THE ROVING EYE Surrender now or we'll bomb you later By Pepe Escobar
Former United States president George W Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein before bombing and invading Iraq.
Nine years later, US President Barack Obama has issued an ultimatum to the leadership in Tehran before ... setting optimal conditions for an "all options on the table" exercise.
Obama has made an offer to Tehran to "negotiate" its nuclear program - ahead of long-delayed talks between the "Iran Six" (P5+1 - the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the US, the United Kingdom, China, Russia and France - plus Germany) and Iran scheduled for Istanbul on Saturday.
For starters, it's not an offer; it's a list of demands - even before
Dilbert
any negotiation takes place. And these "near term" concessions are packaged - according to the president's own rhetoric - as a "last chance".
In modern times, this used to be known as an ultimatum. In the post-everything era, it passes for "international diplomacy".
Obama wants Tehran to shut down and in fact destroy the Fordow enrichment plant, built under a mountain outside the holy city of Qom; he wants Tehran to definitely renounce and "surrender" its entire stockpile of uranium enriched to 20%; to stop any sort of enrichment, even to harmless 5% (which means Iran renouncing its whole civilian nuclear program, to which it has a right according to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ); to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors full access to all Iranian nuclear sites (they already have it); and to let the inspectors talk to all top Iranian nuclear scientists (that's not exactly possible; quite a few have been assassinated by Israel's Mossad).
So welcome to the "roll over and die" school of diplomacy - as perfected by the Obama administration, with vital input from the Israel lobby in Washington. It's our way of the highway. And the highway is to hell - to the sound of "Bomb Bomb Iran".
Another war for the 1% No wonder the proverbial "Israeli officials" are delighted that Iran - via its Foreign Ministry - has rejected all these demands as "irrational"; for Tel Aviv, the Iranian response is "good".
"Good" means the list of demands spells out the inevitable failure of the talks - which is the core of the Israeli strategy. Afterwards Obama may (will) use the failure as the perfect excuse to apply even harsher sanctions - and who knows what else.
The whole Israeli official apparatus for months have been brainwashing Israeli, American and European public opinion for war on Iran by all means necessary - manipulating everything from a nonsensical "existential threat" to the coming of a "second Holocaust".
Now the whole Fordow controversy is linked to the Israeli spin of another shady concept - known as "sphere of immunity". Tel Aviv insists Fordow will allow Tehran to protect the more sensitive elements of its nuclear program literally inside a mountain - immune from the most powerful GBU-28 bunker buster bombs (which Obama, by the way, agreed to sell to Israel).
This is absolutely nonsense. Tel Aviv invented this "sphere of immunity" smokescreen after civilian nuclear activity was already taking place in Fordow, under IAEA supervision.
Yet the tail once again wags the dog. Washington once again is remote-controlled by Tel Aviv.
Polls have shown that a majority of Israelis - in a fabulous display of ... altruism? - only want a war on Iran if the American Big Brother leads (and faces the direst consequences). And it doesn't matter that the nebula of Israeli intel is itself divided.
Context is key. The wealthiest 500 Israelis are worth roughly $75 billion. That in a country with a gross domestic product of only $205 billion.
The wealthiest 20 Israeli families control almost half of the stock market. Their collective wealth is 25% bigger than Israel's budget for 2011. And guess who these people are? The top supporters of the Likud-Ysrael Beitenu coalition in power, with Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu at the helm (Ysrael Beitenu is led by former Moldova bouncer turned Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman).
So it's the cream of the 1% in Israel that want war on Iran - as much as quite a few scoops of the cream of the 1% in the US.
The point in this whole nuclear "negotiation" shadow play is to sell to American - and world - public opinion the notion that Iran once again is stalling; has a lot to hide; and simply cannot be trusted to be engaged in any "serious" negotiations.
US corporate media has already pre-empted the negotiations with the usual rhetorical missiles - to the delight of armchair warmongers in the US Congress and vast sectors of the industrial-military complex. The "Bomb Iran" crowd will do everything in its power to merge Obama's "last chance" into the deafening drums of war.
Iran has not invaded or occupied another country for more than 200 years.We cannot say the same for the USA or the state of Israel. Iran has not used nuclear or biological weapon on any other nations.Cannot say the same for the USA or the state of Israel. Iran has not flaunted the international laws. Cannot say the same of the USA and the state of Israel. Now how is the threat to world peace? The world knows why the USA is bent on invading Iran. It is OIL stupid.
United States has always used Iran as a threatening tool for Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It has used Iran to make them wary of Iranian threat to establish its bases on their soils. A rogue Iranian posture helps US just fine in reaching this objective.
Leonid Geiler· Top Commenter · Nokia Siemens Networks
Pepe, your usual "The US is evil" rants are getting tiresome. How about some facts, for a change?
Iran has been sponsoring terrorism for several decades. It is responsible for the murder and maiming of hundreds of civilians, from Argentina to Thailand.
Iran is run by a fanatical, anti-semitic, violence-prone theocratic regime, that has made repeated threats to annihilate another country.
Iran's nuclear ambitions are worrying not just to the West: all of Iran's Arab neighbors are equally opposed to Iranian nuclear program (and some are terrified of it, much more than Israel is).
The standoff is not between Israel and Iran (although that's how you would like to frame it - since it makes it so much jucier, and you get to blame the Jews). The standoff is between most of the international community (including, as I mentioned above, the Arab countries), and Iran.
Your dishonest attempts to distort and/or ignore these facts, makes your articles all the more feeble.
Quiet!" Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" Thats from the New Testament, have you read it? Irans arab neighbors are pawns of the US and have no credibility. "most of the international community"? Define "most". Most who have no access to the facts? Or most who agree with the US position? China, India represent the two most populous countries and both are against the sanctions. Russia is the largest by area, against the sanctions,and the non aligned countries are against the sanctions.And thats not even to mention the war.No need to thank me.
Pepe Escobar is very enlightening on the 1% who control so much unmiitgated corrupting power. There seems to be no countervailing power out there that can counter this. How soon people forget the harangues regarding the Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" and the headlong rush to kill countless Iraqi civilians in their "shock and awe". The list goes on....
Seymour Hersh just released another blog on the New York times regarding the MKT being trained in Nevada for the last ten years. They claims to have assassinated several scientists.
I think the most powerful bunker-buster available to date is the GBU-57 with 30 000 pounds of explosives in it, not the GBU-28 - has the US also delivered this weapon to Israel too?
'cause in US Empire 1% gets to CALL the SHOTS ;)......99% just sit and watch bombing on TV and enact it on COD :) ! its cool mom its Just like Call Of Duty ! the blood is so real ! and one day a Soldier in AFPAK kills 17 innocent in COLD BLOOD!!!!
“Sanctions,” New York Times’ reporter Rick Gladstone writes, have subjected “ordinary Iranians” to “increased deprivations” in order to “punish Iran for enriching uranium that the West suspects is a cover for developing the ability to make nuclear weapons.” [1] In other words, Iran is suspected of having a secret nuclear weapons program, and so must be sanctioned to force it to abandon it.
Contrary to Gladstone, the West doesn’t really believe that Tehran has a secret nuclear weapons program, yet even if we accept it does believe this, the position is indefensible. Why should Iranians be punished for developing a capability that the countries that have imposed sanctions already have?
The reason why, it will be said, is because Iranians are bent on developing nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. Didn’t Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to “wipe Israel off the map”?
Regurgitated regularly by US hawks and Israeli politicians to mobilize support for the bombing of Iran, the claim is demagogic rubbish. Ahmadinejad predicted that Israel as a Zionist state would someday disappear much as South Africa as an apartheid state did. He didn’t threaten the physical destruction of Israel and expressed only the wish that historic Palestine would become a multinational democratic state of Arabs and of Jews who trace their descent from antecedents who arrived in Palestine before the arrival of Zionist settlers, i.e., that it would someday become a more humane alternative to what it is today. [2]
No less damaging to the argument that Iranians aspire to take Israel out in a hail of nuclear missiles is the reality that it would take decades for Iran to match Israel’s already formidable nuclear arsenal, if indeed it ever aspires to. For the foreseeable future, Israel is in a far better position to wipe Iran off the map. And given Israel’s penchant for flexing its US-built military muscle, is far more likely to be the wiper than the wipee. Already it has almost wiped an entire people from the map of historic Palestine.
But this is irrelevant, for the premise that the West suspects Iran of developing a nuclear weapons capability is false. To be sure, the mass media endlessly recycle the fiction that the West suspects Iran’s uranium enrichment program is a cover for a nuclear weapons program, but who in the West suspects this? Not high officials of the US state, for they have repeatedly said that there’s no evidence that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program.
The consensus view of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies is that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program years ago. Director of US intelligence James Clapper “said there was no evidence that (Iran) had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view…. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements.” [3]
Rather than weakening this conclusion, stepped up US espionage has buttressed it. Iran’s leaders “have opted for now against…designing a nuclear warhead,” said one former intelligence official briefed on US intelligence findings. “It isn’t the absence of evidence, it’s the evidence of an absence. Certain things are not being done” [4] that would indicate that Iran is working on nuclear weapons. Even Mossad, Israeli’s intelligence agency “does not disagree with the US on the weapons program,” according to a former senior US intelligence official. [5]
So, contrary to the repeated claim that the West “suspects” Iran of concealing a nuclear weapons program, no one in a position of authority in the US state believes this to be true. Neither does Israeli intelligence. So why is the United States and its allies subjecting ordinary Iranians to increased deprivations through sanctions?
The answer, according to the grand docent of US foreign policy, Henry Kissinger, is because US policy in the Middle East for the last half century has been aimed at “preventing any power in the region from emerging as a hegemon.” This is another way of saying that the aim of US Middle East policy is to stop any Middle Eastern country from challenging its domination by the United States. Iran, Kissinger points out, has emerged as the principal challenger. [6]
Indeed, it did so as long ago as 1979, when the local extension of US power in Iran, the Shah, was overthrown, and the country set out on a path of independent economic and political development free from the oppression of a Washington henchman. For the revolutionaries’ boldness in asserting their sovereignty, Washington pressed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq into a war with Iran. This served the same purpose as today’s economic warfare, sabotage, threats of military intervention, and assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists: to weaken the country and stifle its development; to prevent it from thriving and thereby becoming an example to other countries of development possibilities outside US domination.
Uranium enrichment has emerged as point of conflict for two reasons.
First, a civilian nuclear power industry strengthens Iran economically and domestic uranium enrichment provides the country with an independent source of nuclear fuel. Were Iran to depend on the West for enriched uranium to power its reactors, it would be forever at the mercy of a hostile US state. Likewise, concern over energy security being in the hands of an outside power has led Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and South Korea to insist over US objections that they be allowed to produce nuclear fuel domestically, without sanction. With US nuclear reactor sales hanging in the balance, it appears that their wishes will be respected. [7] Iran will be uniquely denied.
Secondly, uranium enrichment provides Tehran with the capability of developing nuclear weapons quickly, if it should ever feel compelled to. Given Washington’s longstanding hostility to an independent Iran, there are good reasons why the country may want to strengthen its means of self-defense. The hypocrisy of the United States championing counter-proliferation—and only selectively since no one is asking Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, and the United States hasn’t the slightest intention of ever relinquishing its own—reveals the illegitimacy of the exercise.
The reason, then, for punishing Iranians with new and more debilitating privations is not because their government has a secret nuclear weapons program —which no one in the US state believes anyway—but because a developing Iran with independent energy, economic and foreign policies threatens Washington’s preferred world political order—one in which the United States has unchallenged primacy.
Given that bankers, corporate lawyers and top corporate executives hold key positions in the US state and given that they fund and contribute to elite policy formulation organizations, it can be concluded that the point of US primacy is to secure the financial and corporate class’s profit-making interests. These include: creation of conditions for low-wage labor; the elimination of infant-industry protections; bans on subsidized pricing of necessities; upward redistribution of income; privatization of heath care and education; weakening environmental and health and safety regulations; and so on; in other words, all that is necessary to make profits fatter, and at the same time, all that makes the lives of ordinary people—in Iran and the West–meaner, poorer, shorter, and more uncertain.
Iran’s economic policy, with its restrictions on foreign investment and foreign ownership, and reliance on state-ownership of key industries, is an anathema to a US corporate and financial elite that depends on free access to profit making opportunities on a global scale. [8] To secure its interests in Iran, this class of super-wealthy bankers, investors and corporate titans, through its domination of the state, pursues a policy of creating misery among ordinary Iranians to destabilize their country and press their leadership into surrendering Iran to its pre-1979 role as appendage of US economic and foreign policy—and source of lucrative money-making opportunities.
The barbarism—concealed beneath lies about the need to protect Israel from an existential threat posed by an Iran that is “suspected” to be secretly building nuclear weapons –is revealed: Iran is being impoverished and threatened with physical destruction, not because it’s an offensive threat to anyone’s physical safety, but because its insistence on sovereignty is a threat to unrestricted Western corporate and financial domination of the Middle East.
1. Rick Gladstone, “Iranian President Says Oil Embargo Won’t Hurt”, The New York Times, April 10, 2012. 2. Glenn Kessler, “Did Ahmadinejad really say Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’?” The Washington Post, October 6, 2011. 3. James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, “U.S. agencies see no move by Iran to build a bomb”, The New York Times, February 24, 2012. 4. Joby Warrick and Greg Miller, “U.S. intelligence gains in Iran seen as boost to confidence”, The Washington Post, April 7, 2012. 5. James Risen, “U.S. faces a tricky task in assessment of data on Iran”, The New York Times, March 17, 2012. 6. Henry A. Kissinger, “A new doctrine of intervention?” The Washington Post, March 30, 2012. 7. Carol E. Lee and Jay Solomon, “Obama to discuss North Korea, Iran”, The Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2012. 8. For an elaboration of this point see Stephen Gowans, “Wars for Profits: A No-Nonsense Guide to Why the United States Seeks to Make Iran an International Pariah”, what’s left, November 9, 2011. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/wars-for-profits-a-no-nonsen...
ALERT: Barack Hussein Obama has just signed a Presidential Executive Order, which would give him thepowers of a DICTATOR -- whenever HE thinks it's "necessary" to institute MARTIAL LAW!
According to press reports, "A White House order updating federal emergency powers has raised alarm among some conservative commentators, and U.S. Rep. Sandy Adams, that President Barack Obama is attempting to grab unconstitutional powers."
A columnist with The Washington Times declared the mid-March order -- an update of a 60-year-old document outlining the president's authority in a national emergency -- "stunning in its audacity and a flagrant violation of the Constitution." The conservative Drudge Report website linked to it with the headline, "Martial Law?"
And Adams, R-Orlando, said it "leaves the door open for the president to give himself control over American resources during both times of peace, and national crisis."
THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS! BARACK OBAMA IS TRYING TO VIOLATE THE CONSTITUTION, BECOME ADICTATOR, AND TAKE AWAY OUR RIGHTS!
It's up to YOU AND ME to STOP HIM NOW!
SEND A MESSAGE TO EVERY SINGLE U.S. CONGRESSMAN, DEMANDING THEY STOP BARACK OBAMA'S "EMERGENCY POWERS" MARTIAL LAW EXECUTIVE ORDER: SEND YOUR MESSAGE NOW!
It's almost unbelievable what Barack Hussein Obama is trying to do -- BUT IT'S TRUE. According to a bombshell article in the Washington Times, "President Obama has given himself the powers to declare martial law -- especially in the event of a war with Iran. It is a sweeping power grab that should worry every American."
On March 16, the White House released an executive order, "National Defense Resources Preparedness." The document is stunning in its audacity and a flagrant violation of the Constitution. It states that, in case of a war or national emergency, the federal government has the authority to take over almost every aspect of American society. Food, livestock, farming equipment, manufacturing, industry, energy, transportation, hospitals, health care facilities, water resources, defense and construction -- all of it could fall under the full control of Mr. Obama. The order empowers the president to dispense these vast resources as he sees fit during a national crisis.
In short, according to the Times, the order gives Barack Obama the ability to IMPOSE MARTIAL LAW: "He now possesses the potentialpowers of a dictator. The order is a direct assault on individual liberties, private property rights and the rule of law. It is blatantly unconstitutional. The executive branch is arrogating responsibilities precluded by the Constitution without even asking the permission of Congress. The order gives Mr. Obama a blank check to erect a centralized authoritarian state."
But why this -- and why now?
SIMPLE -- because he's about to provoke a confrontation with IRAN, which could give him the excuse to implement martial law in America:
"Obama may be ready to launch devastating airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. If that should happen, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has promised massive retaliation. American troops will be targeted by Iranian proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan. American embassies will be struck across the Middle East and North Africa. Most ominously, Iranian-backed Hezbollah cells could launch devastating terrorist attacks in major U.S. cities, killing numerous citizens. The war may well come home, triggering domestic chaos. These are the very real risks of a major conflict with Iran."
As columnist Jeffrey Kuhner notes, "The president does not - and should not - have the authority to subordinate the entire private economy to the government, especially without the consent of Congress and the American people. It is national socialism masquerading as military security. This is why conservatives -- those who are serious about defending our constitutional republic - should demand that the executive order be repealed immediately."
THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED TO DO -- RIGHT NOW!
SEND A MESSAGE TO EVERY SINGLE U.S. CONGRESSMAN, DEMANDING THEY STOP BARACK OBAMA'S "EMERGENCY POWERS" MARTIAL LAW EXECUTIVE ORDER: SEND YOUR MESSAGE NOW!
Thankfully, there are Members of Congress who are standing UP for the U.S. Constitution. Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL) has introduced H. Con. Res. 110 in response to President Obama's blatant attempt to go around the Constitution and institute martial law if HE thinks it's "necessary."
In introducing her bill, Rep. Adams stated, "President Obama issued a National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order on March 16, 2012 that raises some serious concerns in its wording and intent. The order has historically been based on the Defense Production Act of 1950 (50 U.S.C. App. 2061 et seq.). However, unlike previous presidents, President Obama's executive order broadens the definition of 'national defense.' This leaves the door open for the president to give himself control over American resources during both times of peace, and national crisis. In response to the order, I have introduced a resolution to make it clear the president cannot use this as an excuse to abuse his executive power."
Rep. Adams' bill presently has 37 co-sponsors -- but she needs a lot more to get the bill to the floor.
THAT'S WHERE YOU AND I COME IN!
If we can FLOOD the offices of all of these Congressmen, demanding that they SUPPORT H. Con. Res. 110,we CAN put a stop to Obama's attempt to circumvent the Constitution and lay the groundwork formartial law. But we need YOUR help. Send your Blast Faxes to every single U.S. Congressman and Senator NOW!
Sincerely, William Greene, President RightMarch.com
P.S. As Rep. Adams stated when introducing her bill to stop Barack Obama's attempt to put in place the ability to institute martial law on his own whim, "Each of us in Congress began our service to our friends, neighbors, and communities with the knowledge it was our responsibility to uphold the Constitution. We were elected to protect the values that make our nation great and to be a line of defense against the growing interjection of government into the everyday lives of the American people. I will continue to defend the principles on which our nation was founded and I will continue to uphold our Constitution."
YOU AND I need to JOIN IN and force the REST of Congress to uphold our Constitution! TAKE ACTIONNOW!
SEND A MESSAGE TO EVERY SINGLE U.S. CONGRESSMAN, DEMANDING THEY STOP BARACK OBAMA'S "EMERGENCY POWERS" MARTIAL LAW EXECUTIVE ORDER: SEND YOUR MESSAGE NOW!
As always, you can also send a FREE message directly to your Representative by clicking here, and to your Senators by clicking here. Thank you.
“Sanctions,” New York Times’ reporter Rick Gladstone writes, have subjected “ordinary Iranians” to “increased deprivations” in order to “punish Iran for enriching uranium that the West suspects is a cover for developing the ability to make nuclear weapons.” [1] In other words, Iran is suspected of having a secret nuclear weapons program, and so must be sanctioned to force it to abandon it.
Contrary to Gladstone, the West doesn’t really believe that Tehran has a secret nuclear weapons program, yet even if we accept it does believe this, the position is indefensible. Why should Iranians be punished for developing a capability that the countries that have imposed sanctions already have?
The reason why, it will be said, is because Iranians are bent on developing nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. Didn’t Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to “wipe Israel off the map”?
Regurgitated regularly by US hawks and Israeli politicians to mobilize support for the bombing of Iran, the claim is demagogic rubbish. Ahmadinejad predicted that Israel as a Zionist state would someday disappear much as South Africa as an apartheid state did. He didn’t threaten the physical destruction of Israel and expressed only the wish that historic Palestine would become a multinational democratic state of Arabs and of Jews who trace their descent from antecedents who arrived in Palestine before the arrival of Zionist settlers, i.e., that it would someday become a more humane alternative to what it is today. [2]
No less damaging to the argument that Iranians aspire to take Israel out in a hail of nuclear missiles is the reality that it would take decades for Iran to match Israel’s already formidable nuclear arsenal, if indeed it ever aspires to. For the foreseeable future, Israel is in a far better position to wipe Iran off the map. And given Israel’s penchant for flexing its US-built military muscle, is far more likely to be the wiper than the wipee. Already it has almost wiped an entire people from the map of historic Palestine.
But this is irrelevant, for the premise that the West suspects Iran of developing a nuclear weapons capability is false. To be sure, the mass media endlessly recycle the fiction that the West suspects Iran’s uranium enrichment program is a cover for a nuclear weapons program, but who in the West suspects this? Not high officials of the US state, for they have repeatedly said that there’s no evidence that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program.
The consensus view of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies is that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program years ago. Director of US intelligence James Clapper “said there was no evidence that (Iran) had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view…. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements.” [3]
Rather than weakening this conclusion, stepped up US espionage has buttressed it. Iran’s leaders “have opted for now against…designing a nuclear warhead,” said one former intelligence official briefed on US intelligence findings. “It isn’t the absence of evidence, it’s the evidence of an absence. Certain things are not being done” [4] that would indicate that Iran is working on nuclear weapons. Even Mossad, Israeli’s intelligence agency “does not disagree with the US on the weapons program,” according to a former senior US intelligence official. [5]
So, contrary to the repeated claim that the West “suspects” Iran of concealing a nuclear weapons program, no one in a position of authority in the US state believes this to be true. Neither does Israeli intelligence. So why is the United States and its allies subjecting ordinary Iranians to increased deprivations through sanctions?
The answer, according to the grand docent of US foreign policy, Henry Kissinger, is because US policy in the Middle East for the last half century has been aimed at “preventing any power in the region from emerging as a hegemon.” This is another way of saying that the aim of US Middle East policy is to stop any Middle Eastern country from challenging its domination by the United States. Iran, Kissinger points out, has emerged as the principal challenger. [6]
Indeed, it did so as long ago as 1979, when the local extension of US power in Iran, the Shah, was overthrown, and the country set out on a path of independent economic and political development free from the oppression of a Washington henchman. For the revolutionaries’ boldness in asserting their sovereignty, Washington pressed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq into a war with Iran. This served the same purpose as today’s economic warfare, sabotage, threats of military intervention, and assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists: to weaken the country and stifle its development; to prevent it from thriving and thereby becoming an example to other countries of development possibilities outside US domination.
Uranium enrichment has emerged as point of conflict for two reasons.
First, a civilian nuclear power industry strengthens Iran economically and domestic uranium enrichment provides the country with an independent source of nuclear fuel. Were Iran to depend on the West for enriched uranium to power its reactors, it would be forever at the mercy of a hostile US state. Likewise, concern over energy security being in the hands of an outside power has led Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and South Korea to insist over US objections that they be allowed to produce nuclear fuel domestically, without sanction. With US nuclear reactor sales hanging in the balance, it appears that their wishes will be respected. [7] Iran will be uniquely denied.
Secondly, uranium enrichment provides Tehran with the capability of developing nuclear weapons quickly, if it should ever feel compelled to. Given Washington’s longstanding hostility to an independent Iran, there are good reasons why the country may want to strengthen its means of self-defense. The hypocrisy of the United States championing counter-proliferation—and only selectively since no one is asking Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, and the United States hasn’t the slightest intention of ever relinquishing its own—reveals the illegitimacy of the exercise.
The reason, then, for punishing Iranians with new and more debilitating privations is not because their government has a secret nuclear weapons program —which no one in the US state believes anyway—but because a developing Iran with independent energy, economic and foreign policies threatens Washington’s preferred world political order—one in which the United States has unchallenged primacy.
Given that bankers, corporate lawyers and top corporate executives hold key positions in the US state and given that they fund and contribute to elite policy formulation organizations, it can be concluded that the point of US primacy is to secure the financial and corporate class’s profit-making interests. These include: creation of conditions for low-wage labor; the elimination of infant-industry protections; bans on subsidized pricing of necessities; upward redistribution of income; privatization of heath care and education; weakening environmental and health and safety regulations; and so on; in other words, all that is necessary to make profits fatter, and at the same time, all that makes the lives of ordinary people—in Iran and the West–meaner, poorer, shorter, and more uncertain.
Iran’s economic policy, with its restrictions on foreign investment and foreign ownership, and reliance on state-ownership of key industries, is an anathema to a US corporate and financial elite that depends on free access to profit making opportunities on a global scale. [8] To secure its interests in Iran, this class of super-wealthy bankers, investors and corporate titans, through its domination of the state, pursues a policy of creating misery among ordinary Iranians to destabilize their country and press their leadership into surrendering Iran to its pre-1979 role as appendage of US economic and foreign policy—and source of lucrative money-making opportunities.
The barbarism—concealed beneath lies about the need to protect Israel from an existential threat posed by an Iran that is “suspected” to be secretly building nuclear weapons –is revealed: Iran is being impoverished and threatened with physical destruction, not because it’s an offensive threat to anyone’s physical safety, but because its insistence on sovereignty is a threat to unrestricted Western corporate and financial domination of the Middle East.
1. Rick Gladstone, “Iranian President Says Oil Embargo Won’t Hurt”, The New York Times, April 10, 2012. 2. Glenn Kessler, “Did Ahmadinejad really say Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’?” The Washington Post, October 6, 2011. 3. James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, “U.S. agencies see no move by Iran to build a bomb”, The New York Times, February 24, 2012. 4. Joby Warrick and Greg Miller, “U.S. intelligence gains in Iran seen as boost to confidence”, The Washington Post, April 7, 2012. 5. James Risen, “U.S. faces a tricky task in assessment of data on Iran”, The New York Times, March 17, 2012. 6. Henry A. Kissinger, “A new doctrine of intervention?” The Washington Post, March 30, 2012. 7. Carol E. Lee and Jay Solomon, “Obama to discuss North Korea, Iran”, The Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2012. 8. For an elaboration of this point see Stephen Gowans, “Wars for Profits: A No-Nonsense Guide to Why the United States Seeks to Make Iran an International Pariah”, what’s left, November 9, 2011. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/wars-for-profits-a-no-nonsen...
Jul 20, 2011 – Diary: Exposing OBAMA article shows that he was not born in the Hawaiian Islands, his Social Security Number has surfaced, and news about ...
Russia Is Massing Troops On Iran's Northern Border And Waiting For A Western Attack
F. Michael Maloof|April 09, 2012|
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58
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WASHINGTON – The Russian military anticipates that an attack will occur on Iran by the summer and has developed an action plan to move Russian troops through neighboring Georgia to stage in Armenia, which borders on the Islamic republic, according to informed Russian sources.
Russian Security Council head Viktor Ozerov said that Russian General Military Headquarters has prepared an action plan in the event of an attack on Iran.
Dmitry Rogozin, who recently was the Russian ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, warned against an attack on Iran.
"Iran is our neighbor," Rogozin said. "If Iran is involved in any military action, it's a direct threat to our security." Rogozin now is the deputy Russian prime minister and is regarded as anti-Western. He oversees Russia's defense sector.
Russian Defense Ministry sources say that the Russian military doesn't believe that Israel has sufficient military assets to defeat Iranian defenses and further believes that U.S. military action will be necessary.
The implication of preparing to move Russian troops not only is to protect its own vital regional interests but possibly to assist Iran in the event of such an attack. Sources add that a Russian military buildup in the region could result in the Russian military potentially engaging Israeli forces, U.S. forces, or both.
Informed sources say that the Russians have warned of "unpredictable consequences" in the event Iran is attacked, with some Russians saying that the Russian military will take part in the possible war because it would threaten its vital interests in the region.
The influential Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper has quoted a Russian military source as saying that the situation forming around Syria and Iran "causes Russia to expedite the course of improvement of its military groups in the South Caucasus, the Caspian, Mediterranean and Black Sea regions."
This latest information comes from a series of reports and leaks from official Russian spokesmen and government news agencies who say that an Israeli attack is all but certain by the summer.
Because of the impact on Russian vital interests in the region, sources say that Russian preparations for such an attack began two years ago when Russian Military Base 102 in Gyumri, Armenia, was modernized. It is said to occupy a major geopolitical position in the region.
Families of Russian servicemen from the Russian base at Gyumri in Armenia close to the borders of Georgia and Turkey already have been evacuated, Russian sources say.
"Military Base 102 is a key point, Russia's outpost in the South Caucasus," a Russian military source told the newspaper. "It occupies a very important geopolitical position, but the Kremlin fears lest it should lose this situation."
With Vladimir Putin returning to the Russian presidency, the prospect that he again would order an attack on Georgia as he did in August 2008 also has become a possibility, these informed sources say.
The Russians believe that Georgia would cooperate with the United States in blocking any supplies from reaching Military Base 102, which now is supplied primarily by air. Right now, Georgia blocks the only land transportation route through which Russian military supplies could travel.
Fuel for the Russian base in Armenia comes from Iran. Russian officials believe this border crossing may be closed in the event of a war.
"Possibly, it will be necessary to use military means to breach the Georgian transport blockade and establish transport corridors leading into Armenia," according to Yury Netkachev, former deputy commander of Russian forces in Transcaucasia. Geography of the region suggests that any such supply corridor would have to go through the middle of Georgia approaching Georgia's capital of Tbilisi given the roads and topography of the country.
In September, the Russian military plans to hold its annual military exercises called Kavkaz 2012. However, informed Russian sources say that preparations and deployments of military equipment and personnel already have begun in anticipation of a possible war with Iran.
These sources report that new command and control equipment has been deployed in the region capable of using the Russian GPS system, GLONASS for targeting information.
"The air force in the South Military District is reported to have been rearmed almost 100 percent with new jets and helicopters," according to regional expert Pavel Felgenhauer of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation.
In 2008, Felgenhauer pointed out, Kavkaz 2008 maneuvers allowed the Russian military to covertly deploy forces that successfully invaded Georgia in August of that year.
Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov already has announced that new Spetznaz, or Special Forces units, will be deployed in Stavropol and Kislovodsk, which are located in the North Caucasian regions.
(Page 2 of 2)
Russia Is Massing Troops On Iran's Northern Border And Waiting For A Western Attack
F. Michael Maloof|April 09, 2012|
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Russian sources say that the Russian military believes that if the U.S. goes to war with Iran, it may deploy forces into Georgia and warships in the Caspian Sea with the possible help of Azerbaijan, which since has stated that it will not allow its territory to be used by Israel to launch an attack on neighboring Iran.
There had been speculation that given the improved relations between Israel and Azerbaijan, the Jewish state may use bases from which to launch air attacks on neighboring Iran's nuclear sites. Israel recently agreed to sell Azerbaijan $1.6 billion in military equipment.
A further irritant to Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili is the prospect that Russian assault airborne troops, or VDV units, with helicopters could be moved into Georgia's two breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These two provinces were taken by the Russian military during the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war. Initially they were declared by Moscow to be independent countries, but now the Kremlin is indicating they may be annexed to Russia.
Similarly, Lt. General Vladimir Shamanov, commander of the VDV, has announced that Russian troops in Armenia will be reinforced by paratroopers, along with attack and transport helicopters.
"The Russian spearhead (from the Transcaucasia region) may be ordered to strike south to prevent the presumed deployment of U.S. bases in Transcaucasia, to link up with the troops in Armenia and take over the South Caucasus energy corridor along which Azeri, Turkmen and other Caspian naturalgas and oil may reach European markets," Felgenhauer said.
"By one swift military strike, Russia may ensure control of all the Caucasus and the Caspian states that were its former realm, establishing a fiat accompli the West, too preoccupied with Iran, would not reverse," he said.
"At the same time, a small victorious war would unite the Russian nation behind the Kremlin, allowing it to crush the remnants of the prodemocracy movement 'for fair elections,' and as a final bonus, Russia's military action could perhaps finally destroy the Saakashvili regime."
Putin has made no secret that he despises Saakashvili and with his return to the presidency, he may consider taking out the Georgian president as unfinished business. Just as in 2008, Putin will not have much to worry about if he sends Russian troops into Georgia, since there was muted reaction from the U.S. and the Europeancountries to the Russian invasion and subsequent occupation.
"He is not strong and powerful who throweth people down; but he is strong who witholdeth himself from anger": Muhammad
= "Do not say, that if the people do good to us, we will do good to them; and if the people oppress us, we will oppress them; but determine that if people do you good, you will do good to them; and if they oppress you, you will not oppress them": Muhammad
= "To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace": Bible
= "Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.": Buddha - Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta
note: Gandhi talks about the Moral World ---- so not to worry....he's not talking about the ONE WORLD ORDER/NEW WORLD ORDER because that in itself is Immoral.............therefore, OBOMB-A, et. als. are Immoral....
... to text)* Insurers more reluctant to cover tankers with Iranian oil* Big ... on Tuesday, in the latest sign that Western sanctions are curbing the ...
11 hours ago – View Photo Gallery — Iran's quest to possess nuclear technology: Iran said it has made advances in nuclear technology, citing new uranium ...
1 day ago –Iran must immediately close a large nuclear facility built underneath a mountain if it is to take what President Obama has called a "last chance" ...
1 day ago – Unveiling a six-point plan to implement the Iranian Intranet, Taghipour said last March that the Internet "promotes crime, disunity, unhealthy ...
Monday, 09 April 2012. E-mail · Print · PDF. New York Times : Bad news: the Obama administration and the West hold a lousy hand as they go into talks with Iran...
Replies
what's left
The US’s Barbarous Policy on Iran
By Stephen Gowans
“Sanctions,” New York Times’ reporter Rick Gladstone writes, have subjected “ordinary Iranians” to “increased deprivations” in order to “punish Iran for enriching uranium that the West suspects is a cover for developing the ability to make nuclear weapons.” [1] In other words, Iran is suspected of having a secret nuclear weapons program, and so must be sanctioned to force it to abandon it.
Contrary to Gladstone, the West doesn’t really believe that Tehran has a secret nuclear weapons program, yet even if we accept it does believe this, the position is indefensible. Why should Iranians be punished for developing a capability that the countries that have imposed sanctions already have?
The reason why, it will be said, is because Iranians are bent on developing nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. Didn’t Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to “wipe Israel off the map”?
Regurgitated regularly by US hawks and Israeli politicians to mobilize support for the bombing of Iran, the claim is demagogic rubbish. Ahmadinejad predicted that Israel as a Zionist state would someday disappear much as South Africa as an apartheid state did. He didn’t threaten the physical destruction of Israel and expressed only the wish that historic Palestine would become a multinational democratic state of Arabs and of Jews who trace their descent from antecedents who arrived in Palestine before the arrival of Zionist settlers, i.e., that it would someday become a more humane alternative to what it is today. [2]
No less damaging to the argument that Iranians aspire to take Israel out in a hail of nuclear missiles is the reality that it would take decades for Iran to match Israel’s already formidable nuclear arsenal, if indeed it ever aspires to. For the foreseeable future, Israel is in a far better position to wipe Iran off the map. And given Israel’s penchant for flexing its US-built military muscle, is far more likely to be the wiper than the wipee. Already it has almost wiped an entire people from the map of historic Palestine.
But this is irrelevant, for the premise that the West suspects Iran of developing a nuclear weapons capability is false. To be sure, the mass media endlessly recycle the fiction that the West suspects Iran’s uranium enrichment program is a cover for a nuclear weapons program, but who in the West suspects this? Not high officials of the US state, for they have repeatedly said that there’s no evidence that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program.
The consensus view of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies is that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program years ago. Director of US intelligence James Clapper “said there was no evidence that (Iran) had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view…. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements.” [3]
Rather than weakening this conclusion, stepped up US espionage has buttressed it. Iran’s leaders “have opted for now against…designing a nuclear warhead,” said one former intelligence official briefed on US intelligence findings. “It isn’t the absence of evidence, it’s the evidence of an absence. Certain things are not being done” [4] that would indicate that Iran is working on nuclear weapons. Even Mossad, Israeli’s intelligence agency “does not disagree with the US on the weapons program,” according to a former senior US intelligence official. [5]
So, contrary to the repeated claim that the West “suspects” Iran of concealing a nuclear weapons program, no one in a position of authority in the US state believes this to be true. Neither does Israeli intelligence. So why is the United States and its allies subjecting ordinary Iranians to increased deprivations through sanctions?
The answer, according to the grand docent of US foreign policy, Henry Kissinger, is because US policy in the Middle East for the last half century has been aimed at “preventing any power in the region from emerging as a hegemon.” This is another way of saying that the aim of US Middle East policy is to stop any Middle Eastern country from challenging its domination by the United States. Iran, Kissinger points out, has emerged as the principal challenger. [6]
Indeed, it did so as long ago as 1979, when the local extension of US power in Iran, the Shah, was overthrown, and the country set out on a path of independent economic and political development free from the oppression of a Washington henchman. For the revolutionaries’ boldness in asserting their sovereignty, Washington pressed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq into a war with Iran. This served the same purpose as today’s economic warfare, sabotage, threats of military intervention, and assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists: to weaken the country and stifle its development; to prevent it from thriving and thereby becoming an example to other countries of development possibilities outside US domination.
Uranium enrichment has emerged as point of conflict for two reasons.
First, a civilian nuclear power industry strengthens Iran economically and domestic uranium enrichment provides the country with an independent source of nuclear fuel. Were Iran to depend on the West for enriched uranium to power its reactors, it would be forever at the mercy of a hostile US state. Likewise, concern over energy security being in the hands of an outside power has led Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and South Korea to insist over US objections that they be allowed to produce nuclear fuel domestically, without sanction. With US nuclear reactor sales hanging in the balance, it appears that their wishes will be respected. [7] Iran will be uniquely denied.
Secondly, uranium enrichment provides Tehran with the capability of developing nuclear weapons quickly, if it should ever feel compelled to. Given Washington’s longstanding hostility to an independent Iran, there are good reasons why the country may want to strengthen its means of self-defense. The hypocrisy of the United States championing counter-proliferation—and only selectively since no one is asking Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, and the United States hasn’t the slightest intention of ever relinquishing its own—reveals the illegitimacy of the exercise.
The reason, then, for punishing Iranians with new and more debilitating privations is not because their government has a secret nuclear weapons program —which no one in the US state believes anyway—but because a developing Iran with independent energy, economic and foreign policies threatens Washington’s preferred world political order—one in which the United States has unchallenged primacy.
Given that bankers, corporate lawyers and top corporate executives hold key positions in the US state and given that they fund and contribute to elite policy formulation organizations, it can be concluded that the point of US primacy is to secure the financial and corporate class’s profit-making interests. These include: creation of conditions for low-wage labor; the elimination of infant-industry protections; bans on subsidized pricing of necessities; upward redistribution of income; privatization of heath care and education; weakening environmental and health and safety regulations; and so on; in other words, all that is necessary to make profits fatter, and at the same time, all that makes the lives of ordinary people—in Iran and the West–meaner, poorer, shorter, and more uncertain.
Iran’s economic policy, with its restrictions on foreign investment and foreign ownership, and reliance on state-ownership of key industries, is an anathema to a US corporate and financial elite that depends on free access to profit making opportunities on a global scale. [8] To secure its interests in Iran, this class of super-wealthy bankers, investors and corporate titans, through its domination of the state, pursues a policy of creating misery among ordinary Iranians to destabilize their country and press their leadership into surrendering Iran to its pre-1979 role as appendage of US economic and foreign policy—and source of lucrative money-making opportunities.
The barbarism—concealed beneath lies about the need to protect Israel from an existential threat posed by an Iran that is “suspected” to be secretly building nuclear weapons –is revealed: Iran is being impoverished and threatened with physical destruction, not because it’s an offensive threat to anyone’s physical safety, but because its insistence on sovereignty is a threat to unrestricted Western corporate and financial domination of the Middle East.
1. Rick Gladstone, “Iranian President Says Oil Embargo Won’t Hurt”, The New York Times, April 10, 2012.
2. Glenn Kessler, “Did Ahmadinejad really say Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’?” The Washington Post, October 6, 2011.
3. James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, “U.S. agencies see no move by Iran to build a bomb”, The New York Times, February 24, 2012.
4. Joby Warrick and Greg Miller, “U.S. intelligence gains in Iran seen as boost to confidence”, The Washington Post, April 7, 2012.
5. James Risen, “U.S. faces a tricky task in assessment of data on Iran”, The New York Times, March 17, 2012.
6. Henry A. Kissinger, “A new doctrine of intervention?” The Washington Post, March 30, 2012.
7. Carol E. Lee and Jay Solomon, “Obama to discuss North Korea, Iran”, The Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2012.
8. For an elaboration of this point see Stephen Gowans, “Wars for Profits: A No-Nonsense Guide to Why the United States Seeks to Make Iran an International Pariah”, what’s left, November 9, 2011. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/wars-for-profits-a-no-nonsen...
The Associates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkhzHQO7jY
aloha.
Obama is Grabbing Unconstitutional Powers to Declare Martial Law -- Click below to DEMAND Congress STOP Obama's "Emergency Powers" Executive Order:
https://secure.responseenterprises.com/rm_martial-law/?a=7559
ALERT: Barack Hussein Obama has just signed a Presidential Executive Order, which would give him thepowers of a DICTATOR -- whenever HE thinks it's "necessary" to institute MARTIAL LAW!
According to press reports, "A White House order updating federal emergency powers has raised alarm among some conservative commentators, and U.S. Rep. Sandy Adams, that President Barack Obama is attempting to grab unconstitutional powers."
THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS! BARACK OBAMA IS TRYING TO VIOLATE THE CONSTITUTION, BECOME ADICTATOR, AND TAKE AWAY OUR RIGHTS!
It's up to YOU AND ME to STOP HIM NOW!
SEND A MESSAGE TO EVERY SINGLE U.S.
CONGRESSMAN, DEMANDING THEY STOP
BARACK OBAMA'S "EMERGENCY POWERS"
MARTIAL LAW EXECUTIVE ORDER:
SEND YOUR MESSAGE NOW!
It's almost unbelievable what Barack Hussein Obama is trying to do -- BUT IT'S TRUE. According to a bombshell article in the Washington Times, "President Obama has given himself the powers to declare martial law -- especially in the event of a war with Iran. It is a sweeping power grab that should worry every American."
In short, according to the Times, the order gives Barack Obama the ability to IMPOSE MARTIAL LAW: "He now possesses the potentialpowers of a dictator. The order is a direct assault on individual liberties, private property rights and the rule of law. It is blatantly unconstitutional. The executive branch is arrogating responsibilities precluded by the Constitution without even asking the permission of Congress. The order gives Mr. Obama a blank check to erect a centralized authoritarian state."
But why this -- and why now?
SIMPLE -- because he's about to provoke a confrontation with IRAN, which could give him the excuse to implement martial law in America:
As columnist Jeffrey Kuhner notes, "The president does not - and should not - have the authority to subordinate the entire private economy to the government, especially without the consent of Congress and the American people. It is national socialism masquerading as military security. This is why conservatives -- those who are serious about defending our constitutional republic - should demand that the executive order be repealed immediately."
THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED TO DO -- RIGHT NOW!
SEND A MESSAGE TO EVERY SINGLE U.S.
CONGRESSMAN, DEMANDING THEY STOP
BARACK OBAMA'S "EMERGENCY POWERS"
MARTIAL LAW EXECUTIVE ORDER:
SEND YOUR MESSAGE NOW!
Thankfully, there are Members of Congress who are standing UP for the U.S. Constitution. Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL) has introduced H. Con. Res. 110 in response to President Obama's blatant attempt to go around the Constitution and institute martial law if HE thinks it's "necessary."
Rep. Adams' bill presently has 37 co-sponsors -- but she needs a lot more to get the bill to the floor.
THAT'S WHERE YOU AND I COME IN!
If we can FLOOD the offices of all of these Congressmen, demanding that they SUPPORT H. Con. Res. 110,we CAN put a stop to Obama's attempt to circumvent the Constitution and lay the groundwork formartial law. But we need YOUR help. Send your Blast Faxes to every single U.S. Congressman and Senator NOW!
Sincerely,
William Greene, President
RightMarch.com
P.S. As Rep. Adams stated when introducing her bill to stop Barack Obama's attempt to put in place the ability to institute martial law on his own whim, "Each of us in Congress began our service to our friends, neighbors, and communities with the knowledge it was our responsibility to uphold the Constitution. We were elected to protect the values that make our nation great and to be a line of defense against the growing interjection of government into the everyday lives of the American people. I will continue to defend the principles on which our nation was founded and I will continue to uphold our Constitution."
YOU AND I need to JOIN IN and force the REST of Congress to uphold our Constitution! TAKE ACTIONNOW!
SEND A MESSAGE TO EVERY SINGLE U.S.
CONGRESSMAN, DEMANDING THEY STOP
BARACK OBAMA'S "EMERGENCY POWERS"
MARTIAL LAW EXECUTIVE ORDER:
SEND YOUR MESSAGE NOW!
As always, you can also send a FREE message directly to your Representative by clicking here, and to your Senators by clicking here. Thank you.
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Stephen Gowans sent the following:
what's left
The US’s Barbarous Policy on Iran
By Stephen Gowans
“Sanctions,” New York Times’ reporter Rick Gladstone writes, have subjected “ordinary Iranians” to “increased deprivations” in order to “punish Iran for enriching uranium that the West suspects is a cover for developing the ability to make nuclear weapons.” [1] In other words, Iran is suspected of having a secret nuclear weapons program, and so must be sanctioned to force it to abandon it.
Contrary to Gladstone, the West doesn’t really believe that Tehran has a secret nuclear weapons program, yet even if we accept it does believe this, the position is indefensible. Why should Iranians be punished for developing a capability that the countries that have imposed sanctions already have?
The reason why, it will be said, is because Iranians are bent on developing nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. Didn’t Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to “wipe Israel off the map”?
Regurgitated regularly by US hawks and Israeli politicians to mobilize support for the bombing of Iran, the claim is demagogic rubbish. Ahmadinejad predicted that Israel as a Zionist state would someday disappear much as South Africa as an apartheid state did. He didn’t threaten the physical destruction of Israel and expressed only the wish that historic Palestine would become a multinational democratic state of Arabs and of Jews who trace their descent from antecedents who arrived in Palestine before the arrival of Zionist settlers, i.e., that it would someday become a more humane alternative to what it is today. [2]
No less damaging to the argument that Iranians aspire to take Israel out in a hail of nuclear missiles is the reality that it would take decades for Iran to match Israel’s already formidable nuclear arsenal, if indeed it ever aspires to. For the foreseeable future, Israel is in a far better position to wipe Iran off the map. And given Israel’s penchant for flexing its US-built military muscle, is far more likely to be the wiper than the wipee. Already it has almost wiped an entire people from the map of historic Palestine.
But this is irrelevant, for the premise that the West suspects Iran of developing a nuclear weapons capability is false. To be sure, the mass media endlessly recycle the fiction that the West suspects Iran’s uranium enrichment program is a cover for a nuclear weapons program, but who in the West suspects this? Not high officials of the US state, for they have repeatedly said that there’s no evidence that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program.
The consensus view of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies is that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program years ago. Director of US intelligence James Clapper “said there was no evidence that (Iran) had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view…. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements.” [3]
Rather than weakening this conclusion, stepped up US espionage has buttressed it. Iran’s leaders “have opted for now against…designing a nuclear warhead,” said one former intelligence official briefed on US intelligence findings. “It isn’t the absence of evidence, it’s the evidence of an absence. Certain things are not being done” [4] that would indicate that Iran is working on nuclear weapons. Even Mossad, Israeli’s intelligence agency “does not disagree with the US on the weapons program,” according to a former senior US intelligence official. [5]
So, contrary to the repeated claim that the West “suspects” Iran of concealing a nuclear weapons program, no one in a position of authority in the US state believes this to be true. Neither does Israeli intelligence. So why is the United States and its allies subjecting ordinary Iranians to increased deprivations through sanctions?
The answer, according to the grand docent of US foreign policy, Henry Kissinger, is because US policy in the Middle East for the last half century has been aimed at “preventing any power in the region from emerging as a hegemon.” This is another way of saying that the aim of US Middle East policy is to stop any Middle Eastern country from challenging its domination by the United States. Iran, Kissinger points out, has emerged as the principal challenger. [6]
Indeed, it did so as long ago as 1979, when the local extension of US power in Iran, the Shah, was overthrown, and the country set out on a path of independent economic and political development free from the oppression of a Washington henchman. For the revolutionaries’ boldness in asserting their sovereignty, Washington pressed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq into a war with Iran. This served the same purpose as today’s economic warfare, sabotage, threats of military intervention, and assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists: to weaken the country and stifle its development; to prevent it from thriving and thereby becoming an example to other countries of development possibilities outside US domination.
Uranium enrichment has emerged as point of conflict for two reasons.
First, a civilian nuclear power industry strengthens Iran economically and domestic uranium enrichment provides the country with an independent source of nuclear fuel. Were Iran to depend on the West for enriched uranium to power its reactors, it would be forever at the mercy of a hostile US state. Likewise, concern over energy security being in the hands of an outside power has led Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and South Korea to insist over US objections that they be allowed to produce nuclear fuel domestically, without sanction. With US nuclear reactor sales hanging in the balance, it appears that their wishes will be respected. [7] Iran will be uniquely denied.
Secondly, uranium enrichment provides Tehran with the capability of developing nuclear weapons quickly, if it should ever feel compelled to. Given Washington’s longstanding hostility to an independent Iran, there are good reasons why the country may want to strengthen its means of self-defense. The hypocrisy of the United States championing counter-proliferation—and only selectively since no one is asking Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, and the United States hasn’t the slightest intention of ever relinquishing its own—reveals the illegitimacy of the exercise.
The reason, then, for punishing Iranians with new and more debilitating privations is not because their government has a secret nuclear weapons program —which no one in the US state believes anyway—but because a developing Iran with independent energy, economic and foreign policies threatens Washington’s preferred world political order—one in which the United States has unchallenged primacy.
Given that bankers, corporate lawyers and top corporate executives hold key positions in the US state and given that they fund and contribute to elite policy formulation organizations, it can be concluded that the point of US primacy is to secure the financial and corporate class’s profit-making interests. These include: creation of conditions for low-wage labor; the elimination of infant-industry protections; bans on subsidized pricing of necessities; upward redistribution of income; privatization of heath care and education; weakening environmental and health and safety regulations; and so on; in other words, all that is necessary to make profits fatter, and at the same time, all that makes the lives of ordinary people—in Iran and the West–meaner, poorer, shorter, and more uncertain.
Iran’s economic policy, with its restrictions on foreign investment and foreign ownership, and reliance on state-ownership of key industries, is an anathema to a US corporate and financial elite that depends on free access to profit making opportunities on a global scale. [8] To secure its interests in Iran, this class of super-wealthy bankers, investors and corporate titans, through its domination of the state, pursues a policy of creating misery among ordinary Iranians to destabilize their country and press their leadership into surrendering Iran to its pre-1979 role as appendage of US economic and foreign policy—and source of lucrative money-making opportunities.
The barbarism—concealed beneath lies about the need to protect Israel from an existential threat posed by an Iran that is “suspected” to be secretly building nuclear weapons –is revealed: Iran is being impoverished and threatened with physical destruction, not because it’s an offensive threat to anyone’s physical safety, but because its insistence on sovereignty is a threat to unrestricted Western corporate and financial domination of the Middle East.
1. Rick Gladstone, “Iranian President Says Oil Embargo Won’t Hurt”, The New York Times, April 10, 2012.
2. Glenn Kessler, “Did Ahmadinejad really say Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’?” The Washington Post, October 6, 2011.
3. James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, “U.S. agencies see no move by Iran to build a bomb”, The New York Times, February 24, 2012.
4. Joby Warrick and Greg Miller, “U.S. intelligence gains in Iran seen as boost to confidence”, The Washington Post, April 7, 2012.
5. James Risen, “U.S. faces a tricky task in assessment of data on Iran”, The New York Times, March 17, 2012.
6. Henry A. Kissinger, “A new doctrine of intervention?” The Washington Post, March 30, 2012.
7. Carol E. Lee and Jay Solomon, “Obama to discuss North Korea, Iran”, The Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2012.
8. For an elaboration of this point see Stephen Gowans, “Wars for Profits: A No-Nonsense Guide to Why the United States Seeks to Make Iran an International Pariah”, what’s left, November 9, 2011. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/wars-for-profits-a-no-nonsen...
******************************
The Associates
The Associates
THE PLUNDERING UPON IRAN MEANS PLUNDERING UPON RUSSIA (CHINA) TOO...............SEE THE POST FROM RUSSIA....
aloha.
Russia Is Massing Troops On Iran's Northern Border And Waiting For A Western Attack
Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-09/news/31311454_1_russ...
OpEdNews - Diary: Exposing BORIS ABRAMOV also known as ...
Track Record of UNDOING THE CONSTITUTION compiled by ...
Russia Is Massing Troops On Iran's Northern Border And Waiting For A Western Attack
WASHINGTON – The Russian military anticipates that an attack will occur on Iran by the summer and has developed an action plan to move Russian troops through neighboring Georgia to stage in Armenia, which borders on the Islamic republic, according to informed Russian sources.
Russian Security Council head Viktor Ozerov said that Russian General Military Headquarters has prepared an action plan in the event of an attack on Iran.
Dmitry Rogozin, who recently was the Russian ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, warned against an attack on Iran.
"Iran is our neighbor," Rogozin said. "If Iran is involved in any military action, it's a direct threat to our security." Rogozin now is the deputy Russian prime minister and is regarded as anti-Western. He oversees Russia's defense sector.
Russian Defense Ministry sources say that the Russian military doesn't believe that Israel has sufficient military assets to defeat Iranian defenses and further believes that U.S. military action will be necessary.
The implication of preparing to move Russian troops not only is to protect its own vital regional interests but possibly to assist Iran in the event of such an attack. Sources add that a Russian military buildup in the region could result in the Russian military potentially engaging Israeli forces, U.S. forces, or both.
Informed sources say that the Russians have warned of "unpredictable consequences" in the event Iran is attacked, with some Russians saying that the Russian military will take part in the possible war because it would threaten its vital interests in the region.
The influential Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper has quoted a Russian military source as saying that the situation forming around Syria and Iran "causes Russia to expedite the course of improvement of its military groups in the South Caucasus, the Caspian, Mediterranean and Black Sea regions."
This latest information comes from a series of reports and leaks from official Russian spokesmen and government news agencies who say that an Israeli attack is all but certain by the summer.
Because of the impact on Russian vital interests in the region, sources say that Russian preparations for such an attack began two years ago when Russian Military Base 102 in Gyumri, Armenia, was modernized. It is said to occupy a major geopolitical position in the region.
Families of Russian servicemen from the Russian base at Gyumri in Armenia close to the borders of Georgia and Turkey already have been evacuated, Russian sources say.
"Military Base 102 is a key point, Russia's outpost in the South Caucasus," a Russian military source told the newspaper. "It occupies a very important geopolitical position, but the Kremlin fears lest it should lose this situation."
With Vladimir Putin returning to the Russian presidency, the prospect that he again would order an attack on Georgia as he did in August 2008 also has become a possibility, these informed sources say.
The Russians believe that Georgia would cooperate with the United States in blocking any supplies from reaching Military Base 102, which now is supplied primarily by air. Right now, Georgia blocks the only land transportation route through which Russian military supplies could travel.
Fuel for the Russian base in Armenia comes from Iran. Russian officials believe this border crossing may be closed in the event of a war.
"Possibly, it will be necessary to use military means to breach the Georgian transport blockade and establish transport corridors leading into Armenia," according to Yury Netkachev, former deputy commander of Russian forces in Transcaucasia. Geography of the region suggests that any such supply corridor would have to go through the middle of Georgia approaching Georgia's capital of Tbilisi given the roads and topography of the country.
In September, the Russian military plans to hold its annual military exercises called Kavkaz 2012. However, informed Russian sources say that preparations and deployments of military equipment and personnel already have begun in anticipation of a possible war with Iran.
These sources report that new command and control equipment has been deployed in the region capable of using the Russian GPS system, GLONASS for targeting information.
"The air force in the South Military District is reported to have been rearmed almost 100 percent with new jets and helicopters," according to regional expert Pavel Felgenhauer of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation.
In 2008, Felgenhauer pointed out, Kavkaz 2008 maneuvers allowed the Russian military to covertly deploy forces that successfully invaded Georgia in August of that year.
Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov already has announced that new Spetznaz, or Special Forces units, will be deployed in Stavropol and Kislovodsk, which are located in the North Caucasian regions.
Russia Is Massing Troops On Iran's Northern Border And Waiting For A Western Attack
Russian sources say that the Russian military believes that if the U.S. goes to war with Iran, it may deploy forces into Georgia and warships in the Caspian Sea with the possible help of Azerbaijan, which since has stated that it will not allow its territory to be used by Israel to launch an attack on neighboring Iran.
There had been speculation that given the improved relations between Israel and Azerbaijan, the Jewish state may use bases from which to launch air attacks on neighboring Iran's nuclear sites. Israel recently agreed to sell Azerbaijan $1.6 billion in military equipment.
A further irritant to Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili is the prospect that Russian assault airborne troops, or VDV units, with helicopters could be moved into Georgia's two breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These two provinces were taken by the Russian military during the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war. Initially they were declared by Moscow to be independent countries, but now the Kremlin is indicating they may be annexed to Russia.
Similarly, Lt. General Vladimir Shamanov, commander of the VDV, has announced that Russian troops in Armenia will be reinforced by paratroopers, along with attack and transport helicopters.
"The Russian spearhead (from the Transcaucasia region) may be ordered to strike south to prevent the presumed deployment of U.S. bases in Transcaucasia, to link up with the troops in Armenia and take over the South Caucasus energy corridor along which Azeri, Turkmen and other Caspian natural gas and oil may reach European markets," Felgenhauer said.
"By one swift military strike, Russia may ensure control of all the Caucasus and the Caspian states that were its former realm, establishing a fiat accompli the West, too preoccupied with Iran, would not reverse," he said.
"At the same time, a small victorious war would unite the Russian nation behind the Kremlin, allowing it to crush the remnants of the prodemocracy movement 'for fair elections,' and as a final bonus, Russia's military action could perhaps finally destroy the Saakashvili regime."
Putin has made no secret that he despises Saakashvili and with his return to the presidency, he may consider taking out the Georgian president as unfinished business. Just as in 2008, Putin will not have much to worry about if he sends Russian troops into Georgia, since there was muted reaction from the U.S. and the European countries to the Russian invasion and subsequent occupation.
This post originally appeared at G2 Bulletin.
Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-09/news/31311454_1_russ...
Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-09/news/31311454_1_russ...
"He is not strong and powerful who throweth people down; but he is strong who witholdeth himself from anger": Muhammad
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"Do not say, that if the people do good to us, we will do good to them; and if the people oppress us, we will oppress them; but determine that if people do you good, you will do good to them; and if they oppress you, you will not oppress them": Muhammad
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"To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace": Bible
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"Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.": Buddha - Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta
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Read this newsletter online http://tinyurl.com/dy6yy
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86yssup7fWg&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igDsu5QWhpo&feature=related
NOW .......................Remember Gandhi.......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElixqbRw4g4
note: Gandhi talks about the Moral World ---- so not to worry....he's not talking about the ONE WORLD ORDER/NEW WORLD ORDER because that in itself is Immoral.............therefore, OBOMB-A, et. als. are Immoral....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GThfWVCfjVo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZVxjH04aIY
aloha.
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