The United States is planning what will be a catastrophic attack on
Iran. For the Bush cabal, the attack will be a way of “buying time” for
its disaster in Iraq. In announcing what he called a “surge” of American
troops in Iraq, George W Bush identified Iran as his real target. “We
will interrupt the flow of support [to the insurgency in Iraq] from Iran
and Syria”, he said. “And we will seek out and destroy the networks
providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”
“Networks”
means Iran. “There is solid evidence,” said a State Department
spokesman on 24 January, “that Iranian agents are involved in these
networks and that they are working with individuals and groups in Iraq
and are being sent there by the Iranian government.” Like Bush’s and
Blair’s claim that they had irrefutable evidence that Saddam Hussein was
deploying weapons of mass destruction, the “evidence” lacks all
credibility. Iran has a natural affinity with the Shia majority of Iraq,
and has been implacably opposed to al-Qaeda, condemning the 9/11
attacks and supporting the United States in Afghanistan. Syria has done
the same. Investigations by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times
and others, including British military officials, have concluded that
Iran is not engaged in the cross-border supply of weapons. General Peter
Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said no such
evidence exists.
As the American disaster in Iraq deepens and
domestic and foreign opposition grows, “neocon” fanatics such as
Vice-President Cheney believe their opportunity to control Iran’s oil
will pass unless they act no later than the spring. For public
consumption, there are potent myths. In concert with Israel and
Washington’s Zionist and fundamentalist Christian lobbies, the Bushites
say their “strategy” is to end Iran’s nuclear threat. In fact, Iran
possesses not a single nuclear weapon nor has it ever threatened to
build one; the CIA estimates that, even given the political will, Iran
is incapable of building a nuclear weapon before 2017, at the earliest.
Unlike
Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory
and has allowed routine inspections under its legal obligations – until
gratuitous, punitive measures were added in 2003, at the behest of
Washington. No report by the International Atomic Energy Agency has ever
cited Iran for diverting its civilian nuclear programme to military
use. The IAEA has said that for most of the past three years its
inspectors have been able to “go anywhere and see anything”. They
inspected the nuclear installations at Isfahan and Natanz on 10 and 12
January and will return on 2 to 6 February. The head of the IAEA,
Mohamed El-Baradei says that an attack on Iran will have “catastrophic
consequences” and only encourage the regime to become a nuclear power.
Unlike its two nemeses, the US and Israel, Iran has attacked no other
countries. It last went to war in 1980 when invaded by Saddam Hussein,
who was backed and equipped by the US, which supplied chemical and
biological weapons produced at a factory in Maryland. Unlike Israel, the
world’s fifth military power with thermo-nuclear weapons aimed at
Middle-East targets, an unmatched record of defying UN resolutions and
the enforcer of the world’s longest illegal occupation, Iran has a
history of obeying international law and occupies no territory other
than its own.
The “threat” from Iran is entirely manufactured, aided and abetted by
familiar, compliant media language that refers to Iran’s “nuclear
ambitions”, just as the vocabulary of Saddam’s non-existent WMD arsenal
became common usage. Accompanying this is a demonising that has become
standard practice. As Edward Herman has pointed out, President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, “has done yeoman service in facilitating this”; yet a close
examination of his notorious remark about Israel in October 2005
reveals its distortion. According to Juan Cole, American professor of
Modern Middle History, and other Farsi language analysts, Ahmadinejad
did not call for Israel to be “wiped off the map”. He said, “The regime
occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”. This, says Cole,
“does not imply military action or killing anyone at all”. Ahmadinejad
compared the demise of the Jerusalem regime to the dissolution of the
Soviet Union. The Iranian ergime is repressive, but its power is diffuse
and exercised by the mullahs, with whom Ahmadinejad is often at odds.
An attack would surely unite them.
The one piece of “solid
evidence” is the threat posed by the United States. An American naval
buildup in the eastern Mediterranean has begun. This is almost certainly
part of what the Pentagon calls CONPLAN 8022, which is the aerial
bombing of Iran. In 2004, National Security Presidential Directive 35,
entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorisation, was issued. It is
classified, of course, but the presumption has long been that NSPD 35
authorised the stockpiling and deployment of “tactical” nuclear weapons
in the Middle East. This does not mean Bush will use them against Iran,
but for the first time since the most dangerous years of the cold war,
the use of what were then called “limited” nuclear weapons is being
openly discussed in Washington. What they are debating is the prospect
of other Hiroshimas and of radioactive fallout across the Middle East
and Central Asia. Seymour Hersh disclosed in the New Yorker last year
that American bombers “have been flying simulated nuclear weapons
delivery missions . . . since last summer”.
The well-informed
Arab Times in Kuwait says Bush will attack Iran before the end of April.
One of Russia’s most senior military strategists, General Leonid
Ivashov says the US will use nuclear munitions delivered by Cruise
missiles launched in the Mediterranean. “The war in Iraq,” he wrote on
24 January, “was just one element in a series of steps in the process of
regional destabilization. It was only a phase in getting closer to
dealing with Iran and other countries. [When the attack on Iran begins]
Israel is sure to come under Iranian missile strikes. Posing as victims,
the Israelis will suffer some tolerable damage and then an outraged US
will destabilize Iran finally, making it look like a noble mission of
retribution . . . Public opinion is already under pressure. There will
be a growing anti-Iranian hysteria, leaks, disinformation etcetera . . .
It remains unclear whether the US Congress is going to authorize the
war.”
Asked about a US Senate resolution disapproving of the
“surge” of US troops to Iraq, Vice-President Cheney said, “It won’t stop
us.” Last November, a majority of the American electorate voted for the
Democratic Party to control Congress and stop the war in Iraq. Apart
from insipid speeches of “disapproval”, this has not happened and is
unlikely to happen. Influential Democrats, such as the new leader of the
House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and would-be presidential
candidates Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have disported themselves
before the Israeli lobby. Edwards is regarded in his party as a
“liberal”. He was one of a high-level American contingent at a recent
Israeli conference in Herzilya, where he spoke about “an unprecedented
threat to the world and Israel (sic). At the top of these threats is
Iran . . . All options are on the table to ensure that Iran will never
get a nuclear weapon.” Hillary Clinton has said, “US policy must be
unequivocal . . . We have to keep all options on the table.” Pelosi and
Howard Dean, another liberal, have distinguished themselves by attacking
former President Jimmy Carter, who oversaw the Camp David agreement
between Israel and Egypt and has had the gall to write a truthful book
accusing Israel of becoming an “apartheid state”. Pelosi said, “Carter
does not speak for the Democratic Party.” She is right, alas.
In
Britain, Downing Street has been presented with a document entitled
“Answering the Charges” by Professor Abbas Edalal of Imperial College,
London, on behalf of others seeking to expose the disinformation on
Iran. Blair remains silent. Apart from the usual honourable exceptions,
Parliament remains shamefully silent.
Can this really be
happening again, less than four years after the invasion of Iraq which
has left some 650,000 people dead? I wrote virtually this same article
early in 2003; for Iran now read Iraq then. And is it not remarkable
that North Korea has not been attacked? North Korea has nuclear weapons.
That is the message, loud and clear, for the Iranians.
In
numerous surveys, such as that conducted this month by BBC World
Service, “we”, the majority of humanity, have made clear our revulsion
for Bush and his vassals. As for Blair, the man is now politically and
morally naked for all to see. So who speaks out, apart from Professor
Edalal and his colleagues? Privileged journalists, scholars and artists,
writers and thespians who sometimes speak about “freedom of speech” are
as silent as a dark West End theatre. What are they waiting for? The
declaration of another thousand year Reich, or a mushroom cloud in the
Middle East, or both?
