Month: Mar 2012

What Are Iran’s Intentions?

The media re­sound with warn­ings about a likely Is­raeli at­tack on Iran while the U.S. hes­i­tates, keep­ing open the op­tion of ag­gres­sion – thus again rou­tinely vi­o­lat­ing the U.N. Char­ter, the foun­da­tion of in­ter­na­tional law.

March 3 PERES AMD OBAMA FOAMING AT THE MOUTH
Mr Peres described Iran as "an evil, cruel and morally corrupt regime" bent on controlling the Middle East. He told delegates: "Iran is the centre, the sponsor, the financier of world terror. Iran is a danger to the entire world."Mr Obama is due to hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday.

As ten­sions es­ca­late, eerie echoes of the run-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are in the air. Fever­ish U.S. pri­mary cam­paign rhetoric adds to the drum­beat.

Con­cerns about “the im­mi­nent threat” of Iran are often at­trib­uted to the “in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity” – code lan­guage for U.S. al­lies. The peo­ple of the world, how­ever, tend to see mat­ters rather dif­fer­ently.

The non­aligned coun­tries, a move­ment with 120 mem­ber na­tions, has vig­or­ously sup­ported Iran’s right to en­rich ura­nium – an opin­ion shared by the ma­jor­ity of Amer­i­cans (as sur­veyed by WorldPublicOpinion.org) be­fore the mas­sive pro­pa­ganda on­slaught of the past two years.

China and Rus­sia op­pose U.S. pol­icy on Iran, as does India, which an­nounced that it would dis­re­gard U.S. sanc­tions and in­crease trade with Iran. Turkey has fol­lowed a sim­i­lar course….,,,,

Iran has very lim­ited ca­pac­ity to de­ploy force, and its strate­gic doc­trine is de­fen­sive, de­signed to deter in­va­sion long enough for diplo­macy to take ef­fect. If Iran is de­vel­op­ing nu­clear weapons (which is still un­de­ter­mined), that would be part of its de­ter­rent strat­egy.

The un­der­stand­ing of se­ri­ous Is­raeli and U.S. an­a­lysts is ex­pressed clearly by 30-year CIA vet­eran Bruce Riedel, who said in Jan­u­ary, “If I was an Iran­ian na­tional se­cu­rity plan­ner, I would want nu­clear weapons” as a de­ter­rent.

An ad­di­tional charge the West lev­els against Iran is that it is seek­ing to ex­pand its in­flu­ence in neigh­bor­ing coun­tries at­tacked and oc­cu­pied by the U.S. and Britain, and is sup­port­ing re­sis­tance to the U.S.-backed Is­raeli ag­gres­sion in Lebanon and il­le­gal Is­raeli oc­cu­pa­tion of Pales­tin­ian lands. Like its de­ter­rence of pos­si­ble vi­o­lence by West­ern coun­tries, Iran’s ac­tions are said to be in­tol­er­a­ble threats to “global order.”

Global opin­ion agrees with Maoz. Sup­port is over­whelm­ing for a WMDFZ in the Mid­dle East; this zone would in­clude Iran, Is­rael and prefer­ably the other two nu­clear pow­ers that have re­fused to join the Nu­clear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty: India and Pak­istan, who, along with Is­rael, de­vel­oped their pro­grams with U.S. aid.

Sup­port for this pol­icy at the NPT Re­view Con­fer­ence in May 2010 was so strong that Wash­ing­ton was forced to agree for­mally, but with con­di­tions: The zone could not take ef­fect until a com­pre­hen­sive peace set­tle­ment be­tween Is­rael and its Arab neigh­bors was in place; Is­rael’s nu­clear weapons pro­grams must be ex­empted from in­ter­na­tional in­spec­tion; and no coun­try (mean­ing the U.S.) must be obliged to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about “Is­raeli nu­clear fa­cil­i­ties and ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to pre­vi­ous nu­clear trans­fers to Is­rael.”

The 2010 con­fer­ence called for a ses­sion in May 2012 to move to­ward es­tab­lish­ing a WMDFZ in the Mid­dle East.

With all the furor about Iran, how­ever, there is scant at­ten­tion to that op­tion, which would be the most con­struc­tive way of deal­ing with the nu­clear threats in the re­gion: for the “in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity,” the threat that Iran might gain nu­clear ca­pa­bil­ity; for most of the world, the threat posed by the only state in the re­gion with nu­clear weapons and a long record of ag­gres­sion, and its su­per­power pa­tron

Genocidal US capitalists see huge profits in a war with Iran.. and they control Obama.

One can find no men­ti

on at all of the fact that the U.S. and Britain have a unique re­spon­si­bil­ity to ded­i­cate their ef­forts to this goal. In seek­ing to pro­vide a thin legal cover for their in­va­sion of Iraq, they in­voked U.N. Se­cu­rity Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 687 (1991), which they claimed Iraq was vi­o­lat­ing by de­vel­op­ing WMD.

We may ig­nore the claim, but not the fact that the res­o­lu­tion ex­plic­itly com­mits sign­ers to es­tab­lish­ing a WMDFZ in the Mid­dle East.

Related articles

• World considers US, Israel threat not Iran: Chomsky (chomskywatch.wordpress.com)