|
Euro factor to the Iran ‘crisis’
By Finian Cunningham
02/10/06 "ICH"
-- -- The referral of Iran to the UN Security
Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency is not a step
towards resolving the presumed nuclear problem between that
country and the ‘international community’. It is a step towards
further confrontation, with the deliberate intention by the
US-UK axis to provide political cover for its real aim:
subjugation of Iran.
This is phase three of the Anglo-American ‘war on terror’ which,
deciphered from its Orwellian doublespeak and put into
intelligible language, means the ongoing Anglo-American war of
aggression on humanity.
The truly worrying thing is that such are the contradictions
between the reckless fantasies of Anglo-American neo-imperialism
and the limits of its own power that the warmongers may be
tempted to actually trigger the very outcome they say they are
trying to prevent: a nuclear conflagration.
First of all, let us dispel the latest smokescreen from the IAEA.
Iran is being reported to the UN Security Council for alleged
breaches of IAEA protocols. But these protocols, such as
research into the enrichment of uranium, were only ever put in
place by Iran on a voluntary basis. How can someone be in breach
of something that they put forward in a non-binding, voluntary
capacity? Besides, the ongoing IAEA arrangement was part of a
quid pro quo in which the EU-3, Britain, France, Germany, would
in return for Iran’s cooperation provide specific economic
incentives and safeguards concerning Iran’s national security.
But as seasoned observer of non-proliferation issues Selig
Harrison said: "The EU, held back by the US, has failed to
honour this bargain."
The recommencement of uranium enrichment is Iran’s sovereign
prerogative. And the plain truth is that Iran has and will be
doing nothing outside of the only legally binding statute
governing the issue, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which grants
all signatory nations an "inalienable right to develop nuclear
technology for peaceful, energy purposes," as already pointed
out in this newspaper recently by Ghani Jafar.
For two years Iran has been negotiating with the EU-3 over its
nuclear programme. Iran’s considerable petroleum and gas
reserves are nevertheless finite and like every other fuel
supplier the country may indeed have reached ‘Peak’ — the
technical term the oil industry uses to mean final reserves —
lasting perhaps another two decades. Iran has been prudently
making the transition to an alternative energy source - nuclear.
(In the same way as US President George Bush urged his country
during his State of the Union speech last week!)
Iran has always said that its nuclear programme is about
civilian use of energy. Despite allowing the IAEA unprecedented
access to its nuclear facilities, and the IAEA not being able to
find any evidence of clandestine nuclear weapons production, the
same sinister allegations and suspicions of ‘nuclear ambitions’
are relentlessly thrown at Iran by the US and EU.
Several real initiatives put forward by Iran in its efforts to
resolve the latest diplomatic ‘impasse’ and head off a referral
to the UN Security Council were haughtily dismissed by the EU-3
as "nothing new". And calls for further dialogue by the Iranian
foreign minister were rebuffed. It must be said that Britain has
taken the lead in adopting this intransigent attitude by the EU
troika. Days before the IAEA ruling, British Prime Minister Tony
Blair told his parliament that "not only has Iran breached its
international nuclear obligations but it is exporting terrorism
around the world."
Clearly this is a soft cop, hard cop routine. There was never
any intention of a reasonable, diplomatic ‘solution’. The real
intention was to set up an appearance of a diplomatic process,
which could then be presented as tried, exhausted and failed.
Now, it’s over to the hard cop.
Just like phase one and two of the Anglo-American war on
humanity in which Afghanistan and Iraq were placed in the firing
lines, there were similar attempts to create a diplomatic faÁade.
But all the while, the troops were being readied, the tanks
cranked up and the bombers loaded. It is to their Machiavellian
credit that the Anglo-Americans appear to have now managed to
get the French, Germans, Chinese and Russians on board. We are
still some way off the trigger of aggression and these last four
mentioned may have no intention of going all the way of
endorsing Security Council sanctions. But as we have seen with
Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington and London didn’t need UN
sanctions to launch into aggression; they just need to create a
false sense of crisis in world security. This same process is
now happening once again.
The collision course with Iran is a central aim of the Project
for the New American Century, the real manifesto for which Bush
was elected. This geopolitical strategy for full-spectrum
dominance has already taken considerable shape, with US-British
military penetration into vast areas of the critical energy
territories in Western and Central Asia. Iran being the
second-largest source of petroleum and gas is obviously a prize
even bigger than Iraq. Its strategic importance is underlined by
Iran’s existing and potential geopolitical connections to
Pakistan, India, China and Russia.
There’s also a revenge factor. Since the Americans and British
were kicked out of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 after
more than two decades of a cosy arrangement with their brutal
client, the Shah, there would be, for them, the immense
satisfaction of ‘imperial recovery’.
But here’s the real trigger for a military attack on Iran. It’s
Iran’s intention to challenge the all-dominant US petrodollar
oil trade by setting up a rival euro oil market.
Many political commentators have pointed out that the
deficit-ridden US and British economies have only been able to
continue their unsustainable ways because the US dollar enjoys
the artificial privilege of being the world’s reserve currency.
The world’s two existing oil markets, the NYMEX in New York and
the International Petroleum Exchange in London, both owned by US
capital, insist on all oil transactions being conducted in US
dollars. For this reason, all countries must have substantial
reserves of dollars to ensure vital supplies of fuel energy.
This means that the US economy can go on accumulating
stratospheric debts because they can just keep printing more
dollars, knowing that the rest of the world will have to take
them in order to keep their oil supplies coming.
American political analyst Mike Whitney points out that the US
is now running a total debt of $8 trillion, which makes it by
far the world’s biggest economic basket case.
Whitney said: "America’s currency monopoly is the perfect
pyramid scheme. As long as nations are forced to buy oil in
dollars, the US can continue its profligate spending with
impunity. The only threat to this strategy is the prospect of
competition from an independent oil exchange, forcing the
faltering dollar to go nose to nose with more stable, debt-free
currencies such as the euro.
"That would compel central banks to diversify their currency
holdings, sending billions of dollars back to America and
ensuring a devastating economic crash."
Iran has already given notice to the world that it intends
opening this new euro oil market next month. With the
devastating blow that this move will cause to the US-British
economies, we can expect Washington and Britain to precipitate a
pre-emptive confrontation with Iran over its ‘nuclear ambitions’
and ‘threats’, using poor little (nuclear-armed-to-the-teeth)
Israel as a proxy.
The profoundly disturbing contradiction is this: the
Anglo-American neo-imperialists need to subjugate Iran for
economic survival, yet their conventional military resources are
pinned down in overstretched geopolitical adventures. The
Anglo-American war on humanity could thus reach new depths of
illegality and depravity, through the unleashing of nuclear
weapons.
The writer is a newspaper journalist based in Dublin. Ireland
Email:
finianpcunningham@yahoo.ie
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.) |
