US drumbeat against Iran threatens new war of aggression
Bill Van Auken wsws.org | 12.03.2006 00:47 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | London | World
Bush’s remarks echoed those made the day before by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the US faces “no greater challenge from a single country” than from Iran.
$75 million to “promote democracy” in Iran
With the US war and occupation in Iraq fast approaching its third anniversary, those in the Bush administration responsible for launching this unprovoked aggression based on lies about weapons of mass destruction and through intimidating the American people with fabricated threats of terror are once again beating the same war drums, this time against Iran.
Washington has succeeded in having charges over Iran’s nuclear program referred to the United Nations Security Council, where a response is to be debated beginning next week. Representatives of the council’s five permanent members met on Friday to draft a statement on the dispute, which the US is demanding include direct condemnation of the Teheran government and a possible threat of UN sanctions.
In a question and answer session with newspaper publishers at a conference in Washington Friday, President Bush described the Iranian nuclear program as a “grave national security concern” and recalled his inclusion of Iran in a so-called “axis of evil” in his 2002 state of the union address. He declared that the US would “continue to work with others to solve these issues diplomatically—in other words, to deal with these threats today.”
In a rambling response to a question about the looming threat of civil war in Iraq, Bush repeated his predictions of success and his claims that Washington is fighting for democracy. He then added: “There’s a lot of talk about Iran. A free Iraq will inspire reformers in Iran.”
Such a claim is clearly ludicrous. The Iranian people, like the rest of the world, have looked with horror upon what the US invasion and occupation has wrought in neighboring Iraq, where over 100,000 civilians have been killed, basic economic and social life has been shattered and an American-dominated government rules through death squads and torture.
If there is an unintended grain of truth in Bush’s absurd comment, it is that “reformers,” such as Reza Pahlavi, son of the late deposed Shah, are hopeful that the old Washington-backed police state will return through an Iraqi-style, US “shock and awe” campaign being launched against Iran.
Bush’s remarks echoed those made the day before by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the US faces “no greater challenge from a single country” than from Iran.
In her deliberately provocative remarks, Rice branded the Iranian government as the “central banker for terrorism” and charged that “Iranian support for terrorism is retarding and, in some cases, helping to arrest the growth of democratic and stable governments [in the Middle East].”
Rice made the remarks in the context of the administration’s appeal for $92 billion more for waging the three-year-old war that has terrorized the people of Iraq. She likewise asked the Senate to approve an appropriation of $75 million to “promote democracy” in Iran. Such funding will be funneled to US-backed exile groups that are collaborating with Washington in preparing for military action against Iran.
“This is a country that is determined, it seems, to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance of the international community which is determined that they should not get one,” Rice declared of Iran.
Repeating her claim that Iran represents a terrorist threat, she warned the congressional panel, “If you can take that and multiply it by several hundred, you can imagine Iran with a nuclear weapon and the threat they would then pose to that region.”
Rice, like Bush, claimed that Washington wants to resolve the confrontation with Iran through “diplomacy.”
The remarks by the US president and Secretary of State, however, come on the heels of numerous statements by Bush himself, as well as comments made more recently by Vice President Dick Cheney, US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and others stressing that as far as Washington is concerned “all options are on the table,” a clear and threatening reference to American military action against Iran.
For its part, the Iranian government has denied charges that its nuclear program is directed at anything but peaceful purposes centered on the generation of electricity, and the Bush administration has yet to offer any conclusive evidence to the contrary. Teheran has vowed not to bow to the intense pressure emanating from Washington.
The Bush administration’s diplomatic maneuvering at the United Nations over the Iranian nuclear program is for all intents and purposes a re-run of its campaign to manipulate the UN in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq three years ago. Now, just as then, it is going through the motions of diplomacy with the aim of using the international body as a cat’s paw in US war preparations, creating a paper trail of UN resolutions as a supposed casus belli and pseudo-legal justification for aggression.
Meanwhile, the constant drumbeat of public statements from administration officials warning of Iranian nuclear weapons, support for terrorism and the preposterous insinuation that Teheran would hand over a nuclear weapon to Al Qaeda, all are aimed at creating a climate of fear within the American public.
There is no indication that the Bush administration has any interest in reaching an accommodation with Teheran. It appears determined to maintain the confrontation over the alleged weapons program, even if it requires brushing aside any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
Speaking to reporters Friday while traveling to Chile—where there have been demonstrations demanding that she be declared persona non grata for her role in the war against Iraq—Rice rejected a call by Russia for a continuation of talks outside the UN Security Council aimed at easing the crisis atmosphere.
On Thursday, Ambassador Bolton took the same position, implicitly threatening that if the UN Security Council failed to take steps against Iran—backed by a threat of military force—Washington would pursue its own methods for doing so. “This is a test for the council,” he declared. “And if the Iranians do not back off from their continued aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons, we will have to make a decision of what the next step will be.”
The stark resemblance of the current campaign against Iran at the UN to the one initiated by Washington three years ago against Iraq was referred to explicitly Thursday by Russia’s foreign minister. “We aren’t reminding (everyone) who was right and who was not in Iraq, although the answer is obvious,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview on Russian state television. He called for the UN nuclear inspection agency to be given more time to review the Iranian nuclear program.
China has likewise criticized Washington’s bellicose threats against Iran. In a front-page statement published Friday, Beijing’s People’s Daily warned against the Security Council taking action against Iran.
“What is distressing is that the US government seems purposely to push the issue towards exacerbation,” the newspaper commented.
The statement continued by declaring that the US effort could result in “passing a resolution on economic sanctions over Iran, e.g., oil embargo and freezing its overseas assets. However, such sanctions are unbearable for the current world oil market and large oil-consuming countries.”
It went on to pose the question: “Since referring to the Security Council will not necessarily bring a solution to the issue, why is the US so eager to do it?” If Iran fails to capitulate, the newspaper predicted, “the US in its turn will be able to find reasons for eventual surgical attack on Iran for itself and Israel, although the reasons would be barely enough.” It went on to warn that such action “will further exasperate the Muslim community whose anti-US sentiment has already gone out of control and then lead to confrontation between the US and the entire Muslim world.”
Meanwhile, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana warned Thursday that the increasingly belligerent exchanges between Washington and Teheran are “not in line with normal diplomacy.”
Russia, China and European countries all have multi-billion-dollar economic interests in Iran and depend upon it as a principal supplier of energy resources. The US, on the other hand, has maintained economic sanctions against the country since the overthrow of the Shah’s CIA-backed dictatorship. Sanctions bar US firms from doing business with the Islamic republic.
Washington’s aggressive campaign against Teheran is aimed at furthering the principal strategic aims that underlay the invasion of Iraq three years ago: the use of military force to impose US domination over the vast oil reserves of the Persian Gulf and thereby assure American hegemony over its principal economic rivals in Europe and Asia.
That the US administration dares to use the same discredited strategy of lies and provocations against Iran that it employed in preparing the catastrophic war in Iraq is the clearest expression of this government’s criminality and desperation.
Why would anyone believe their warnings about a supposed Iranian threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, when these very same charges were exposed as a lying pretext for waging an illegal “pre-emptive war” that has killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands more US soldiers?
All of these officials—Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Bolton—stand exposed before the entire world as war criminals. Within the US itself—as well as within the ranks of the American military—the Iraq war is broadly opposed and seen as a political disaster. Popular opposition to another military campaign against Iran would undoubtedly be even greater.
Yet, within the ostensible US political opposition, the braying for action against Iran is, if anything, even louder. Leading Democrats, such as Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, have attacked Bush from the right. She recently accused the administration of having “lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource negotiations.”
That the American ruling elite would, under conditions of mounting disintegration of the US Iraqi occupation, even consider launching a second war against a country four times as large and with nearly triple the population seems insane on its face. Yet, it is historically proven that weak and desperate governments frequently take strong measures.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/iran-m11.shtml
Washington has succeeded in having charges over Iran’s nuclear program referred to the United Nations Security Council, where a response is to be debated beginning next week. Representatives of the council’s five permanent members met on Friday to draft a statement on the dispute, which the US is demanding include direct condemnation of the Teheran government and a possible threat of UN sanctions.
In a question and answer session with newspaper publishers at a conference in Washington Friday, President Bush described the Iranian nuclear program as a “grave national security concern” and recalled his inclusion of Iran in a so-called “axis of evil” in his 2002 state of the union address. He declared that the US would “continue to work with others to solve these issues diplomatically—in other words, to deal with these threats today.”
In a rambling response to a question about the looming threat of civil war in Iraq, Bush repeated his predictions of success and his claims that Washington is fighting for democracy. He then added: “There’s a lot of talk about Iran. A free Iraq will inspire reformers in Iran.”
Such a claim is clearly ludicrous. The Iranian people, like the rest of the world, have looked with horror upon what the US invasion and occupation has wrought in neighboring Iraq, where over 100,000 civilians have been killed, basic economic and social life has been shattered and an American-dominated government rules through death squads and torture.
If there is an unintended grain of truth in Bush’s absurd comment, it is that “reformers,” such as Reza Pahlavi, son of the late deposed Shah, are hopeful that the old Washington-backed police state will return through an Iraqi-style, US “shock and awe” campaign being launched against Iran.
Bush’s remarks echoed those made the day before by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the US faces “no greater challenge from a single country” than from Iran.
In her deliberately provocative remarks, Rice branded the Iranian government as the “central banker for terrorism” and charged that “Iranian support for terrorism is retarding and, in some cases, helping to arrest the growth of democratic and stable governments [in the Middle East].”
Rice made the remarks in the context of the administration’s appeal for $92 billion more for waging the three-year-old war that has terrorized the people of Iraq. She likewise asked the Senate to approve an appropriation of $75 million to “promote democracy” in Iran. Such funding will be funneled to US-backed exile groups that are collaborating with Washington in preparing for military action against Iran.
“This is a country that is determined, it seems, to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance of the international community which is determined that they should not get one,” Rice declared of Iran.
Repeating her claim that Iran represents a terrorist threat, she warned the congressional panel, “If you can take that and multiply it by several hundred, you can imagine Iran with a nuclear weapon and the threat they would then pose to that region.”
Rice, like Bush, claimed that Washington wants to resolve the confrontation with Iran through “diplomacy.”
The remarks by the US president and Secretary of State, however, come on the heels of numerous statements by Bush himself, as well as comments made more recently by Vice President Dick Cheney, US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and others stressing that as far as Washington is concerned “all options are on the table,” a clear and threatening reference to American military action against Iran.
For its part, the Iranian government has denied charges that its nuclear program is directed at anything but peaceful purposes centered on the generation of electricity, and the Bush administration has yet to offer any conclusive evidence to the contrary. Teheran has vowed not to bow to the intense pressure emanating from Washington.
The Bush administration’s diplomatic maneuvering at the United Nations over the Iranian nuclear program is for all intents and purposes a re-run of its campaign to manipulate the UN in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq three years ago. Now, just as then, it is going through the motions of diplomacy with the aim of using the international body as a cat’s paw in US war preparations, creating a paper trail of UN resolutions as a supposed casus belli and pseudo-legal justification for aggression.
Meanwhile, the constant drumbeat of public statements from administration officials warning of Iranian nuclear weapons, support for terrorism and the preposterous insinuation that Teheran would hand over a nuclear weapon to Al Qaeda, all are aimed at creating a climate of fear within the American public.
There is no indication that the Bush administration has any interest in reaching an accommodation with Teheran. It appears determined to maintain the confrontation over the alleged weapons program, even if it requires brushing aside any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
Speaking to reporters Friday while traveling to Chile—where there have been demonstrations demanding that she be declared persona non grata for her role in the war against Iraq—Rice rejected a call by Russia for a continuation of talks outside the UN Security Council aimed at easing the crisis atmosphere.
On Thursday, Ambassador Bolton took the same position, implicitly threatening that if the UN Security Council failed to take steps against Iran—backed by a threat of military force—Washington would pursue its own methods for doing so. “This is a test for the council,” he declared. “And if the Iranians do not back off from their continued aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons, we will have to make a decision of what the next step will be.”
The stark resemblance of the current campaign against Iran at the UN to the one initiated by Washington three years ago against Iraq was referred to explicitly Thursday by Russia’s foreign minister. “We aren’t reminding (everyone) who was right and who was not in Iraq, although the answer is obvious,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview on Russian state television. He called for the UN nuclear inspection agency to be given more time to review the Iranian nuclear program.
China has likewise criticized Washington’s bellicose threats against Iran. In a front-page statement published Friday, Beijing’s People’s Daily warned against the Security Council taking action against Iran.
“What is distressing is that the US government seems purposely to push the issue towards exacerbation,” the newspaper commented.
The statement continued by declaring that the US effort could result in “passing a resolution on economic sanctions over Iran, e.g., oil embargo and freezing its overseas assets. However, such sanctions are unbearable for the current world oil market and large oil-consuming countries.”
It went on to pose the question: “Since referring to the Security Council will not necessarily bring a solution to the issue, why is the US so eager to do it?” If Iran fails to capitulate, the newspaper predicted, “the US in its turn will be able to find reasons for eventual surgical attack on Iran for itself and Israel, although the reasons would be barely enough.” It went on to warn that such action “will further exasperate the Muslim community whose anti-US sentiment has already gone out of control and then lead to confrontation between the US and the entire Muslim world.”
Meanwhile, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana warned Thursday that the increasingly belligerent exchanges between Washington and Teheran are “not in line with normal diplomacy.”
Russia, China and European countries all have multi-billion-dollar economic interests in Iran and depend upon it as a principal supplier of energy resources. The US, on the other hand, has maintained economic sanctions against the country since the overthrow of the Shah’s CIA-backed dictatorship. Sanctions bar US firms from doing business with the Islamic republic.
Washington’s aggressive campaign against Teheran is aimed at furthering the principal strategic aims that underlay the invasion of Iraq three years ago: the use of military force to impose US domination over the vast oil reserves of the Persian Gulf and thereby assure American hegemony over its principal economic rivals in Europe and Asia.
That the US administration dares to use the same discredited strategy of lies and provocations against Iran that it employed in preparing the catastrophic war in Iraq is the clearest expression of this government’s criminality and desperation.
Why would anyone believe their warnings about a supposed Iranian threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, when these very same charges were exposed as a lying pretext for waging an illegal “pre-emptive war” that has killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands more US soldiers?
All of these officials—Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Bolton—stand exposed before the entire world as war criminals. Within the US itself—as well as within the ranks of the American military—the Iraq war is broadly opposed and seen as a political disaster. Popular opposition to another military campaign against Iran would undoubtedly be even greater.
Yet, within the ostensible US political opposition, the braying for action against Iran is, if anything, even louder. Leading Democrats, such as Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, have attacked Bush from the right. She recently accused the administration of having “lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource negotiations.”
That the American ruling elite would, under conditions of mounting disintegration of the US Iraqi occupation, even consider launching a second war against a country four times as large and with nearly triple the population seems insane on its face. Yet, it is historically proven that weak and desperate governments frequently take strong measures.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/iran-m11.shtml
Bill Van Auken wsws.org
Additions
The cycle of war from the Allies
12.03.2006 08:12
If it is not apparent to the world at large that the US and its allies intend to bomb Iran in the future, it would be only due to avoidance of the news. The question is not 'if' but when, and of course, why?
There is much rhetoric flying back and forth across the Atlantic, and between Teheran and the United States, but we must sift the facts out from the fiction, from the lies, and from the war-mongering if we are to make sense of the notion that on the back of a crippling war in Iraq (primarily for Iraqis, but also for the objectives and international standing of the US, the UK and its other allies, such as Australia and Italy) the US seems to be gearing up for yet another large scale conflict, this time in the stronger and more unified state of Iran.
The Official Reasons
The official reasons, put forth by the US and the UK governments for a referral from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the United Nations Security council, are that Iran has breached the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (initially for a period of 18 years [1]), and that, in the most recent news, it has removed United Nations Atomic Inspectors seals to begin once again the process of nuclear development and enrichment. The official reasons being peddled by the US state that Iran has once again broken the NPT, and are intent, based on the removal of the seals, to further their 'goal' towards nuclear weapons - which is, of course, a serious breach of the NPT.
What is not a serious breach of the NPT is the non-declared nuclear programme of which the BBC, much of the media and our leaders (Bush, Blair, Rice, Straw) are making so much of. That breach (a breach of Iran's safeguards agreement, not the NPT [4]) was dealt with in 2003, by the Atomic Inspectors, who sealed the enrichment processes and set in place surveillance systems, on the basis that, through the IAEA an agreement would be made and enrichment allowed to continue for peaceful nuclear development (energy, not bombs). Four years later, and co-operation from Iran every step of the way, no progress had been made on the issue, and Iran said they would remove the seals if an agreement could not be made in the near future. It has not been, and Iran has removed the seals. Removing the seals is not a breach of the NPT however (rather an issue of the subsequent safeguards agreement - an obligatory agreement between the 2 parties, in which Iran feels the IAEA has not fulfilled their side - namely, to find a satisfactory way forward to allow Iran to explore its inalienable rights of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes[5]), prior warning has been made, offers to keep the programme transparent have been made, but these details are not enough for the US. Only halting the enrichment of uranium would please the US (for the moment) and this is not something that Iran wishes to do. According to the NPT agreement, it is their inalienable right to use the full potential of the technology for peaceful energy development
Peripheral rhetoric
During the last 6 months, the US has been busy in the press, attempting to relay to the public ideas that would further the public support of an invasion, or an attack on Iran. In the British press, there have been accusations from military intelligence in Iraq that Teheran has been supplying bomb-making know-how and equipment to 'Iraqi insurgents' which have been used to attack US troops and civilians of Iraq [6]. There has of course been no reliable proof of these accusations, just as there has been no reliable proof of Iran subsequent accusations against British intelligence of playing a part in the spate of bombings across Iran. The latter news has barely skimmed the headlines; the former has had a great deal of airtime.
The media campaigning surrounding the fiery words of Ahmadinejad threatening to 'wipe Israel off the map' has not been lost on the public - either here (in the UK) or around the world. It is quite entrenched now in the domain of public thought. Ahmadinejad is the man who said....
Never mind the fact that he did not. The exact words were:
[7]"No one believed that some day we would see the collapse of the Soviet Empire. They used to say it is an iron-clad rule. But we saw its collapse in our life time. That regime collapse so dramatically that we must go to libraries to read about it as there are no signs of it left. Our dear Imam [Ruhollah Khomeini] ordered that the occupying regime in Jerusalem be wiped off the face of the earth. This was a very wise statement."
Then we were told about his holocaust denial, which further rallied the cause against Iran. Here is the offending quote:
[8]""Is it not true that European countries insist that they committed a Jewish genocide? They say that Hitler burned millions of Jews in furnaces ... and exiled them," Ahmadinejad told Al-Alam.
"Then because the Jews have been oppressed during the Second World War, therefore they (the Europeans) have to support the occupying regime of Qods (Jerusalem). We do not accept this," he said."
While it is neither here nor there that the president of Iran may believe the figures of WWII exaggerated, the crime of genocide and of the Jewish holocaust is not his crime, nor any other Iranian's. The crime he talks about is a crime of Europe. That Europe now holds that crime so sacred is Europe's responsibility and legacy, not Iran's. For a country that has an immigrant and refugee population far exceeding many countries of Europe, it is obviously a compassionate nation. Ahmadinejad's main crime here was to suggest that Europe should have shouldered the responsibility of building the dispossessed Jews of WWII a new country, not passed it to the Arab world.
More recently, we have been shown the extreme behaviours of the 'Muslim world' in reaction to the now infamous cartoons of The Prophet. What the world has not had explained to it through our mainstream media is that the cartoons were initially published in September of 2005, to almost no fanfare. Only when it suited our governments to begin the rally against Muslims (for the purpose of manufacturing consent for yet another conflict), did the pictures suddenly hit the headlines.
There was violence, there was threat of violence (through placards), and there was death. The deaths were more Muslims, killed by authorities, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia [9]. Despite current laws in the UK making such threats illegal and arrestable offenses, the offending placard-holders photographed to become synonymous with 'Islamicism' around the world were not arrested [10], nor were the many peaceful protests given placement on the barrage of news on the subject. We saw one small side of things, and it was, not surprisingly, the side the media and our governments wished us to see.
In Australia, the violence was publicly condemned by the Australian government. Where were they when mosques were firebombed in 2002 in Brisbane? Or those in Sydney? Or Melbourne? Not to mention the violence and hysteria against Muslims in the last 3 or 4 years..
The engine is turning, and in 'free' Western countries, that means the media, telling us the soon-to-be enemy is dirty, nasty, not to be trusted. We saw all the same in the build up to the Afghanistan invasion - let's hope not too many people have forgotten.
The Real Reasons
There are a few of these, and like Afghanistan and Iraq, the issue at the heart of it seems to be oil. There is the proposed Iranian Oil Bourse [11], a precursor also to the invasion of Iraq (3 years prior to the invasion, Saddam Hussein began trading in Euros). Perhaps, as the then 5th largest oil producer in the world, the US saw and felt enough of the heat from that exchange to realise they didn't like it. Iran has more oil and more gas, and is therefore a bigger trader. The question is, are US fiat dollars strong enough to cope with such a change in the economic structure of the world's most important resource? Personally, I don't know, but the argument is strong. The most succinct interpretation of the reasoning behind the Iranian Oil Bourse as a reason for U.S. opposition strong enough to presage war I have read is this, written by David Bracewell, a contributor to Media Lens:
"It's what happens on the margins which matters. The US need to bring 2 billion into their financial system via the stock market or government bond market every day. It is just managing to do this.
Every country in the world needs US dollars to buy oil. So every country in the world is bound into trading with the US (on US terms) if they want those dollars cheaply. The structure of Neo-Liberalism is now necessary for US survival and much of it relies on the US dollar being at the heart of oil trading. The inequalities in trade are happening because they need to happen for the US economy to function. The biggest stick that the US holds over smaller countries is their access to the US market so that there is a direct trade in dollars. They never really get a fair shake as they are forced to open up their economies and sell off their assets at bargain basement prices - which suit the powerful in those countries. These are the last big reserves which the US capitalist model can exploit.
If countries can begin to trade in Euros or other currencies, the fiscal pressure comes off them to negotiate inequitous and increasingly unattractive trade relationships with the US. A hundred countries diversifying their trade because they can now trade in oil in multi-currencies is going to see that 2 billion dollars a day the US rely on dry up in a matter of a couple years, maybe months. That's all that needs to happen for the US to go into a major depression, because it is happening in a deflating housing bubble, during a flight of US manufacturing overseas and a within population which dis-saves for the first time in 70 years. The IMF is a discredited instrument being repudiated, and more threateningly in S America, ignored for the first time in a quarter century. SO what does that leave? It will no more be able to hold things together militarily than the Soviet Union could (with short lines of communications and a hundred years of direct occupation of central Asia).
That is why the oil bourse is so important. It doesn't need to compete with the US, just take the wind out of the sails of incoming capital into the US which is covering its deficit. The US can go to war with whomever at that point. The ability to keep a high tech army up and running in a depression where people are disaffected, the limits of your power are known and you gradually accrue the weight of much of the worlds resistance is about NIL. I mean, a Sunni insurgency of a few tens of thousands has knackered this high tech army in reasonably good times - what chance when the shit hits the fan?"
Add to it the fact that the other place the US is current rallying support against - Venezuela - is also proposing such a bourse, and you begin to suspect that the money behind the oil is possibly the most important aspect [12].
Then there are military and infrastructure contracts from US wars [13]. Awarded to US companies and close affiliates of the White House, the money made through privatising other countries' resources may be tremendous - many people have put a lot of time into investigating such issues. Sadly, few of them have been in the mainstream news.
A third, and perhaps most frightening possibility, is the notion that George Bush just wants to do it. Based on his supposedly being Christian - that peculiar American version of a Christian that allows for large scale massacres and human rights abuses within the framework of the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' - and the events of the final book of the bible, Revelations, it would seem he is intent on engineering the events that would bring about the end of the world.
The facts
Iran is not any longer in breach of the NPT. The original breach was a small one, in the terms of the agreement; that is to say, they were not breaking the NPT agreement, but failing to keep the process transparent.
Jefferson Morley of the Washington Post says "Is Iran in breach of NPT? The reprocessing that it stopped and has now possibly restarted is not actually against the rules of NPT. Iran is being asked to go BEYOND its NPT committments when it’s told to stop reprocessing.[3]"
Bearing in mind the heavy sanctions on Iran at the time the nuclear research was being done, there was a fair amount of it that under sanctions they simply would not have been allowed to do anyway through transparent means - despite the NPT which gives every signatory the inalienable right to development of nuclear power for peaceful processes. The reasons behind the sanctions (which continue even today to a certain degree) stem from US anger at the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979. The fact they remained throughout the period that Iran was under direct threat and attack from Saddam's Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s shows the US administration's historical oppression of Iran, and their 'dislike' of the state. The fact is that at the time, Iraq was supplied with weapons and intelligence as well as open support from the US administration to further its imperialistic attacks on Iran [14].
The IAEA Implementation of the NPT Safeguards report from 4th February 2006 concluded that Iran should be referred to the Security Council, after the March board, and with any subsequent resolutions, and by Elbaradei - not, as the BBC told us then, that the report was given to the Security Council then. Although nothing has changed since that date, and no proof has been supplied that Iran may in fact be covertly developing nuclear weapons (and much evidence to the contrary published, such as the amount of uranium enrichment currently being undertaken versus the amount needed to make even one bomb with a great disparity between the two), the IAEA has concluded for referral to the Security Council [15].
Iran has done nothing wrong, and, unlike two other prominent signatories of the NPT - the United States and the United Kingdom - has not broken the NPT. For existing nuclear powers at the time of signing, the NPT was signed to ensure that, as soon as possible, they would decommission their nuclear weapons so that in the future there would be no nuclear states. For non-nuclear states at the time, the NPT detailed ensuring that they would not become such - so no nuclear weapons would be developed in any countries from that point forward.
Instead, the US has continued to proliferate its nuclear arsenal, through such weapons as depleted uranium shells, bunker-busters and more traditional nuclear bombs [16]. The UK is currently considering revamping their trident system in the next twelve years, and it is currently thought they will buy the weapons from the United States to refresh their ageing weapons already onboard the submarines. In the most heinous way possible, the US and the UK are guilty of breaking the NPT.
Iran is merely pursuing all avenues of nuclear energy. Enrichment processes are essential for the production of heavy water, and it can be used to produce more efficient cooling towers in nuclear power plants [17]. Enrichment is necessary for medical facilities. It can also be used for the production of nuclear weapons, but this requires other technology (the manufacture of the shells) as well. Iran's president, and, more importantly, the Supreme Leader, have both said that nuclear weapons are not what they want. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has
"... issued the Fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons." [18]
In addition,
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office just recently, in his inaugural address reiterated that his government is against weapons of mass destruction and will only pursue nuclear activities in the peaceful domain. The leadership of Iran has pledged at the highest level that Iran will remain a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the NPT and has placed the entire scope of its nuclear activities under IAEA safeguards and additional protocol, in addition to undertaking voluntary transparency measures with the agency that have even gone beyond the requirements of the agency's safeguard system."
That's quite comprehensive - if only we could get the same types of promises out of the leaders of the West, perhaps the world might be a safer place. Perhaps though, if this fatwa is well-known around the world (from what I have seen it is not), the West's idea is that promises are made to be broken. This is certainly unfair, to say the least. One thing, historically, that Arab and Persian countries have given the West, is their word. It has always been the West to break the promises. We cannot afford to tar the Middle-East with the same brush we are tarred with ourselves.
Yet, most importantly, according to the experts, the stage that Iran is currently at in its enrichment programme means that even if they were telling the West one thing and doing another, and they did indeed wish to have nuclear weapons, the process would take
"Several years ... First, Iran would have to master the enrichment process. This involves engineering thousands of centrifuges which spin a gas made from uranium ore, a difficult operation. Then it has to learn how to trigger a nuclear explosion and make a device small enough to be carried by an aircraft or missile.[2]" So why, we must ask, is the US focused so heavily on Iran in the first few months of 2006, when March 2006 is when Iran is scheduled to begin their Bourse using Euros? Could it simply be a coincidence?
Further to the fact that the NPT has been breached only by the aggressors (the US and the UK), it has been ignored by other states without consequence; India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel are not signatories to the NPT. This is more than a small issue of hypocrisy by the West - don't let the media fool you. The legalities of the situation are purely related to paperwork, and perceived threat. You do not argue with a country which has nuclear weapons, so once they have been developed, sanctions or strikes are not an option. In the case of Israel, it was never an option, and Israel is a good example here, because on the issue of UN resolutions, Israel has broken, and ignored perhaps more than the rest of the 'democratic' world put together. They have not been sanctioned or boycotted, and they have certainly not been attacked by the West. Iraq, Syria, Iran, Lebanon on the other hand, have all been sanctioned at one time or another.
Iran has never invaded another state. It does not break international law. Why then, does the West see it as its right to threaten Iran? Based on the mirrored rhetoric coming from Washington of late to that of the build-up to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, there is a very real threat that the US, the UK and quite possibly Israel are gearing up to an attack on Iran, and its people. Are we going to let it happen again?
Notes:
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4031603.stm
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4031603.stm
[3] http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/2006/02/hans_blix_on
[4] http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/030618.htm
[5] Where the reports states "(o) Recognising the inalienable right of States to the development and practical application of
atomic energy for peaceful purposes, including the production of electric power, with due consideration for the needs of developing countries" - http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:tSJIWAybsREJ:http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-81.pdf+ira" target="_blank"> http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-81.pdf+ira"> http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:tSJIWAybsREJ:http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-81.pdf+ira
[6] "According to defence sources, Iran's Revolutionary Guard trains bomb-makers in Iran and Lebanon who go to Basra to kill and teach others to do the same. If the allegations are true, then Iran's government, which has denied involvement, must be implicated, BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood says. A British official said last week Iran had supplied bombs used in the attacks.
Our correspondent says bomb-making know-how is spreading, as one man can train 10 others. [Tony Blair] warned Iran that there could be "no justification" for interfering in Iraq." - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4333246.stm
[7] http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP101305
[8] http://www.khaleejtimes.com/Displayarticle.asp?section=middleeast&xfile=
[9] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4684652.stm
[10] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4684474.stm
[11] http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
[12] http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul303.html
[13] http://money.cnn.com/2003/03/25/news/companies/war_contracts/
[14] http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-30-iraq-ushelp_x.htm
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php
[15] http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2006/gov2006-14.pdf
[16] http://www.sgr.org.uk/ArmsControl/USNucProlif_NL24.html
[17] "The vast majority of all nuclear power reactors in operation and under construction require 'enriched' uranium fuel in which the proportion of the U-235 isotope has been raised from the natural level of 0.7% to about 3.5% or slightly more. The enrichment process removes about 85% of the U-238 by separating gaseous uranium hexafluoride into two streams: One stream is enriched to the required level and then passes to the next stage of the fuel cycle. The other stream is depleted in U-235 and is called 'tails'. It is mostly U-238*." - http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/nfc.htm
[18] http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-17/0508104135124631.htm
www.defendiran.endofempire.org
There is much rhetoric flying back and forth across the Atlantic, and between Teheran and the United States, but we must sift the facts out from the fiction, from the lies, and from the war-mongering if we are to make sense of the notion that on the back of a crippling war in Iraq (primarily for Iraqis, but also for the objectives and international standing of the US, the UK and its other allies, such as Australia and Italy) the US seems to be gearing up for yet another large scale conflict, this time in the stronger and more unified state of Iran.
The Official Reasons
The official reasons, put forth by the US and the UK governments for a referral from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the United Nations Security council, are that Iran has breached the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (initially for a period of 18 years [1]), and that, in the most recent news, it has removed United Nations Atomic Inspectors seals to begin once again the process of nuclear development and enrichment. The official reasons being peddled by the US state that Iran has once again broken the NPT, and are intent, based on the removal of the seals, to further their 'goal' towards nuclear weapons - which is, of course, a serious breach of the NPT.
What is not a serious breach of the NPT is the non-declared nuclear programme of which the BBC, much of the media and our leaders (Bush, Blair, Rice, Straw) are making so much of. That breach (a breach of Iran's safeguards agreement, not the NPT [4]) was dealt with in 2003, by the Atomic Inspectors, who sealed the enrichment processes and set in place surveillance systems, on the basis that, through the IAEA an agreement would be made and enrichment allowed to continue for peaceful nuclear development (energy, not bombs). Four years later, and co-operation from Iran every step of the way, no progress had been made on the issue, and Iran said they would remove the seals if an agreement could not be made in the near future. It has not been, and Iran has removed the seals. Removing the seals is not a breach of the NPT however (rather an issue of the subsequent safeguards agreement - an obligatory agreement between the 2 parties, in which Iran feels the IAEA has not fulfilled their side - namely, to find a satisfactory way forward to allow Iran to explore its inalienable rights of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes[5]), prior warning has been made, offers to keep the programme transparent have been made, but these details are not enough for the US. Only halting the enrichment of uranium would please the US (for the moment) and this is not something that Iran wishes to do. According to the NPT agreement, it is their inalienable right to use the full potential of the technology for peaceful energy development
Peripheral rhetoric
During the last 6 months, the US has been busy in the press, attempting to relay to the public ideas that would further the public support of an invasion, or an attack on Iran. In the British press, there have been accusations from military intelligence in Iraq that Teheran has been supplying bomb-making know-how and equipment to 'Iraqi insurgents' which have been used to attack US troops and civilians of Iraq [6]. There has of course been no reliable proof of these accusations, just as there has been no reliable proof of Iran subsequent accusations against British intelligence of playing a part in the spate of bombings across Iran. The latter news has barely skimmed the headlines; the former has had a great deal of airtime.
The media campaigning surrounding the fiery words of Ahmadinejad threatening to 'wipe Israel off the map' has not been lost on the public - either here (in the UK) or around the world. It is quite entrenched now in the domain of public thought. Ahmadinejad is the man who said....
Never mind the fact that he did not. The exact words were:
[7]"No one believed that some day we would see the collapse of the Soviet Empire. They used to say it is an iron-clad rule. But we saw its collapse in our life time. That regime collapse so dramatically that we must go to libraries to read about it as there are no signs of it left. Our dear Imam [Ruhollah Khomeini] ordered that the occupying regime in Jerusalem be wiped off the face of the earth. This was a very wise statement."
Then we were told about his holocaust denial, which further rallied the cause against Iran. Here is the offending quote:
[8]""Is it not true that European countries insist that they committed a Jewish genocide? They say that Hitler burned millions of Jews in furnaces ... and exiled them," Ahmadinejad told Al-Alam.
"Then because the Jews have been oppressed during the Second World War, therefore they (the Europeans) have to support the occupying regime of Qods (Jerusalem). We do not accept this," he said."
While it is neither here nor there that the president of Iran may believe the figures of WWII exaggerated, the crime of genocide and of the Jewish holocaust is not his crime, nor any other Iranian's. The crime he talks about is a crime of Europe. That Europe now holds that crime so sacred is Europe's responsibility and legacy, not Iran's. For a country that has an immigrant and refugee population far exceeding many countries of Europe, it is obviously a compassionate nation. Ahmadinejad's main crime here was to suggest that Europe should have shouldered the responsibility of building the dispossessed Jews of WWII a new country, not passed it to the Arab world.
More recently, we have been shown the extreme behaviours of the 'Muslim world' in reaction to the now infamous cartoons of The Prophet. What the world has not had explained to it through our mainstream media is that the cartoons were initially published in September of 2005, to almost no fanfare. Only when it suited our governments to begin the rally against Muslims (for the purpose of manufacturing consent for yet another conflict), did the pictures suddenly hit the headlines.
There was violence, there was threat of violence (through placards), and there was death. The deaths were more Muslims, killed by authorities, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia [9]. Despite current laws in the UK making such threats illegal and arrestable offenses, the offending placard-holders photographed to become synonymous with 'Islamicism' around the world were not arrested [10], nor were the many peaceful protests given placement on the barrage of news on the subject. We saw one small side of things, and it was, not surprisingly, the side the media and our governments wished us to see.
In Australia, the violence was publicly condemned by the Australian government. Where were they when mosques were firebombed in 2002 in Brisbane? Or those in Sydney? Or Melbourne? Not to mention the violence and hysteria against Muslims in the last 3 or 4 years..
The engine is turning, and in 'free' Western countries, that means the media, telling us the soon-to-be enemy is dirty, nasty, not to be trusted. We saw all the same in the build up to the Afghanistan invasion - let's hope not too many people have forgotten.
The Real Reasons
There are a few of these, and like Afghanistan and Iraq, the issue at the heart of it seems to be oil. There is the proposed Iranian Oil Bourse [11], a precursor also to the invasion of Iraq (3 years prior to the invasion, Saddam Hussein began trading in Euros). Perhaps, as the then 5th largest oil producer in the world, the US saw and felt enough of the heat from that exchange to realise they didn't like it. Iran has more oil and more gas, and is therefore a bigger trader. The question is, are US fiat dollars strong enough to cope with such a change in the economic structure of the world's most important resource? Personally, I don't know, but the argument is strong. The most succinct interpretation of the reasoning behind the Iranian Oil Bourse as a reason for U.S. opposition strong enough to presage war I have read is this, written by David Bracewell, a contributor to Media Lens:
"It's what happens on the margins which matters. The US need to bring 2 billion into their financial system via the stock market or government bond market every day. It is just managing to do this.
Every country in the world needs US dollars to buy oil. So every country in the world is bound into trading with the US (on US terms) if they want those dollars cheaply. The structure of Neo-Liberalism is now necessary for US survival and much of it relies on the US dollar being at the heart of oil trading. The inequalities in trade are happening because they need to happen for the US economy to function. The biggest stick that the US holds over smaller countries is their access to the US market so that there is a direct trade in dollars. They never really get a fair shake as they are forced to open up their economies and sell off their assets at bargain basement prices - which suit the powerful in those countries. These are the last big reserves which the US capitalist model can exploit.
If countries can begin to trade in Euros or other currencies, the fiscal pressure comes off them to negotiate inequitous and increasingly unattractive trade relationships with the US. A hundred countries diversifying their trade because they can now trade in oil in multi-currencies is going to see that 2 billion dollars a day the US rely on dry up in a matter of a couple years, maybe months. That's all that needs to happen for the US to go into a major depression, because it is happening in a deflating housing bubble, during a flight of US manufacturing overseas and a within population which dis-saves for the first time in 70 years. The IMF is a discredited instrument being repudiated, and more threateningly in S America, ignored for the first time in a quarter century. SO what does that leave? It will no more be able to hold things together militarily than the Soviet Union could (with short lines of communications and a hundred years of direct occupation of central Asia).
That is why the oil bourse is so important. It doesn't need to compete with the US, just take the wind out of the sails of incoming capital into the US which is covering its deficit. The US can go to war with whomever at that point. The ability to keep a high tech army up and running in a depression where people are disaffected, the limits of your power are known and you gradually accrue the weight of much of the worlds resistance is about NIL. I mean, a Sunni insurgency of a few tens of thousands has knackered this high tech army in reasonably good times - what chance when the shit hits the fan?"
Add to it the fact that the other place the US is current rallying support against - Venezuela - is also proposing such a bourse, and you begin to suspect that the money behind the oil is possibly the most important aspect [12].
Then there are military and infrastructure contracts from US wars [13]. Awarded to US companies and close affiliates of the White House, the money made through privatising other countries' resources may be tremendous - many people have put a lot of time into investigating such issues. Sadly, few of them have been in the mainstream news.
A third, and perhaps most frightening possibility, is the notion that George Bush just wants to do it. Based on his supposedly being Christian - that peculiar American version of a Christian that allows for large scale massacres and human rights abuses within the framework of the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' - and the events of the final book of the bible, Revelations, it would seem he is intent on engineering the events that would bring about the end of the world.
The facts
Iran is not any longer in breach of the NPT. The original breach was a small one, in the terms of the agreement; that is to say, they were not breaking the NPT agreement, but failing to keep the process transparent.
Jefferson Morley of the Washington Post says "Is Iran in breach of NPT? The reprocessing that it stopped and has now possibly restarted is not actually against the rules of NPT. Iran is being asked to go BEYOND its NPT committments when it’s told to stop reprocessing.[3]"
Bearing in mind the heavy sanctions on Iran at the time the nuclear research was being done, there was a fair amount of it that under sanctions they simply would not have been allowed to do anyway through transparent means - despite the NPT which gives every signatory the inalienable right to development of nuclear power for peaceful processes. The reasons behind the sanctions (which continue even today to a certain degree) stem from US anger at the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979. The fact they remained throughout the period that Iran was under direct threat and attack from Saddam's Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s shows the US administration's historical oppression of Iran, and their 'dislike' of the state. The fact is that at the time, Iraq was supplied with weapons and intelligence as well as open support from the US administration to further its imperialistic attacks on Iran [14].
The IAEA Implementation of the NPT Safeguards report from 4th February 2006 concluded that Iran should be referred to the Security Council, after the March board, and with any subsequent resolutions, and by Elbaradei - not, as the BBC told us then, that the report was given to the Security Council then. Although nothing has changed since that date, and no proof has been supplied that Iran may in fact be covertly developing nuclear weapons (and much evidence to the contrary published, such as the amount of uranium enrichment currently being undertaken versus the amount needed to make even one bomb with a great disparity between the two), the IAEA has concluded for referral to the Security Council [15].
Iran has done nothing wrong, and, unlike two other prominent signatories of the NPT - the United States and the United Kingdom - has not broken the NPT. For existing nuclear powers at the time of signing, the NPT was signed to ensure that, as soon as possible, they would decommission their nuclear weapons so that in the future there would be no nuclear states. For non-nuclear states at the time, the NPT detailed ensuring that they would not become such - so no nuclear weapons would be developed in any countries from that point forward.
Instead, the US has continued to proliferate its nuclear arsenal, through such weapons as depleted uranium shells, bunker-busters and more traditional nuclear bombs [16]. The UK is currently considering revamping their trident system in the next twelve years, and it is currently thought they will buy the weapons from the United States to refresh their ageing weapons already onboard the submarines. In the most heinous way possible, the US and the UK are guilty of breaking the NPT.
Iran is merely pursuing all avenues of nuclear energy. Enrichment processes are essential for the production of heavy water, and it can be used to produce more efficient cooling towers in nuclear power plants [17]. Enrichment is necessary for medical facilities. It can also be used for the production of nuclear weapons, but this requires other technology (the manufacture of the shells) as well. Iran's president, and, more importantly, the Supreme Leader, have both said that nuclear weapons are not what they want. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has
"... issued the Fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons." [18]
In addition,
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office just recently, in his inaugural address reiterated that his government is against weapons of mass destruction and will only pursue nuclear activities in the peaceful domain. The leadership of Iran has pledged at the highest level that Iran will remain a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the NPT and has placed the entire scope of its nuclear activities under IAEA safeguards and additional protocol, in addition to undertaking voluntary transparency measures with the agency that have even gone beyond the requirements of the agency's safeguard system."
That's quite comprehensive - if only we could get the same types of promises out of the leaders of the West, perhaps the world might be a safer place. Perhaps though, if this fatwa is well-known around the world (from what I have seen it is not), the West's idea is that promises are made to be broken. This is certainly unfair, to say the least. One thing, historically, that Arab and Persian countries have given the West, is their word. It has always been the West to break the promises. We cannot afford to tar the Middle-East with the same brush we are tarred with ourselves.
Yet, most importantly, according to the experts, the stage that Iran is currently at in its enrichment programme means that even if they were telling the West one thing and doing another, and they did indeed wish to have nuclear weapons, the process would take
"Several years ... First, Iran would have to master the enrichment process. This involves engineering thousands of centrifuges which spin a gas made from uranium ore, a difficult operation. Then it has to learn how to trigger a nuclear explosion and make a device small enough to be carried by an aircraft or missile.[2]" So why, we must ask, is the US focused so heavily on Iran in the first few months of 2006, when March 2006 is when Iran is scheduled to begin their Bourse using Euros? Could it simply be a coincidence?
Further to the fact that the NPT has been breached only by the aggressors (the US and the UK), it has been ignored by other states without consequence; India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel are not signatories to the NPT. This is more than a small issue of hypocrisy by the West - don't let the media fool you. The legalities of the situation are purely related to paperwork, and perceived threat. You do not argue with a country which has nuclear weapons, so once they have been developed, sanctions or strikes are not an option. In the case of Israel, it was never an option, and Israel is a good example here, because on the issue of UN resolutions, Israel has broken, and ignored perhaps more than the rest of the 'democratic' world put together. They have not been sanctioned or boycotted, and they have certainly not been attacked by the West. Iraq, Syria, Iran, Lebanon on the other hand, have all been sanctioned at one time or another.
Iran has never invaded another state. It does not break international law. Why then, does the West see it as its right to threaten Iran? Based on the mirrored rhetoric coming from Washington of late to that of the build-up to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, there is a very real threat that the US, the UK and quite possibly Israel are gearing up to an attack on Iran, and its people. Are we going to let it happen again?
Notes:
[1]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4031603.stm [2]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4031603.stm [3]
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/2006/02/hans_blix_on [4]
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/030618.htm [5] Where the reports states "(o) Recognising the inalienable right of States to the development and practical application of
atomic energy for peaceful purposes, including the production of electric power, with due consideration for the needs of developing countries" -
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:tSJIWAybsREJ:http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-81.pdf+ira" target="_blank"> http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-81.pdf+ira"> http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:tSJIWAybsREJ:http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-81.pdf+ira [6] "According to defence sources, Iran's Revolutionary Guard trains bomb-makers in Iran and Lebanon who go to Basra to kill and teach others to do the same. If the allegations are true, then Iran's government, which has denied involvement, must be implicated, BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood says. A British official said last week Iran had supplied bombs used in the attacks.
Our correspondent says bomb-making know-how is spreading, as one man can train 10 others. [Tony Blair] warned Iran that there could be "no justification" for interfering in Iraq." -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4333246.stm [7]
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP101305 [8]
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/Displayarticle.asp?section=middleeast&xfile= [9]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4684652.stm [10]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4684474.stm [11]
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ [12]
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul303.html [13]
http://money.cnn.com/2003/03/25/news/companies/war_contracts/ [14]
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-30-iraq-ushelp_x.htm http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php [15]
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2006/gov2006-14.pdf [16]
http://www.sgr.org.uk/ArmsControl/USNucProlif_NL24.html [17] "The vast majority of all nuclear power reactors in operation and under construction require 'enriched' uranium fuel in which the proportion of the U-235 isotope has been raised from the natural level of 0.7% to about 3.5% or slightly more. The enrichment process removes about 85% of the U-238 by separating gaseous uranium hexafluoride into two streams: One stream is enriched to the required level and then passes to the next stage of the fuel cycle. The other stream is depleted in U-235 and is called 'tails'. It is mostly U-238*." -
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/nfc.htm [18]
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-17/0508104135124631.htm www.defendiran.endofempire.org
derek lane
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