To my total astonishment, when they all fell together the Izvestia story started looking slightly more credible than before.

Today the U.S. media reported that there had been a leak from the Pentagon about a secret Presidential order in which President Bush authorized his military (most of which is currently on Afghan soil) to conduct operations in Pakistan without the necessity for informing the Pakistani government. The U.S. military in Afghanistan - or shall we say in the whole region neighboring Iran - is getting a freer hand by the day. And it is getting more and more hardware to play with.

Of course it's quite clear now that Georgia has lost its immediate potential as a nearby airfield, but after all, the aircraft carriers in the Gulf are not so far away.

Believe me I'm not saying that the U.S. is going to start an all-out war against Iran tomorrow. But aren't there indications that it may happen the day after tomorrow, a month from now, or on any date before the official handover of Presidency in the U.S.? Or, as some suggest, before the election?

I'm just asking the questions. But there are some people, like those working for Izvestia, for instance, who answer them with a "yes".

Evgeny Belenkiy, RT.

[bigron]

US a Step Closer to Iran Blockade


By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI13Ak01.html

12/09/08 "Asia Times" -- - The United States government has imposed new sanctions on Iran, this time targeting its shipping industry, by blacklisting the main shipping line and 18 subsidiaries, accusing the maritime carrier of being engaged in contraband nuclear material, a charge vehemently denied by Iran.

While the economic impact of the measures against Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) will be minimal in light of the near absence of any connection between the shipping company and US businesses, this latest US initiative against Iran sends a strong signal about the US's intention to escalate pressure on Iran, even unilaterally if need be. And, perhaps, it is a prelude for more serious and dangerous actions in the near future, above all a naval blockade of Iran to choke off its access to, among other things, imported fuel.

The outgoing George W Bush administration is slowly but surely taking strident actions that will effectively tie the hands of the next US president, particularly if that happens to be Democratic candidate Senator Barack Obama, who in the past has expressed an interest in direct dialogue with Tehran.

Should the new sanctions prove as catalysts for more aggressive US actions against Iran in international waters or the Persian Gulf, as called for by some members of US Congress seeking the interdiction of Iranian cargo ships, then by the time Bush's successor takes over at the Oval Office next January, the climate in US-Iran hostility may have degenerated to such depths that it would take a monumental effort to undo what appears to be Bush's last hurrah.

On the other hand, on the eve of US presidential elections in November, more tensions between the US and Iran are tantamount to greater prioritization of national security issues by the average American voter, something that benefits Obama's Republican rival, "bomb, bomb Iran" John McCain.

Indeed, the coupling of crisis in Georgia and the Iran crisis represents a major bonus for McCain and his "get tough" approach toward the US's external foes.

According to American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who has done several reports on US covert actions against Iran, Bush has on more than one occasion vowed not to leave the White House with Iran's nuclear program still intact.

With the new tensions with Russia over Georgia lessening the prospects for fresh "multilateral" Iran diplomacy at the United Nations this autumn, the White House has now begun a new chapter in coercive, unilateral action against Iran that may well be part of a comprehensive "package approach". This could include the interdiction of Iranian ships on the high seas and even incremental steps toward imposing a regime of "smart blockade" aimed at denying Iran access to badly needed imported fuel.

The purpose of the latter would be to in effect target the Iranian population by applying tangible pain that could dissipate the popular support for the government's nuclear policy, that is, its insistence that it has the right under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium. Doubtless, this is playing with fire and things could get nasty and rather quickly, spiralling out of control in the event of a stern Iranian reaction.

As far as Washington and Tel Aviv are concerned, their efforts to create a wedge between Iran and Syria is paying off, thanks in part to the tireless efforts of France, and Israeli politicians have made no secret of their hope that their negotiations with Damascus will create a timely dividend in the form of breathing cold air into the hitherto hot furnace of the Iran-Syria alliance.

In Iran murmurings of "weak and reactive diplomacy" can already be heard, thus putting the President Mahmud Ahmadinejad administration on the defensive.

Consequently, Washington hawks increasingly smell a late opportunity to defang Iran. They will surely have made their own threat analysis and estimates of risks. Should their calculations prove incorrect, it could prove disastrous with incalculable, monstrous new headaches for the US government for years to come.

For Iran's part, a spokesperson for IRISL has denounced the US's measure as "illegal" and based on "false accusations", promising to complain to international tribunals. IRISL is, in fact, a stock-owned private company and not government owned, and the US's action may be in violation of the terms and ambit of UN sanctions imposed by the Security Council on Iran over its nuclear program. For instance, these sanctions exempt the Bushehr power plant in Iran, thus allowing the shipment of nuclear material for the Russian-made plant nearing completion.

This means that the US might seek to seize Russian nuclear goods bound for Iran, thus raising the ire of Moscow and using this as a payback for Russia's offensive in pro-West Georgia. Alternatively, the US could use the threat of such action as leverage with regard to both Tehran and Moscow. Russia, from Washington's point of view, needs to be brought into line on Iran.

Again, any such action by the US is bound to have both intended and unintended consequences, and it would be foolhardy for Washington hawks to pretend to know the full scope of the ramifications, which could be dramatic in terms of heating up a new cold war and outright militarizing the Iran nuclear crisis.

Tehran does not appear to welcome any new escalation with the US. A deputy foreign minister, Mehdi Safari, announced Iran's preparedness to engage in good-faith negotiations with the "Iran Six" nations (the UN Security Council's permanent five - the US, Britain, France, Russia and China - plus Germany).

Ahmadinejad is due in New York in less than two weeks to attend the annual UN General Assembly gathering, and by all indications the US and Israel are deliberately picking up serious momentum in their anti-Ahmadinejad campaign, thus warranting a letter by Iran's ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, complaining of blatant threats against Iran's president by Israeli politicians - they even said they would kidnap him.

In conclusion, as tough new decisions on Iran are being plotted in Washington and Tel Aviv, the fate of peace and stability in the volatile oil region of the Persian Gulf seems once again on the verge of being compromised in the drive towards open confrontation with Iran.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction. For his Wikipedia entry, click here.

Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd.

[bigron]

U.S. tests bunker-busters for war on Iran? 



15/09/2008 07:22:00 PM GMT
  http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=161792
 

The Pentagon will test new 'bunker-busting' bombs capable of obliterating underground nuclear production facilities, a report says.

One of Pentagon's highest-profile projects, according to USA Today, is the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) project.

MOP has developed a precision-guided 30,000-pound (13,600-kilogram) bomb built to deliver 2 tons of explosives after burrowing deep down to reach underground nuclear labs.

An Air Force spokeswoman, Vicki Stein, said the force plans to test the 20-foot-long bomb on B-52 bombers.

The deepest penetrating bunker buster currently at the disposal of the US Air Force is the Guided Bomb Unit 28 (GBU-28), a 5000-pound (2,270 kilogram) laser-guided bomb, capable of penetrating over 100 feet (30 meters) of earth or 20 feet (6 meters) of solid concrete.

An analyst told the paper that the MOP project appears to be directed at attacking Iran's nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz.

Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), says its nuclear activities are solely directed at generating electricity for its growing population.

The US and Israel, however, have repeatedly threatened to strike nuclear installations in Iran under the pretext that the country seeks nuclear weaponry.

This is while the UN nuclear watchdog, which has extensively monitored Iran's nuclear program since 2003, said in its latest report on Monday that Iran has managed to enrich uranium-235 to a level 'less than 5 percent'.

The rate is consistent with the construction of a nuclear power plant. Nuclear arms production, meanwhile, requires an enrichment level of above 90 percent.

The report comes shortly after the US Defense Department reportedly approved equipping Israel with 1,000 GBU-39 units - capable of penetrating 6 feet (at least 1.8 meters) of reinforced concrete and more than 3 feet (approximately 1 meter) of steel-reinforced concrete.

According to an Israeli military expert, Yiftah Shapir, hundreds of GBU-39 units 'would have to be used in an attack on Natanz for it to be successful'.

While citing diplomacy as the only acceptable means for clarifying the civilian nature of its nuclear program, Iran has warned that Israel and 32 US bases in the region will be targeted should the country come under attack.




-- Press TV
 

[Godfather77]

LMAO were is thr proof?

Taliban claim weapons supplied by Iran
14th September 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/2958093/Taliban-claim-weapons-supplied-by-Iran.html

A Taliban commander has credited Iranian-supplied weapons with successful operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The comments by the commander, who would not be named but operates in the south east of the country where there has been a surge in Taliban attacks, were a rare admission of co-operation between elements within the Iranian regime and forces fighting British and American troops in Afghanistan.

"There's a kind of landmine called a Dragon. Iran's sending it," he said. "It's directional and it causes heavy casualties. "We're ambushing the Americans and planting roadside bombs. We never let them relax."

The commander, a veteran of 30 years who started fighting when the Soviet Union was occupying Afghanistan, said the Dragon had revolutionised the Taliban's ability to target Nato soldiers deployed in his area.

"If you lay an ordinary mine, it will only cause minor damage to Humvees or one of their big tanks. But if you lay a Dragon, it will destroy it completely," he said.

A "Dragon" is the local nickname for a type of weapon known internationally as an Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP) or "shaped charge" and has been used with devastating effect in Iraq by Iranian-backed groups. It is shaped so that all the explosive force is concentrated in one direction - the target - rather than blasting in all directions and weakening its impact.

A former mujahideen fighter who knows the Afghan arms market well and who asked to be known as Shahir said the Dragon mines came directly from Iran.

Iran has denied these allegations, but Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador in Kabul, said the British Army, which is deployed in south-western Afghanistan, had intercepted consignments of weapons which they believe were "donated by a group within the Iranian state".

The only other possible source, the arms expert said, would be Pakistan's Tribal Areas where a relatively sophisticated arms industry has grown up. "Until now," he said, "no-one in the Tribal Areas has been able to copy these mines. Both the metal and the explosives are different, very high quality and very effective, obviously not Chinese or Pakistani."

He said there were two routes for Iranian weaponry getting to the Taliban. "There are people inside the state in Iran who donate weapons. There are also Iranian businessmen who sell them."

Iranian-made weapons, he said, whether smuggled or donated, were the most popular among Taliban fighters and fetch premium prices on the open market. "A Kalashnikov rifle made in Iran costs two to three hundred dollars more than one made anywhere else" he said. "Its beauty lies in the fact that it can also fire grenades, up to 300 meters. This is something new and it's in great demand."

Iran, a theocratic, Shia Muslim state should have little common cause with the Taliban, an extremist Sunni Muslim movement which massacred hundreds of Afghan Shia civilians and killed nine Iranian diplomats when it was in power.

Only the worsening relations between Iran and America might explain the weapons supply.

Sir Sherard said Iran was playing "a very dangerous game". He added: "I suspect some of their agencies genuinely don't know what others are up to. We've seen a limited supply of weapons by a group within the Iranian state, not necessarily with the knowledge of all other agencies of the Iranian state, sending some very dangerous weapons to the Taliban in the south."

[ConcordeWarrior]

Bush Agrees To War On Iran
By Lord Stirling
9-15-8

The United States has agreed to sell to Israel 1,000 of the very advanced bunker buster GBU-39 bombs. This is a major development as the Bush Administration had denied previous recent Israeli requests for large numbers of this weapon system. The GBU-39 has a stand off range of 110 km and uses pop-out wings with extremely accurate fire and forget technology. It is capable of penetrating 90 cm of steel reinforced concrete. This indicates that the Israeli Government has succeeded in its request that America allow it to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. The GBU-39s will be used extensively in attacks on Iranian targets, as well as on Syrian and Hezbollah high value targets in both Syria and Lebanon.

The Israeli political landscape is about to change. I have been expecting former Israeli Prime Minister, and super war hawk, Benyamin Netanyahu to make a well timed major move. Current Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is about to resign due to his ongoing criminal troubles. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz are in a tight battle to win the vote on Wednesday as Kadima Party Chairman, with the right to attempt to form a new government. However, it appears that Bibi Netanyahu has put together a deal with Labor Party leader, former PM and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and the ultra-religious Shas Party to form a government with Bibi as Prime Minister in a few days time.
 
Count on Bibi Netanyahu lighting a blowtorch in the dry kindling that is the Middle East.
 
There is a real technical question if the GBU-39 can destroy all of the key known or suspected Iranian nuclear sites, as well as key military sites in Lebanon and Syria. The hardest sites are very well protected. Some experts think that several dozen to a hundred plus GBU-39s targeted at the same spot can take out even the deepest/most harden site; others say that a micro or mini nuke will be required.

The Israeli and American war planners may be counting on all sides refraining from the use of WMD. Rather like Saddam held back his 29 WMD armed (chemical and anthrax) Scud-type guided missiles during the First Gulf War and like Hezbollah did during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. If this is the strategy it is one very, very, massive risk to all involved.
 
An effective attack on the Iranian nuclear program and likely hidden sites will require a massive number of air strikes over the Iranian land mass. Iran will respond with missile attacks from its territory on Israel and with rocket and missile attacks from Lebanon and Gaza and the West Bank. Israel has tried very hard to convince Syria to part company with Iran but has had little success. Syria has a large number of guided missiles that can reach virtually all parts of Israel.
 
While the American supplied Israeli weapons, and the Israeli produced guided missiles, are highly accurate the Iranian/Syrian guided missiles are not so accurate (and the many tens of thousands of unguided rockets in Lebanon and Gaza/West Bank are notoriously inaccurate). This means that Israeli civilians will be hit hard if only non-WMD warheads are used. The temptation for Israel to hit back at Iranian and Syrian population centers will be very high. If this happens the cycle of escalation and counter-escalation will likely get out of control; and this is assuming that major efforts will be made to avoid mutual use of WMD in the first place.

Israel has most likely over 600 nuclear warheads from micro nukes to high mega tonnage hydrogen bombs, as well as advanced biological weapons, chemical weapons, radiological weapons, and fuel air explosive based weapons. The Iranian/Syrian side has radiological weapons, fuel air weapons, chemical weapons, advanced biological weapons, and maybe a crude nuclear device or two (doubtful but a remote possibility).
 
The Iranians have made it clear that they will close the Gulf to oil shipping in the event of a war. Americans have just had a taste of $5/gallon gasoline with Hurrican Ike. A general Middle East War could bring $10/per gallon gas prices to America. The world's economy, already headed to a global depression, will be thrust into the worst depression in human history.
 
The Iranians are also apt to hit American targets in the Middle East. In any case, any closing of the Gulf will bring a massive American and allied response making the Middle East War a likley global one as massive US/allied air attacks and naval attacks plummet Iran well beyond what Israel began.
 
If Iran feels that its population is seruously in danger or that its existance as a nation state is at risk, she is apt to use her strategic MAD (mutually assured destruction) force WMD (weapons of mass destruction) on the west and Israel. These weapons are DNA recombination, genetically engineered, advanced biological weapons; man-made viruses that are designed to spread throughtout North America and western Europe using humans as vectors ~ viruses that have never existed before and for which we humans have NO DEFENSE. Iran began an advanced biowar program years ago using out-of-work former Soviet advanced biowar experts, and currently has a world-class advanced biowar program.
 
Throw Russia and China into this mix and you have World War Three.
 
Stirling

http://www.rense.com/general83/waron.htm

[ConcordeWarrior]

Five ex-secretaries of state urge talks with Iran

Advising the next president, 5 former secretaries of state say talking to Iran is essential

BARRY SCHWEID
AP News

Sep 15, 2008 18:05 EST

Five former secretaries of state, gathering to give their best advice to the next president, agreed Monday that the United States should talk to Iran.

The wide-ranging, 90-minute session in a packed auditorium at The George Washington University, produced exceptional unity among Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Warren Christopher, Henry A. Kissinger and James A. Baker III.

But they didn't agree on who should move into the Oval Office next January.

Albright, a Democrat, surprised no one by endorsing Barack Obama. "It would be sending a message of diversity" to the world, she said, drawing cheers from an audience of dozens of diplomats and hundreds of students.

Baker, a Republican, said he wished to send a "powerful message" to America as well as abroad. After a dramatic pause, he evoked applause and some laughter by saying tersely, "But I am for John McCain."

Powell, the first African American secretary of state, said he had not decided yet. "I am an American first," Powell said.

He said he had told Obama, "I am not going to vote for you just because you are black." The critical issue, he said, "is who is going to keep us safe."

The Bush administration has dragged its feet on even minimal contact with Iran under hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a course the five former secretaries of state implicitly criticized.

Nor did they suggest the United States should keep its distance out of concern for Israel, which Ahmadinejad has said "one day will be wiped off the map."

"The military options are very poor," Christopher said. "And we have to tell the Israelis that."

Kissinger, for his part, said he favored negotiations with Iran but that the United States should spell out its objectives at the outset. And that, he said, included a stable Middle East.

Kissinger, secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations from 1973-1977, said the U.S. negotiators also should seek a halt to Iran providing weapons to militant groups.

Albright said she would begin the talks at the State Department level. "You need to engage with countries you have problems with," she said.

Secretary of state in the Clinton administration from 1997-2001, she said "the more we criticize Ahmadinejad the stronger he gets" within Iranian society.

As the five former secretaries cruised through world issues, they hewed to a line that the U.S. had to project its standing but also work with other countries.

Christopher, who preceded Albright in the Clinton administration, serving from 1993-1997, offered the proposition, though, that the United States should outlaw torture of captured terror suspects.

And Powell, who served President Bush from 2001-2005, sought to allay suspicions that Russia was turning into a second Soviet Union, even though it acted "brutally" in its conflict last month with Georgia.

It was "foolhardy," he said, for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to "light a match" with a military operation in South Ossetia to forcibly reassert is authority over the breakaway region.

And Baker, secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush from 1989-1992, said he did not think "there is a deal to be struck" between Israel and the Palestinians. But he said the U.S. should get on good terms with Syria when there is a better chance for a deal. "It's ridiculous for us to say we are not going to talk to Syria," he said.

Source: AP News

http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=350837

[bigron]

'Bush nixed Israeli attack on Iran' 

26/09/2008 11:33:00 AM GMT

http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=165747
 
 The U.S. president had told Premier Ehud Olmert he would not back an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear sites, EU diplomatic sources claim.



Quoting senior European diplomatic sources, The Guardian said Olmert raised the issue of bombing Iranian nuclear facilities with George W. Bush in a one-to-one meeting on May 14.

Bush reportedly not only rejected the idea but stated that his view would not change.

The US president said he would not support such a strike because of fears of retaliation, possibly on US targets in Iraq and Afghanistan, and concerns that the Israelis would fail to disable Iran's nuclear facilities anyway, The Guardian wrote.

The newspaper noted that even if Israel had wanted to go ahead without Washington's agreement, its planes would be unable to reach Iran without passing through US-controlled airspace above Iraq.

Olmert himself raised the possibility of an attack at a press conference during a visit to London last November, when he said sanctions were not enough to block Iran's nuclear program.

Three weeks after Bush's red light on June 2, Israel mounted a massive air exercise covering several hundred miles in the eastern Mediterranean. It involved dozens of warplanes, including F-15s, F-16s and aerial refueling tankers.

The Guardian report comes as the Bush administration confirmed two weeks ago that it would sell Israel 1,000 bunker-busting bombs developed to target underground fortified facilities.

The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the small size of the Guided Bomb Unit-39 (GBU-39)GBU-39 would allow the Israeli Air Force to hit more of Iran's nuclear sites than is currently possible.

The US and Israel, both possessors of atomic arsenal, accuse Iran, a signatory of the NPT, of trying to develop a nuclear program. Tehran insists its activities are entirely peaceful.

The latest UN nuclear watchdog, which has conducted the largest number of inspections in the history of the agency on Iran's nuclear program, has repeated in its latest report that the body has not found any 'components of a nuclear weapon' or 'related nuclear physics studies' in the country.

Nonetheless, neither the United States nor Israel has ruled out a military response to the Iranian nuclear issue.

Referring to US and Israeli war rhetoric, Iran has repeatedly said it would react with force in case it comes under attack.

Iranian military officials have warned that the country would not hesitate in taking the necessary measures to protect its sovereignty - including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz - in case the country comes under attack.

Last week, dozens of Iranian fighter jets, surveillance planes, interceptor aircraft and radar drones took to the skies in a joint three-day military exercise.

The maneuvers were one of many drills conducted by Iran in recent months.

In mid-August, Iran's Air Force chief, Brigadier General Ahmad Miqani, announced that the country had revamped its fighter jet fleet to fly distances of 3,000 kilometers without refueling.

The upgrade allows Iranian aircraft to fly to Israel and back without needing to refuel.



-- Press TV

 

[bigron]

September 26, 2008


Iran: And the Beat Goes On
The beating of war drums, that is !


by Justin Raimondo


In a last-ditch, all-out effort to pave the way for war with Iran, Israel's lobby in the U.S. has inaugurated a new front group: United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI). What, "another" neocon front group – why is this important? With Richard Holbrooke, Obama's most prominent foreign policy advisor – and a likely Secretary of State or National Security Advisor in the Obama administration – joining neocon nutcase James R. Woolsey in the top leadership of this new group, the signal is clear: UANI represents a bipartisan call for war.

In an op ed piece for what else but the War Street Journal, the four horsemen of the apocalypse – Holbrooke, Woolsey, Dennis Ross, the Israel Lobby's ace-in-the-hole in the Obama camp, and Mark D. Wallace, formerly U.S. representative to the U.N. for management and reform – mirror the joint statement of Obama and McCain on the economic crisis. This is "not a partisan matter" – the War Party is the only party that really matters. "We may have different political allegiances and worldviews, " they aver,

"Yet we share a common concern – Iran's drive to be a nuclear state. We believe that Iran's desire for nuclear weapons is one of the most urgent issues facing America today, because even the most conservative estimates tell us that they could have nuclear weapons soon.

"A nuclear-armed Iran would likely destabilize an already dangerous region that includes Israel, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, and pose a direct threat to America's national security," etc., etc., etc…

I suppose it's just a coincidence that the list of threatened countries starts with Israel and ends with the United States, but I wonder…

Leaving the realm of speculation, and entering the region of hard facts: our own National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and its alleged nuclear weapons program shows that the Iranians had a weapons program that they abandoned: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." While keeping the option open, the Iranian regime has not restarted its nuclear program, according to our spooks, and probably could not iron out all the technical problems and hoarding of nuclear materials until at least 2015 – and even then there is no evidence Tehran has any such intention.

The NIE was issued last year around this time, and afterward Robert Gates spoke to the New York Times Magazine:

"One afternoon in late November, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was flying back to Washington from the Army base at Fort Hood, Tex., where he had spoken with soldiers and spouses about the future of Iraq. Sitting across from him at his desk in the back of the Pentagon's jet, I asked him about the possibility of another military conflict: U.S. air strikes on Iran. ‘The last thing the Middle East needs now is another war,' he said quietly. ‘We have to keep all options on the table,' he went on, reciting the standard caveat. ‘But if Iraq has shown us anything, it's the unpredictability of war. Once a conflict starts, the statesmen lose control.'"

This was supposed to signal that the much-anticipated U.S. strike on Iran – the imminence of which was predicted with near certainty by a number of commentators, including this one – has been successfully aborted. There was a collective and well-nigh audible sigh of relief, from Tehran to Terre Haute, but some of us were not convinced by this display of official caution. After all, the statesmen have lost control before….

If the NIE was supposed to blast the neocon war campaign out of the water, then its authors did not take into account the persistence – indeed, fanaticism – of the United for War With Iran crowd. The sheer relentlessness of the effort suggests its essential character as a lobbying campaign on behalf of a special interest – in this case, a very special interest. Corporate and professional lobbyists are notably impervious to facts, and tend to cherry-pick according to the interests of their clients, and foreign lobbyists certainly fall into this category. Yet the latter have a certain edge to them, lacking in the others – and Israel's lobby has the sharpest edge of all.

No one even pretends anymore that the Israel lobby isn't behind the effort to drag us into another Middle Eastern war. You don't have to be me, or Mearsheimer and Walt, to make this case: you have only to listen to the public pronouncements of Israel's leaders, who are openly demanding that either we strike, or else they will – perhaps, as has been suggested by Benny Morris, with nuclear weapons.

In the U.S., AIPAC, the scandal-rocked central command of Israel's amen corner, has come out of the shadows, where they remained during the run-up to the Iraq war, and taken the lead in calling for harsh sanctions and a military blockade of Iranian ports. Now we have this bipartisan ad hoc committee taking out full page newspaper ads and speaking in the implied names of both major party presidential candidates.

I had to laugh when I read, in the Journal op ed piece, that "Tehran's development of a nuclear bomb could serve as the ‘starter's gun' in a new and potentially deadly arms race in the most volatile region of the world. Many believe that Iran's neighbors would feel forced to pursue the bomb if it goes nuclear." Methinks the starter gun went off long off – sometime in the early 1960s, Israel having earlier procured the technology to make the Bomb from the French.

"Iran," say the four horsemen, "is a deadly and irresponsible world actor, employing terrorist organizations including Hezbollah and Hamas to undermine existing regimes and to foment conflict. Emboldened by the bomb, Iran will become more inclined to sponsor terror, threaten our allies, and support the most deadly elements of the Iraqi insurgency." One has only to insert "Israel" where Iran sits in those sentences, and the pot-kettle-black aspect of this whole issue is underscored, as is the ridiculous double standard. After all, Israel has surely been emboldened by its possession of nukes, lo these many years, and acted in a manner that could reasonably called irresponsible – and even deadly, now that you mention it. Yet Israel is not only given a pass, but the defining factor of the Middle Eastern strategic environment – Israel's nuclear arsenal – goes unmentioned by these worthies.

They are full of laughable pronouncements imbued with the solemnity that usually accompanies the argument from authority:

"The world rightfully doubts Tehran's assertion that it needs nuclear energy and is enriching nuclear materials for strictly peaceful purposes. Iran has vast supplies of inexpensive oil and natural gas, and its construction of nuclear reactors and attempts to perfect the nuclear fuel cycle are exceedingly costly. There is no legitimate economic reason for Iran to pursue nuclear energy."

Aside from the propriety of assuming to speak for "the world," one has to ask where the war propagandists have been hiding out lately: haven't they read about those gas lines in Iran? Sanctions and official corruption have contributed to the country's shortage, while rationing ensured it would continue. Indeed, the more tireless Iran-ophobes were at one point speculating that the resulting riots might well spell the end for the mullahs.

And I'm surprised they raised the following accusation, considering the context in which it is hurled:

"By continuing to act in open defiance of its treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, Iran rejects the inspections mandated by the IAEA and flouts multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and sanctions."

Iran is fully within its rights, under the terms of the treaty, to develop a nuclear energy program, which is what they say they are doing – and, as those gas lines attest, they have a real need for it. At any rate, at least Iran has signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, unlike a certain country whose interests seem to be at the heart of the signers' argument:

"At the same time, Iranian leaders declare that Israel is illegitimate and should not exist. President Ahmadinejad specifically calls for Israel to be ‘wiped off from the map,' while seeking the weapons to do so. Such behavior casts Iran as an international outlier. No one can reasonably suggest that a nuclear-armed Iran will suddenly honor international treaty obligations, acknowledge Israel's right to exist, or cease efforts to undermine the Arab-Israeli peace process."

That old canard about wiping Israel off the map has been debunked so many times as a mis-translation of what the Ahmadinejad really said – which was something more akin to predicting that Israel would be washed away by the tides of history and demography – yet it keeps bouncing right back. Just like all the other lies spread far and wide by the War Party's propagandists. Remember that one about Mohammed Atta meeting a top Iraqi intelligence official at the Prague airport? That one didn't die until well after the invasion. I wonder how many people still believe Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks? A lie, repeated relentlessly, becomes enmeshed in the public consciousness, and rooting it out is a major operation, with a problematic success rate.

That's what we do, here at Antiwar.com – root out the lies, and set the record straight. We did it in the run-up to the last war, and we're doing the same thing when it comes to the Iranian issue. The chances that we'll succeed, this time, in stopping the rush to war are better now, perhaps, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. The forces pushing for war, led by the Israel lobby, are marshalling their supporters for a final push. Even if they don't pull it off before the election, the Holbrooke-Woolsey Pact will go down in history as the turning point, politically, the crucial juncture when the American elite made the decision to go to war because the Lobby demanded it.

Our political elites speak in unison: accept the bailout, pay trillions to the plutocrats – accept the coming war with Iran – and pay with the lives of your children. Our leaders, their system in crisis, have closed ranks around the slogan of Big Government at home, and progressively bigger wars abroad. If it were one crisis, or the other, Americans might remain impassive. In this case, however, with the economy imploding and the threat of war looming simultaneously, the Washington crowd that thought it could ride out the turbulence is finding it's a bit more of a bumpy ride than they or anyone else imagined. The people are awakening, but there is a danger in this: without leaders of their own, their rebellion is bound to be inchoate, undirected, and perhaps even violent. As Garet Garrett put it, anticipating this moment some sixty odd years ago:

"No doubt the people know they can have their Republic back if they want it enough to figh for it and to pay the price. The only point is that no leader has yet appeared with the courage to make them choose."

~ Justin Raimondo

 
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13507 
 

[Biggs]

clearly more of the ongoing pre-positioning of munitions and equipment in the middle east theater as part of a multiyear stealth military preparation for an attack. It does not mean one is imminent but is another cog in the wheel in place.

EuCom deploys radar, troops to Israel
Gayle S. Putrich


www.uruknet.info?p=47560

Link: www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/defense_xband_092608/

Saturday Sep 27, 2008 7:18:28 EDT

U.S. European Command has deployed to Israel a high-powered X-band radar and the supporting people and equipment needed for coordinated defense against Iranian missile attack, marking the first permanent U.S. military presence on Israeli soil.

More than a dozen aircraft, including C-5s and C-17s, helped with the Sept. 21 delivery of the AN/TPY-2 Transportable Radar Surveillance/Forward Based X-band Transportable, its ancillary components and some 120 EuCom personnel to Israel’s Nevatim Air Base southeast of Beersheba, said sources here and in Stuttgart, Germany.

Among the U.S. personnel is at least one representative from the Missile Defense Agency, although officials said the agency had little to no say in the deployment decision. MDA involvement has been confined to providing equipment and advice on technical aspects of its deployment, one official said.

The Raytheon-built FBX-T system is the same phased-array radar that was deployed to northern Japan with the U.S. Pacific Air Forces in 2006. The high-powered, high-frequency, transportable X-band radar is designed to detect and track ballistic missiles soon after launch.

Its ancillary gear included cooling systems, generators, perimeter defense weaponry, logistics supplies and dozens of technicians, maintenance specialists and security forces to operate and defend the U.S. installation.

EuCom has repeatedly deployed troops and Patriot air defense batteries for joint exercises and Iraq-related wartime contingencies but has never before permanently deployed troops on Israeli soil.

A EuCom spokesman declined to comment. MDA officials referred to the U.S. State Department, which did not provide comment Friday.

An Israeli military spokesman said the Israel Defense Forces enjoys long-standing strategic cooperation with all branches of the U.S. military.

"This cooperation is varied and comes in multiple forms, and it is not our practice to discuss details of our bilateral activities," he said.

Nevertheless, in previous interviews, U.S. and Israeli officials confirmed that the X-band deployment plan was approved in July, first by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his Israeli counterpart, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi; and then by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Shaving minutes from reaction time

The radar will be linked to the U.S. Joint Tactical Ground Station, which receives and processes threat data transmitted by U.S. Defense Support System satellites. According to U.S. and Israeli sources, JTAGS will remain in Europe, but its essential cueing data will stream into the forward-deployed X-band radar, where it instantaneously shares information with Israel’s Arrow Weapon System.

Once operational, the combined U.S. and Israeli system is expected to double or even triple the range at which Israel can detect, track and ultimately intercept Iranian missiles, according to Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the MDA.

During a visit to Israel in early August, Obering said the X-Band radar could add precious minutes to the time in which Israel has to respond to incoming missile attacks.

"The missile threat from Iran is very real, and we must stay ahead of the threat ... that’s why we’re working so hard with all our allies to put the most optimized, effective, anti-missile capabilities in place," Obering said.

"In the context of Israel, if we can take the radar out here and tie it into the Arrow Weapon System, they’ll be able to launch that interceptor way before they could with an autonomous system," he added.

Brig. Gen. Ilan Biton of the Israel Air Force reserves, a former commander of the nation’s air defense forces, could not comment on the latest developments associated with the X-band radar. However, he said that an IAF air defense brigade established during his 2003-06 tenure has continuously demonstrated its ability to interoperate well with American forces.

"We advanced tremendously on multiple levels and have developed very impressive cooperation," Biton said at a Sept. 22 conference in Herzliya. Referring to bilateral Juniper Cobra air defense exercises and the 2003 deployment of Patriot batteries prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Biton noted, "At the human level, we’ve developed a common language and at the technical level, we’ve put in place the interfaces that allow our systems to speak to one another."

The end result, according to Biton, is a combined ability "to manage battles, execute debriefs and implement corrections, all in real time."
Twin messages

As U.S. public affairs officers last week debated whether to publicly disclose the Israel deployment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York, continued to defend his country’s nuclear enrichment and missile development program.

"Iran’s [nuclear] activities are peaceful," Ahmadinejad said Sept. 23, adding that in Israel, "the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse."

A U.S. government source said the X-band deployment and other bilateral alliance-bolstering activities send parallel messages: "First, we want to put Iran on notice that we’re bolstering our capabilities throughout the region, and especially in Israel. But just as important, we’re telling the Israelis, 'Calm down; behave. We’re doing all we can to stand by your side and strengthen defenses, because at this time, we don’t want you rushing into the military option.’"

But in Israel, frustration is mounting at what is roundly perceived as a lack of international resolve to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons drive. At a Sept. 21 meeting of the Israeli Cabinet, an Israeli military intelligence officer reported that Iran is accelerating the pace at which it enriches uranium, and that Tehran already possesses possibly half of the fissionable material needed to produce its first nuclear warhead.

Reflecting Israeli concern about the ineffectiveness of sanctions against Tehran, Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz, head of Military Intelligence’s research department, reported, "The international front against Iran is weak and not consolidated, and isn’t putting enough pressure on the regime to stop enriching uranium."

According to selected excerpts from the briefing released by the Israeli prime minister’s office, Baidatz warned that Iran is "galloping toward a nuclear bomb."

"The sanctions have very little influence and are far from bringing to bear a critical mass of pressure on Iran," he added.

Vago Muradian contributed to this report from Washington, Barbara Opall-Rome from Tel Aviv.

[bigron]

Should We Fear Iran?

The Peter Principle Playoffs

By Sheila Samples
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20876.htm


We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men ~~ George Orwell

So here we sit, our heads jerking back and forth so rapidly most of us are suffering severe whiplash. Will the US attack Iran? Will Israel attack Iran? Or will the two war-mongering bullies join forces and "bomb, bomb, bomb" that belligerent twit-nation into subservience?

It's a great game. A deadly game. The momentum to attack Iran has been building for so long that we're conditioned to watching it like some grotesque international tennis competition. It's the Peter Principle Playoffs, with neoconsters and ziomonsters out on the court milling around, working at their highest "levels of incompetence," feverishly plotting Iran's destruction. Foul lines mean nothing to them. There are no rules, no officials, no scores, no accountability.

Bolton's Law

Immediately before Bush invaded Iraq, the criminally insane John Bolton, then Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, made a personal trip to Israel to assure Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that as soon as we destroyed Iraq, we'd "deal with threats" from Syria, Iran and North Korea. However, it's obvious Iran has always been at the top of the list.

Since 2003, both US and Israeli governments, the corporate media, especially Fox News, and the US Congress have been unrelenting in their campaign to convince the world that Iran is an immediate nuclear threat, although Iran insists it is seeking nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. In August 2003, the UK Guardian's Simon Tisdall wrote, "They call it a trap. But we call it Bolton's first law of international power politics; keep the other guy guessing; wear him down. When he gives a little, demand a whole lot more. Then zap him anyway."

Bolton's Law: Make wild accusations. Escalate terror and confusion. Kill. Repeat.

It's no laughing matter, but the sight of this tousle-headed, "got milk?" maniac running in circles, warning of -- demanding -- a nuclear holocaust is good for a grin, albeit a grim one. Even as he was being forced onto the United Nations over national and international objections, Bolton was hot on Iran's trail. He insisted that Iran is the most dangerous critter out there -- harboring terrorists, arming terrorists, training terrorists -- sending bombs, IEDs, weapons to Iraq to kill Americans. If it weren't for Iran, there would have been no 9-11 attack because Iran provided safe haven for the box-cutting killers headed our way. Bolton warned if Iran managed to produce a single nuclear weapon, Israel, the United States -- the world -- was toast. He promised that Iran will come after us. "That's the threat," Bolton barked, "that's the reality whether you like it or not. And it will be just like Sept. 11, only with nuclear weapons this time."

Bolton keeps showing up for work even though his paycheck is now signed by the second most powerful Israeli Lobby, the American Enterprise Institute . He's determined that Iran is going down and, if he can't goad the US into action, he will whip Israel into a frenzy. Like the Batman's Joker, Bolton leaps from the pages of the Wall Street Journal in catastrophic convulsions on a regular basis. On July 15, Bolton insisted "we should be intensively considering what cooperation the U.S. will extend to Israel before, during and after a strike on Iran. We will be blamed for the strike anyway," Bolton reasoned, "...so there is compelling logic to make it as successful as possible. At a minimum, we should place no obstacles in Israel's path, and facilitate its efforts where we can."

Who's On First?

Bolton is surrounded by fellow psychopaths like Norman Podhoretz who insists our only choice is to bomb Iran before Iran gets the bomb and bombs us. Podhoretz is a key figure in the Playoffs with his constant drumbeat that Iran is the "leading sponsor of terrorism in the world," and once it achieves nuclear technology, we're all gonna die!

And National Review's Larry Kudlow, who swooned ecstatically when Israel cluster-bombed Lebanon two years ago. Israel was "doing the Lord's work," defending freedom against the "Iranian cat's-paw" of terrorism. Kudlow says Israel must not stop, but furiously attack "all the terrorist sanctuaries, training camps, weapons caches, and missile systems it can find." Scary Larry enthusiastically supports at least half of Bolton's Law -- the last half.

Others joining Bolton for whom the destruction of Iran is a political game include Bill Kristol, virtuous "bookie" Bill Bennett, Joe Lieberman, and Daniel Pipes, whose harsh and raucous predictions center around whether Bush will attack Iran before or after the upcoming election. If McCain wins, most say that Bush will pass the nuclear baton to him while sprinting to the finish line to pardon his fellow war criminals. However, if McCain should lose, they agree that Bush will get his war on and leave the mess for Obama to clean up.

Those who continue to beat the drums of war trust that we will believe what they say without considering the obvious. Just last week, to coincide with President Ahmadi-Nejad's visit to the UN, former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke, former CIA director James Woolsey, former Clinton Middle East coordinator Dennis Ross, and former UN representative for management and reform Mark Wallace wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal regurgitating rigid neoconservative talking points.

Channeling Cheney, they wrote that we shouldn't believe Iran when it says it "needs nuclear energy and is enriching nuclear materials for strictly peaceful purposes." Hey, Iran has "vast supplies of inexpensive oil and natural gas," so there's no "legitimate economic reason for Iran to pursue nuclear energy."

Then, unable to resist an unsubstantiated "Bushism" or two, these heavy hitters warned that "Iran is a deadly and irresponsible world actor," and should it get the bomb, Iran would "sponsor terror, threaten our allies, and support the most deadly elements of the Iraqi insurgency."

Finally, they whipped out Bolton's Law with the wild -- and discredited -- accusation that "President Ahmadinejad specifically calls for Israel to be 'wiped from the map,' while seeking the weapons to do so."

The constant discordant barrage of accusations and demands is so outrageous we attempt to shrug it off as mostly ideological clatter-babble, yet we sit paralyzed with fear. We are unable to recognize the real danger that looms just beyond the shadows.

But we know he's there. When Dick Cheney emerges, we are bewitched by the horror he evokes as he piles lie upon bloody lie about Iran's nuclear activities -- in spite of international findings and US intelligence lack of evidence. He accuses Iran of smuggling weapons of mass destruction into Iraq to kill Americans. Iran is training insurgents, is joined at the hip with Al-Qaeda, is the world's most dangerous sponsor of terrorism, and if it can get its hands on just one nuclear weapon, it will immediately lob it in Israel's direction.

In 2005, Cheney instructed the Pentagon to draw up a plan for a nuclear attack on Iran should another 9-11-type terrorist attack on the U.S. occur, even if Iran had nothing to do with it. To provoke a war, Cheney suggested dressing up Navy Seals as Iranians, putting them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shooting at them. Murdering Americans in cold blood, exterminating 60-70 million innocent Iranians and contaminating millions more throughout the region is a small price for Cheney to pay. Iran must face the consequences for having the audacity to possess two-thirds of the world's oil.

Bad, Bad Ahmadi-Nejad

Since being elected in June 2005 as Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad has rhetorically stepped in it and tracked it all over the Persian rug. Scarcely in office four months, he gave a speech in which he quoted the Ayatollah Khomeini who had said years earlier -- "This regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)." That comment was transcribed as Ahmadi-Nejad threatening to wipe Israel off the map, and despite repeated efforts to get the correct translation out, the world's media went into a shrieking frenzy that has yet to abate.

Ahmadi-Nejad has made numerous public and private diplomatic overtures to the United States in the last three years, and all have been rejected -- with insults, sneers, and threats. It is critical to the outcome of the Playoffs that spectators see Ahmadi-Nejad as a criminally insane killer who is a threat to the entire world. He is sort of cocky, and his arrogance at insisting that Iran has the same rights and privileges under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as the other members, that Iran has the right to pursue nuclear power for peaceful purposes, and that George Bush is not Iran's "Decider" is driving guys like Bolton over the edge.

Which -- when you think about it -- is not necessarily a bad thing...

So, who is this guy? Few know that Ahmadi-Nejad is an Engineer with a Ph.D on transportation engineering, a university professor, a working member on the Iran Civil Engineering Society, and the Islamic Association of Students in the Science and Technology University, as well as others. He is an accomplished journalist and former managing director of the Hamshahri newspaper. He was the mayor of Tehran before running for president. Even fewer know that, in reality, he wields no power other than that allotted to him by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader. He's deeply religious, stubborn and reckless. He's unpredictable and, at times, dangerous. Ohmigod -- when you think about it -- Ahmadi-Nejad is "Bush with Brains!"

Should We Fear Iran?

Iran's nuclear ambitions for other than peaceful purposes are as elusive as Iraq's WMD, which defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said were "in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." Yet we are in danger of being swept up in the propaganda catapulted by the Bush administration and the corporate media once again. Perhaps we should take a deep breath and apply a bit of logic here, pay close attention to the obvious. If Iran is truly a threat to the entire world, then we should be afraid. However, demanding that Iran either prove a negative or face extermination of millions of its citizens does not, and should not, pass the terror smell test.

It is obvious that, in this unstable era, we should be aware of, and even fear, those countries bristling with nukes. For starters, the United States has more nuclear weapons than any other nation. Then there's Russia, China, France, Britain, India, Pakistan, North Korea and...shhhhh...Israel. Currently, Pakistan is in turmoil and threatening to shoot down US planes that fly across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and kill civilians, Russia refuses to back off from its Georgia stance no matter how vigorously Condi Rice wags her finger in its face, China has abruptly cut off financial deals with the US because of the plummeting dollar, and North Korea is restarting its Yongbyon nuclear reactor because Bush broke his promise to remove it from Washington's list of state sponsors of terror.

Yet, amidst all this fury and instability, we are obsessed with destroying Iran -- a nation that, in modern history, has never attacked another country -- and which has repeatedly maintained it seeks nuclear power primarily for generating electricity for its growing population. In 2005, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a Fatwa that "the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire these weapons."

What is obvious to anyone familiar with the timeline of Iran's nuclear program from the 1950s is that Iran has never sought nuclear energy for anything other than peaceful purposes. In 1957, the Shah opened the American Atoms for Peace in Tehran, and signed an agreement with the US for cooperation in research on peaceful uses of nuclear technology. And, in 1968, Iran signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on the first day it opened for signature. In the late 70's, the US supplied Iran with two nuclear power reactors and enriched uranium fuel, and granted Iran the "most favored nation" status so it would not be discriminated against when seeking permission to reprocess US-origin fuel.

To restate the obvious -- if we are to fear Iran, it is not because, as Bush said in June -- "They refuse to abandon their desires to develop the know-how which could lead to a nuclear weapon" -- it is because Iran threatens to defend itself if attacked. It is because other nations, such as Russia, refuse to stand idly by as Iran is "wiped off the map."

We need to get our minds around who is the aggressor here. Because if we continue to passively watch the evil unfold; if Dick Cheney wins the behind-the-scenes, off-court power struggle, the Peter Principle Playoffs will be over and the entire Middle East will explode in nuclear flames.

Sheila Samples http://sheilastuff.blogspot.com/ is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@wichitaonline.net

[bigron]

America Should Listen To Ahmadinejad

By aul Craig Roberts
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20897.htm


29/09/08 "ICH" -- - The full text of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech to the UN General Assembly last week was printed in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz (9-25-08). :
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20872.htm


Although our Founding Fathers would have  comprehended and endorsed Ahmadinejad’s speech to the United Nations, present-day Americans would find it strange should they happen to hear about it.   

Unlike their forbears, Americans today live a material life, not a spiritual one.  Americans are far too likely to dismiss Ahmadinejad’s words about obeisance to God and justice as the mumbo-jumbo of an “Islamist extremist.” 

The hubris of Americans and their belief in U.S. “exceptionalism” would cause them to reject Ahmadinejad’s holding the US, its NATO puppets, and Israel accountable before the UN General Assembly.  So successfully has Ahmadinejad been demonized by the propagandistic US media that his speech would be dismissed out of hand by the arrogance of those who regard themselves as the salt of the earth.

Ahmadinejad echos the statements of other world leaders when he says that US power is rapidly waning.  The US “superpower” is dependent on foreigners for its financing. The US cannot exist without Chinese financing, just as Europe cannot exist without Russian energy.  America’s European puppet regimes are rethinking the consequences of serving US hegemony.

A “superpower” that cannot subdue Iraq and Afghanistan cannot subdue Russia and China.  Do Americans and their neocon leaders believe that China and Russia will lend the US the money to finance a war against themselves?  Do they believe that Russia will keep America’s NATO puppets supplied with energy if American aggression against Russia intensifies?

Warnings about America’s financial dependency on foreigners have been ignored.

The bailout of the US financial system is entirely dependent on the willingness of the Chinese, Saudis, and other foreigners to use their trade surpluses with the US  to purchase the US Treasury instruments that must be sold in order to raise the money for Bush’s bailout of the financial institutions.

The bailout of the US government’s budget has been going on for years, and it takes place every time the US Treasury holds an auction of new American debt.  But now the bailout by foreigners of the US government is starting to turn into much larger sums that carry much higher risks.

Last week the Financial Times reported that Peer Steinbruck, the Finance Minister of Germany, said that the American financial crisis was “a fundamental rupture” and that “the US will lose its status as the superpower of the world financial system.”

Steinbruck is being charitable.  The US lost that status when it became dependent on foreigners to finance  American consumption of foreign goods and US goods and services produced offshore in addition to the war-swollen budget deficits of the US government.  Indeed, foreigners finance Americans’ home mortgages.  The Chinese alone hold about $400 billion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds.

Is Ahmadinejad correct in his view that, with the waning of American hegemonic power, the world is on the verge of a better, more humane, and more just world?  I wonder. Many Americans think of themselves as hard-nosed realists. They believe that it is a dog-eat-dog world:  We have to get “them” before they get us.  This paranoid view is the basis of US foreign and military policy.  It holds that America must not only have the military power to overwhelm any combination of possible enemies, but also America must prevent the rise of any country or countries that could challenge American power. This is a “diplomacy” without any concept of peaceful coexistence or good will among men. Yet, Americans think of themselves as a Christian nation.

Neocons and macho Republicans think we don’t win our wars because we lack the balls to use enough force. They believe that the US should nuke every country that doesn’t follow our orders. Indeed, many American “conservatives” are lusting for the US to nuke a country in order “to teach the world a lesson.” 

To accommodate this blood-lust, the Bush Pentagon revised US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack even upon non-nuclear-armed countries.  During the long cold war, preemptive nuclear attack was not a US option.

Which vision of the future will win out?  Ahmadinejad’s policy of peaceful co-existence or neoconservative desires for American world dominance?   The chance is too high for comfort that the hubris and arrogance of the United States will lead to a nuclear confrontation that will destroy the world.   

People of good will hope that Ahmadinejad and Steinbruck’s views will prevail and that the rest of the world will wake up and ask if they want to continue financing America’s hegemonic ventures that threaten life on earth.  The day the foreign bankers turn off the credit spigot to the US Treasury, American arrogance will be tamed.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

[bigron]

Ahmadinejad Accepts Israel's Right to Exist

The Iranian president has said he would accept a two-state solution if the Palestinians agree. So where are the headlines?

By Peter Tatchell

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/29/iran.israel.ahmadinejad

29/09/08 "The Telegraph" - -- Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made a remarkable announcement. He's admitted that Iran might agree to the existence of the state of Israel.
Ahmadinejad was asked: "If the Palestinian leaders agree to a two-state solution, could Iran live with an Israeli state?"

This was his astonishing reply:

If they [the Palestinians] want to keep the Zionists, they can stay ... Whatever the people decide, we will respect it. I mean, it's very much in correspondence with our proposal to allow Palestinian people to decide through free referendums.

Since most Palestinians are willing to accept a two-state solution, the Iranian president is, in effect, agreeing to Israel's right to exist and opening the door to a peace deal that Iran will endorse.

Ahmadinejad made this apparently extraordinary shift in policy during an
interview last week when he was in New York to address the UN general assembly.

He was interviewed on September 24 by reporters Juan Gonzalez, writing for the New York Daily News, and Amy Goodman for the current affairs TV programme, Democracy Now.

You can watch the full interview and read the full text on the Democracy Now website.

Surprisingly, Ahmadinejad's sensational softening of his long-standing, point-blank anti-Israeli stance was not even headlined by the two reporters. Perhaps this was a decision by their editors? Did they not want to admit that Ahmadinejad may have, for once, said something vaguely progressive?

Equally odd, the story wasn't picked up by the world's media. For many years, the Iranian president has been vilified, usually justifiably. Now, when he says something positive and helpful, the media ignores it. Is this because of some anti-Iran or pro-Israel agenda?

Why ignore a statement that is, from any political and journalistic perspective, a radical departure from Ahmadinejad's previous unyielding anti-Israel tirades? Only a week earlier in Tehran he was saying that the Israeli state would not survive.

Confused? Aren't we all. Will the real Mahmoud Ahmadinejad please stand up?

Is he a deceiver and an unprincipled opportunist who will say anything to further Iran's political agenda? Or could it be that beneath his often demagogic public rhetoric against Israel he is, in fact, open to options more moderate than his reported remarks about wiping the Israeli state off the map?

I am not defending or endorsing Ahmadinejad in any way, shape or form. Indeed, I am on record as being one of Ahmadinejad's harshest critics. I've protested dozens of times outside the Iranian Embassy in London and written scores of articles exposing his regime's persecution of trade unionists, students, journalists, human rights defenders, women's equality campaigners, gay people, Sunni Muslims and ethnic minorities such as the Arabs, Kurds, Azeris and Balochis.

You can watch my Talking with Tatchell online TV programmes on the Iranian regime's anti-Arab racism here, and on the rising popular resistance to its police state methods here.

But I also hope I am open-minded and fair. Even I can see that Ahmadinejad appears to have moderated his position and is now apparently willing, with Palestinian agreement, to accept the co-existence of two states: Israel and Palestine.

Many Israelis and their allies will no doubt say Ahmadinejad can't be trusted; that his comments were part of a manipulative charm offensive during his visit to the UN in New York. They may be right. But even if he is being disingenuous, that fact that he's made this public concession on Israel at all is a softening of sorts.

News of what he said will filter back to Tehran and he'll have to account for his words to his government, including the hardline anti-Israel ayatollahs and revolutionary guards. I wonder what they think?

Call me naive, but in my view Ahmadinejad's words were of major significance. He ought be pressed by world leaders, and Israel, to repeat them and to clarify them. His statement might, and I emphasise might, be evidence that Iran is open to some negotiation on the future of the Israeli state.

If Israel's leaders had any sense, they would ignore past provocations by Iran and seize this moment to have dialogue with the Palestinian and Iranian leaders on a two-state solution. What Ahmadinejad has said could be an opening to diffuse the stand-off between Iran and Israel.

I am not relenting one inch in my condemnation of Ahmadinejad's regime, with its grisly torture chambers, execution of juvenile offenders and neocolonial subjugation of national minorities. But I do find myself in considerable agreement with the Iranian president's analysis of why the Middle East peace process has stalled. He told Gonzales and Goodman:

The first reason is that none of the solutions have actually addressed the root cause of the problem. The root cause is the presence of an illegitimate government regime that has usurped and imposed itself on, meaning they have brought people from other parts of the world, replaced them with people who had existed in the territory and then forced the exit of the old people out, the people who lived there, out of the country or the territories. So there have been two simultaneous displacements. The indigenous people were forced out and displaced, and a group of other people scattered around the globe were gathered and placed in a new place ... A second reason is that none of those peace plans offered so far have given attention to the right to self-determination of the Palestinians. If a group of people are forced out of their country, that doesn't mean their rights are gone, even with the passage of 60 years. Can you ignore the rights of those displaced? How is it possible for people to arrive from far-off lands and have the right to self-determination, whereas the indigenous people of the territory are denied that right?

Much as I loathe his regime, Ahmadinejad is basically right. The key to peace in the Middle East is concessions from the occupying power. As the stronger, wealthier and conquering partner, Israel should take the initiative and help kick-start the peace process by withdrawing unilaterally and totally from the territories it has occupied illegally (according to international law) since the 1967 war. This means pulling out from all of the West Bank and dismantling all the illegal Israeli settlements.

The West Bank, plus Gaza, should become the independent, sovereign state of Palestine, backed with international aid and investment to create the infrastructure for economic development and for social provision (new houses, schools, hospitals, transport links and sports facilities).

Jobs and prosperity in Palestine will undercut and isolate the men of violence. They will lose support and become marginalised in a self-governing state where ordinary Palestinians experience the tangible benefits of peace.

This is so damn obvious. When will Israel's leaders wake up and realise that peace with justice is the only way to give their people lasting security?

[bigron]

Inside Iran's Fury

Scholars trace the nation's antagonism to its history of domination by foreign powers

By Stephen Kinzer

Smithsonian magazine, October 2008



No American who was alive and alert in the early 1980s will ever forget the Iran hostage crisis. Militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, captured American diplomats and staff and held 52 of them captive for 444 days. In the United States, the television news program "Nightline" emerged to give nightly updates on the crisis, with anchorman Ted Koppel beginning each report by announcing that it was now "Day 53" or "Day 318" of the crisis. For Americans, still recovering from defeat in Vietnam, the hostage crisis was a searing ordeal. It stunned the nation and undermined Jimmy Carter's presidency. Many Americans see it as the pivotal episode in the history of U.S.-Iranian relations.

Iranians, however, have a very different view.

Bruce Laingen, a career diplomat who was chief of the U.S. embassy staff, was the highest-ranking hostage. One day, after Laingen had spent more than a year as a hostage, one of his captors visited him in his solitary cell. Laingen exploded in rage, shouting at his jailer that this hostage-taking was immoral, illegal and "totally wrong." The jailer waited for him to finish, then replied without sympathy.

"You have nothing to complain about," he told Laingen. "The United States took our whole country hostage in 1953."

Few Americans remembered that Iran had descended into dictatorship after the United States overthrew the most democratic government it had ever known. "Mr. President, do you think it was proper for the United States to restore the shah to the throne in 1953 against the popular will within Iran?" a reporter asked President Carter at a news conference during the hostage crisis. "That's ancient history," Carter replied.

Not for Iranians. "In the popular mind, the hostage crisis was seen as justified by what had happened in 1953," says Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts. "People saw it as an act of national assertiveness, of Iran standing up and taking charge of its own destiny. The humiliation of 1953 was exorcised by the taking of American hostages in 1979."

This chasm of perception reflects the enormous gap in the way Americans and Iranians viewed—and continue to view—one another. It will be hard for them to reconcile their differences unless they begin seeing the world through each other's eyes.

Iran's assertiveness on the global stage—especially its defiant pursuit of what it sees as its sovereign right to a nuclear program—is in part the product of traumatic events that have shaped its national consciousness over the course of generations. In fact, all of 20th-century Iranian history can be seen as leading to this confrontation. That history has been dominated by a single burning passion: to destroy the power that foreigners have long held over Iran.

Many countries in the Middle East are modern inventions, carved out of the Ottoman Empire by victorious European powers following the end of World War I. That is not the case with Iran, one of the world's oldest and proudest nations. Half a millennium before the birth of Christ, the great conquerors Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes built the Persian Empire into a far-reaching power. When Europe was descending into the Dark Age, Persian poets were creating works of timeless beauty, and Persian scientists were studying mathematics, medicine and astronomy. Over the centuries, the nation that would become Iran thrived as it assimilated influences from Egypt, Greece and India.

Persian armies were not always victorious. They failed to turn back invading Arabs who conquered Persia in the seventh century, decisively reshaping it by introducing Islam. But the Persians turned even this defeat into a kind of victory by adopting their own form of Islam, Shiism, which allowed them to maintain the distinct identity they have always cherished. Shiite Muslims broke ranks with the majority Sunnis as a result of a succession dispute following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in A.D. 632.

While Sunnis believe that Muhammad's friend and adviser, Abu Bakr, was the legitimate successor, Shiites believe that 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet's first cousin and son-in-law, was the rightful heir, and that the Prophet's legitimate lineage ended with the "occultation" of Muhammad al-Mahdi around A.D. 874. This Twelfth Imam is believed to have been hidden by God and is destined to return before the Last Judgment. Shiite religious scholars argued that they should take on some of the Imam's responsibilities in the meantime. (Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini further expanded this concept to justify the clerical rule he imposed on Iran after 1979.) Shiite rulers brought Persia to another peak of power in the 16th and 17th centuries, creating a magnificent capital at Isfahan, where spectacular buildings like the Imam Mosque still testify to the empire's grandeur.

From this rich heritage, Iranians have developed a deep-rooted sense of national identity. The pride they take in their achievements, however, is mixed with resentment. Beginning in the 18th century, Persia descended from glorious heights to appalling depths. Weak and corrupt leaders allowed foreign powers to subjugate the nation. Afghan tribesmen overran and looted Isfahan in 1722. During the early 19th century, Russia seized large Persian territories in the Caspian provinces of Georgia, Armenia, Dagestan and Azerbaijan. In 1872, a British company bought a "concession" from the decadent Qajar dynasty that gave it the exclusive right to run Persia's industries, irrigate its farmland, exploit its mineral resources, develop its railway and streetcar lines, establish its national bank and print its currency. The British statesman Lord Curzon would call this "the most complete and extraordinary surrender of the entire industrial resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has ever been dreamed of, much less accomplished, in history."

Public outrage in Iran led to the withdrawal of the British concession in 1873, but the incident reflected Iran's new status as a vassal state and a pawn in great-power rivalries. For nearly 150 years, Russia and Britain dominated Iran's economy and manipulated its leaders. This history still stings. "Nationalism, the desire for independence, is a fundamental theme," says Shaul Bakhash, who teaches Iranian history at George Mason University in Virginia. "The memory of foreign intervention in Iran runs very deep. It is playing itself out again in today's stand-off with the United States over the nuclear program. Iranians think, ‘Once again the West wants to deny us technology and modernism and independence.' It's a very powerful history. Iran is extraordinarily sensitive to any indication of foreign influence or foreign direction."

A series of uprisings shaped modern Iranian nationalism. The first erupted in 1891, after the British Imperial Tobacco Company took control of Iran's tobacco industry, which reached deep into the national life of a country where many people survived by growing tobacco and many more smoked it. The morally and financially bankrupt Qajar leader, Nasir al-Din Shah, sold the industry to British Imperial for the laughably small sum of £15,000. Under the terms of the deal, Iranian tobacco farmers had to sell their crops at prices set by British Imperial, and every smoker had to buy tobacco from a shop that was part of its retail network. This proved one outrage too many. A national boycott of tobacco, supported by everyone from intellectuals and clerics to Nasir al-Din's own harem women, swept the country. Troops fired upon protesters at a huge demonstration in Tehran. After a series of even larger demonstrations broke out, the concession was canceled. "For a long time Iranians had been watching other people take control of their destiny," says John Woods, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Chicago. "The tobacco revolt was the moment when they stood up and said they'd had enough."

That revolt crystallized the sense of outrage that had been building in Iran for more than a century. It also laid the groundwork for the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, in which reformers chipped away at the power of the dying Qajar dynasty by establishing a parliament and a national electoral system. Over the century that followed, many Iranian elections were rigged and many constitutional provisions were violated. Nonetheless, democracy is not a new idea for Iranians. They have been struggling toward it for more than 100 years. That makes Iran fertile ground for democratic transition in ways that most nearby countries are not.

"The ingredients are all there," says Barbara Slavin, recently a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation. "Iran has an established history of elections that has put people in the habit of going to the polls. Iranians are used to hearing different opinions expressed in parliament and in the press. They turn out to vote in great numbers, and hold elected officials accountable for their actions."

Although the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 weakened the Qajar dynasty, it did not end it. That was fine with the Russians and British, who continued treating Iran like a colony. In 1907, the two nations signed a treaty dividing Iran between them. The British assumed control over southern provinces, guaranteeing them a land route to India, and Russia took over the north, ensuring it control over the region adjoining its southern border. No Iranian representative attended the conference in St. Petersburg at which this extraordinary treaty was signed.

Moscow's interest in Iran waned as Russia was consumed by civil war and then, in 1917, fell under Bolshevik rule. Britain moved to fill the vacuum. In 1919 it assumed control over Iran's army, treasury, transportation system and communications network through imposition of the Anglo-Persian Agreement, ensuring its approval through the simple expedient of bribing the Iranian negotiators. In a memorandum to his British cabinet colleagues, Lord Curzon defended the agreement, arguing that Britain could not permit the frontiers of its Indian Empire to descend into "a hotbed of misrule, enemy intrigue, financial chaos and political disorder." He garnished Britain's traditional rivalry with Russia with fears of Communist conspiracies: "If Persia were to be alone, there is every reason to fear that she would be overrun by Bolshevik influence from the north."

The Anglo-Persian Agreement, which all but ended Iran's status as an independent state, sparked a second uprising in 1921. The Qajar dynasty was removed from power and replaced by a fiercely reformist dictator—an illiterate former stableboy who came to call himself Reza Shah (shah being the Persian word for "king"). In appearance Reza was an intimidating figure, "six foot three in height, with a sullen manner, huge nose, grizzled hair and a brutal jowl," the British chronicler Vita Sackville-West wrote after attending his coronation in 1926. "He looked, in fact, like what he was, a Cossack trooper; but there was no denying he was a kingly presence."

That aptly captured Reza Shah's dual nature. He resorted to brutal tactics to crush bandits, tribal leaders and everyone else he saw as blocking his drive to re-establish Iran as a great power, but he also deserves credit for creating the modern Iranian state. He built the country's first railway, established a national bank and stripped clerics of much of their power. Shockingly, he banned the veil for women. The decree was so radical that many women refused to leave their homes.

Although many Iranians were appalled by Reza Shah, they admired and supported him because they believed a strong central government was needed to fight back against foreign domination. It was during this period that the modern idea of what it meant to be Iranian began to take shape. "Before the beginning of the 20th century, if you asked a villager where he was from, he would say he was from such-and-such village," says Janet Afary, a professor of history at Purdue University who has written extensively about the Constitutional Revolution. "If you pressed him about his identity, he would say he was a Muslim. National identification, in the sense of everyone in the country calling themselves Iranian, started with the intellectuals of the Constitutional Revolution and was institutionalized under Reza Shah."

The Iranian government developed close economic and political ties with Germany, the European rival to Iran's traditional enemies, Britain and Russia. That relationship prompted the Allies to invade Iran in 1941. They crushed Iran's pitiful army in a campaign that lasted less than a month. This showed Iranians that despite all Reza Shah had accomplished, Iran was still too weak to resist foreign powers. It was yet another national humiliation, and led to Reza Shah's forced abdication in September 1941. His 21-year-old son, Mohammad Reza, took his place.

The winds of nationalism and anti-colonialism that swept across Asia, Africa and Latin America in the years after World War II whipped up a sandstorm in Iran. Since the early 20th century, the immeasurably rich Iranian oil industry had been under the control of a British monopoly, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which was owned principally by the British government. Iranian oil powered the British economy and made possible the high standard of living Britons enjoyed from the 1920s through the 1940s. It also fueled the Royal Navy as it projected British power around the world. Most Iranians, meanwhile, lived in wretched poverty.

Anger over this glaring inequality triggered the next Iranian revolution, a peaceful but deeply transformative one. In 1951, Iran's parliament chose as prime minister one of the most highly educated men in the country, Mohammed Mossadegh, whose degree from the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland made him the first Iranian ever to earn a doctorate in law from a European university. Mossadegh championed what had become the nation's transcendent goal: nationalization of the oil industry. Even before taking office, he proposed a nationalization law that both houses of parliament passed unanimously. The British, to no one's surprise, refused to accept it. They withdrew their oil technicians, blockaded the port from which oil was exported and asked the United Nations to order Iran to withdraw the plan. Mossadegh's popularity at home skyrocketed; as a British diplomat wrote in a report from Tehran, he had done "something which is always dear to Persian hearts: he flouted the authority of a great power and a great foreign interest."

Mossadegh's daring challenge to Britain also turned him into a world figure. Time magazine chose him as its 1951 Man of the Year. In October he traveled to New York City to plead his case at the United Nations. It was the first time the leader of a poor country had mounted this august stage to challenge a great power so directly.

"My countrymen lack the bare necessities of existence," Mossadegh told the U.N. Security Council. "Their standard of living is probably one of the lowest in the world. Our greatest national resource is oil. This should be the source of work and food for the population of Iran. Its exploitation should properly be our national industry, and the revenue from it should go to improve our conditions of life." Most American newspapers, however, were unsympathetic to Mossadegh's plea on the grounds that he was defying international law and threatening the flow of oil to the free world. The New York Times, for instance, decried Iran as a "defiant scorner" of the United Nations, and further blamed "Iranian nationalism and Islamic fanaticism" for carrying the dispute "beyond the field of legality and common sense."

The epic struggle for control of the oil industry helped transform Iranian nationalism from an abstract idea into a movement. "While Reza Shah crafted the vessel, it was Mossadegh who filled it," says Iranian-British scholar Ali Ansari. "Between 1951 and 1953, Persian nationalism became truly Iranian—inclusive, broad-based and with increasing mass appeal." During this period, many Iranians came to hope the United States would emerge as their friend and protector. Most of the Americans who had come to Iran during the first half of the 20th century were teachers, nurses and missionaries who had left highly positive impressions. That view changed abruptly in the summer of 1953, when the United States took a step that made it an object of deep resentment in Iran.

After trying every conceivable way to pressure Mossadegh to abandon his nationalization plan, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered British agents to organize a coup and overthrow him. When Mossadegh learned of the plot, he closed the British Embassy in Tehran and expelled all British diplomats, including the agents who were plotting his overthrow. In desperation, Churchill asked President Harry S. Truman to order the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency to depose Mossadegh. Truman refused. "The CIA was then a new agency, and Truman saw its mission as gathering and collecting intelligence, not undermining or overthrowing foreign governments," says James Goode, a historian at Grand Valley State University in Michigan who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran and later taught at the University of Mashhad. "He was almost as frustrated with the British as he was with the Iranians."

After President Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in 1953, however, U.S. policy changed. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was eager to strike back against growing Communist influence worldwide, and when the British told him that Mossadegh was leading Iran toward Communism—a wild distortion, since Mossadegh despised Marxist ideas—Dulles and Eisenhower agreed to send the CIA into action.

"The intense dislike that Dulles and Eisenhower had toward Mossadegh was visceral and immediate," says Mary Ann Heiss, a historian at Kent State University who specializes in early cold war history. "They were not interested in negotiation at all. For Dulles, coming from a corporate law background, what Mossadegh had done seemed like an attack on private property, and he was bothered by what he saw as the precedent that it might be setting. He was also worried about the possibility that the Soviet Union might gain a foothold in Iran....It was all very emotional and very quick. There was no real attempt to find out who Mossadegh was or what motivated him, to talk to him or even to respond to letters he was sending to Washington."

In August 1953, the CIA sent one of its most intrepid agents, Kermit Roosevelt Jr., grandson of president Theodore Roosevelt, to Tehran with orders to overthrow Mossadegh. Employing tactics that ranged from bribing newspaper editors to organizing riots, Roosevelt immediately set to work. From a command center in the basement of the U.S. Embassy, he managed to create the impression that Iran was collapsing into chaos. On the night of August 19, an angry crowd, led by Roosevelt's Iranian agents—and supported by police and military units whose leaders he had suborned—converged on Mossadegh's home. After a two-hour siege, Mossadegh fled over a back wall. His house was looted and set afire. The handful of American agents who organized the coup were, as Roosevelt later wrote, "full of jubilation, celebration and occasional and totally unpredictable whacks on the back as one or the other was suddenly overcome with enthusiasm." Mossadegh was arrested, tried for high treason, imprisoned for three years, then sentenced to house arrest for life. He died in 1967.

The 1953 coup put an end to democratic rule in Iran. After Mossadegh was deposed, the CIA arranged to bring Mohammad Reza Shah back from Rome, where he had fled during the pre-coup turmoil, and returned him to the Peacock Throne. He ruled with increasing repression, using his brutal secret police, Savak, to torture opposition figures. No independent institutions—political parties, student groups, labor unions or civic organizations—were tolerated during his quarter century in power. The only place dissidents could find shelter was in mosques, which gave the developing opposition movement a religious tinge that would later push Iran toward fundamentalist rule.

Throughout the cold war, relations between Washington and Tehran were exceedingly close, largely because the Shah was, as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoir, "that rarest of leaders, an unconditional ally." Iranians, for their part, came to see the United States as the force that propped up a hated dictatorship. "Iranians traditionally believed that the United States was not a colonial power, and older people remembered [President] Woodrow Wilson's anti-colonial views," says Mansour Farhang, who was the revolutionary government's first ambassador to the United Nations and now teaches history at Bennington College. "Even Mossadegh initially had great goodwill toward the United States. But during the 1950s and '60s, largely as a result of the 1953 coup and concessions the Shah made to the Americans, a new generation emerged that saw the United States as imperialist and neo-colonialist. As time went by, this perspective became completely dominant."

Flush with money from oil revenues, the Shah sought to transform Iran into a regional military power. The United States sold him tens of billions of dollars' worth of advanced weaponry, which brought huge profits to U.S. arms manufacturers while securing Iran as a powerful cold war ally on the Soviet Union's southern border. In the long run, though, this policy would have dire repercussions.

"Some of the things the Shah purchased from us were far beyond his needs," notes Henry Precht, an American diplomat who served in Tehran during the 1970s and later became the State Department's desk officer for Iran. "Prestige and his fascination with military hardware played a great part. There was no rational decision-making process. It was the same way on the civilian side. There was tremendous waste and corruption. Shiploads of grain would arrive and there were no trucks to offload them, so they would just heap the grain in mountains and set it afire."

Anger at the U.S. military presence and the Shah's dictatorial rule culminated in a national uprising in 1979. It was Iran's last modern revolution, like previous ones, a rebellion against a regime that was seen to have sold out to a foreign power. Nearly every important group in Iranian society joined the anti-Shah uprising. Muslim clerics were prominent among its leaders, but so were others ranging from pro-Soviet communists to democrats who had supported Mossadegh in the 1950s. In one of the most astonishing political turnarounds of the 20th century, the Shah, who many in Washington and elsewhere had come to see as invulnerable, was overthrown and forced to flee. He left Iran on January 16, 1979, and after stays in Egypt, Morocco, the Bahamas and Mexico, was admitted to the United States for medical treatment on October 22 of that year. Many Iranians saw this as evidence that the Carter administration was plotting to place him back in power. Thirteen days later, militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Fundamentalist Shiite clerics used the crisis to crush moderate factions, consolidate control over the new government and transform Iran into a theocratic state under Ayatollah Khomeini, who had returned from exile in Paris on February 1, 1979.

The deepening hostility between Tehran and Washington led to a catastrophe that no one in Iran had anticipated. Saddam Hussein, dictator of neighboring Iraq—which had been a rival of Iran since the two countries were the kingdoms of Persia and Mesopotamia—saw that Iran suddenly lacked a powerful ally and that its military was in disarray. Seizing this chance, he launched an invasion of Iran in September 1980. The ensuing war lasted eight years, devastated the Iranian economy and cost Iran as many as one million casualties, including thousands who were killed or incapacitated by chemical weapons. Iraq saw between 160,000 and 240,000 killed.

The United States, still fuming over the hostage crisis, sided with Iraq, which it saw as a bulwark against Shiite militancy that threatened perceived U.S. interests such as the stability of the Sunni monarchies in oil-producing countries. President Ronald Reagan twice sent a special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, to Baghdad to discuss ways the United States could help Saddam. In the wake of his visits, Washington provided Iraq with aid, including helicopters and satellite intelligence that was used in selecting bombing targets. "The war had two profound effects," says Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations and Muslim politics at Sarah Lawrence College. "First, it deepened and widened anti-American feeling in Iran and made anti-American foreign policy a fundamental raison d'être of the Iranian government. Second, Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and the American role in preventing an investigation [of them] and shielding Saddam from criticism, convinced the [Iranian] mullahs that they needed to pursue a program to develop unconventional weapons of their own."

The hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq War and the religious regime's intense efforts to undermine U.S. power in the Middle East and elsewhere have turned Iran and the United States into bitter enemies. To many Americans, the blame seems to lie only with a radical, aggressive and almost nihilistic regime in Tehran, which has threatened Israel, opposed U.S. efforts to resolve Middle East conflicts and has been linked to terrorism in cities from Berlin to Buenos Aires.

Iran's current leaders—conservative Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the provocative, incendiary president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—skillfully exploit the country's nationalist sentiment, citing threats and demands from Washington to justify harsh crackdowns on students, labor unions, women and other dissatisfied groups. Sometimes Ahmadinejad even defends these draconian measures while sitting in front of a photo of majestic Mount Damavand, a traditional nationalist symbol.

"The regime feeds off American hostility," says Robert Tait, who spent nearly three years in Iran as a correspondent for the Guardian until he was forced to leave last December when the government refused to renew his visa. "Every time there's another threat from Washington, that gives them more oxygen. They won't be able to use this threat indefinitely. There's a widespread feeling in Iran that the way things are isn't the way they should be. People believe that too much isolation has not been good for them. But as long as there seems to be a clear and present danger, the government has what it sees as a justification to do whatever it wants."

This justification is especially convenient at a time when growing numbers of Iranians are expressing their unhappiness with the government. Low wages, spiraling inflation, high prices for gasoline, discrimination against women, suffocating social controls, religious-oriented university curricula and the spread of social ills like prostitution and drug abuse have angered much of the population. Some of this dissent hovers just beneath the surface of everyday life—as in Tehran, where a bus has been converted into a mobile discothèque to evade religious authorities. Other forms of dissent are more overt, and even go so far as to co-opt government idioms. Last fall, striking workers at a sugar factory chanted "Our salary is our absolute right!"—a play on the government slogan "Nuclear energy is our absolute right."

The rhetoric of nationalism no longer satisfies Iranians. Their country has finally achieved independence, but now most wish for more: freedom, prosperity and engagement with the outside world. Iran will not be truly stable until its leaders offer them those great prizes.

Former New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer wrote All the Shah's Men and, most recently, A Thousand Hills, which documents the rebuilding of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide.
 
Explore more photos from the story :
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/iran-fury.html?c=y&page=1#

 
Find this article at:
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[KingNeil]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/29/iran.israel.ahmadinejad

But oh no. I guess Iran is the bad guy...?!?! What the hell? Seriously, Ahmadinejdad is our best friend, yet the US wants to bomb Iran.

[PTTurboe]

Fire this off to all the brainwashed Islamaphobes!!!

[Dig]

NICE CATCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[RickT]

Saved those pages before they go missing into the memory hole.  Saving Democracy Now's interview too.

[DireWolf]

Won`t see this on the nightly news.

[Matt Hatter]

Hey guys the Financial news in the US has taken over the main stream news. I think we all know that when something is going on in the mainstream news, something else is going on under cover. Anyone have anything to report. Is this financial mess a distraction just like the Olympic Games? What happened to the Iran naval blockade? Is that still happening?

[jannerbob]

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=13515

In a significant and highly unusual defeat for the so-called "Israel Lobby," the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has decided to shelve a long-pending, albeit nonbinding, resolution that called for President George W. Bush to launch what critics called a blockade against Iran.

[Dig]

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=13515

In a significant and highly unusual defeat for the so-called "Israel Lobby," the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has decided to shelve a long-pending, albeit nonbinding, resolution that called for President George W. Bush to launch what critics called a blockade against Iran.

HOLY SHIT! AWESOME!

September 27, 2008
Iran Resolution Shelved in Rare Defeat for AIPAC


by Jim Lobe

In a significant and highly unusual defeat for the so-called "Israel Lobby," the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has decided to shelve a long-pending, albeit nonbinding, resolution that called for President George W. Bush to launch what critics called a blockade against Iran.

House Congressional Resolution (HR) 362, whose passage the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) had made its top legislative priority this year, had been poised to pass virtually by acclamation last summer.

But an unexpectedly strong lobbying effort by a number of grassroots Iranian-American, Jewish-American, peace, and church groups effectively derailed the initiative, although AIPAC and its supporters said they would try to revive it next year or if Congress returns to Washington for a "lame-duck" session after the November elections.

Congress, which may still adopt a package of new unilateral economic sanctions against Iran – some of which the administration has already imposed – over the weekend, is expected to adjourn over the next several days.

''We'll resubmit it when Congress comes back, and we'll have even more signatures,'' the resolution's main author, New York Democrat Rep. Gary Ackerman, told the Washington Times, adding that the resolution currently has 270 co-sponsors, or some two-thirds of the House's entire membership.

Still, the decision by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, to shelve HR 362 marked an unusual defeat for AIPAC, according to its critics who charged that the resolution was designed to lay the groundwork for the Bush administration or any successor administration to take military action against Iran.

"This was a joint effort by several groups to really put the focus on the dangers presented by such a resolution over the opposition of one of the most powerful lobbies in the country," said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).

Among other provisions, the resolution declared that preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capacity was "vital to the national security interests of the United States" – language that is normally used to justify military action – and "demand(ed) that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities..."

Among the means it called for were "prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran's nuclear program."

Although the resolution's sponsors explicitly denied it – indeed, one clause stated that "nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran" – the resolution's critics charged that the latter passage could be used to justify a blockade against Iran, an act of war under international law.

"Ambiguity in the text of the resolution – whether intended by its drafters or not – has led some to see it as a de-facto approval for a land, air and sea blockade of Iran, any of which could be considered an act of war," according to Deborah DeLee, president of Americans for Peace Now (APN), a Zionist group that has long urged the administration to engage in direct talks with Tehran and that lobbied against the resolution.

Two key Democratic congressmen, who had initially co-sponsored the resolution, Reps. Robert Wexler and Barney Frank, unexpectedly defected in July, insisting that its language be changed to exclude any possibility that it could be used to justify war against Iran and to include new provisions urging Washington to directly engage Tehran.

The resolution was introduced last May, shortly after AIPAC's annual meeting during which then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly told the House Democratic leadership, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Berman, and Ackerman that economic sanctions against Iran had run their course and that stronger action, including a possible naval quarantine, was needed to increase pressure on Tehran to halt its nuclear program.

The meeting also followed talks between Olmert and Bush who, despite an strongly hawkish speech before Israel's Knesset, privately told his hosts that Washington would almost certainly not attack on Iranian nuclear facilities nor give a green light Israel to launch an attack of its own before he leaves office in January 2009, according to a recent account by London's Guardian newspaper. The administration itself never took a position on the resolution.

At the time, the price of oil was skyrocketing, and the military brass in the Pentagon, increasingly concerned about the deteriorating situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was expressing its opposition to military action against Iran in unusually blunt terms.

Nonetheless, AIPAC pushed hard for adoption of the resolution, even as it, like its Congressional sponsors, insisted that it was not designed to justify military action.

Just last week, in a final push for the resolution's passage, AIPAC drafted a letter that was circulated to House members who had not yet co-sponsored the resolution. While it denounced as "utter nonsense" suggestions that the resolution could be used to justify military action, the text also stressed that Tehran's "pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional hegemony" posed "real and growing" threats to "the vital national security interests of the United States."

AIPAC's failure was particularly notable given the presence at the UN General Assembly in New York this week of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose repeated and predictably provocative predictions about the demise of Israel and "the American empire" have been used routinely by AIPAC to rally public and elite opinion against Tehran and underline the threat it allegedly poses.

In announcing that the resolution has been shelved, Berman said he shared critics' concerns about the resolution's wording and will not bring it before his committee until his concerns were addressed. "If Congress is to make a statement of policy, it should encompass a strategy on how to gain consensus on multilateral sanctions to change Iran's behavior,'' his spokesperson told the Times.

[kevlar442]

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=13515

In a significant and highly unusual defeat for the so-called "Israel Lobby," the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has decided to shelve a long-pending, albeit nonbinding, resolution that called for President George W. Bush to launch what critics called a blockade against Iran.

Perhaps if the bailout would have passed, this would have passed.  Ain't politics a biatch.

[Matt Hatter]

Awesome!

Looks like the NWO are loosing their grip! No Iran War, No Bailout!

[bigron]

Israel’s plan to attack Iran confirmed


By Jean Shaoul
30 September 2008
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/isra-s30.shtml


Last week, the Guardian newspaper confirmed that Israel was actively considering a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities last spring. It reported that when Israel’s then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, raised this during US President George W. Bush’s visit to Israel last May, Bush vetoed it.

The Guardian’s veteran Middle East commentator, Jonathan Steele, cited senior diplomatic personnel working for a European head of government who met Olmert some time after Bush’s visit.

According to the Guardian’s sources, the talks were so sensitive that they were held in private, with no note-takers in attendance. They said that Olmert “took it [the refusal of a US green light] as where they were at the moment, and that the US position was unlikely to change as long as Bush was in office.”

Bush’s refusal to sanction an attack was apparently based on several factors. Firstly, the US was concerned that such an attack would provoke Iran to retaliate, which would probably include a wave of attacks on US military and contract personnel in Iraq, and Afghanistan and US shipping in the Gulf. Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government, installed by the US, retains close ties with and is dependent upon Tehran.

Secondly, it was unlikely that an Israeli air raid—even with dozens of aircraft—would succeed in knocking out Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are widely dispersed in fortified underground locations throughout the country.

Furthermore, the shortest route to Natanz, Iran’s uranium enrichment plant, is more than 700 miles from Israel and would entail flying over Iraq’s airspace, which is controlled by the US. So it would be impossible for Israel to launch such an attack without explicit US approval.

This would have left the US unable to officially deny knowledge of the attack. Iran would have every reason to assume that Bush had concurred with such an act of war, and to retaliate.

Iran has repeatedly said it would defend itself against any attacks on its nuclear facilities, which it maintains are for civilian purposes only. An air strike would precipitate a full-scale war, going far beyond Iran, underlining Washington’s increasing isolation in the region. It would precipitate attacks by Hezbollah on Israel and even terrorist attacks within the US itself.

One official said, “It is over 10 years since Hezbollah’s last terror attack outside Israel, when it hit an Argentine-Israel association building in Buenos Aires [killing 85 people].” “There is a large Lebanese diaspora in Canada which must include some Hezbollah supporters. They could slip in the US and take action,” he continued.

Olmert’s press spokesman, by denying that Bush had refused Israel a green light to attack Iran in “any working meeting,” only served to confirm the Guardian’s story.

US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe refused to comment on the content of a private conversation between Bush and Olmert, saying, “The president’s position is that all options are on the table but diplomacy remains our first course of action.”

While it appears that Bush vetoed Israel’s plans to attack Iran in private, publicly he continued his bellicose attitude towards Iran and gave no hint that he had, for the time being at least, excluded the military option.

In his speech to the Knesset the following day, Bush told legislators, “America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

Israel’s plans to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in fact continued, despite the fact that 16 US intelligence agencies had issued a long delayed National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) last December concluding that Tehran had ended any nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The Israeli political and military establishment, which regards Iran as its main rival in the region, rejected the NIE’s assessment and has repeatedly sought assurances that the Bush administration would “deal with” Tehran before leaving office.

It is determined to maintain its military supremacy in the Middle East and to prevent the possibility that Iran or any of its neighbours will master nuclear technology that could assist in the building of weapons. It is an open secret that Israel itself has an arsenal of more than 200 nuclear missiles. In order to retain its nuclear monopoly, the Israeli ruling elite is fully prepared to plunge the entire region into war through an unprovoked and criminal attack on Iran.

Senior ministers, including Olmert himself last November, have warned that Israel would take military action of its own to disable the “threat” posed by Iran’s nuclear facilities. In September last year, Israel destroyed a deserted Syrian target that Washington and Tel Aviv claimed was a North Korean-built nuclear installation. This attack evoked no serious international condemnation and is viewed as a precursor to a future attack on Iran.

Last April, National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer threatened Iran with complete destruction should it attack in Israel. This threat was made amid a massive five-day civil defence drill and continuing hints of a pre-emptive Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Even after Bush’s apparent veto, verbal threats and speculation of imminent air strikes against Iran have continued. In June, Israel carried out a long-range exercise over the eastern Mediterranean involving more than 100 F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, refuelling planes and rescue helicopters. Citing unnamed sources, the New York Times reported that the operation was a dry run for an attack on Iran.

Shaul Mofaz, deputy prime minister and a former defence minister, warned a few weeks later that a unilateral attack against Iran was “unavoidable” as international sanctions had been ineffective.

The official position in Washington and Tel Aviv is that diplomacy is the preferred way of dealing with Iran. And these bellicose threats and war games are widely seen as part of an orchestrated pressure campaign against Iran to submit to US demands for the suspension of its nuclear enrichment programme. But since Israel does not have the capacity to carry out a successful attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on its own, the ultimate purpose of such threats as far as influential figures in both Tel Aviv and Washington are concerned is to draw the US into such an attack.

There are without doubt elements within the Israeli and American ruling elite that are pressing for an escalation of militarism in the region, with the question of Iran one of the most divisive issues in the US presidential election.

Israel recently signed a deal with Washington for the purchase of F-22 stealth bombers, which are ideally suited to the type of targeted bombing raids planned by an Israeli air force command. Israel’s existing fleet of F15 fighter jets could also be used to launch an attack on Iran.

The Israeli military has bought 90 F-161 fighter bombers that can reach Iran and will receive 11 more by the end of next year. It has also bought two new Dolphin-class submarines from Germany, in addition to the three it already has, that are reported to be capable of firing nuclear missiles.

Earlier this month, the US Defense Department told Congress it intended to sell Israel 1,000 smart bombs capable of penetrating 90cm of steel-reinforced concrete.

On Sunday, it was announced that the US had supplied Israel with an advanced radar system that will provide an early warning in the event of an Iranian missile attack. Known as FBX-T, it will be linked to the US military’s Joint Tactical Ground Station and will be run by 120 US military personnel. Israel’s Arrow II ballistic missile shield currently works with less advanced radar.

While Bush refused to give Israel the nod to attack Iran last May, judging that it would be too precipitous a step, the military build-up in the region makes clear that such an attack is far from being off the agenda permanently. Indeed, elements within the Bush administration might still contemplate an unprovoked attack on Iran before the presidential election in November.

[eddy64]

i thought there was more than one resolution, one going thru the house of representatives and one thru the senate.  i might be wrong tho.

[bigron]

Chomsky: "The Majority of the World Supports Iran"

In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview, Chomsky discusses the global politics of Iran's and India's attempts to become nuclear powers.

By Subrata Ghoshroy, AlterNet
Posted on October 3, 2008, Printed on October 3, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/101290/


On Wednesday night, in a vote of 86 to 13, the U.S. Senate passed a historic nuclear deal with that will allow the United States to trade with India in nuclear equipment and technology, and to supply India with nuclear fuel for its power reactors. The deal is considered hugely consequential by its supporters and opponents alike -- and a significant victory for the Bush administration.

Last month, Subrata Ghoshroy, a researcher in the Science, Technology and Global Security Working Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, met with Noam Chomsky in his office at MIT, where he is the institute professor of linguistics. "Before we started our discussion," Ghoshroy writes, "Professor Chomsky asked me to give him a little background information. I told him that I was researching missile defense, space weapons and the U.S.-India nuclear deal." Ghoshroy is a longtime critic of the U.S. missile defense program and a former analyst at the Government Accountability Office who in 2006 blew the whistle on the failure -- and attempted cover-up -- of a key component of the program: a $26 billion weapon system that was the "centerpiece" of the Bush administration's antimissile plan.

Ghoshroy and Chomsky discussed the then-pending nuclear deal, which would sanction trade hitherto prohibited by U.S. and international laws because of India's refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the nuclear tests it conducted in 1998. Ghoshroy has written several articles criticizing the U.S.-India deal as a triumph of the business lobby -- an assessment Chomsky agreed with. He said that Condoleezza Rice is actually on record admitting what is truly behind this deal, which he characterized as a "non-proliferation disaster."

Ghoshroy's subsequent conversation with Chomsky touched on a number of interweaving topics, including: India and the importance of the non-aligned movement; the myths of free trade and the so-called "success" of neoliberalism; Washington's historic opposition to promote new world economic and information orders; Latin America's growing independence; the West's hypocrisy over Iran's nuclear program -- and MIT's ironic role in it during the shah's regime; and, finally, U.S. elections and the prospects for change.

The result is a two-part interview, the second of which will run on AlterNet tomorrow. Part One begins with India, the Non-Aligned Movement, and why a "majority of the world supports Iran." (The Non-Aligned Movement, which consists of some 115 or more representatives of "developing countries," originated at the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, which was convened mainly by newly independent former colonies from Africa and Asia to develop joint policies in international relations. Jawaharlal Nehru, then India's prime minister, led the conference. There, "Third World" leaders shared their similar problems of resisting the pressures of the major powers, maintaining their independence and opposing colonialism and neo-colonialism, especially Western domination. India continued its vigorous participation and leadership role in NAM until the end of the Cold War. For further reading, visit the NAM Web site.)

***

Subrata Ghoshroy: (Comparing India) with the situation in Latin America, there is a lot more explicit stance (in Latin America) against imperialism and toward independence.

Noam Chomsky: It exists (in India), but I think that India should be in the lead, as it was in the l950s when it was in the lead in the non-aligned movement.

SG: This is the tension in the Indian situation. The Indian government, the Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, they think NAM is anachronistic and a relic of the Cold War.

NC: I think that they are quite wrong. I think that it is a sign of the future. The positions of the Non-Aligned Movement, and the South Commission before it, and alongside of it, are pretty sound. A good indication of how sound they are is they are almost entirely suppressed in the West, which tells you a lot.

Take the question of Iranian enrichment. The U.S, of course, takes a militant position against it, which is kind of ironic because the same officials who are now having tantrums about it are the ones who supported the same programs under the shah. MIT is right at the center of that; I can remember in the l970s there was an internal crisis at MIT when the institute authorities pretty much sold the nuclear engineering department to the shah in a secret agreement. The agreement was that the Nuclear Engineering Department would bring in Iranian nuclear engineers, and in return, the shah would provide some unspecified -- but presumably large -- amount of money to MIT. When (this was) leaked, there was a lot of student protest and a student referendum -- something like 80 percent of students were opposed to it. There was so much turmoil, the faculty had to have a large meeting. Usually faculty meetings are pretty boring things; nobody wants to go. But this one, pretty much everybody came to it. There was a big discussion. It was quite interesting. There were a handful of people, of whom I was one, who opposed the agreement with the shah. But it passed overwhelmingly. It was quite striking that the faculty vote was the exact opposite of the student vote, which tells you something quite interesting, because the faculty are the students of yesterday, but the shift in institutional commitment had a major impact on their judgments -- a wrong impact, in my opinion. Anyway, it went through. Probably the people running the Iranian program today were trained at MIT. The strongest supporters of this U.S.-Iranian nuclear program were Henry Kissinger, Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

SG: This was right around Nixon?

NC: This was in the mid-'70s. Kissinger now says, "How can Iran be pursuing a peaceful program when they have so much oil -- they don't need nuclear energy." In 1975 he was saying the opposite. He was saying, "Of course Iran has to develop nuclear energy. It cannot rely upon its oil resources." Kissinger was asked by the Washington Post why he had completely changed his judgment on this issue. He was quite frank and honest. He said something like, "They were an ally then, so they needed nuclear energy. Now they are an enemy, so they don't need nuclear energy." OK, I appreciate honesty. It is ironic to see this developing right now.

When you read the media on this, say the New York Times, the coverage is uniform. "Iran is defying the world." "Iran is defying the international community."

The fact of the matter is that the majority of the world supports Iran. The non-aligned movement supports Iran. The majority of the world is part of the non-aligned movement. But they are not part of the world, from the U.S. point of view. It is a striking illustration of the strength and depth of the imperial mentality. If the majority of the world opposes Washington, they are not part of the world. Strikingly, the American population is not part of the world. A large majority of Americans -- something like 75 percent -- agree that Iran has the right to develop nuclear energy, if it is not for nuclear weapons. But they are not part of the world either. The world consists of Washington and whoever goes along with it. Everything else is not the world. Not the majority of Americans. Not the majority of countries of the world.

All of this illustrates many things, among them the importance of the non-aligned movement. Just as the South Commission was important, the same is true of NAM. But the commission's important positions were never quoted or mentioned; they were treated as insignificant. They are not insignificant.

The same is true of NAM. India should be in the lead of ensuring that the voice of what is euphemistically called "developing countries" should be heard, should be influential and should be powerful. Not just what comes out of Washington and London!

(In India), on one hand, there has been significant growth and development in the past 20 years or so. On the other hand, the internal problems are simply overwhelming. If you look at the human development index, for example, when the neoliberal reforms, so-called, began, India was 125th or so. Now it is 128th, the last time I looked. Meaning that the fundamental internal problems of India which are so overwhelming, when you just even walk the streets, have clearly not been addressed. If you go to places like Hyderabad or Bangalore, you see wonderful laboratories, high-tech industries, software and a few miles away a sharp increase in peasant suicides coming from the same source. The same social and economic policies are driving both processes.

In places like West Bengal, there has been serious internal strife over land rights and industrial development, and I don't think that the Left has worked out a way to come to terms with that constructively. On issues like the U.S.-India nuclear pact, from what I read of the Left's positions, I have found them quite disappointing. They seem to be opposing the pact on nationalist grounds, that India might be surrendering some element of sovereignty. But the real problem is quite different; it is a major step toward undermining the Non-Proliferation Treaty -- as India's refusal to join it and its secret bomb was in the first place. You know that India does have a tradition about disarmament and non-alignment and so on going back to Nehru, of pressing for nuclear disarmament, non-alignment and so on, and the U.S.-India pact is directly counter to that honorable tradition. And I would have expected the Left to be emphasizing this.

SG: And what you are saying is that this is where the Left should be much more vocal and active?

NC: To an extent, they are. It is very hard to break through Western propaganda. This was dramatically true in the l970s, in the early period of decolonization, when there were calls for a new international economic order, a new information order -- a restructuring of the world to give the voiceless some voice. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was an important institution at the time. UNESCO was pressing for an international information order in which the Third World would have a voice. There was bitter opposition to that here. It was really brutal here; UNESCO was practically destroyed.

SG: And the U.S. left UNESCO for a while?

NC: First it practically destroyed UNESCO, and then it left it for a long time. Media and commentators were full of outright lies about how UNESCO was trying to destroy freedom of the press, and so on and so forth. What they were trying to do, very clearly, was to break the Western monopoly and to allow independent voices to appear. That is intolerable to Western intellectual communities. We have to have an absolute monopoly; otherwise it violates freedom.

There is quite a good book on this running through the details. It is called Hope and Folly, and it could never be reviewed, because of the devastating story that it tells about the efforts of the media and the intellectual community and so on to destroy UNESCO out of fear that it might open the international communications system to Third World voices. Take a look at the book -- it is very devastating, and what happened is incredible.

The same thing happened with the new international economic order. Instead of a new international economic order of the kind that UNCTAD was pressing for, which made a lot of sense, what happened was the opposite. That's when the West -- with U.S. and Britain in the lead -- rammed through neoliberal programs, which have been pretty much of a disaster. International economists often say it has been a great success, pointing to average growth rates and the rise out of poverty during the past 30 years. That is a scam. The rising growth rates and rise out of poverty are primarily from China. But China was not following neoliberal rules. They were pursuing a policy of export orientation with a state-directed economy. State-directed export orientation is not the Washington consensus. Muddling the two things together is real dishonesty.

SG: I see. Because of sheer numbers in China? A billion Chinese are growing …

NC: If you have a billion Chinese who are growing, the average growth rate increases. So you have an increase in average growth rate mainly through the efforts of countries that are not following the rules. The same is true of India. One of the reasons that India escaped the Asian financial crisis was that it maintained financial controls.

SG: Right, which would not be the case anymore.

NC: Not anymore. But in that period (it was the case). It escaped the disaster that took place. Take South Korea: It has had spectacular growth. It is heralded as a success of neoliberal principles. That is not even a bad joke. In South Korea, the controls over capital were so strict that a capital export could bring the death penalty. What does that have to do with neoliberalism? It was a state-directed economy, more or less on the Japanese model. Incidentally, just to make the irony even more extreme, one of the leading state-based economies in the world is the United States. Surely, everyone at MIT knows that. What pays their salaries? MIT is part of the funnel by which the taxpayer pays the costs and takes the risks of high-tech development, and the profits are ultimately privatized.

SG: Absolutely.

NC: That's where you get computers and Internet and the biotech. The entire high-tech economy almost derives from the dynamic state sector.

***

Visit AlterNet tomorrow to read Part Two, in which Chomsky debunks the myths of the free market, free trade and the "success" of neoliberal economic reforms, while also weighing in on such topics as the United States' declining military influence in Latin America. Finally, be sure to check out Chomsky's views on the presidential election -- and what an Obama victory might mean for U.S. foreign policy.

Subrata Ghoshroy is a research associate in the Science, Technology and Society program at MIT. He directs a project to promote nuclear stability in South Asia.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/101290/

[Biggs]

Iran says won't go down 'unending road' with IAEA
10.02.08, 12:14 PM ET
http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/10/02/afx5501698.html


NEW YORK, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Iran will not be dragged down an 'unending road' in dealings with the U.N. atomic watchdog, Iran's foreign minister said on Thursday, adding Washington was perpetuating a 'huge lie' about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Speaking at a think tank in New York, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki reiterated Tehran's position that it would press ahead with its nuclear program and had no ambition to build an atomic bomb. He added that it had cooperated with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Washington and other Western countries suspect Iran is developing a nuclear bomb and the U.N. Security Council has demanded Iran halt enriching uranium.

Iran has repeatedly denied blocking IAEA inquiries but says that inspectors, egged on by Iran's arch-foe the United States, are seeking unacceptable access to purely conventional military sites whose exposure would jeopardize its security.

The IAEA and Western nations say Iran must grant such access to clear up intelligence allegations of military involvement in the nuclear program. More generally, Iran should stop limiting inspector movements to declared nuclear sites, they say.

'We are not going to allow ourselves to be pushed into an unending road, a road which will be directed by the United States,' Mottaki said at the Asia Society in Manhattan.

'For the United States, it is difficult to accept the peaceful nature of Iran's program because once it accepts, it can no longer oppose,' Mottaki said.

'So they continue with a huge lie, perpetuating this huge lie, they're saying that Iran wants to have the bomb.'

He said Iran was committed to negotiating in a process led by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, and welcomed participation of a high-level U.S. diplomat in talks on Iran's nuclear program in Geneva in the summer.

'Mr Solana has given to us a modality for the negotiations. We have responded by proposing our own modality,' he said.

'We believe that the common ground which exists in the two sets of modalities can serve as a basis for the continuation of the talks.'

'If there is sufficient political will .... I fully believe that if we continue with the negotiations, we will later reach an agreed point, which will lead us to agreed action,' he said.

But Mottaki left no doubt that Tehran had no plan to reverse its nuclear policies.

'The issue of Iran's nuclear activity is not a problem. We are going about our usual business, (with) our peaceful nuclear program as a fully fledged NPT member,' Mottaki said, referring to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Tehran signed.

[Biggs]

U.S. Military Plane Forced to Land in Iran, Fars Says (Update2)

By John Deane

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aeN7IE0U4YaA&refer=home

Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. military aircraft was forced to land in Iran after violating the Persian Gulf nation's airspace, the state-run Fars news agency said.

The plane was carrying five U.S. generals and three non- military passengers, Fars reported. They were questioned before being released and allowed to leave for Afghanistan, which was their destination, Fars added.

The U.S. has no reports that any of its aircraft are missing, Agence France-Presse cited the Pentagon as saying, denying the Iranian report that an American warplane was forced to land in the country.

[Dan]

The U.S. has no reports that any of its aircraft are missing, Agence France-Presse cited the Pentagon as saying, denying the Iranian report that an American warplane was forced to land in the country.

If it was carrying five US generals and three non-military passengers, then it wouldn't be considered a "warplane".  It would be labled as a military supply craft, or a military aircraft, not a "warplane".

My two sense.

Dan

[Biggs]

If it was carrying five US generals and three non-military passengers, then it wouldn't be considered a "warplane".  It would be labled as a military supply craft, or a military aircraft, not a "warplane".

My two sense.

Dan

I quite agree there is clearly some playing with words in these types of reports, in fact the latest I heard was that they were civilian, most likely mercenaries