Iran: The war begins
John Pilger
Published 05 February 2007
As opposition grows in America to the failed Iraq adventure, the Bush administration is preparing public opinion for an attack on Iran, its latest target, by the spring.
The United States is planning what will be a catastrophic attack on Iran. For the Bush cabal, the attack will be a way of "buying time" for its dis aster in Iraq. In announcing what he called a "surge" of American troops in Iraq, George W Bush identified Iran as his real target. "We will interrupt the flow of support [to the insurgency in Iraq] from Iran and Syria," he said. "And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
"Networks" means Iran. "There is solid evidence," said a State Department spokesman on 24 January, "that Iranian agents are involved in these networks and that they are working with individuals and groups in Iraq and are being sent there by the Iranian government." Like Bush's and Tony Blair's claim that they had irrefutable evidence that Saddam Hussein was deploying weapons of mass destruction, the "evidence" lacks all credibility. Iran has a natural affinity with the Shia majority of Iraq, and has been implacably opposed to al-Qaeda, condemning the 9/11 attacks and supporting the United States in Afghanistan. Syria has done the same. Investigations by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and others, including British military officials, have concluded that Iran is not engaged in the cross-border supply of weapons. General Peter Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said no such evidence exists.
As the American disaster in Iraq deepens and domestic and foreign opposition grows, "neo-con" fanatics such as Vice-President Dick Che- ney believe their opportunity to control Iran's oil will pass unless they act no later than the spring. For public consumption, there are potent myths. In concert with Israel and Washington's Zionist and fundamentalist Christian lobbies, the Bushites say their "strategy" is to end Iran's nuclear threat. In fact, Iran possesses not a single nuclear weapon, nor has it ever threatened to build one; the CIA estimates that, even given the political will, Iran is incapable of building a nuclear weapon before 2017, at the earliest. Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory, and has allowed routine inspections under its legal obligations - until gratuitous, punitive measures were added in 2003, at the behest of Washington. No report by the International Atomic Energy Agency has ever cited Iran for diverting its civilian nuclear programme to military use. The IAEA has said that for most of the past three years its inspectors have been able to "go anywhere and see anything". They inspected the nuclear installations at Isfahan and Natanz on 10 and 12 January and will return on 2 to 6 February. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, says that an attack on Iran will have "catastrophic consequences" and only encourage the regime to become a nuclear power.
Unlike its two nemeses, the US and Israel, Iran has attacked no other countries. It last went to war in 1980 when invaded by Saddam Hussein, who was backed and equipped by the US, which supplied chemical and biological weapons produced at a factory in Maryland. Unlike Israel, the world's fifth military power - with its thermo nuclear weapons aimed at Middle East targets and an unmatched record of defying UN resolutions, as the enforcer of the world's longest illegal occupation - Iran has a history of obeying international law and occupies no territory other than its own.
The "threat" from Iran is entirely manufactured, aided and abetted by familiar, compliant media language that refers to Iran's "nuclear ambitions", just as the vocabulary of Saddam's non-existent WMD arsenal became common usage. Accompanying this is a demonising that has become standard practice. As Edward Herman has pointed out, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "has done yeoman service in facilitating [this]"; yet a close examination of his notorious remark about Israel in October 2005 reveals how it has been distorted. According to Juan Cole, American professor of modern Middle East and south Asian history at the University of Michigan, and other Farsi language analysts, Ahmadinejad did not call for Israel to be "wiped off the map". He said: "The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." This, says Cole, "does not imply military action or killing anyone at all". Ahmadinejad compared the demise of the Israeli regime to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Iranian regime is repressive, but its power is diffuse and exercised by the mullahs, with whom Ahmadinejad is often at odds. An attack would surely unite them.
Nuclear option
The one piece of "solid evidence" is the threat posed by the United States. An American naval build-up in the eastern Mediterranean has begun. This is almost certainly part of what the Pentagon calls CONPLAN 8022-02, which is the aerial bombing of Iran. In 2004, National Security Presidential Directive 35, entitled "Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorisation", was issued. It is classified, of course, but the presumption has long been that NSPD 35 authorised the stockpiling and deployment of "tactical" nuclear weapons in the Middle East. This does not mean Bush will use them against Iran, but for the first time since the most dangerous years of the cold war, the use of what were then called "limited" nuclear weapons is being discussed openly in Washington. What they are debating is the prospect of other Hiroshimas and of radioactive fallout across the Middle East and central Asia. Seymour Hersh disclosed in the New Yorker last year that American bombers "have been flying simulated nuclear weapons delivery missions . . . since last summer".
The well-informed Arab Times in Kuwait says that Bush will attack Iran before the end of April. One of Russia's most senior military strategists, General Leonid Ivashov, says the US will use nuclear munitions delivered by cruise missiles launched from the Mediterranean. "The war in Iraq," he wrote on 24 January, "was just one element in a series of steps in the process of regional destabilisation. It was only a phase in getting closer to dealing with Iran and other countries. [When the attack on Iran begins] Israel is sure to come under Iranian missile strikes . . . Posing as victims, the Israelis . . . will suffer some tolerable damage and then the outraged US will destabilise Iran finally, making it look like a noble mission of retribution . . . Public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian . . . hysteria, . . . leaks, disinformation et cetera . . . It . . . remain[s] unclear . . . whether the US Congress is going to authorise the war."
Asked about a US Senate resolution disapproving of the "surge" of US troops to Iraq, Vice-President Cheney said: "It won't stop us." Last November, a majority of the American electorate voted for the Democratic Party to control Congress and stop the war in Iraq. Apart from insipid speeches of "disapproval", this has not happened and is unlikely to happen. Influential Democrats, such as the new leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and the would-be presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, have disported themselves before the Israeli lobby. Edwards is regarded in his party as a "liberal". He was one of a high-level American contingent at a recent Israeli conference in Herzliya, where he spoke about "an unprecedented threat to the world and Israel [sic]. At the top of these threats is Iran . . . All options are on the table to ensure that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon." Hillary Clinton has said: "US policy must be unequivocal . . . We have to keep all options on the table." Pelosi and Howard Dean, another liberal, have distinguished themselves by attacking the former president Jimmy Carter, who oversaw the Camp David Agreement between Israel and Egypt and has had the gall to write a truthful book accusing Israel of becoming an "apartheid state". Pelosi said: "Carter does not speak for the Democratic Party." She is right, alas.
In Britain, Downing Street has been presented with a document entitled Answering the Charges by Professor Abbas Edalat, of Imperial College London, on behalf of others seeking to expose the disinformation on Iran. Blair remains silent. Apart from the usual honourable exceptions, parliament remains shamefully silent, too.
Can this really be happening again, less than four years after the invasion of Iraq, which has left some 650,000 people dead? I wrote virtually this same article early in 2003; for Iran now, read Iraq then. And is it not remarkable that North Korea has not been attacked? North Korea has nuclear weapons.
In numerous surveys, such as the one released on 23 January by the BBC World Service, "we", the majority of humanity, have made clear our revulsion for Bush and his vassals. As for Blair, the man is now politically and morally naked for all to see. So who speaks out, apart from Professor Edalat and his colleagues? Privileged journalists, scholars and artists, writers and thespians, who sometimes speak about "freedom of speech", are as silent as a dark West End theatre. What are they waiting for? The declaration of another thousand-year Reich, or a mushroom cloud in the Middle East, or both?
About the writer
John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism's top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. "John Pilger," wrote Harold Pinter, "unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him."
Please, where is the evidence for Iran's support of the US's recent regime change in Afghanistan? The Taliban regime was made up of Pashtun ethnics in Afghanistan, thus essentially an iranian tribe, whilst Karzai and his men are (you guessed it!) of turkik origin. I don't see Iran having had an interest in that regime change.
Moreover, the present build-up of US naval units in the Mediterranean might be the prelude to an imminent re-invasion of Lebanon to set the israeli score with Hizbollah straight. The Great Revealer and I pointed out the IDF is intensively training in a fake lebanese/palestinian town built up of concrete in the Negeev desert army base of Tze'elim. It could be that the imminent attack is on BOTH South Lebanon AND Iran, but it is reasonable to assume that the US-UK-IL axis of evil will try to attack Iran before Bush II ends his office.
The israeli expansionism is unacceptable and must be exposed, widespread protest must be organised. It's unacceptable not only for the loss of lives, massive local disruption of civilian structures and global world economies that it will cause, it's unacceptable because it's for big-oil control and real progressive people are sick and tired with a civilization burning fossil hydrocarbons all the time in every place.
We need to come out of the age of carbon combustion, we have been in it since prehistory. Israeli expansionism in the Middle East is primarily for oil, to own fraudolently, and not only distribute, the damn substance which is also heating up the planet to a point of no return. Like in medieval Poland with their beer, the ashkenazi Zionists and their neo-con accomplices want to shove the foul stinking brew down our throats for decades more to come. This must be halted and a serious effort towards renewable energy sources called for in all technologically oriented countries.
I agree with everything you said there.
Renewable Energy usage is being blocked by the ruling power elites because it would shift the power relations within societies and make them more de-centralized and less hierarchical. The Power elites would lose 'their goose' that lays their golden egg. Research in this area is being blocked by similar power groups to prevent this from happening.
Exactly leftfield, the energy and money policies are the crux of this critical time for the Western (and Eastern) Civilisation. In both fields the aliens within have enslaved us to their choices, which are favourable to them (who control both energy and money) and not to us. So in these two sectors is where the reawakening must first and foremost take place. We should press and get organised for a new monetary and financial system, getting rid of the merchant and the central banks which enslave us, and at the same time press and organise serious research in renewable energy sources. All this requires organisation, coordination, courage and - especially - funding. So it's a hard, very hard task when most of the whealth and financial power is in the hands of the aliens who have infiltrated us since centuries, if not millenia back in history.
Revolutions need financial backers. The Russian 'revolution' (in fact a restauration of the Tatar Yoke) was financed by Wall Street's Yacob Schiff and other ashkenazic bankers in Europe. How are we going to finance a revolt againt the zionist Ashkenazic Yoke?
according to shaykh abdul qadir sufi (aka Ian Dallas), the way forward is by destroying 'the watch tower' and vantage point from where the machine gunner 'picks off' the lone fighter, every time he pops his head out to strike. The 'watch tower' is the fiat money system and fractional reserve banking.
One way to destroy it, is by withdrawing our money from the system and by not using the system for any of the transactions, the more we as a people in groups and as individuals do this the more the system collapses.
One way to go into alternatives is by converting our dollars into Gold and Silver coins and using them to trade with.
see this site
http://www.e-dinar.com/html/3_2.html
It is based in Dubai and hold Gold and Silver deposits in their safes, they agree, to convert paper dollars to Gold and Silver coins and to store them for you (using e-dinar electronic money for transactions), but you can ask them to send you the actual coins which they will also do. I have not used it yet, because it involves going to my bank and asking them to transfer the money and have not had the time to do this. But I have a few weeks vacation and intend to do it with $1000 initially just so I have something tangible instead of just blipping digits on a Bank Computer which are worthless and can all come crashing down at anytime. I hope they are trustworthy though.
regards
I wonder if there's a connection between the
"surge" (increase of US troops in Iraq) and preparations to attack Iran? I've been hearing a lot of propaganda in the mainstream news about Iranian activity in Iraq, aiding and supplying the "insurgency" in attacking American troops. This sounds like the Zionists in the media are preparing the American public for an attack on Iran.
Pulling out all our money from the banks may be effective, leftfield, only if we do it collectively, en masse. How many Gentiles do you see withdrawing their savings and moneys invested in stocks, shares and bonds from the merchant banks? Also, most Gentile enterpreneurs depend on the banks (ashkenazi owned or not) to further their businesses, to earn their livings essentially. If masses of well-coordinated Gentiles (assuming such coordination could be achieved) were to withdraw their substances all of a sudden from the banks, it is not clear that their employers (Gentile enterpreneurs) would still be able to keep them in their jobs. In other words, the financial disobedience you call for would cause the loss of livelyhood of the Gentile rebels too. At the same time, converting savings into gold and silver coins is no guarantee either. The value of such coins is also relative and conditioned to the acceptance of others in exchange of labour, goods and other services. It is not obvious that, in a collapsed financial system, those coins would be accepted by the majority of those you would interact with and at an acceptable exchange rate. Owners of gold mines etc. (guess just who they are?) would mint their own coins and so on. Even changing your savings into property might be risky, the property could be confiscated by decree, appropriated by others and not protected by legislation or by the law-enforcers. Just look at the East-Germans who in 1945 had to flee to save their lives from the invading asian hordes of the Red Army, they had to abandon all their property and there is no chance (but wait ...) they could have their assets back or compensations paid by Poland/Russia.
This is not the right blog where to elaborate on this, but the capitalist market economy just stinks. It's a mess, a system where the value of any commodity is set by 'markets', i.e. by what the other participants in the game think the commodity may be worth. It's a system so intricate and at the same time ridden with inside-traders where in the end everybody loses except the few that really control the game from the start. In other words, it's perverse and reflects the stalwart tribal bondage of the chief players in this evil game. It was our huge mistake, as Gentiles, to get so hopelessly involved and tangled in it, for greed and ignorance, and now it's a real mess to get out of it unharmed.
"Just look at the East-Germans who in 1945 had to flee to save their lives from the invading asian hordes of the Red Army, they had to abandon all their property and there is no chance..."
Just a minor correction, otherwise okay. Russians are not 'typically considered' Asians, although they are considered by most as 'Eastern' versus 'Western'.
Anyhow, that's a minor detail.
;)
If I stressed 'asian hordes' of the Red Army there's a good reason for it, I know the Russians are not - strictly speaking - considered Asians. On the one hand, however, the Russians are made up of a finnic base, a slavic infusion, then a scandinavian overlayer. That was before the Mongol onslaught, after which they received a formidable central-asian infusion of blood. 'Scratch the Russian and you'll find the Tartar', wrote K.Marx. On the other hand, the Soviets were a constellation of nationalities, the central-asian ones (Ashkenazis on top) ruling that wild concoction. Similarly, the Red Army - pitted against the White - was significantly made up of individuals from the central-asian tribes (but not exclusively). Whence my saying that the Red Army's rape of the East Germans in 1945 was perpertrated mostly (but not exclusively) by asian hordes. Genghis-Khan onslaught repeated. You can find confirmation of this in A.-M. de Zayas' and J. Baque's books.