Anti-Iranian Hysteriaby
Eric Margolis
It’s both fascinating
and dismaying watching the manufactured ‘crisis’ over Iran reach
new intensity each week.
Iran poses no real military threat to anyone, but listening to
the Bush Administration or the US media one would think that Tehran
was about to unleash a nuclear holocaust on the world.
What we are seeing is a rerun of the administration’s massive
propaganda offensive that led to the invasion of Iraq. There is
also no doubt that the Bush Administration has been planning a major
air war against Iran.
The highly respected American investigative journalist Seymour
Hersh even claims the Bush Administration is considering the use
of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
This writer reported last December that the US was preparing a
massive air campaign against Iran and already probing Iranian air
defenses and mounting special forces ground missions to both target
high-value nuclear and strategic targets, and to stir up domestic
unrest among Iran’s ethnic minorities.
On the list for possible US – and likely Israeli – air and missile
strikes: more than twenty Iranian nuclear facilities, including
the Bushehr reactor; airfields, missile and naval bases; communications
nodes; military and intelligence headquarters; military factories;
power plants and oil terminals.
No major ground offensive by the US is planned, though its special
forces will play an important role in any attack. The surest sign
of an impending US attack will be the massing of US strike aircraft
in the Gulf and possibly Pakistan and Central Asia, the arrival
of additional US aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea, concentration
of US Navy minesweepers and shallow-water vessels around the Strait
of Hormuz, and heightened activity at US bases in Turkey, Romania,
Bulgaria, and, of course, Iraq.
Respected international experts say that it if Iran wanted to
produce nuclear warheads, it would take 5–10 years. UN nuclear
inspectors report no signs Iran is working on nuclear weapons.
But the Bush Administration has used Iran’s gleefully announcement
that it enriched uranium to 3.5% (83% is needed for nuclear weapons),
to generate a major US-Iranian crisis seven months before national
mid-term elections. The administration clearly hopes its lurid claims
that Iran is a nuclear threat to the world will whip gullible Americans
back into war fever. A bombing campaign before elections would likely
reverse the Republican’s steep decline in the polls.
Much of the administration’s anti-Iranian jihad has been orchestrated,
like the attack on Iraq, by Vice President Dick Cheney, who increasingly
emerges as the Rasputin of the Bush presidency. Cheney is very close
to Israel’s political far right. He is carrying out former Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s command to the US that once it invaded
Iraq, ‘march immediately on Tehran.’
Cheney, and the pro-Israel neoconservatives around him, have long
worked closely with Israel’s rightists, Mossad intelligence service,
and Israel’s strategic planners. All agree that Iran, not Iraq,
was the greater enemy of Israel, and one that had at all costs to
be crushed before it could develop nuclear warheads and the means
to deliver them.
Much of the current anti-Iranian hysteria campaign that is currently
being trumpeted by the compliant US media and members of Congress
is being orchestrated from Cheney’s office. It is clear that in
spite of the debacle in Iraq, the vice president intends to pursue
his personal jihad against all Muslim regimes that are uncooperative
and hostile to Israel.
Cheney has persistently frustrated efforts by the US State Department
and CIA to improve relations with Tehran. America’s mighty Israel
lobby has become Cheney’s personal army in this struggle, and is
mounting a high-powered campaign to generate war fever against Iran.
Jewish Americans have been panicked by false claims that Israel
is in the direst nuclear peril.
For its part, Iran has played right into the hands of the war
party in Washington. President Ahmadinejad’s calls for Israel to
be wiped out, his denial of the Jewish Holocaust, and the lavish
song and dance spectacular he produced over nuclear enrichment delighted
many ordinary Iranians. But abroad, Ahmadinejad’s fiery pronouncements
created an international firestorm of condemnation and made Iran
look precisely what Israel’s supporters claim: a rogue nation with
a dangerous, erratic leadership that absolutely cannot be trusted
with nuclear arms. In short, a Mideast North Korea.
Iranians may be forgiven for over-reacting to nuclear Viagra –
Indians and Pakistanis responded the same way. But Iran should have
adopted a lower key approach to enrichment and invited UN and European
observers to attend.
By flaunting its infant nuclear technology, Tehran provides the
US and Israel with an excellent pretext to attack Iran. In such
an event, Iran will have precious few sympathizers around the globe.
Many will say, ‘Iran got what it deserved.’ One really wonders
if Iran’s leaders – many battle-scarred veterans of the frightfully
bloody Iran-Iraq war – are daring the US to attack.
The Iranian leadership and the Bush Administration are feeding
off one another, gaining domestic popularity with each now escalation
but drawing their nations into a clash whose outcome could be dangerously
unpredictable and would surely shake the entire Mideast and world
oil markets.
WRITER’S NOTEBOOK One big reason the Bush Administration attacked Afghanistan and Iraq was to get revenge for 9/11 and cover up the fact that it was asleep on guard duty. Americans still want revenge, so the pathetic figure of Zacharias Moussaoui has been chosen for the role. This man is clearly mentally unbalanced and bent on making himself into a martyr. He is being tried in the same northern Virginia hanging court that is a favorite with government prosecutors. If Moussaoui is executed, his death will bring international condemnation of the US and its deeply flawed legal system.
April 21, 2006 Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website. Copyright © 2006 Eric Margolis |
Berlusconi
– or ‘Ducesconi’ as I used to jokingly call him – was supposed
to be the hard-driving businessman who would shake up and revitalize
Italy. Alas, he did nothing of the kind, missing a golden opportunity
to rid Italy of crippling socialist programs, His successor,
former Prime Minister Romano Prodi, will probably not do any
better. In Italy, it’s always muddle along. At least the racist
neo-fascists in Berlusconi’s coalition will be gone – but, even
worse, they will be replaced by hard-line Communists in any
coalition government formed by Prodi. 