|
Iran: the next war
Bush and Blair are gearing up for it, and they are preparing us,
too - just as they did before attacking Iraq. But where is the
threat?
By John Pilger
02/09/06 "ICH" -- -- Has Tony Blair, our minuscule Caesar,
finally crossed his Rubicon? Having subverted the laws of the civilised world and brought carnage to a defenceless people and
bloodshed to his own, having lied and lied and used the death of
a hundredth British soldier in Iraq to indulge his profane
self-pity, is he about to collude in one more crime before he
goes?
Perhaps he is seriously unstable now, as some have suggested.
Power does bring a certain madness to its prodigious abusers,
especially those of shallow disposition. In The March of Folly:
from Troy to Vietnam, the great American historian Barbara
Tuchman described Lyndon B Johnson, the president whose insane
policies took him across his Rubicon in Vietnam. "He lacked
[John] Kennedy's ambivalence, born of a certain historical sense
and at least some capacity for reflective thinking," she wrote.
"Forceful and domineering, a man infatuated with himself,
Johnson was affected in his conduct of Vietnam policy by three
elements in his character: an ego that was insatiable and never
secure; a bottomless capacity to use and impose the powers of
his office without inhibition; a profound aversion, once fixed
upon a course of action, to any contradictions."
That, demonstrably, is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of
the cabal that has seized power in Washington. But there is a
logic to their idiocy - the goal of dominance. It also describes
Blair, for whom the only logic is vainglorious. And now he is
threatening to take Britain into the nightmare on offer in Iran.
His Washington mentors are unlikely to ask for British troops,
not yet. At first, they will prefer to bomb from a safe height,
as Bill Clinton did in his destruction of Yugoslavia. They are
aware that, like the Serbs, the Iranians are a serious people
with a history of defending themselves and who are not stricken
by the effects of a long siege, as the Iraqis were in 2003. When
the Iranian defence minister promises "a crushing response", you
sense he means it.
Listen to Blair in the House of Commons: "It's important we send
a signal of strength" against a regime that has "forsaken
diplomacy" and is "exporting terrorism" and "flouting its
international obligations". Coming from one who has exported
terrorism to Iran's neighbour, scandalously reneged on Britain's
most sacred international obligations and forsaken diplomacy for
brute force, these are Alice-through-the-looking-glass words.
However, they begin to make sense when you read Blair's Commons
speeches on Iraq of 25 February and 18 March 2003. In both
crucial debates - the latter leading to the disastrous vote on
the invasion - he used the same or similar expressions to lie
that he remained committed to a peaceful resolution. "Even now,
today, we are offering Saddam the prospect of voluntary
disarmament . . ." he said. From the revelations in Philippe
Sands's book Lawless World, the scale of his deception is clear.
On 31 January 2003, Bush and Blair confirmed their earlier
secret decision to attack Iraq.
Like the invasion of Iraq, an attack on Iran has a secret agenda
that has nothing to do with the Tehran regime's imaginary
weapons of mass destruction. That Washington has managed to
coerce enough members of the International Atomic Energy Agency
into participating in a diplomatic charade is no more than
reminiscent of the way it intimidated and bribed the
"international community" into attacking Iraq in 1991.
Iran offers no "nuclear threat". There is not the slightest
evidence that it has the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium
to weapons-grade material. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed
ElBaradei, has repeatedly said his inspectors have found nothing
to support American and Israeli claims. Iran has done nothing
illegal; it has demonstrated no territorial ambitions nor has it
engaged in the occupation of a foreign country - unlike the
United States, Britain and Israel. It has complied with its
obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to allow
inspectors to "go anywhere and see anything" - unlike the US and
Israel. The latter has refused to recognise the NPT, and has
between 200 and 500 thermonuclear weapons targeted at Iran and
other Middle Eastern states.
Those who flout the rules of the NPT are America's and Britain's
anointed friends. Both India and Pakistan have developed their
nuclear weapons secretly and in defiance of the treaty. The
Pakistani military dictatorship has openly exported its nuclear
technology. In Iran's case, the excuse that the Bush regime has
seized upon is the suspension of purely voluntary
"confidence-building" measures that Iran agreed with Britain,
France and Germany in order to placate the US and show that it
was "above suspicion". Seals were placed on nuclear equipment
following a concession given, some say foolishly, by Iranian
negotiators and which had nothing to do with Iran's obligations
under the NPT.
Iran has since claimed back its "inalienable right" under the
terms of the NPT to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. There
is no doubt this decision reflects the ferment of political life
in Tehran and the tension between radical and conciliatory
forces, of which the bellicose new president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, is but one voice. As European governments seemed to
grasp for a while, this demands true diplomacy, especially given
the history.
For more than half a century, Britain and the US have menaced
Iran. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 overthrew the democratic
government of Muhammed Mossadeq, an inspired nationalist who
believed that Iranian oil belonged to Iran. They installed the
venal shah and, through a monstrous creation called Savak, built
one of the most vicious police states of the modern era. The
Islamic revolution in 1979 was inevitable and very nasty, yet it
was not monolithic and, through popular pressure and movement
from within the elite, Iran has begun to open to the outside
world - in spite of having sustained an invasion by Saddam
Hussein, who was encouraged and backed by the US and Britain.
At the same time, Iran has lived with the real threat of an
Israeli attack, possibly with nuclear weapons, about which the
"international community" has remained silent. Recently, one of
Israel's leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, wrote:
"Obviously, we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I
don't know if they're developing them, but if they're not
developing them, they're crazy."
It is hardly surprising that the Tehran regime has drawn the
"lesson" of how North Korea, which has nuclear weapons, has
successfully seen off the American predator without firing a
shot. During the cold war, British "nuclear deterrent"
strategists argued the same justification for arming the nation
with nuclear weapons; the Russians were coming, they said. As we
are aware from declassified files, this was fiction, unlike the
prospect of an American attack on Iran, which is very real and
probably imminent.
Blair knows this. He also knows the real reasons for an attack
and the part Britain is likely to play. Next month, Iran is
scheduled to shift its petrodollars into a euro-based bourse.
The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if
not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on
paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national
debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn.
The cost of the Iraq adventure alone, according to the Nobel
Prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could be $2trn.
America's military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases and
limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally
China.
That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the
dollar as the world's reserve currency. What the Bush regime
fears is not Iran's nuclear ambitions but the effect of the
world's fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the
dollar monopoly. Will the world's central banks then begin to
shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar?
Saddam Hussein was threatening to do the same when he was
attacked.
While the Pentagon has no plans to occupy all of Iran, it has in
its sights a strip of land that runs along the border with Iraq.
This is Khuzestan, home to 90 per cent of Iran's oil. "The first
step taken by an invading force," reported Beirut's Daily Star,
"would be to occupy Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province, securing
the sensitive Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the Iranian
military's oil supply." On 28 January the Iranian government
said that it had evidence of British undercover attacks in
Khuzestan, including bombings, over the past year. Will the
newly emboldened Labour MPs pursue this? Will they ask what the
British army based in nearby Basra - notably the SAS - will do
if or when Bush begins bombing Iran? With control of the oil of
Khuzestan and Iraq and, by proxy, Saudi Arabia, the US will have
what Richard Nixon called "the greatest prize of all".
But what of Iran's promise of "a crushing response"? Last year,
the Pentagon delivered 500 "bunker-busting" bombs to Israel.
Will the Israelis use them against a desperate Iran? Bush's 2002
Nuclear Posture Review cites "pre-emptive" attack with so-called
low-yield nuclear weapons as an option. Will the militarists in
Washington use them, if only to demonstrate to the rest of us
that, regardless of their problems with Iraq, they are able to
"fight and win multiple, simultaneous major-theatre wars", as
they have boasted? That a British prime minister should collude
with even a modicum of this insanity is cause for urgent action
on this side of the Atlantic.
With thanks to Mike Whitney. John Pilger's new book, Freedom
Next Time, will be published by Bantam Press in June
First published in the New
Statesman
Translate
this page
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
