By Mark H Gaffney | September 22, 2012
Recently, President Obama imposed new sanctions on Iran which according to reports have been very effective, causing a sudden major devaluation of Iran’s currency. The Iranians correctly understand that they are under attack, and have threatened to respond by closing the strait of Hormuz, through which a large percentage of oil from the Mideast flows to the global economy.
If the crisis deepens and Iran makes good on its threat to close Hormuz, there is little doubt that the US will intervene to reopen the strait. This will lead to a shooting war for which Iran will be blamed, even though the recent US sanctions were tantamount to overt aggression.
I believe the US will exploit the situation to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. But, even more importantly, the US will target Iran’s conventional missiles. Indeed, I believe this is the real reason for US sanctions in the first place, and for the buildup of tensions in recent days. Despite public perceptions, and all the rhetoric about nukes, the present crisis has nothing to do with Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. In my opinion, that is just a cover story.
The real issue is the fact that Iran has upgraded its medium range conventionally-armed missiles with GPS technology, making its missiles much more accurate. This means Iran can now target Israel’s own nuclear, bio and chemical weapons stockpiles, located inside Israel, as well as the Dimona nuclear reactor.
In short, Iran has achieved a conventional deterrent to Israel. Therefor, statements by Iranian officials that Iran has no nuclear weapons program are in my view probably correct. Presently, Iran does not need nukes to deter Israel. It can do so with its GPS-guided medium range missiles. The Israelis are no doubt gnashing their teeth over this, because they now find themselves threatened by their own WMD stockpiles, and by their own nuclear reactors, especially Dimona, all of which have become targets.
A few direct hits by Iran could cause a toxic plume, killing thousands of Israelis. A worst case might signal the end of the Jewish state.
It is important to realize that Iran would never launch a pre-emptive strike on Israel because the Iranians know that the US/Israeli response would be devastating. However, if Iran comes under attack first, all bets are off. Iran will defend itself. A counter attack on Israel cannot be ruled out because Iranian leaders understand clearly (even if the American people do not) that the crisis has been manufactured, on Israel’s behalf.
From the Israeli standpoint, the present Iranian deterrent (though conventional) is simply unacceptable. Israel’s military strategists have always insisted on total freedom of movement. This is why Israel refused a US offer many years ago to sign a defense pact with the US. Such a treaty would have limited Israel’s freedom of movement, and this was unacceptable. Israel’s leaders preferred to remain independent. Israel has always insisted on the “freedom” to intimidate its neighbors, whenever and howsoever it chooses. Iran’s conventional missiles now curtail that “freedom.” Israeli officials probably worry, for example, that Iran’s conventional missiles would limit its freedom to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, in a future conflict. Hezbollah is closely allied with Tehran.
I believe the present crisis has been manufactured to create the pretext for a US air campaign to take out Iran’s conventional missile sites. The US will also target Iran’s nuclear facilities, but the primary target will be Iran’s conventional missiles. The US will be doing Israel’s bidding. The Zionist tail will be wagging the servile US dog.
Obviously, you can’t generate public support for such a bombing campaign, on Israel’s behalf. Hence the cover story about nukes and the alleged Iranian threat to wipe Israel off the map, all of which is untrue but very effective propaganda nonetheless.
The problem for the US is that depriving Iran of its conventional deterrent will not be easy to accomplish. Indeed, it will be even more difficult than taking out all of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran’s conventional missiles are probably dispersed widely. If they come under attack, the purpose of the air campaign will be transparently obvious to the Iranian leadership. Faced with the prospect of losing their deterrent, the Mullahs may well decide to fire their conventional missiles. If they do and manage some direct hits on Israel’s nuclear-bio-and chemical weapons stockpiles, the ensuing disaster will prompt an Israeli response. Israel may even resort to the Samson Option, and attack Iran with nukes. Words cannot describe the horrific scale of such an outcome. Unfortunately, it is all too possible.
Early in the war, US naval forces in the Gulf will also come under attack. No mistake, Iran has enough anti-ship cruise missiles to pose a grave threat to the US naval presence in the Gulf. Thousands of US sailors are now in harm’s way, and at risk.
We must rally to prevent such a war. Peace activists must now marshal every asset for peace that we possess. The American people need to know the truth. This is a phony crisis. Yet the danger is very real. Now is the time to speak out with all of our strength. Tomorrow could come too late.
- Iran: “We Lied!” – not really (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Who’s Got the Nukes? (thetruthiswhere.wordpress.com)
September 23, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Negev Nuclear Research Center, Samson Option, United States, Zionism |
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For a number of years the mainstream media and politicians have been in an uproar about Iran’s nuclear program, alleging that the Islamic state is developing a nuclear weapons program, or at least the capability of developing nuclear weapons, and thus threatening the peace of the world. But no reputable source claims that Iran actually possesses a nuclear weapons arsenal. In 2009, the then-dean of the Washington White House Correspondents, Helen Thomas, was so intrepid as to ask President Obama in his inaugural press conference if there were any Middle Eastern countries that currently possessed nuclear weapons. President Obama was caught flat-footed, uttering that he did not want to “speculate” (somehow America’s varied claims about Iran’s nuclear program do not count as speculation), and then, resorting to the verbal gymnastics common to American politicians, dodged the question as best he could. (A little over a year later, Thomas would be hounded out of journalism for what were widely regarded as anti-Semitic remarks about Israel, which were made in private but were video-recorded by an individual unknown to Thomas who turned out to be a an ardently pro-Israel rabbi, and then publicized by the major media.)
On August 31, the Washington Post’s ombudsman, Patrick B. Pexton, dared to touch on the taboo subject of Israel’s nuclear-weapons program in a piece titled “What about Israel’s nuclear weapons?” The Post’s ombudsman is supposed to deal with complaints about the newspaper and he began by noting: “Readers periodically ask me some variation on this question: ‘Why does the press follow every jot and tittle of Iran’s nuclear program, but we never see any stories about Israel’s nuclear weapons capability?’”
Pexton then offered some ostensible reasons for such a state of affairs. He wrote: “First, Israel refuses to acknowledge publicly that it has nuclear weapons. [Israel’s policy is known as “nuclear ambiguity.”] The U.S. government also officially does not acknowledge the existence of such a program.” But the very purpose of a purportedly free media is to ferret out and mention things that governments don’t acknowledge. And the fact that Iran actually denies trying to develop nuclear weapons does not prevent the U.S. media from charging it with that very activity.
Then Pexton glommed onto the idea that since Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) its nuclear weapons are not ipso facto illegal and that it is under no legal obligation to have them inspected, whereas since Iran did sign that treaty it is not allowed to develop nuclear weapons and must allow for full inspections of all of its nuclear facilities. Pexton maintains that “the core of the current dispute is that Tehran is not letting them [International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) weapons inspectors] have unfettered access to all of the country’s nuclear installations.” It is not apparent that the NPT actually allows inspectors to have “unfettered access” to go wherever they want. And while the IAEA has found some faults with Iran’s adherence to the NPT, Israel and the United States go beyond the letter of the Treaty in demanding that Iran be prohibited from developing a “nuclear weapons capability” or engaging in the enrichment of uranium to high levels that could lead to nuclear weapons. Such demands would inhibit the promotion and sharing of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, which is one of the fundamental “pillars” of the NPT and a significant reason why countries lacking nuclear weapons would be motivated to become Treaty members. Iran thus has some justification in claiming that its treaty rights in this area have been violated by existing sanctions.
Furthermore, the NPT does not give the United States the right to enforce its provisions—even if they were being violated—by attacking Iran, and still more outrageous would be the claim that it would be legal for Israel to enforce a treaty to which it is not a party.
And, finally, Iran could withdraw from the NPT, which it could legally do according to Article X of the Treaty, which allows such a move if “extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.” To do so, Iran would simply be required to give the reasons for leaving and three months’ notice. In sum, the clear-cut legal distinction between Israel and Iran on the nuclear weapons issue made by Pexton does not actually seem to exist.
Next, Pexton points out that Israel “has military censors that can and do prevent publication of material on Israel’s nuclear forces.” But is Iran without such censorship? If this were the case, then all the charges that the Islamic Republic is an oppressive government, which is the fundamental argument for “regime change,” would have to be abandoned. And if Iran does have censorship, then its existence cannot be a reason for the failure to discuss Israel’s nuclear program.
Then Pexton attributes the failure to discuss Israel’s nuclear program to the fact that Israel and the United States “are allies and friends.” This explanation obviously contains much truth, but it is insufficient. It is not the whole truth and is certainly not a justification for the existing situation. It is an admission of bias, while most people, even government leaders and media officials, profess to believe in truth. An obvious question would be: why can’t the light of truth shine through on this issue?
This same critique could also apply to Pexton’s next exculpatory explanation: “not being open about Israel’s nuclear weapons serves both U.S. and Israeli interests.” More than this, while it obviously serves Israel’s interests, to be seen as biased in favor of Israel does not benefit U.S. interests in regard to the rest of the Middle East or, for that matter, the rest of the world. This has been a concern of U.S. diplomatic officials from the time of the creation of Israel.
Then Pexton tells an obvious, but rarely mentioned, truth: criticizing Israel “can hurt your career.” He quotes George Perkovich, director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “It’s like all things having to do with Israel and the United States. If you want to get ahead, you don’t talk about it; you don’t criticize Israel, you protect Israel.”
But Pexton ends up his article by trying to show that he really identifies with the best interests of Israel, and thus implies a benign intent, and even justification, for the current blackout and double standard on Israel’s nukes, while simultaneously chiding the lack of press coverage of the subject. In exonerating Israel, he avers: “I don’t think many people fault Israel for having nuclear weapons. If I were a child of the Holocaust, I, too, would want such a deterrent to annihilation. But that doesn’t mean the media shouldn’t write about how Israel’s doomsday weapons affect the Middle East equation. Just because a story is hard to do doesn’t mean The Post, and the U.S. press more generally, shouldn’t do it.” Note that in his effort to show his identification with Jewish suffering, Pexton plays the obligatory, and often debate-ending, Holocaust card.
The problem with what Pexton asserts is that the Jews of Israel are not facing annihilation, whereas, as a result of Israel’s nukes, its neighbors do confront such a possibility. And it is quite understandable that they do not like that situation and there is no moral reason why they should have to face annihilation any more than the Israeli Jews.
Moreover, contrary to what Pexton claims in his above statement, many people around the world do fault Israel for having nuclear weapons. For example, the 120-nation Nonaligned Movement in its 16th global summit recently voted for global nuclear disarmament, with no exception for Israel. And the Arab states for a number of years have advocated that the Middle East become a nuclear weapons-free zone. Even a majority of Israeli Jews in a November 2011 poll favored the idea of a nuclear weapons-free zone, though it was made known to them that this would entail Israel giving up its nuclear arsenal.
Finally, many Americans might oppose the nuclear double standard, too, if its stark reality were often thrust before them in the same way that the alleged misdeeds of Iran are placed in the media’s spotlight. It is quite understandable that an issue ignored by the mainstream media would not attract widespread public attention.
What Pexton leaves out in his discussion of Israel’s nuclear arsenal is also of the utmost significance. First, while Pexton invokes legalistic arguments in his quasi-apologetic for the status quo, it is not apparent that the United States government is following federal law on this issue. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 as amended by the Symington Amendment of 1976 and the Glenn Amendment of 1977 prohibits U.S. military assistance to countries that acquire or transfer nuclear reprocessing technology when they do not comply with IAEA regulations and inspections. For the United States to provide aid in such cases requires a special waiver from the office of the President, and it has issued such a waiver for Pakistan, another non-signatory of the NPT with nuclear weapons. But, in line with Israel’s wishes, the United States government does not want to publicly recognize Israel’s nuclear weapons, and thus eschews this approach. Hence, it directly violates federal law in its provision of aid to Israel, America’s foremost foreign aid recipient.
United States actions regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons program may also run afoul of the NPT. There is considerable evidence that Israel has relied on material and technology from the United States in order to develop its nuclear weapons arsenal. Grant Smith, who has been studying recently declassified U.S. government documents on Israel’s nuclear weapons program, wrote in response to Pexton’s article: “The ongoing clandestine movement of material and technology out of the U.S. may mean America has violated Article 1 of the NNPT, since according to the GAO it has never apparently taken successful efforts to stem the flow.”
Moreover, it is not apparent that Israel would only resort to nuclear weapons to prevent the annihilation of its populace; rather, it might use its weaponry to prevent any type of significant defeat. The Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, revealed this mindset in an interview with British commentator Alan Hart in April 1971 for the BBC’s Panorama program. Hart queried Meir: “Prime Minister, I want to be sure that I understand what you are saying . . . . You are saying that if ever Israel was in danger of being defeated on the battlefield, it would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it?” And Meir replied: “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” (Alan Hart, “Zionism The Real Enemy of the Jews,” volume 2, 2005, p. xii)
In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, it has been argued by analysts such as Seymour Hersh that Israel used the threat of launching nuclear missiles to blackmail the United States to begin an immediate and massive resupply of the Israeli military. It was correctly perceived in Israel that American strategy intended to delay any resupply in an attempt to let the Arabs achieve some territorial gains and thus force Israel to be more pliable and trade the occupied land for peace.
Grant Smith pointed out in his response to Pexton that blackmail of the United States government was not simply restricted to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, but has been a major purpose of Israel’s nuclear weapons program. “As understood by the CIA back in the early 1960s,” Smith stated, “Israel’s nuclear arsenal is primarily used to coerce the United States to provide enough benefits that they will never have to be used.”
Since the United States government has given in to this blackmail it would seem that it believes that Israel is not simply bluffing.
In sum, Pexton offers a rather tepid and incomplete account of Israel’s nuclear program and its ramifications, one that often verges on the apologetic. Still, given the limited parameters of permissibility in the American mainstream on anything concerning Israel, even broaching this subject is courting danger, and for this Pexton has been lauded by Phil Weiss as having “some spine,” especially for noting that to give Israel negative publicity on its illegal settlements can lead to the destruction of one’s career.
And that fact underscores how unfree American society is on the whole subject of Israel. Grant Smith, however, after pointing out the shortcomings of Pexton’s article, writes: “The Washington Post in particular seems to want to play a role in shoring up the decrepit policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ [rather] than enlighten readers about the true role of Israel’s arsenal in US and Iranian relations.” It is apparent that in the mainstream the full truth about Israel’s nuclear weapons remains strictly verboten.
September 22, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran, Israel, Israel's nuclear weapons, Middle East, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, United States |
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The U.S. Department of State took the moral and strategic bankruptcy of America’s Iran policy to a new low today, by notifying Congress that the Obama administration intends to remove the mojahedin-e khalq (MEK) from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
At a macro level, we are disdainful—even scornful—of the U.S. government’s lists of both FTOs and state sponsors of terrorism. We have seen too many times over the years just how cynically American administrations have manipulated these designations, adding and removing organizations and countries for reasons that have little or nothing to do with designees’ actual involvement in terrorist activity. So, for example, after Saddam Husayn invaded the fledgling Islamic Republic in 1980—on September 22, no less—and starting killing large numbers of innocent Iranians, the Reagan administration (which came to office in January 1981) found a way to remove Iraq from the state sponsors list, in order to remove legal restrictions prohibiting the U.S. government from helping Saddam prosecute his war of aggression as robustly as the administration wanted. (During that war, the MEK—after having tried but failed to bring down the Islamic Republic through a bloody campaign of terrorist bombings and assassinations conducted against the new Iranian government’s upper echelons—ended up collaborating with an Iraqi government regularly carrying out chemical weapons attacks against targets, civilian as well as military, inside Iran.) But, when the same Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, the George H.W. Bush administration couldn’t get Iraq back on the state sponsors list fast enough. We are very skeptical that Saddam’s ties to groups that the United States considers terrorist organizations changed all that much during this period.
Yet, precisely because we know how thoroughly corrupt and politicized these designations really are, we recognize their significance as statements of U.S. policy. Today, the Obama administration made a truly horrible statement about U.S. policy toward Iran.
The statement is horrible even if one wants to believe that FTO designations have some kind of procedural and evidentiary integrity about them. (We don’t, but we also recognize that letting go of illusions is often not easy.) Just this year, U.S. intelligence officials told high-profile media outlets that the MEK is actively collaborating with Israeli intelligence to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, see here; Iranian officials have made the same charge. Since when did murdering unarmed civilians (and, in some instances, members of their families as well) on public streets in the middle of a heavily populated urban area (Tehran) not meet even the U.S. government’s own professed standard for terrorism? Of course, one might rightly point out that the United States is responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent civilians across the Middle East. But Washington generally strives to maintain the fiction that it did not intend for those innocents to die as a (direct and foreseeable) consequence of U.S. military operations and sanctions policies. (You know, the United States didn’t really mean for those people to die, but, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, “Stuff happens.”) Here, the Obama administration is taking an organization that the U.S. government knows is directly involved in the murder of innocent people and giving this group Washington’s “good housekeeping seal of approval.”
But, to invoke Talleyrand’s classic observation that a certain action was “worse than a crime—it was a mistake,” delisting the MEK is not just a moral abomination; it is a huge strategic and policy blunder. It is hard to imagine how the Obama administration could signal more clearly that, even after the President’s presumptive reelection, it has no intention of seeking a fundamentally different sort of relationship with the Islamic Republic—which would of course require the United States to accept the Islamic Republic as a legitimate political entity representing legitimate national interests.
Count on this: once the MEK is formally off the FTO list—a legally defined process that will take a few months to play out—Congress will be appropriating money to support the monafeqin as the vanguard of a new American strategy for regime change in Iran. In the 1990s, similar enthusiasm for Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress—who were about as unpopular among Iraqis as the MEK is among Iranians—led to President Clinton’s signing of the Iraq Liberation Act, which paved the way for George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The chances for such a scenario to play out with regard to Iran over the next few years—with even more disastrous consequences for America’s strategic and moral standing—got a lot higher today.
September 21, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Flynt Leverett, George W. Bush, Iran, Iraq, MEK, People's Mujahedin of Iran, United States |
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TEHRAN — Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has proposed that observers from a contact group on Syria comprising Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey be dispatched to the crisis-hit country and announced that Tehran is ready to host a meeting of the group.
According to a statement issued by the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday, Salehi made the remarks during a foreign ministerial meeting of the group that was held in Cairo on the same day.
The meeting in Cairo was described as the quartet meeting of the foreign ministers of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, but neither Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal nor any other Saudi Arabian official attended the meeting.
Egyptian presidential spokesman Yasser Ali and an unidentified Arab League official said that Faisal did not attend the meeting for health reasons, but Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr stated that Faisal’s absence was due to previously arranged engagements, Reuters reported on Monday.
After the meeting in Cairo, the Egyptian foreign minister announced that the contact group would meet again on the sidelines of the 67th regular session of the United Nations General Assembly, which opened at the UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday and closes on September 30.
Following is the translation of the Iranian Foreign Ministry statement:
Foreign Minister Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi put forward the approach and the road map proposed by the Islamic Republic of Iran to find a way out of the Syrian crisis at the quartet meeting of the foreign ministers of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
Within this framework, on Monday… our country’s foreign minister proposed (the following points) for discussion at the Cairo meeting:
1) Announcing a halt to the conflict and the violence by both sides simultaneously;
2) Emphasizing the peaceful settlement of the crisis without foreign intervention;
3) Ending any kind of financial, military, and training support to armed groups;
4) Launching talks between the Syrian government and the opposition;
5) Establishing a national reconciliation committee with the participation of all movements and groups;
6) Dispatching observers from the four countries to supervise the process of ending the violence and holding negotiations;
7) Emphasizing the necessity of maintaining Syria’s cohesion, national unity, and territorial integrity;
8) Contributing to the process of fundamental reforms;
9) Realizing a Syrian-Syrian democratic approach.
Dr. Salehi also pointed to the fact that the suffering of the Syrian people, (and) particularly the sanctions and economic punishments, necessitate that Muslim countries, including the four known regional powers (scheduled to be) present at the meeting, intensify and pool their efforts to ship economic and humanitarian aid and proposed that a committee be established to end the suffering of the Syrian people for the realization of this goal.
The foreign minister emphasized that the Syrian people should determine their (own) destiny themselves and within the framework of maintenance of territorial integrity, independence, sovereignty, and national unity, and said, “Regional countries should ensure the accomplishment of this process through utilization of all resources and the current potential and constant consultation.”
He emphasized, “While emphasizing the necessity of the implementation of fundamental reforms, the Islamic Republic of Iran, throughout the Syrian developments, has proposed feasible and practical solutions to help end the violence by both sides and initiate a dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition… (at) the Tehran Consultative Meeting on Syria, which was held with the participation of 30 countries (on August 9), and also… (at) the Mecca summit (on August 14 and 15) and… the recent meeting of the Non-Aligned (Movement) countries in Tehran (from August 26 to 31).”
Salehi emphasized that most regional countries are concerned about the repercussions of the armed presence of extremist movements on regional security and stability, and said, “We believe that the complete failure of political solutions can pave the way for fitna (sedition) in various forms and its spread to neighboring countries and the entire region.”
He added, “Unfortunately, most Western countries, which are in a quandary (due to their failure to) perceive the realities and the mission of regional nations’ uprisings, have closed their eyes to the realities of the region by prioritizing the interests of the Zionist regime and are preventing the realization and the implementation of true reforms in Syria and the region through providing comprehensive financial and military support to unknown armed groups.”
In addition, our country’s foreign minister pointed to the good potential of the Non-Aligned Movement to play an effective role in regional and global developments after the holding of the summit of the heads of state (and government) of the Non-Aligned (Movement) in Tehran and described the participation of Iran and Egypt of the NAM troika in the Cairo meeting as beneficial and called for the inclusion of Venezuela, as a member of the troika of the Non-Aligned Movement, and Iraq, as the rotating president of the Arab League, to the present group so that the current constructive process will come to fruition.
Salehi pointed to the necessity of the continuation of consultation between the participants of the Cairo meeting and active movements and groups in Syria, and added, “Such consultations can offer new prospects, not only in regard to Syrian developments but also in regard to current and future crises, and, according to this perspective, the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to host the next round of the meeting (of the contact group) in Tehran.”
At the beginning of his speech, the foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran thanked the Egyptian government for hosting the quartet meeting and also the deputy (foreign ministers) meeting (on September 10) and said that this illustrates the prevalence of collective wisdom in the region.
September 18, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Solidarity and Activism | Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran, Syria |
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TEHRAN – Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani has said that the most recent resolution issued against Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency raises doubt about the benefit of being a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Larijani made the remarks in a speech during an open session of the Majlis on Sunday in reference to the resolution that the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors adopted in Vienna on Thursday, which condemned Iran’s refusal to meet international demands to curb uranium enrichment and its alleged failure to allay international concerns about its nuclear program.
The Iranian parliament speaker said, “The recent resolution by the Board of Governors raises this question for the public: What is the benefit of the NPT and membership in the International Atomic Energy Agency for countries?
“If Iran had not been committed to the NPT, would Western countries have taken other measures?”
He stated that IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano has a responsibility to encourage the world’s countries to join the NPT, adding, “Will Mr. Amano be able to succeed in his job through such high-handed decision-making?”
“If the path taken by the West and the United States is the adoption of resolutions and sanctions against Iran, then why are they seeking negotiations between Iran and Western countries? However, these countries must be aware that the result of the negotiations is predetermined with the adoption of such an attitude,” Larijani noted.
He also said, “The main text of the resolution was definitely drafted by a few Western countries. It seems that certain tyrannical countries made their intention to make excessive demands at the 5+1 talks more public with (their) insistence on the adoption of the resolution.”
The latest round of high-level talks between Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) over the country’s nuclear program was held in Moscow on June 18 and 19.
After the Moscow talks, both sides agreed to hold expert talks, the most recent round of which was held in Istanbul on July 24.
No decision has yet been made on the next round of negotiations.
September 17, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Ali Larijani, International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran, NPT, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, United States, Yukiya Amano |
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TEHRAN – Iranian Minister of Road and Urbanization Ali Nikzad said Ashgabat’s recent decision to annul a contract with an Iranian company over the construction of a key railway linking Iran to the Central Asia does not mean an end to the project and Tehran will accomplish construction of the railway which is a vital North-South corridor.
“The termination of Turkmenistan’s contract with an Iranian company will not affect the two country’s joint railway construction project,” Nikzad told FNA on Monday.
“This railway line will be inaugurated in due time,” the Iranian minister reiterated.
Meantime, he said Turkmenistan might have annulled the contract with the Iranian company in a bid to strike a better deal with the same or a different contractor.
Yet, the Iranian minister underscored that Iran will accomplish its undertakings with regard to this project.
Earlier media reports said that Turkmenistan has annulled a $700 million contract for an Iranian company to build a key section of the key railway line.
The decision was made at a cabinet meeting chaired by President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov.
During the cabinet meeting, the Turkmen president said Turkmenistan will build this section independently.
Yesterday, Iran started laying the rail line of a key transit and transportation project linking Iran’s Northern city of Gorgan to IncheBoron in Turkmenistan.
Speaking to FNA, Iranian Deputy Minister of Road and Urbanization Seyed Ahmad Sadeqi said that the last phase of the construction of the railway officially started in a ceremony with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in attendance.
He said that construction of the infrastructures of the 80km long railway has already been finished.
The railway will link Iran to Turkmenistan and then to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and will connect the CIS countries with the Indian Ocean and high seas and the Persian Gulf littoral states.
The primary agreement on the construction of the rail link among Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan was signed between presidents of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan in April 2007 in the city of Turkmenbashi and its final agreement was signed in a summit meeting in Tehran in September of the same year by the three presidents.
The total route of the railway is 1000 kilometers, of which 90 kilometers would be in Iran, 700 kilometers in Turkmenistan and 210 kilometers in Kazakhstan.
The railway facilitates transportation of goods from the Central Asian countries to the Persian Gulf.
September 14, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Central Asia, Fars News Agency, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan |
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The empire requires a nice juicy enemy to keep people’s minds off its own sins. During the Cold War, Hollywood responded admirably to the challenge, churning out anti-communist thrillers with Russian bad guys, most memorably during Reagan’s surreal presidency, when “Red Dawn” and “Rocky IV” reduced international politics to a comic book parody.
Given who the official enemy is these days, it is no surprise that the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), which boasts of 72 participating countries, did not include a ‘Spotlight on Iranian cinema’ this year. On the contrary, it showcased the latest serving of propaganda against Iran with the premiere of “Argo”, a docudrama depicting the escape of six US diplomats from Iran following the November 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, when 52 Americans were held hostage, and Iranian student protesters dumped US diplomatic correspondence on the street in a spectacular premodern WikiLeak.
“Argo” is based on then-Canadian ambassador Kenneth Taylor, who indeed hid the six Americans who showed up at the Canadian embassy during the 1979 hostage crisis and issued them fake Canadian passports. Taylor was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1981 for his help.
As if scripted in Hollywood, the Friday evening TIFF premier began just hours after the announcement that Canada was closing its embassy in Tehran, adding extra spice.
“Argo” was produced by George Clooney and directed by Ben Affleck, who also plays the lead role of the CIA agent Tony Mendez, posing as director of a fake Canadian science-fiction film (appropriately entitled “Argo”). Mendez convinces Iranian officials that Iran’s stark desert panoramas would make a convincing extraterrestrial terrain (the Hollywood subtext being that Islamic Iran is loony and Iranian officials are easily duped).
Clooney and Affleck are not Zionist zealots. They are even criticized for being ‘pro-Palestinian’ (though that means very little in the case of Hollywood), and both are identified with opposition to US neocon wars. So their production of this blatant propaganda potboiler is a sad commentary on just how obsessed America is with the one country to successfully stand up to it and Israel today. It’s as if a muted critique of US government crimes must be balanced by fawning displays of patriotism. Affleck even entertained US troops aboard the USS Enterprise on a USO-sponsored tour of the Persian Gulf in December 2003, despite his reservations about US warmongering (no doubt mock-firing a missile at Iran from the US naval base in Bahrain).
The CIA-cum-Hollywood producer of the movie-within-the-movie is another icon of anti-war liberals, Alan Arkin, who starred in “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” (1966), directed by Norman Jewison, and the screen version of the satirical anti-war Catch-22 (1970). However, he also did an HBO TV movie “Doomsday Gun” (1994) about a Canadian weapons builder whom helped Israel ‘defend’ the Golan Heights, but then cynically decides to sell his talents to the highest bidder — Saddam Hussein, who wants to build the eponymous weapon-of-mass-deception (excuse me, ‘destruction’). Arkin plays an Israeli intelligence officer who politely changes the misguided Canadian’s mind. No doubt Bush junior saw this nuanced bit of hasbara, prompting him to invade Iraq in search of WMDs.
“Argo” was received with raves and calls for an Oscar for Arkin. His past displays of anti-war liberalism should not be a problem, given his devotion to Israel as shown in “Doomsday Gun” and now this latest sop to America’s Israel-firsters.
The timing of this screening of the fantasy Canadian embassy intrigue must have been coordinated with the real-life Canadian embassy closing. There’s no other explanation. Worthy of an Oscar in itself. In sharp contrast to the scandal at the 2009 Toronto festival. Despite Israel’s invasion of Gaza just months earlier, it featured a ‘City to city Spotlight on Tel Aviv’, funded by the Israeli Embassy and the Canada-Israel Cultural Foundation, the centre-piece of Israeli Consul Amir Gissin’s “Brand Israel” campaign. At the time, Gissin unashamedly was calling Toronto “an arena for Israel from a PR, cultural and commercial point of view”. The idea was “to promote Tel Aviv as a city of peace”, even after killing more than a thousand Gazans in Operation Cast Lead a few short months earlier.
TIFF’s cozying up to the Israeli propaganda machine blew up into a global scandal, as a spontaneous movement of protest among a few filmmakers turned into an international incident, bringing 1,500 signatures from prominent Israeli public figures and the likes of Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein, Guy Maddin, and Harry Belafonte to the “Toronto Declaration” criticizing Israel and TIFF. It was a huge embarrassment, a sign that Israel propaganda is becoming harder to swallow, even by devotees of Hollywood.
Since then, no more tributes to Tel Aviv. Now, to show how open-minded it is, TIFF even shows Arab films tsk-tsking Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians, but all safely within the bounds of North American discourse on Palestine, Syria etc. This year’s include:
*”After the Battle”, by Egyptian Yousry Nasrallah, about Mahmoud, who makes a paltry living taking tourists on horseback rides at the pyramids but was conned into participating in the “battle of the camels” during the Egyptian revolution last year. He is now unemployed and ostracized, and has a fateful encounter with a liberal rich divorcee from Zamalek.
*”As if We Were Catching a Cobra”, by Hala Alabdalla, about the tradition of caricature drawing in Egypt and Syria, filmed before, during and after the uprisings of 2011–12.
*Inescapable”, by Arab-Canadian director Ruba Nadda, about a former officer in the Syrian military police who is forced to return to Damascus when his globe-trotting daughter goes missing.
*”Fidai” and “Zabana!”, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Algeria’s independence, the former reminiscences of a combatant, the latter a biopic about the legendary freedom fighter guillotined by the French in 1956 who inspired the Battle of Algiers.
*”The Attack”, by Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri, about a Palestinian doctor in Israel who faces discrimination and whose wife is involved in a suicide bombing.
“”When I Saw You”, by Palestinian Annemarie Jacir, produced by Ossama Bawardi, who produced “Paradise Now”.
*”A World Not Ours”, by Mahdi Fleifel, about life in the Ain al-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.
*”State 194″, a documentary by Dan Setton, on Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s plans for a Palestinian state, with Fayyad in attendance.
*”Inch’ Allah”, by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, about a Quebec doctor who works in a women’s health clinic on the Palestinian side of the barrier but resides in an apartment on the Israeli side.
Uprisings against Arab dictators, celebration of Algerian independence, Palestinian angst balanced by a paean to the chief Palestinian sellout.
As another sign of the times, there is now an annual Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) following TIFF at the beginning of October, where more probing films are shown and where Palestinian filmmakers invited to TIFF (this year — Jacir, Bawardi and Fleifel) can meet with local activists fighting Israeli apartheid.
This year’s line-up includes some hard-hitting documentaries:
*”The War Around Us”, by Abdallah Omeish, about the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2008.
*”Road Map to Apartheid”, by Ana Nogueira.
*”This Is My Land…Hebron”, by Giulia Amati and Stephen Natanson, about Hebron, where 160,000 Palestinians are confronted by an Israeli settlement of 600 settlers, guarded by 2,000 Israeli soldiers, intent on expelling the indigenous population and occupying their homes.
If patrons of TPFF have their way, Toronto may not be Gissin’s “arena for Israeli PR” much longer.
September 13, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Argo, Ben Affleck, Iran, Israel, Toronto International Film Festival |
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On NBC‘s Meet the Press (9/9/12), Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and host David Gregory had a discussion about the failures of the Obama administration’s foreign policy that included this:
ROMNEY: The president has not drawn us further away from a nuclear Iran. And in fact Iran is closer to having a weapon, closer to having nuclear capability, than when he took office. This is the greatest failure, in my opinion, of his foreign policy. He ran for office saying he was going to meet with Ahmadinejad. He was going to meet with Castro, Kim Jong Il. All the world’s worst actors, without precondition, he’d meet with them in his first year.
GREGORY: President Bush said that he would stop Iran from going nuclear. So did President Obama. Neither one were able to achieve that. Correct?
ROMNEY: President Obama had a policy of engagement with Ahmadinejad. That policy has not worked and we’re closer to a nuclear weapon as a result of that.
Set aside the talk about the U.S. having a “policy of engagement” with Iran–we have a policy of sanctions. The real question is what Gregory is talking about when he talks about Iran “going nuclear,” and how Bush and Obama failed “to achieve that.”
In this context, “going nuclear” would seem to refer to producing a nuclear weapon, which nobody claims Iran has done. Gregory has mislead viewers on this before: “Iran: Will talks push that country to give up its nuclear weapons program?” he declared a few years back (10/4/09).
There is as yet no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon. What we know now is that the country has a nuclear energy program, and some countries demand to know more about that program, based on the theory that Iran is hiding something. Perhaps they are, but no evidence to that effect exists.
But it is common for media to start the Iran conversation based on the assumption that there’s a weapon being built. You could see that in Bill Keller’s column in the New York Times today (9/10/12). “Negotiations aimed at preventing the dreaded Persian Bomb have resumed their desultory course,” he explained to readers–before posing what I think Keller believes is a provocative question: “Can we live with a nuclear Iran?”
Keller believes his column is adding something novel to the debate over Iran:
The prevailing view now is that a nuclear Iran cannot be safely contained. On this point both President Obama and Mitt Romney agree.
Keller then goes on: “Let’s assume, for starters, that Iran’s theocrats are determined to acquire nuclear weapons.” The rest of the column consists mostly of a “theoretical exercise” where Keller ends up opposing pre-emptive war in favor of allowing Iran to enrich uranium so long as it doesn’t pursue a weapons program. Then we could “gradually relaxes sanctions and brings this wayward country into the community of more-or-less civilized nations.”
It’s a strange argument, given that Iran says that’s what it’s doing, and the inspectors that are supposed to monitor Iran’s nuclear program are already reporting that there is no evidence any of the country’s uranium is being diverted for a weapons program. It sure doesn’t seem as if sanctions relief is right around the corner.
A truly novel media approach that Keller–or any other columnist–might want to try: Assume, for the sake of novelty, that Iran is not pursuing a weapons program. Then take every fact of the Iran showdown–the sanctions, the threats from various Israeli government officials that a military attack could be imminent–and try to reconcile them with the assumption that Iran is not developing the weapons that are the focus of so much controversy.
It’s much more difficult to rationalize U.S. policy if one explores this “theoretical exercise.” Which is likely why pundits like Keller go a different route.
September 10, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Bill Keller, Iran, Meet the Press, Mitt Romney, NBC, Obama |
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On 7 September, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced that Canada is suspending all diplomatic relations with Iran, expelling all Iranian diplomats, closing its embassy in Tehran, and authorizing Turkey to act on Canada’s behalf for consular services there. Baird cited Iran’s enmity with Israel, its support of Syria and terrorism. “Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today,” Baird said at the Asia Pacific Economic Conference in Vladivostok, Russia.
Canada has not had a full ambassador in Iran since 2007. Relations between the two countries cooled after Iranian-Canadian free-lance photographer Zahra Kazemi died in Iran in 2003 under disputed circumstances, and went from bad to worse under the Conservative government in power in Ottawa since then.
While indeed Iran has been the nation most outspokenly critic of Israel, and is actively working to thwart the Western-backed insurgency in Syria, there is no evidence of its support for “terrorism”. It is in fact the victim of terrorism on the part of Israel and the US, which boast about assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and destroying Iranian computers with viruses made-to-order, among other officially-sponsored acts of subversion.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast suggested that the real reason for Harper’s latest targeting of Iran was because of Iran’s successful hosting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran in August. Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Tehran’s hosting of the 16th NAM Summit was a “humiliating defeat” for the West.
Humiliation is indeed the operative word for Canada in particular. The past five years of Conservative rule in Canada under the fiercely pro-Israeli Prime Minister Stephen Harper have brought nothing but disgrace to Canada internationally, and this present move adds further humiliation.
As if scripted, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately commended Canada’s decision. With good cause, as it looks suspiciously like a response to a direct Israeli request. Canadian foreign policy is now made in consultation with Israeli advisers under a public security cooperation “partnership” signed in 2008 by Canada and Israel to “protect their respective countries’ population, assets and interests from common threats”. Israel security agents now officially assist Canada’s security services, the RCMP and CSIS, in profiling Canadians citizens who are Muslims and monitoring individuals and/or organisations in Canada involved in supporting the rights of Palestinians and other such nefarious activities.
The barring of British MP George Galloway from entering Canada in 2009 on a North American tour was done as a result of this cooperation. Baird’s claim that Iran supports terrorism is one that Israeli agents have been making in Ottawa under this partnership. Harper has publicly stated he is convinced that Iran is trying “beyond any doubt” to develop nuclear weapons, with ‘evidence’ supplied by these advisers, though it is unlikely that such claims convince anyone, but rather merely confirm public perception of his devotion to Israel.
“It’s hard to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days,” chirped Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on his official visit in 2010. He is right. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives:
-called Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon a “measured response” (Two Canadian UN peacekeepers were targeted and killed by Israeli in the invasion. Harper refused to protest, asking rhetorically in parliament what they were doing there in the first place.)
-refused to condemn the invasion of Gaza in December 2008 or the siege of Gaza (the only “Nay” at the UN Human Rights Council)
-refused to condemn the Israeli murder of nine members of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May 2009
-opposed an attempted IAEA probe of Israel’s nuclear facilities as part of an effort to create a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East
-cut off UN humanitarian aid to Gaza because it was going through the Hamas government there
-allow goods manufactured in occupied territories by illegal settlers to be labelled “Made in Israel” under the 1997 Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement 1997.
And as is the case in the Obama/Romney ‘race’ next door, there is no peep of protest from Canada’s opposition liberals or socialists. Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae (whose wife Arlene Perly is past vice president of the Canadian Jewish Congress) met with Netanyahu on his official visit to Canada in February this year, and afterwards said the visit “gives all Canadians the chance to reflect on the deep friendship and strong ties between Israel and Canada”.
In a bizarre non sequitur, the ‘Liberal’ leader added, “Iran’s regime is a threat to the security of the region and the world. A nuclear armed Iran would mean the threat of even greater proliferation and instability in the region, is a direct flouting of international law, and obviously raises the deepest concerns in Israel for its security.” Apparently a very much ‘nuclear armed Israel’ which daily threatens to bomb Iran does not raise his ‘deepest concerns ‘ for Iran’s security.
After meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres during his official visit to Canada this May, New Democrat leader Tom Mulcair, told the press, “My in-laws are Holocaust survivors. Their history is part of my daily life. That’s why I am an ardent supporter of Israel in all circumstances.” Mulcair’s wife, Catherine Pinhas, was born in France to a Sephardic Jewish family from Turkey. Canadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East and Independent Jewish Voices criticized Mulcair for accepting financial support from pro-Israel lobbyists.
So there will be little if any protest in parliament over Harper’s unprovoked violation of diplomatic norms. In fact, rumor has it that this Canadian move is in preparation for an Israeli-US attack on Iran, though Baird demurred when asked about this as the motive for advising all Canadians to leave Iran immediately. However, the Harper government actually supports Israel’s threats of a pre-emptive air strike against Iran as being within its rights. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the Americas Peter Kent told the G8 in Toronto in 2010, “It’s a matter of timing and it’s a matter of how long we can wait without taking more serious pre-emptive action.”
It appears Ottawa is ready and willing to join Israel in any attack. Harper has said, “An attack on Israel is an attack on Canada.” There have already been US-conducted military ‘exercises’ involving Canadian ships off Iran’s coast. 160 Canadian troops have died senselessly in Afghanistan over the past decade. Now Harper wants them to die for Israel in an invasion of Iran, orchestrated to look like it is in defense of Israel.
The NAM summit clearly ruffled some feathers. Iran is supported by the great majority of the world’s people and governments, both as a courageous opponent to US and Israeli imperial intrigues, and as a model for countries that want to develop independent, peaceful nuclear power as an alternative to oil. The summit strongly supported Iran on both counts.
Iranian leadership of NAM during the next three years promises to be innovative and energetic. Even as Baird embarrassed Canadians with his undocumented accusations and violations of diplomatic norms, Mehmanparast called on the UN to fulfill its obligations towards Palestinians and respond forcefully to Israel’s killing of six Palestinians in besieged Gaza last week. “As the rotating president of NAM, the Islamic Republic of Iran expects all international institutions affiliated to the United Nations to adhere to their responsibilities towards the Palestinian nation.” The hysteria in Tel Aviv, Washington, and now Ottawa is not without cause.
September 10, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Canada, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Stephen Harper, Zionism |
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Flynt Leverett appeared on Background Briefing with Ian Masters; to listen to the interview, click here. The discussion centered on two big topics: whether Israel will attack Iran, and whether the United States can pursue a diplomatic opening with Iranian “hardliners.”
Asked about the prospects for a unilateral Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear targets, perhaps even before the U.S. presidential election on November 6, Flynt argues that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is compelled to deal with two significant constraints on his decision-making. The first is a “capacity constraint”: the Israeli military, on its own, simply cannot do that much damage to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. This is a constraint that Netanyahu or any other Israeli prime minister would have to face; it helps to explain why the leadership of Israel’s military and intelligence services and most of Israel’s national security establishment is so strongly opposed to the idea of a unilateral attack. Of course, this is not an absolute barrier facing Netanyahu; one cannot categorically say that he and his colleagues would never decide to do something strategically counter-productive or at odds with material reality. But, in this case, material reality does make such a decision harder.
The second constraint that Netanyahu must deal with is a political one. Broadly speaking, the prime minister of Israel does not have the same measure of “commander-in-chief” authority as an American president. (Actually, the U.S. Constitution would suggest that American presidents should not have as much power in this regard as they currently wield, but that’s another issue.) Put more specifically, Netanyahu, on his own, does not have the authority to start a war, against Iran or anybody else.
For a prime minister to start a war, he must have, at a minimum, the defense minister on board; with Ehud Barak currently holding the defense portfolio, that is probably not an insuperable obstacle. Beyond this, however, historically-conditioned expectations in Israel are that a prime minister will also have very strong consensus within an eight-member inner cabinet and a larger, more formalized, committee on defense and security affairs within the cabinet. While outsiders do not have transparent access to the deliberations of these bodies, myriad indications coming from Israel suggest that Netanyahu, today, does not have the requisite degree of consensus to order an attack on the Islamic Republic.
We have argued before that Netanyahu’s ultimate goal is to line up the United States to take on the mission of striking Iran militarily. But the Obama administration is not about to start an overt war against Iran before the U.S. presidential election (a covert war, of course, has been underway for some time). Netanyahu is playing a longer-term game than that. We anticipate that this game will come to a head in 2013—either with a re-elected President Obama or with a new Romney administration—not before November 6, 2012.
Furthermore, as Flynt points out in the interview, scenarios of Israel launching a unilateral strike in the expectation that the United States will inevitably be “drawn in” depend on Israeli leaders making deeply confident assumptions about a multiplicity of variables (in Washington, Tehran, and elsewhere) completely beyond Israel’s control. Again, this is not to say that Netanyahu and his colleagues would never decide to do something strategically unwise. But, here too, material reality makes such a decision harder.
The interview segues to a discussion of American diplomacy with Iran with a question about the long-term effect of the George W. Bush administration’s undercutting of former President Seyed Mohammad Khatami and his reformist colleagues through Washington’s abusive reaction to Iranian cooperation with the United States after 9/11. Playing off this point, Ian Masters asked Flynt’s view of a recent article in which Ray Takeyh argues that, because of the religious grounding of the ideology ostensibly driving Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Iran—unlike the People’s Republic of China—has failed to continue moving along a path of “moderation” and reform. In Takeyh’s depiction, the Islamic Republic today looks (at least from official Washington’s perspective) like the People’s Republic if the Maoists were still in charge.
Flynt responds that the George W. Bush administration certainly blew a major opportunity to improve U.S. relations with Iran by its witless reaction (perhaps motivated by an ideology grounded in a particular religious view?) to Tehran’s post-9/11 cooperation with the United States. Through the remainder of Khatami’s presidency, the Bush administration continued to blow opportunities for realigning U.S.-Iranian relations—most importantly by refusing to deal diplomatically with Iran during the nearly two years (2003-2005) in which it suspended uranium enrichment in order to encourage a serious negotiating process. But to suggest that Iran’s post-9/11 cooperation with the United States was only a function of a reformist administration in Tehran and that Washington has no openings to deal with the current Iranian leadership shows only how willfully distorted is Takeyh’s reading of Iranian foreign policy.
Ayatollah Khamenei has been the Supreme Leader through the presidencies of Ali Akbar Rafsanjani (what many analysts call a “pragmatic conservative”), the reformist Mohammad Khatami, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a “new generation” conservative. We fully expect Ayatollah Khamenei to continue serving in this position after the Islamic Republic elects its next president in 2013. Under the Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Ahmadinejad administrations, Iran made serious efforts to engage the United States on the basis of mutual interests; it insisted only that diplomacy take place in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Khatami—like Rafsanjani before him and Ahmadinejad after him—could not have sought better relations with Washington without Khamenei’s backing. It is successive American administrations that, on a bipartisan basis, have been too obtuse to take advantage of the openings that Tehran has afforded, demanding instead that the Islamic Republic surrender to American diktats on the nuclear issue and various regional issues up front.
Moreover, if one wants to stick with Takeyh’s analogy between the Islamic Republic’s current leadership and Chinese Maoists, then let’s follow the analogy all the way through: the United States achieved its historic diplomatic opening with China when Mao still held power and the People’s Republic was still going through the Cultural Revolution. If the United States insists on micromanaging Iran’s domestic politics to produce exactly the kind of interlocutor it wants to deal with, it will fail. In the process, Washington will continue to miss opportunities to do what it so manifestly needs to do, for America’s own interests—to come to terms with the Islamic Republic as it is, not as those radically disconnected from Iranian reality might wish it to be.
September 9, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Ali Khamenei, Benjamin Netanyahu, Flynt Leverett, Iran, Israel, Mohammad Khatami, Netanyahu, United States |
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In August 2010, Noam Chomsky told Israeli Channel 2 News: “I regard myself a supporter of Israel.”
The Jewish-American political analyst, professor Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928), knows how to cover his personal agenda behind literary smokescreen. That’s what he did in his recent article published at AlterNet on September 3, 2012, entitled ‘Why America and Israel Are the Greatest Threats to Peace.’ His article begins with the statement: “Imagine if Iran – or any other country – did a fraction of what Americans and Israel do at will.” However, after criticizing both the US and Israel for their warmongering policies toward the Islamic Republic – Chomsky drops the Zionist entity from his list of “brutal and repressive regimes” in the region.
“The Iranian government is brutal and repressive, as are Washington’s allies in the region,” wrote Chomsky. One wonders why none of the leaders from 120 NAM member countries and 23 non-NAM countries who attended the 16th NAM summit in Tehran last week – compared Iran with the United States in those categories!
Before, I quote Chomsky’s said article, I would like to introduce the ‘real Chomsky’ to my readers. Chomsky is a strong critic of US foreign policy. He believes in the discredited ‘official 9/11 story’. In his book, ’9-11′, Chomsky criticized US foreign policy in the Middle East and its invasion of Afghanistan – but never mentioned Israel’s complicity in the tragedy. Chomsky is against Palestinian military resistance. He also favors the so-called ‘two-state’ solution and believes in Israel’s right to exist as ‘Jewish state’. Chomsky never publicly questioned the Zionist version of the holocaust (‘Six Million Died’). Chomsky is against academic boycott of Israel. Chomsky doesn’t believe that US foreign policy is controlled by Jewish groups especially AIPAC. Chomsky also doesn’t like Israel being compared with the former apartheid South Africa.
American Jewish writer and blogger, Roger Tucker, in a 2010 ‘Open Letter to Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter,’ had claimed that they’re not friends of Palestine – because they themselves were ‘Crypto-Zionists’ hiding behind the facade of ‘humanism’.
Jeff Blankfort, Jewish former editor of the Middle East Labor Bulletin, a long time photographer and a frequent writer on the Israel-Palestinian conflict – had called Chomsky a Double Agent in one of his 2005 articles.
“A number of statements made by Chomsky have demonstrated his determination to keep Israel and Israelis from being punished or inconvenienced for the very monumental transgressions of decent human behavior that he himself has passionately documented over the years. This is one of the glaring contradictions in Chomsky’s work. He would have us believe that Israel’s occupation and harsh actions against the Palestinians, its invasions and undeclared 40 years war on Lebanon, and its arming of murderous regimes in Central America and Africa during the Cold War, has been done as a client state in the service of US interests. In Chomsky’s world view, that absolves Israel of responsibility and has become standard Chomsky doctrine,” wrote Blankfort.
Now, back to Chomsky’s ‘satirical article.’
The war drums are beating ever more loudly over Iran. Imagine the situation to be reversed.
Iran is carrying out a murderous and destructive low-level war against Israel with great-power participation. Its leaders announce that negotiations are going nowhere. Israel refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and allow inspections, as Iran has done. Israel continues to defy the overwhelming international call for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region. Throughout, Iran enjoys the support of its superpower patron.
Iranian leaders are therefore announcing their intention to bomb Israel, and prominent Iranian military analysts report that the attack may happen before the US elections.
Iran can use its powerful air force and new submarines sent by Germany, armed with nuclear missiles and stationed off the coast of Israel. Whatever the timetable, Iran is counting on its superpower backer to join, if not lead, the assault. U.S. defense secretary Leon Panetta says that while we do not favor such an attack, as a sovereign country Iran will act in its best interests.
All unimaginable, of course, though it is actually happening, with the cast of characters reversed. True, analogies are never exact, and this one is unfair – to Iran.
September 6, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception | AlterNet, Chomsky, Foreign policy of the United States, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Noam Chomsky, United States |
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Introduction
Iran chaired, hosted and led the recently rejuvenated Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Teheran, attended by delegates from 120 countries, including 31 heads of state and 29 foreign secretaries of state. Even the United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, notorious mouthpiece of Washington, felt obligated to address, a forum attended by two-thirds of the member countries of the UN, despite State Department and Israeli objections.
Any objective evaluation of the meeting, its venue, the attendance, resolutions and political impact leads to one paramount conclusion: the NAM meeting was a strategic diplomatic victory for Iran and a major defeat for the US, Israel and the European Union. The entire US-Israeli-EU diplomatic and propaganda effort to isolate and stigmatize Iran, especially over the past decade, was shredded.
The Politics of Attendance
Attendance by representatives of 120 countries demonstrates that Iran is not a ‘pariah state’; it is an accepted member of the international community.The presence of 60 heads of state and foreign secretaries demonstrates that Iran is considered a noteworthy and significant political actor, not a “terrorist state” to be isolated and shunned. The proceedings, debates and discussions among and between the delegates and Iranian leaders convinced those attending that Teheran gives primacy to reasonable dialogue in resolving international conflicts.
Both in terms of form and content the NAM meeting highlighted the superiority of Iran’s diplomacy over and against Washington’s bellicose posturing and improvised diversionary tactics. The fact that the meeting took place in Teheran, that Iran was elected chair, that a major part of the NAM agenda and subsequent resolutions coincided with Iran’s democratic foreign policy, highlights Washington’s policy failures and its isolation on issues of major concern to the larger international community. Pandering to the domestic Zionist power configuration has a high cost in the sphere of international politics.
NAM Resolutions: Iran versus Washington – Israel
The centerpiece of US and Israeli strategic policy has been to claim that Iran’s nuclear program including the enrichment of uranium, are a threat to world peace and in particular to Israel and the Gulf states. The NAM meeting repudiated that position, affirming Iran’s right to develop a peaceful nuclear program including the enrichment of uranium. NAM rejected western sanctions against Iran and other countries. In fact many of the leading members, including India, brought delegations of business executives in pursuit of new economic contracts.
NAM declared its support for a nuclear free Middle East and called for an independent Palestinian state based on 1969 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, in total repudiation of Washington’s unconditional support of the nuclear armed Jewish state.
NAM rejected Egyptian Prime Minister Morsi’s proposal to support the Western backed armed mercenaries invading Syria, major blow to Washington’s effort to secure international support for regime change. NAM unanimously approved several resolutions which affirmed its anti-imperialist principles in direct opposition to US imperial positions: it rejected the US blockade of Cuba; it affirmed Argentine sovereignty of the Malvinas Islands (dubbed the ‘Falklands’ by Anglo-American pundits); it opposed the Paraguayan coup; it supported Ecuador in its dispute with Great Britain on asylum for Assange; it selected Venezuela as the site for the next NAM meeting; it rejected terrorism in all of its forms and modalities, including the state sponsored variant.
Western Propaganda Media: Self Serving Diversions
The resounding diplomatic successes of the Iranian hosts of the NAM meeting were countered by a mass media blitz directed at diverting attention to relatively marginal events. The Financial and New York Times, the BBC and the Washington Post featured a speech by Egyptian Prime Minister Morsi calling for NAM support for the Western backed armed mercenaries invading Syria. The media omitted mentioning that no delegation took up his proposal. NAM not only ignored Morsi but unanimously approved a resolution opposing western intervention and affirming the right of self-determination, clearly applicable to the case of Syria.
While NAM defended Iran’s right to develop its peaceful nuclear program, the mass media publicized a dubious “report” authored by US favorite, Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) questioning Iran’s compliance with his directives. Not surprisingly the report by Amano carried no weight in the deliberations of the 130 delegates, given his notoriety as a front-man for Israeli and US pro-war propaganda.
Overall the mass media deliberately ignored or underplayed the resolutions, dialogue and democratic procedures of the NAM meeting in an effort to cover up the enormous political gulf between the US, Israel, the EU and the vast majority of the international community.
Political Impact of the NAM Conference
NAM seriously undermined the images of the Mid-East conflicts which US policymakers and their acolytes in the EU and Gulf States project: the political reality, which came out of the meetings emphasized that it is the US. Israel and the EU who are outside the mainstream international community. It is the US and EU who lack political allies in the pursuit of colonial wars. It is the Israeli occupation of Palestine and Washington’s policies of ‘regime change’ in Syria and Iran which lack allies. Its Iran’s peaceful nuclear program which has legitimacy not Israel’s nuclear arsenal. The Iranian leadership gained prestige via its openness to international dialogue. In contrast its regional Gulf adversaries, who rely on multi-billion dollar US arms purchases and military bases were denigrated and discredited.
The Iranian proposals to reform the United Nations to make it more democratic and responsive to emerging countries and less a tool of US-EU policymakers resonated throughout the conference. The emphasis on free trade, was manifest in the large economic delegations who attended eager to sign agreements in defiance of US-Israel-EU sanctions.
Conclusion
Temporarily the NAM conference may have lessened the threat of a military attack against Iran, at least by the US and the EU – by demonstrating the political cost of alienating two thirds of the UN Assembly. Nevertheless by demonstrating Israel’s total isolation, (and truly pariah status in the international community), NAM may have heightened the pathological paranoia of the Israeli leadership and hastened its move toward a catastrophic war.
The follow-up of the NAM resolutions requires a permanent organization, a minimum coordinating secretariat to ensure compliance and rapid responses to crises. Otherwise the good intentions and positive moves toward peace via dialogue will be inconsequential.
The mobilization of the NAM members in the UN General Assembly is crucial to withstand the blackmail, bribes, threats and corruption which are used by the Western powers to secure majorities on crucial votes regarding US sanctions, coups and military intervention. Trade, investment and cultural boycotts of Israel should be promoted and enforced, until the Jewish State ends its occupation of Palestine. Clearly Iran, as the newly elected leader of NAM, has a major role to play in ensuring that the Tehran meeting of 2012 becomes the basis for a revitalization of the Movement. Iran can play a constructive leadership role providing it continues to promote a plural collective format based on common anti-imperialist principles.
September 6, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Solidarity and Activism | Ban Ki-moon, European Union, International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran, Middle East, Non-Aligned Movement, United Nations |
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