The Bush Who Cried Wolf
Robert Dreyfuss
January 12, 2006

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.He can be reached through his website: www.robertdreyfuss.com.

The deteriorating international crisis over Iran is a direct result of the Bush’s administration’s ham-handed and mendacious Iraq([search]) policy.

Under normal circumstances—that is, under any previous U.S. administration—the battle over Iran’s pugnacious effort in pursuit of nuclear technology would be amenable to a diplomatic solution. But, by insisting on a national security strategy of pre-emptive war, by illegally and unilaterally invading Iraq on false pretenses, and by hinting that the White House would tolerate an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear plants, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have made a successful diplomatic resolution of the Iran crisis nearly impossible.

Speaking yesterday at the Council for National Policy, Larry Wilkerson—the former top aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell who caused a stir last fall when he accused Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld of operating a “cabal” —said that it is likely that Pentagon officials are polishing contingency plans for a strike against Iran. Iran, said Wilkerson, is the “principal winner” from the war in Iraq. As a result of the power of the Shiite religious forces in Iraq, he said, the Iranians “own the south” of Iraq. Wilkerson insisted that the United States ought to “talk to the people who really matter in Iran”—i.e., to the ayatollahs. But he said that U.S. policy has failed so utterly that the door to negotiations with Iran is virtually closed. “When you close the door to diplomacy, you have no other option but to rely on military power,” he said. “I hope to hell we don’t have to use it.”

Without diplomatic tools, the looming showdown with Iran is potentially even more dangerous than the Iraq war. Iran is a far larger and more complex country, with the capability of retaliating against a U.S./Israeli attack by fomenting civil war in Iraq, by creating regional chaos in the Gulf, and by mobilizing its significant international terrorist capability against Western targets.

As it did in the run-up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration—along with Israel—is content to exaggerate the threat from Iran. The ayatollahs appear to be at least five years or more away from a serious nuclear capacity, according to U.S. intelligence reports. Iran’s recent decision to restart one part of its nuclear research is indeed a serious threat to diplomatic talks aimed at resolving the matter peacefully. But the issue is nowhere near an end-game stage. There is plenty of time, years in fact, for a back-and-forth effort to secure Iran's compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.

By crying wolf over Iraq, through claiming that Saddam Hussein’s regime had an active nuclear arms program, the United States lacks credibility when it now asserts that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. And by its illegal, unilateral invasion of Iraq, without allowing the U.N. and the IAEA to proceed with inspections there, the United States has made other countries extremely wary of taking Iran to the U.N. Security Council, out of fear that it might give the United States or Israel a pretext to attack Iran unilaterally.

But the international community’s justified fear that the United States is controlled by a war party seeking to attack Iran makes other states’ diplomacy even harder. Normally, the five U.N. Security Council powers would take up the matter with some urgency, adopt a resolution demanding Iran compliance, and threaten political and economic sanctions against Iran for non-compliance. But Moscow, Beijing and Paris remember what happened in Iraq. That matter was taken to the UNSC, a resolution passed—and then Washington declared unilaterally that Iraq had violated it, and went to war. So the world’s capitals may be forgiven for being reluctant to drag Iran into the UNSC in 2006.

The fact that John Bolton, the belligerent, war-mongering neoconservative who serves as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., takes over as president of the Security Council in February doesn’t help.

Bolton, Cheney and their allies are pushing for a showdown in the UNSC, even though it is highly unlikely that either Russia or China would support anti-Iran sanctions. India, the Arab League and other countries would strongly oppose such measures. And even Western Europe, furious over Iran for its latest effrontery, doesn’t view sanctions on Iran as a happy outcome. Their resistance to anti-Iran measures comes despite a string of outrageous provocations from Iranian President Ahmadinejad, from demanding that Israel be “wiped off the map” to pooh-poohing the Holocaust to haughtily restarting Iran's nuclear research.

It is impossible to deny that Iran is a dangerous, out-of-control regime—yes, a “rogue” regime. But, had the Bush administration maintained a consistent policy of seeking a dialogue with Iran, had the neocons refrained from demanding regime change and military action, had President Bush not referred to Iran as part of a mythical “axis of evil,” and had the United States not immensely strengthened Iran’s position by handing it Iraq on a silver platter, diplomacy would stand a better chance. A package deal, giving Iran political acceptance and economic incentives, combined with a regulated nuclear technology regime, in exchange for Iran’s backing down from its hardline stance, could likely have been reached over time. It may still, but it seems highly unlikely now.

So we are left with persistent reports that both the United States and Israel are planning to strike Iran, and soon. Not only would such an attack result in a vastly wider conflict in Iran, Iraq and the Gulf, but it would also probably push oil prices well over $100 a barrel, making $5-a-gallon gas a reality. Perhaps, because the international community wants to avoid such a catastrophe, and because the United States is exerting enormous pressure on Russia, China and other world powers, first the IAEA and then the UNSC might vote to sanction Iran. If so, Iran will certainly not back down. And as a result, the United States will have the pretext it seeks to go to war once again.

Some Democrats—and even a fair number of moderate and libertarian Republicans—expect the November 2006 elections to take place against the backdrop of a failed occupation of Iraq. Instead, those same elections might take place in the midst of yet another crisis manufactured by the Bush administration.

 http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060112/the_bush_who_cried_wolf.php

Israel Wants West to Deal More Urgently With Iran
 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/international/middleeast/13israel.html?ex=1137819600&en=938991e2e75da9e3&ei=5059&partner=AOL

AIPAC, the Zionist spy organization in the US, wants other countries' kids to fight their battles for them.

 http://www.aipac.org/iran/

AIPAC, the very same organization that buys the Congress behind your back, the very same organization caught operating a spy ring inside the same Pentagon office from which many of the lies about Iraq's 'nookular' threat originated, now plays the same game with Iran.

And you know what is really insulting? That they think Americans are dumb enough to fall for the same lie twice.

WHO IS THE US CONGRESS LISTENING TO?
 http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/whoiscongresslisteningto.html

Bush Calls Iran Grave Threat, Surprises Staff…

Washington Post | Peter Baker

President Bush declared yesterday that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose "a grave threat to the security of the world" as he tried to rally support from other major powers for U.N. Security Council action unless a defiant Tehran abandons any aspirations for nuclear weapons.

The "grave threat" language was not in any talking points prepared and distributed yesterday across the U.S. government, and it surprised diplomats and even some of Bush's own aides. During his State of the Union address in 2002, when Bush labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil," he said the three states posed a "grave and growing danger." And he later repeated the "grave threat" description to describe Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But by and large, he has shied away from those words regarding Iran.

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/01/14/bush-calls-iran-grave-thr_n_13798.html

Iran Air Strikes 'Under Consideration'
 http://www.antiwar.com/ips/suri.php?articleid=8386

103 Congress members to Israel in 2005
More than 100 members of Congress visited Israel in 2005.

In his summary to the Israeli Cabinet this week on relations with the United States, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said 23 U.S. senators and 80 members of the U.S. House of Representatives visited Israel last year, some multiple times.

The legislative branch has maintained its unique and long-standing status as a stronghold of support for Israel, transcending party lines and Congressional houses,†he said.

 http://www.jta.org/page_view_breaking_story.asp?intid=870&ref=daily_briefing

Tehran has Washington by the cojones

Iran believes the U.S. and Britain are mired in Iraq([search]) and cannot spare the military muscle to pick a fight.

* * *
The Security Council cannot deal with Iran like Iraq, ruined by war and obliged to give UN inspectors unfettered access.

* * *
"As President George Bush([search]) might privately put it, Tehran has Washington by the cojones," wrote Oxford University professor Timothy Garton Ash.

Iran not only has a formidable military, but it has strong economic ties with Russia and China, both of whom wield vetoes on the Security Council.

The US and Britain bulldozed their way into Iraq, but how will they handle Iran?

On Monday, senior officials from Britain, the U.S., Russia and China will meet in London to try and agree on how to proceed.

* * *
[The] United States repeatedly has told Tehran that developing nuclear weapons capability is unacceptable.

* * *
[But,] experts [estimate] Iran is at least five years away from being able to produce a nuclear bomb.

Five years away. So what's the unstated urgency, could it be Iran's oil bourse that's slated to open in March?

[Jack Straw] insisted the dispute with Iran "can only be resolved by peaceful means."

* * *
[But,] US officials . . . won't rule out a unilateral military strike.

* * *
German deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler said imposing economic sanctions against Iran for its nuclear policy would be a "very dangerous path" and could "lead to an escalation that can get out of control."

Will cooler heads prevail? Your guess is as good as mine. But, don't hold your breath.

Hans Blix, who led the pre-war UN inspection team in Iraq, accuses Europe and the U.S. of not giving Iran enough economic and political incentives to make a deal.

At one point, Iran seemed ready to do so...

The deal tabled included allowing Iran to buy a light-water reactor and ending trade restrictions on spare parts, which helps explain the tendency of Iranian planes to fall out of the sky.

Iran then balked at an offer to have Russia supply enriched uranium, saying Moscow's recent gas dispute with Ukraine shows how easy it is for a supplier to turn off the tap.

He raises a very good point. We all know what happens when those who supply that which we need to survive decide to turn off the tap.

[W]hen credit is created out of "thin air" and returned on the maturity day to the bank this amounts to a withdrawal of money from the economy, i.e, [a] decline in the money stock . . . because there wasn't any original saver/lender, since this credit was created out of "thin air."

It follows then that the sole cause behind the wide swings in the stock of money [i.e., economic booms and depressions] is the existence of fractional reserve banking, which gives rise to unbacked-by-savings credit. (Mises thinks INTEREST is okay. Minor dispute. We know better.)

Ahmedinjad is no fool. MONEY and ENERGY make the world go 'round. What would you do for your people, if you were him?

When peak oil comes around, Iran will need an alternate source of energy. Who would you allow to control your country's destiny?

 http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2006/01/tehran-has-washington-by-cojones.html