Does a Bush ‘October surprise’ await Iran?

from the Independent:

Bill Kristol, editor of the Murdoch owned neocon house journal the Weekly Standard says Bush is more likely to attack Iran if he believes Barack Obama is going to be elected.

Speaking on Sunday to Fox News’ Chris Wallace he said, “If the president thought John McCain was going to be the next president, he would think it more appropriate to let the next president make that decision than do it on his way out,” before suggesting Bush might move more quickly if he thought Obama was going to win. Wallace then asked if Kristol was suggesting that Bush might “launch a military strike” before or after the election. Watch it

full article

Stop the War on Iran before it starts!

Stop the War on Iran before it starts!
Money for Jobs, Healthcare, and Education, Not War and Occupation!

• Stop War on Iran!
• U.S. Out of Iraq & Afghanistan
• No U.S. attack on Iran through Israel
• No to all U.S./NATO war threats
  
• Money for human needs, not war!

Dear Friends:

As many of you know, the Bush Administration, with the support of politicians of both parties in Congress, has repeatedly threatened Iran with military action, and many now believe that an attack may be imminent.  The Stop War on Iran campaign has issued an international call for actions on September 27.

We’re writing to ask for your help; the only force that can stop another brutal U.S. war is a massive outpouring of grassroots opposition.

We must act now !  As more U.S. warships are deploying to the Persian Gulf, we have to mobilize to stop an “October Surprise” attack on Iran, or any other country. Politicians don’t stop wars; they create them. The only force that will stop endless war in the Middle East is a massive grassroots peoples’ movement.

It is time to turn up the heat!

Threats against Iran are growing daily.  The Bush Administration has mobilized a massive naval presence which will place hundreds of nuclear-armed aircraft within striking range of Iran.

The London Daily Telegraph of Sept. 2 reported that “the Dutch intelligence service has pulled an agent out of an ‘ultra-secret operation’ spying on Iran’s military industry because spymasters in the Netherlands believe a United States air attack was imminent.”  The Jerusalem Post reported that the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf said the attack was to be carried out “within weeks.”

And there are increasing signs that the Pentagon is growing more reckless and dangerous on several fronts.  During the first week of September, U.S. special forces attacked the village of Angor Adda in Pakistan, killing as many as 20 people, including women and children, according to Pakistani officials.  This follows the August 22 killings by U.S.-led forces of 90 Afghan civilians, including 60 children.  Meanwhile, the U.S. is deploying naval forces to Georgia, increasing tensions throughout the region and directly threatening Russia.

These war moves must be protested.  On September 27 we must loudly voice our opposition and say:  “Not Another War:  No ‘October Surprise’!

A Summer of Mobilizing to Stop War On Iran

The Stop War on Iran Campaign has been mobilizing non-stop this summer to help build a movement to stop Washington’s drive to war.  On August 2, in response to an emergency call for international actions issued by the Stop War On Iran campaign, anti-war activists in more than 100 cities– from Bangladesh to Boston, and from Vancouver to Hawaii, in cities large and small-voiced their opposition boldly in the streets.

In the past few weeks, Stop War on Iran activists have been in the streets of Denver and St. Paul, at the many protests at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.  Despite the menacing and often violent police presence, we carried Stop War on Iran placards and banners, and distributed tens of thousands of Stop War On Iran newsletters, reaching out to the many activists in both cities, to help build grassroots opposition to Washington’s bipartisan agenda of endless war.

We need money for jobs and housing -
not for another war!

While billions of dollars go to war, at home the unemployment rate has seen the biggest spike in 23 years. Home foreclosures and evictions are increasing; fuel and food prices are through the roof. While the situation is growing dire for many, Washington’s cutbacks in domestic programs continue.  The fiscal year beginning on October 1 will bring drastic cuts. A new U.S. war will bring only more suffering here as well as massive destruction abroad.

The recent Hurricane Gustav highlighted the failure of Washington to do anything to rebuild the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  Three years after the disaster, thousands of people are still homeless, as the money that could have been spent on meeting human needs has gone to fund the Pentagon and the agenda of endless war.  Every social program and every aspect of the economy has been impacted by the billions of dollars wasted on war.

But we must do more! As the threat of a U.S. attack on Iran grows, we must do everything we can to build a grassroots movement to oppose this aggression, while continuing to protest the  occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

We must take action now!  Here are some ways you can help:

Organize a local September 27 action to Stop War On Iran, whether it is a march or rally, speak-out, picket line, walk-out, or teach-in–in cities large or small.   What you do can  make a difference.  List your action at http://www.stopwaroniran.org/sept272008volorgcent.shtml, so activists in your area can contact you and get involved.  .

Make a donation to help with vital mobilizing expenses for September 27 protests and to help this movement grow. Or contribute to campaigns to get the truth out about the war danger by literature production, international emails and holding meetings. You can donation online at http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml.

This campaign is truly dependent on grass-roots donations from all over the country;  this is how every leaflet, sign, mailing and newsletter—every expense—is funded.    We can only do what our supporters enable us to do.

Donate online at  www.StopWarOnIran.org

All of our volunteer staff and organizers thank you for your continued support and dedication to the campaign to prevent a new war in Iran or anywhere else.

In solidarity and with our appreciation,

Stop War on Iran staff and national organizers

‘2 US aircraft carriers headed for Gulf’

from the Jerusalem Post:

Two additional United States naval aircraft carriers are heading to the Gulf and the Red Sea, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Kuwait Times.

Kuwait began finalizing its “emergency war plan” on being told the vessels were bound for the region.

The US Navy would neither confirm nor deny that carriers were en route. US Fifth Fleet Combined Maritime Command located in Bahrain said it could not comment due to what a spokesman termed “force-protection policy.”

While the Kuwaiti daily did not name the ships it believed were heading for the Middle East, The Media Line’s defense analyst said they could be the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Ronald Reagan.

Within the last month, the Roosevelt completed an exercise along the US east coast focusing on communication among navies of different countries. It has since been declared ready for operational duties. The Reagan, currently with the Seventh Fleet, had just set sail from Japan.

full article here

Kuwait Goes On “War Alert” As Massive US Armada Heads For Iran

from http://envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=7184
August 8, 2008
Sorcha Faal / What Does It Mean & Adam Gonn / The Jerusalem Post

Reports from the Middle East are stating today that Kuwait has activated its “Emergency War Plan” after being notified that two additional United States Navy Aircraft Carrier Groups are headed to the Gulf and Red Sea. The US Navy would neither confirm nor deny that carriers were en route. US Fifth Fleet Combined Maritime Command located in Bahrain said it could not comment due to what a spokesman termed “force-protection policy.”

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1123.htm

(August 8, 2008) — Reports from the Middle East are stating today that Kuwait has activated its “Emergency War Plan” after being notified that two additional United States Navy Aircraft Carrier Groups are headed to the Gulf and Red Sea.

The Arabic news agency Moheet is reported that “an unnamed American destroyer, accompanied by two Israeli naval vessels, traveled through the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean to join a US nuclear submarine accompanied by a destroyer and a supply ship that have also moved into the Mediterranean.”

The Jerusalem Post is also reporting that “there are two US naval battle groups operating in the Gulf: one is an aircraft carrier group, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln, which carries some 65 fighter aircraft. The other group is headed by the USS Peleliu which maintains a variety of planes and strike helicopters.”

Russian Military Analysts report that with the addition of these new US Naval Battle Groups the American Forces now have arrayed against the Iranian Nation one of the largest naval armadas assembled by the West since World War II.

The Associated Press News Service is reporting, too, that Israel is building up its strike capabilities against Iran and is “confident” of dealing a “crippling attack” against Iran’s nuclear programme as it becomes more concerned that the Western Nations will back off from their planned attack against the Iranians.

The United States, at least for the moment, appears to be attempting to thwart another major war by threatening Iran with more sanctions, and as we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threatened Iran with more sanctions Thursday after it failed to give an adequate response to the latest bid by Western powers to induce it to freeze uranium enrichment.

“Iran has a way out if they ever wish, but we will seriously pursue sanctions if they don’t,” Rice told Yahoo! News and the magazine Politico. “You have to hope that there are reasonable people in Iran who see this as not the way to run a country.”

Tehran’s latest response to a demand for the enrichment freeze in exchange for trade and technology incentives “is not a really serious answer,” she said in her first comments since six world powers discussed the matter in a Wednesday conference call.°®

The “wild card” in these latest moves by the United States, its Western Allies and Israel, say Russian Military Reports, remains the “hidden” Israeli threats against the US should it not attack Iran, and which many in the Russian Intelligence Community take to mean another September 11th-type assault upon the American Nation itself.

[Note: Following the attacks upon the US on September 11, 2001, American Intelligence services conducted one of their largest counterterror sweeps in their history which netted not Arab Terrorists, but one of the largest Israeli spy networks ever discovered. Fox News was the only US propaganda media outlet to report on this but after its first airing was “immediately pulled” from the American airwaves.]

The United States has further moved to counter Russian Military responses to an attack upon Iran’s nuclear facilities, and which have been built and financed by Russia, by igniting the flames of Total War on Russia’s very doorstep in the Caucuses by turning their loose their puppet ally Georgia to begin attacks upon South Ossetia.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a warning today that Georgia is preparing for war, and as South Ossetia’s capitol has come under fire, and with Russia reporting that Georgian tanks are headed for the border, Russia has warned the West that it “will not stand by” if the situation erupts into a full scale conflict.

What remains unknown at this time is how far the United States, and the West, is prepared to push our World towards Total War in its game of brinkmanship in the Middle East.

What is known, however, is that should the Americans push our World into the abyss of war, both Russia and China will retaliate as they are both determined not to ever again allow the Western Nations to have control over the World’s supply of oil.

© August 8, 2008 EU and US all rights reserved.

‘Two US Aircraft Carriers Headed for Gulf’

(August 7, 2008) — Two additional United States naval aircraft carriers are heading to the Gulf and the Red Sea, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Kuwait Times.

Kuwait began finalizing its “emergency war plan” on being told the vessels were bound for the region.

The US Navy would neither confirm nor deny that carriers were en route. US Fifth Fleet Combined Maritime Command located in Bahrain said it could not comment due to what a spokesman termed “force-protection policy.”

While the Kuwaiti daily did not name the ships it believed were heading for the Middle East, The Media Line’s defense analyst said they could be the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Ronald Reagan.

Within the last month, the Roosevelt completed an exercise along the US east coast focusing on communication among navies of different countries. It has since been declared ready for operational duties. The Reagan, currently with the Seventh Fleet, had just set sail from Japan.

The Seventh Fleet area of operation stretches from the East Coast of Africa to the International Date Line.

Meanwhile, the Arabic news agency Moheet reported at the end of July that an unnamed American destroyer, accompanied by two Israeli naval vessels traveled through the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean. A week earlier, a US nuclear submarine accompanied by a destroyer and a supply ship moved into the Mediterranean, according to Moheet.

Currently there are two US naval battle groups operating in the Gulf: one is an aircraft carrier group, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln, which carries some 65 fighter aircraft. The other group is headed by the USS Peleliu which maintains a variety of planes and strike helicopters.

The ship movements coincide with the latest downturn in relations between Washington and Teheran. The US and Iran are at odds over Iran’s nuclear program, which the Bush administration claims is aimed at producing material for nuclear weapons; however, Teheran argues it is only for power generation.

Kuwait, like other Arab countries in the Gulf, fears it will be caught in the middle should the US decide to launch an air strike against Iran if negotiations fail. The Kuwaitis are finalizing details of their security, humanitarian and vital services, the newspaper reported.

The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman – lie just across the Gulf from Iran. Generals in the Iranian military have repeatedly warned that American interests in the region would be targeted if Iran is subjected to any military strike by the US or its Western allies.

Bahrain hosts the US Fifth Fleet, while there is a sizeable American base in Qatar. It is assumed the US also has military personnel in the other Gulf states, The Media Line’s defense analyst said.

Iran is thought to have intelligence operatives working in the GCC states, according to Dubai-based military analysts.

The standoff between the US and Iran has left the Arab nations’ political leaders in something of a bind, as they were being used as pawns by Washington and Teheran, according to The Media Line analyst.

Iran has offered them economic and industrial sweeteners, while the US is boosting their defense capabilities. US President George W. Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have paid visits to the GCC states in a bid to win their support.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1218104233164&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Is an Attack on Iran Imminent?

from Common Dreams

George W. Bush is poised to order a massive aerial bombardment — possibly including tactical nuclear weapons – of up to 10,000 targets in Iran. The attack would be justified on grounds that Iran is interfering with U.S. efforts in Iraq and that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, a charge that was debunked last fall in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

According to international experts, the U.S. declared economic war against Iran on March 20. On that day, the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) called on the world’s financial institutions to stop doing business with Iran, making it much more difficult for Iran to engage in global commerce.

full article here

War With Iran?

from Counterpunch:

Those predicting an assault point to the incessant propaganda campaign against Iran, abject Congressional complicity in that campaign, military preparations in the U.S. and Israel, the recent flurry of U.S.-Israeli military contacts, the power of AIPAC and Israel in U.S. politics and specifically their influence on the impressionable mind of President Bush. They point to the sidelining of mainstream intelligence reports that declare Iran has no active military program, and to the nearly identical rhetoric from Bush, McCain and Obama about how that (probably non-existent) program poses an “existential threat” to (nuclear) Israel. They suggest Burns’ recent step and other small diplomatic initiatives are really cover, merely designed to convince the world that the U.S. is exhausting diplomacy before the bombing starts.

full article here

U.S. & Israel prepare for attack on Iran

Dustin Langley

President George W. Bush has given the Israeli military the go-ahead to prepare for an imminent attack on Iran. Israel is also using U.S. bases in Iraq to prepare for the attack.

Actions on Aug. 2

www.StopWarOnIran.org

The British Sunday Times of July 13 reported: “Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread skepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an ‘amber light’ to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, [a Pentagon] official told The Sunday Times.

“‘Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,’ the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use U.S. military bases in Iraq for logistical support.”

No U.S. support? The Jerusalem Post reported on the same day: “On Friday, sources in the Iraqi Defense Ministry told a local news network that IAF [Israeli Air Force] war planes were practicing in Iraqi airspace and were landing on U.S. airbases in the country as a preparation for a potential strike on Iran.”

Once again the most powerful forces of U.S. corporate power—the military-industrial-petroleum complex—are using Israel as their proxy to threaten war on surrounding countries in the region. Israel is armed, financed and politically and diplomatically supported by Washington. It cannot act on its own or without explicit permission from Washington.

At the same time that the White House is giving the Zionist military a go-ahead to bomb Iran, the U.S. Congress is moving ahead to escalate tensions in the region and possibly provoke an incident that would “justify” U.S. military action. House Resolution 362 and Senate Resolution 580 both require that the president begin a blockade of Iran.

The House resolution “demands” that the president impose “stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains and cargo entering or departing Iran.” Enforcing this would require a U.S. naval blockade of the Straits of Hormuz, which is an act of war according to international law. Approximately one-fourth of the world’s oil, including that from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, passes through the Straits of Hormuz, which are 21 miles wide at their narrowest point.

These two resolutions have received widespread bipartisan support from members of both houses of Congress, and are expected to pass without debate or vote. A staffer in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office said that once the House resolution hits the floor, it will “pass like a hot knife through butter.” Some have speculated that the bill will be put on the floor “under suspension”—meaning it will pass without even a vote.

Both resolutions accuse Iran of developing nuclear weapons, despite the fact that Washington’s National Intelligence Estimate report last December made it clear that every major U.S. intelligence agency believes Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

Nor do the resolutions refer to the real nuclear threat in the region: the U.S., the only country that has used nuclear weapons and currently has a massive nuclear-armed naval armada in the region. It also does not mention the apartheid settler state of Israel, which is thought to have at least 200 nuclear weapons.

At the same time, two leading senators announced on July 15 that they had reached a bipartisan agreement to expand economic sanctions targeting Iran. Senators Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chair of the Senate Banking Committee, and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) called Iran “a threat to U.S. interests.” Dodd, a former candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for president, said: “This bipartisan bill strengthens economic sanctions against Iran, and authorizes divestment from companies that do business with Iran’s key oil sector.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. is involved in “covert operations”—acts of terrorism—inside Iran. In the July 7 New Yorker, Seymour Hersh revealed that Congress has approved $400 million to fund covert operations in Iran. These operations include providing support to armed groups opposed to the Iranian government, kidnapping members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and taking them across the border to Iraq for interrogation, the manipulation of Iran’s currency, and other acts intended to destabilize the regime.

Hersh reports that these types of operations have been ongoing at least since last year, but the recent congressional appropriation signals a significant expansion of these actions.

It is clear that the Bush administration is determined to push forward with its agenda of endless war to control the oil reserves of the Middle East. It is equally clear that members of Congress—both Democrats and Republicans—are on board, just as they collaborated in authorizing the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

It is imperative that progressive activists and organizations, particularly in the U.S., mobilize to stop another brutal war and demand an end to the illegal sanctions and covert operations targeting Iran.

Stop War on Iran, an international grassroots campaign, has issued an Emergency Call for protests, marches and other actions on the weekend of Aug. 2. Local organizers are planning events in more than 50 cities, including Los Angeles, Tucson, San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, Jersey City, Albuquerque, Buffalo, New York, Charlotte, Raleigh/Durham, Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Houston, Salt Lake City, Virginia Beach, Washington and more. An updated list is available at www.StopWarOnIran.org.

Now is the time to take to the streets. Only a massive grassroots mobilization can stop another bloody and illegal war. To get involved, or for more information, see www.StopWarOnIran.org.

Sanctions, diplomacy, missiles: U.S. takes aim at Iran’s sovereignty

What is the significance of the widely publicized announcement that the Bush administration has finally agreed to talk to Iran?

Have U.S. aircraft carriers, nuclear-armed and powered submarines, destroyers or missiles been pulled back from Iran’s coast? Has Washington renounced its years of sabotage, assassinations and other covert actions inside Iran? Will any of the many sanctions imposed to constrict Iran’s development be lifted or even eased?

On July 19 Undersecretary of State William Burns sat in on a six-nation gathering in Geneva and “observed” nuclear negotiations between Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili and Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. The talks are scheduled to resume in August, but Burns will not return for them. The one-time presence of this third-ranking diplomat is supposedly enough to show that Washington has made an effort at a diplomatic solution.

U.S. participation in the meeting came after increasingly frantic appeals from European powers and from the feudal and military regimes in the Persian Gulf region for diplomacy rather than war. They fear the destabilizing consequences of another U.S. attack. Even in top circles of the U.S. ruling class and military command, concern has been expressed about the risks and dangers of a new war.

Following his appearance at the Geneva meeting, Burns and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Abu Dhabi with foreign ministers and senior officials of the six Gulf states, along with Egypt, Iraq and Jordan. At the meeting Rice warned that Iran had two weeks to halt its development of nuclear energy or face further “punitive measures.” Iran will also be the main topic at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers the following day.

Washington says its possible next step is to push for an intense level of international sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. If council members don’t go along with its demands, the U.S. is threatening military action.

To reinforce the threat, Rice’s statement was immediately followed by an announcement from Israeli military adviser Amos Gilad that Israel was preparing to attack Iran if diplomacy failed—and that the U.S. would not veto such action.

Although Burns sat in on the Geneva meeting, the U.S. did not give its agreement to a European proposal that, in exchange for an Iranian “freeze” on its enrichment of uranium, a six-week “freeze” be put on more restrictive sanctions against Iran. Lifting the existing sanctions was not even proposed.

U.S. sanctions have been imposed on Iran since the 1978 Iranian Revolution. Soon after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the U.N. Security Council imposed three new rounds of sanctions on Iran. Now Washington is demanding new and far harsher sanctions—despite International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) reports that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program and a similar conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate report of December 2007, endorsed by the 17 top U.S. spy agencies.

Iran has every right under international law and treaties to develop nuclear energy for civilian purposes. Its nuclear power plants are all under the inspection and safeguards of the IAEA. The IAEA has continually said that there has been no illicit diversion of declared nuclear material.

It is now clear that the State Department’s one-day venture into talks with Iran was merely positioning by Washington to get its allies to agree on far harsher economic sanctions and other efforts to sabotage Iran’s national development.
Iran’s real crime

Iran has a severe energy shortage. Although it is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, its ability to refine crude oil into gasoline and diesel fuel is limited. As a country with a history of underdevelopment, Iran must import more than half its refined petroleum products to fuel its new industries and a modern transportation system. Iran is now the second-largest importer of gasoline and diesel fuel in the world. (Toronto Globe and Mail, July 22)

A bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products and imposing “stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran.” This would amount to a blockade—an act of war—and a threat to Iran’s sovereignty. It is also an example of how U.S. policy is aimed at keeping resource-rich countries underdeveloped and under its control.

At the same time that the U.S. is trying to cripple Iran’s economy, supposedly over its nuclear program, it is pursuing a deal with India to provide it nuclear fuel and technology. India is not yet a signer of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or a member of the IAEA. Iran is both.

Iran’s real crime, in the eyes of the Pentagon and the corporate oil giants who determine U.S. policy, is that it is determined to use its resources for the further development of its own economy. The other oil-producing states in the region are corrupt semi-feudal regimes, each with a compliant and dependent ruling class. These regimes are under the total control of U.S. corporations and banks. The largest portion of their vast revenue from oil sales is wasted in purchases of U.S. weapons systems or invested in U.S. banks.

Millions of Iranian people participated in the 1978 revolution that overthrew the corrupt U.S.-backed shah. Since then, great social advances have transformed Iran. Once the people liberated their oil resources from the control of giant U.S. and British corporations, billions of dollars were available to develop Iranian industries and social services.

In less than two decades, Iran moved from 90 percent illiteracy for rural women to full literacy; more than half the university graduates are now women. Stunning improvements in totally free as well as subsidized health care meant record-breaking improvements in life expectancy, birth control and infant mortality. Even according to World Bank figures, Iran has exceeded the social gains of any other country in the region.

This is what U.S. policy makers are determined to reverse. They want control of the vast wealth that comes from every aspect of exploration, pumping, transport and refining of the planet’s most valuable and needed resource. They are willing to destroy millions of lives and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on war in this struggle.
Past history of U.S. talks

It is important to recall the many rounds of talks between U.S. and Iraqi delegations before the war. The U.S. repeatedly demanded the authority to carry out inspections in Iraq any time, any place, to search for non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.” Just before the Pentagon attack, there was the heaviest round of diplomatic talks involving Iraq, members of the U.N. Security Council and Washington’s European allies. The talks were aimed at imposing still stricter sanctions, supposedly to gain Iraq’s total disarmament. This was years after U.N. inspectors had declared Iraq fully disarmed.

It is also important to remember the U.S./NATO “peace talks” with the Yugoslav government in Rambouillet, France. U.S. negotiators gave Yugoslavia an ultimatum: accept total U.S./NATO military occupation and dismemberment or face massive bombardment. When the Parliament of the Yugoslav Federation voted overwhelmingly to refuse the NATO “peace” demand of occupation of their sovereign territory, the Pentagon began 72 days of massive bombardment followed by the NATO seizure of Kosovo.

The U.S. conducted five years of “peace negotiations” with theVietnamese while escalating its bombardment, including carpet bombing.

Secretary of State Rice has announced the U.S. is considering the establishment of an “interests section” in Tehran and compared it to the interests section that the U.S. has maintained for decades in Cuba. “We have an interests section in Cuba, so I wouldn’t read thawing of relations into anything,” she said. Throughout the decades that Washington has maintained an interests section in Havana, the blockade of Cuba, sabotage and attempted assassinations of Cuban leaders have continued.

U.S. “talks” are too often preparation for the next stage of war. It is important for the movement on a global scale to remain on the alert and to understand that U.S. imperialism’s aims and plans have not changed.

Fact Sheets of Iran-US Standoff: Twenty Reasons against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

reprinted from CASMII:

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Click [here] to download this paper in PDF format.

[Last Updated January 2008]

INTRODUCTION

Five years into the US-UK illegal invasion of Iraq and its consequent catastrophe for Iraqi people, peace loving people throughout the world are appalled by the current Iran-US standoff and its resemblance to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq . The hawks, headed by Dick Cheney in Washington , are now shamelessly calling for a military attack on Iran . The same Israeli lobby which pushed for the invasion of Iraq is now pushing for a military attack on Iran . The same distortions which were attempted to dupe the western public opinion for the invasion of Iraq , are now used to pave the way for another illegal pre-emptive war of aggression against Iran . As in the case of Iraq , the UN Security Council Resolutions against Iran , extricated through massive US pressure, are meant to provide a veneer of legitimacy for such an attack.

Contrary to the myth created by the western media, it is the US and its European allies which are defying the international community, in that they have rejected negotiations without pre-conditions. They show their lack of good faith by demanding that Iran concede the main point of negotiations, namely, suspension of enrichment of uranium which is Iran ’s legitimate right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, before the negotiations actually start.

The Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) calls for immediate and direct negotiations between the US and Iran without any pre-conditions.

Here, we debunk the main unfounded accusations, lies and distortions by the US and Israel and their allies while highlighting the main reasons to oppose sanctions and military intervention against Iran .

IRAN ‘S NUCLEAR PROGRAMME: FACTS AND LIES

1 . There is no evidence of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran . The US and its allies pressure Iran to prove that it is not hiding a nuclear weapons programme. This demand is logically impossible to satisfy and serves to make diplomacy fail in order to force regime change. Numerous intrusive and snap visits by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, totalling more than 2,700 person-hours of inspection, have failed to produce a shred of evidence for a weapons programme in Iran . Traces of highly enriched uranium found at Natanz in 2004, were determined by the IAEA to have come with imported centrifuges.

In July 2007, IAEA and Iran agreed on a work plan with defined modalities and timetable to clarify all issues of concerns in relation to Iran ’s nuclear programme. On 27 th August 2007 IAEA announced that “The Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials at the enrichment facilities in Iran and has therefore concluded that it remains in peaceful use ”. The Agreement also cleared Iran ’s plutonium experiments, which the Cheney Camp had accused of being evidence of Iran ’s weaponisation programme.

Dr Mohammad El-Baradei, the IAEA Director General, said on 7 th September 2007, “For the last few years we have been told by the Security Council, by the board, we have to clarify the outstanding issues in Iran because these outstanding issues are the ones that have led to the lack of confidence, the crisis” , “We have not come to see any undeclared activities or weaponisation of their programme”.

Two years earlier, in June 2005, Bruno Pellaud, former IAEA Deputy Director General for Safeguards, was asked by Swissinfo if Iran was intent on building a nuclear bomb. He replied: “My impression is not. My view is based on the fact that Iran took a major gamble in December 2003 by allowing a much more intrusive capability to the IAEA. If Iran had had a military programme they would not have allowed the IAEA to come under this Additional Protocol. They did not have to.”

2. Iran ’s need for nuclear power generation is real. Even when Iran ’s population was one-third of what it is today, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, negotiating on behalf of President Gerald Ford, persuaded the former Shah that Iran needed over twenty nuclear reactors. With Iran ’s population of 70 million, and growing, and its oil resources fast depleting, Iran may be a net importer of oil in just over a decade from now. Nuclear energy is thus a realistic and viable solution for electricity generation in the country.

3. The “crisis” over Iran ’s nuclear programme lacks the urgency claimed by Washington . Weapons grade uranium must be enriched at least to 85%. A 2005 CIA report determined that it could take Iran 10 years to achieve this level of enrichment. Many independent nuclear experts have stated that Iran would face formidable technical obstacles if it tried to enrich uranium beyond the 3.5% purity required for electricity generation. According to Dr Frank Barnaby of the Oxford Research Group, because of contamination of Iranian uranium with heavy metals, Iran cannot possibly enrich beyond even 20% without support from Russia or China. IAEA director, Dr. Mohammad ElBaradei, too, reiterated in October 2007 that “I don’t see Iran , today, to be a clear and present danger. And our conclusion here is supported by every intelligence assessment I’ve seen that even if Iran has ambitions to develop nuclear weapons, it’s still three to eight years away from that”..

4. Iran has met its obligations under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran voluntarily accepted and enforced safeguards stricter than IAEA’s Additional Protocol until February 2006, when Iran ’s nuclear file was reported, under the pressure from the US , to the Security Council. (The US , by contrast, has neither signed nor implemented the Additional Protocol, and Israel has refused to sign the NPT.)

Iran ’s earlier concealment of its nuclear programme took place in the context of the US-backed invasion of Iran by Saddam. Not only the U.S. , Germany , and the UK were complicit in the sale of chemical weapons to Saddam which were used against Iranian soldiers and civilians but Israel ’s destruction of Iraq ’s Osirak reactor in 1981 was treated with total impunity. Iranian leaders then concluded from these gross injustices that international laws are only “ink on paper”.

But the most direct reasons for Iran ’s concealment were the American trade embargo on Iran and Washington ’s organized and persistent campaign to stop civilian nuclear technology from reaching Iran from any source. For example, in 1995 Germany offered to let Kraftwerk Union (a subsidiary of Siemens) finish Iran ’s Bushehr reactor, but withdrew its proposal under US pressure . The following year, China cancelled its contract to build a nuclear enrichment facility in Isfahan for the same reason. Thus Washington systematically violated, with impunity, Article IV of the NPT, which allows “signatories the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy”.

Nevertheless, Iran ’s decision not to declare all of its nuclear installations did not violate its NPT obligations. According to David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, who first provided satellite imagery and analysis in December 2002, under the safeguards agreement in force at the time, ” Iran is not required to allow IAEA inspections of a new nuclear facility until six months before nuclear material is introduced into it.”

5. Iran has given unprecedented concessions on its nuclear programme. Unlike North Korea , Iran has resisted the temptation to withdraw from the NPT. Besides accepting snap inspections under Additional Protocol until February 2006, Iran has invited Western companies to develop Iran ’s civilian nuclear programme. Such joint ventures would create the best assurance that the enriched uranium would not be diverted to a weapons programme. Such concessions are very rare in the world, but the U.S. and its allies have refused Iran ’s offer.

6. Enrichment of uranium for a civilian nuclear programme is Iran ’s inalienable right. Every member of the NPT has the right to enrich uranium for a civilian nuclear programme and is entitled to full technical assistance.

But with the US as the back seat driver and in violation of their assistance obligations, France , Germany , and the UK insisted throughout the three years of negotiations that Tehran forfeit its right, in return for incentives of little value. Some European diplomats admitted to Asia Times Online on 7th September 2005, that the package offered by the EU-3 was “an empty box of chocolates.” But “there is nothing else we can offer,” the diplomats went on to say . “The Americans simply wouldn’t let us.”

7. The Western alliance has not tried true diplomacy and relies instead on threats. Iran refuses to suspend its enrichment of uranium before bilateral negotiations begin, as demanded by the White House, because it suspects Washington will stall with endless doubts regarding verification of suspension.

WESTERN HYPOCRISY

8. The UN resolutions against Iran , in contrast to the treatment of the US allies, South Korea , India , Pakistan , and Israel , smack of double standards. For example, in the year 2000, South Korea enriched 200 milligrams of uranium to near-weapons grade (up to 77%), but was not referred to the UN Security Council.

India has refused to sign the NPT or allow inspections and has developed an atomic arsenal, but receives nuclear assistance from the US in violation of the NPT. More bizarrely, India has a seat on the governing board of IAEA and, under US pressure, voted to refer Iran as a violator to the UN Security Council. Another non-signatory, Pakistan , clandestinely developed nuclear weapons but is supported by the US as a “war on terror” ally.

Israel is a close ally of Washington , even though it has hundreds of clandestine nuclear weapons, has dismissed numerous UN resolutions and has refused to sign the NPT or open any of its nuclear plants to inspections.

The US itself is the most serious violator of the NPT. The only country to have ever used nuclear bombs in war, the US has refused to reduce its nuclear arsenal, in violation of Article VI of NPT. The US is also in breach of the Treaty because it is developing new generations of nuclear warheads for use against non-nuclear adversaries. Moreover, Washington has deployed hundreds of such tactical nuclear weapons all around the world in violation of Articles I and II of the NPT.

9. Iran has not threatened Israel or attacked another country. The track records of the US , Israel , the UK and France are very different. These so called “democracies” have a bloody history of invading other countries. Iran ’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has declared repeatedly that Iran will not attack or threaten any country. He has also issued a fatwa against the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons and banned nuclear weapons as sacrilegious. Iran has been a consistent supporter of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and called for a nuclear weapons free Middle East .

The comments of Iran ’s President Ahmadinejad against Israel have been repeated by some of Iran ’s leaders since 1979 and constitute no practical threat. The statement attributed to him that “ Israel should be wiped off the map” is a distortion of the truth and has been determined by a number of Farsi linguists, amongst them, Professor Juan Cole, to be a mistranslation. What he actually said was that “the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”. Ahmadinejad has made clear that he envisions regime change in Israel through internal decay, similar to the demise of the Soviet Union . Iranian leaders have said consistently for two decades that they will accept a two-state solution in Palestine if a majority of Palestinians favour that option.

This is in sharp contrast to the explicit threats by Israeli and the US leaders against Iran , including aid to separatist movements to disintegrate and wipe Iran off the map [9], as reported by Seymour Hersh and Reese Erlich . There is considerable evidence of clandestine operations by the US , British and Israeli agents who are arming, training and funding terrorist entities such as Jundollah in Baluchistan, Arab separatists in Khuzestan, and PJAK in Kurdistan . These concrete attempts at disintegration of Iran , as well as the 100 million dollars congressional funding for ‘democracy’ promotion in Iran , constitute aggression and are interference in Iran ’s domestic affairs and Iranian people’s rights of sovereignty. They violate the bilateral Algiers Accord of 1981, in which Washington renounced any such actions in the future.

Furthermore, President Bush and Vice President Cheney, former UN ambassador, John Bolton, Senator Lieberman, as well as presidential candidates Guilliani, Romney and McCain are openly advocating and pushing for pre-emptive military attack on Iran. The French President, Sarkouzy, and his Foreign Minister, Kouchner, the new recruits to the Neo Cons camp, have added their voice to this chorus for war . British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, too has not ruled out the pre-emptive military option against Iran .

Iran is no match for Israel , whose security and military needs are all but guaranteed by the US . Iran is surrounded on all sides by the US Navy and American bases.

Iran has not invaded or threatened any country for two and a half centuries. The only war the Islamic Republic fought was the one imposed by Saddam’s army, which invaded Iran with the backing of the US and its allies. When Iraq used chemical weapons, supplied by the West, against Iranian troops, Iran did not retaliate in kind. When Afghanistan ’s Taliban regime murdered eight Iranian diplomats in 1996 and remained unapologetic, Iran did not respond militarily.

10. The US “democratization” programme for Iran is a hoax. Although violations of human rights and democratic freedoms do occur too often in Iran , the country has the most pluralistic system in a region dominated by undemocratic client states of the US . It is sheer hypocrisy for the US, which turns a blind eye to the gross human rights abuses by its allies, such as Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Libya, and Egypt, to misrepresent its agenda in Iran as a “democratization” programme. Washington ’s pretensions ring especially hollow when one remembers that in 1953 Iran ’s nascent democracy under Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq was overthrown by the CIA, which restored a hated military dictatorship for the benefit of American oil conglomerates.

UN SECURITY COUNCIL INVOLVEMENT TOTALLY UNJUSTIFIED

11. There are no legal bases for Iran ’s referral to the UN Security Council. Since there is no evidence that Iran is even contemplating to weaponize its nuclear programme, no grounds exist for this sidelining of the IAEA.

Michael Spies of the New York-based Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy has clarified the issue: “Under the Statute (Art. 12(C)) and the Safeguards Agreement, the Board may only refer Iran to the Security Council if it finds that, based on the report from the Director General, it cannot be assured that Iran has not diverted nuclear material for non-peaceful purpose. In the past, findings of `non-assurance’ have only come in the face of a history of active and ongoing non-cooperation with IAEA safeguards. The pursuit of nuclear activities in itself, which is specifically recognized as a sovereign right, and which remain safeguarded, could not legally or logically equate to uncertainty regarding diversion.”

The IAEA director, Dr ElBaradei, has in fact consistently confirmed that there has been no diversion of safeguarded nuclear material in Iran . He has asserted unambiguously in his interview with New York Times on 7 th September 2007 that in Iran “we have not come to see any undeclared activities … We have not seen any weaponisation of their programme, nor have we received any information to that effect” . He has also repeatedly urged skeptics in Western capitals to help the IAEA by sharing any possible proof in their possession of suspicious nuclear activity in Iran .

The IAEA-Iran work plan of August 2007 has reconfirmed this. It has stated that all declared nuclear activirties in Iran have been verified to be for peaceful purposes. It has also cleared Iran of its plutonium experiments which had been regarded as a smoking gun by the US .

Dr ElBaradei has nevertheless said, under pressure from Washington , that he cannot rule out the existence of undeclared nuclear activities in the country. However, according to the IAEA’s Safeguards Implementation Report for 2005 (issued on 15 June 2006), 45 other countries, including 14 European countries, in particular Germany , are in this same category as Iran .

Moreover, according to the UK-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, certifying non-diversion of nuclear material to military purposes for any given country takes an average of six years of inspections and verification by the IAEA. In the case of Iran , these investigations have been going on for only about four years now.

Iran ’s file, therefore, must be returned to the jurisdiction of the IAEA and the rules of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). The US and its allies violated the rules by exerting massive pressure on the IAEA to report Iran without any legitimacy to the UN Security Council. For example, David Mulford, the US Ambassador to India , warned the Government of India in January 2006 that there would be no US-India nuclear deal if India did not vote against Iran at the IAEA. On February 15th 2007, Stephen Rademaker, the former US Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation, admitted publicly that the US coerced India to vote against Iran. Clearly, reporting Iran to the UN Security Council and the subsequent adoption of the Resolutions 1696 and 1737 have been carried out with US coercion and have thus no legitimacy at all.

The IAEA report on the outcome of the “work plan” between Iran and the IAEA released on 15/11/07 has confirmed that ” Iran has provided sufficient access to individuals and has responded in a timely manner to questions and provide (needed) clarifications and amplifications,” . The report has stated that Iran had made “substantial progress” towards clarifying outstanding questions about its nuclear programs , that “The agency has been able to conclude that answers provided on the declared past P-1 and P-2 centrifuge programs are consistent with its findings” and that “We will however continue to seek corroboration and to verify the completeness of Iran’s declarations”. It has also confirmed repeatedly in various parts of the document that, in relation to all issues of ambiguity such as past black market procurement and concealment, Iran ’s statements are consistent with the information independently available to the agency.

The response from the US/Israel and their allies has been immediately negative, accusing Iran of “selective cooperation” with the IAEA. Shaul Mofaz , Israel ’s deputy prime minister, called for the sacking of Dr ElBaradei over the IAEA’s recent report on Iran . The US is pressing with the demand for Iran to stop its uranium enrichment, which is Iran ’s inalienable right as a signatory to the NPT. Probably under direct pressure from the US and its allies, trying to discredit the successful collaboration of Iran with the IAEA, the report has at the same time pointed to the agency’s “diminishing knowledge” about Iran ’s current nuclear programme. Such a situation, as Dr ElBaradei later asserted in his speech to the Governors’ Board of the IAEA in November 2007, is true of (over forty) countries that do not enforce the additional protocol. In the case of Iran , which is singled out among these countries by the west for political reasons, the US and its European allies bear the direct responsibility for this situation. As previously pointed out, they coerced the Governors Board of the IAEA to report Iran ’s file to the UN in 2005 and early 2006, which prompted Iran to suspend its voluntary enforcement of the Additional Protocol and to resume enrichment of uranium.

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran , issued on December 3, refutes the US and Israeli accusations that Iran has a covert nuclear weapons programme. The statement vindicates Iran ’s claim that the decision by the Governors Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report its nuclear file to the UN Security Council in February 2006 and the subsequent Security Council resolutions and sanctions against Iran lack legitimacy.

The NIE report had been held for nearly one year in an effort by Vice President Cheney’s office to force the intelligence community to remove some of the dissenting judgments on Iran ’s nuclear program.

Representing the views of 16 US intelligence agencies, the NIE on Iran sharply reverses its 2005 version that claimed Iran was developing nuclear weapons. The report assesses that Iran ’s alleged military nuclear work ended in 2003, but fails to provide any evidence that such activity ever existed. If proof for this assessment had been found, it was the obligation of the US to provide it to the IAEA for on-the-ground verification.

A senior IAEA official was quoted by the IHT on December 4: “despite repeated smear campaigns, the IAEA has stood its ground and concluded time and again that ‘there was no evidence of an undeclared nuclear weapons program in Iran ‘”.

While the IAA and Iran are collaborating to resolve the final components of the outstanding issues on the Iranain nuclear programme by March 2008, the US and its European allies have pushed for a third round of the UN sanctions against Iran when according to its own intelligence Iran does not have a nuclear weapons programme.

SANCTIONS NOT A GOOD IDEA

12. Dr ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, has said that more sanctions are counterproductive. Economic sanctions on Iran will harm the people of Iran , as they were devastating to Iraqis, resulting in the death of at least 500,000 children. Sanctions would not however bring the Islamic Republic to its knees. Instead, any kind of sanctions, including the so-called “targeted” or “smart” sanctions, are viewed by the Iranian people as the West’s punishment for Iran ’s scientific progress (uranium enrichment for reactor fuel). As sanctions tighten, nationalist fervour will strengthen the resolve of Iranians to defend the country’s civilian nuclear programme.

13. Sanctions are not better than war; they can be exploited as a diplomatic veneer and a provocative prelude to military attack, as they were in Iraq . Thus, countries which support sanctions against Iran are only falling into the US trap in aiding the war drive on Iran .

STATEGIC SHIFT TO MULTI-FOCAL TARGETS

14. A US attack on Iran is imminent. The end of George Bush’s presidency in 2009 could be a serious set back for the NeoCons’ hegemonic dreams to control the energy resources in the region. He is unlikely to leave office bearing the legacy of failures in Afghanistan and Iraq and particularly leaving Iran a stronger player in the region. Thus the likelihood of military attack on Iran before Bush leaves office is a reality. Washington insiders have told security analysts that preparations for military attack have been made and are ready for execution.

Since January, in addition to the nuclear issue, the US has also focused its propaganda to falsely implicate Iran in the violence and failures of US policies in Afghanistan and Iraq . The Iran-US bilateral dialogue this summer was derailed amidst accusations that Iran aided the killing of American soldiers by providing sophisticated weapons and training to Afghan and Iraqi fighters. As in the nuclear case, Washington has provided no proof .

British Foreign Minister, David Miliband, admitted in an interview with the Financial Times on 8 th July 07 that there was “No Evidence” of Iranian involvement in the violence and instability in Iraq . Likewise, the British Defence Minister, Des Browne, in August 07 maintained categorically that “No Evidence” existed of Iranian government’s complicity or instigation in supplying weapons to Iraqi militias. The Washington Post, too, reported from Iraq that hundreds of British troops combing southern Iraq for sign of Iranian weapons have come up empty-handed. Furthermore, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, and Al-Maleki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, have stated Iran ’s positive role in providing whatever limited stability there is in both these countries. Nevertheless, G eorge Bush’s speech on 28 th August, authorizing the American military to “ confront Tehran ’s murderous activities”, and the deployment of British troops to the Iranian border to guard against Iran ’s “proxy war” in Iraq , signaled a systematic building towards a casus belli for another illegal pre-emptive war. The Kyle-Lieberman Amendment to the Defence Authorisation Bill, too, accused Iran of killing American servicemen in Iraq and nearly authorized the military to take all necessary action to combat Iran .

A third focus in the US war drive has now been launched by branding Iran ’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. This unprecedented move in US foreign policy and international relations is the proclaimed basis for imposing the toughest sanctions ever on Iranian banks, companies and individuals.

These new measures represent a massive escalation in the US war drive, they are a prelude to a military attack on Iran and provide the legal pretext for the US military to wage war on Iran without the prior approval of the US Congress.

ILLEGALITY OF A MILITARY ATTACK

15. Foreign state interference in Iran violates the UN charter. According to Seymour Hersch, the US is running covert operations in Iran to foment unrest and ethnic conflict for the purpose of regime change. Unmanned US drones have also entered into Iranian air space to spy over Iranian military installations and to map Iranian radar systems. These actions violate the UN Charter’s guarantee of the right of self-determination for all nations.

The Bush Administration has also confirmed, in the 2006 US National Security Strategy, its long term policy for pre-emptive military action against Washington ’s rivals. Former British prime minister, Tony Blair, supported this policy in his 21st March 2006 foreign policy speech, and his successor Gordon Brown has not rejected the pre-emptive use of military force against Iran . However, unprovoked strikes are illegal under international law. To remove this obstacle, John Reid, the then British Secretary of Defence, in his speech on 3rd April 2006 to the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, proposed a change in international law on pre-emptive military action.

16. Reports of nuclear attack scenarios against Iran can serve to raise the public’s tolerance for an act of aggression with conventional military means. People of conscience and sanity must not only condemn even contemplation of a nuclear attack, but also denounce any conventional attack.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF AN ATTACK ON IRAN

17. Bombing cannot end Iran ’s nuclear programme. Since Iran already has the expertise to enrich uranium up to the 3.5% grade for a fuel cycle, no degree of bombing will halt Iran ’s civilian nuclear programme. On the contrary, the resulting mass casualties and destruction would strengthen the voices that argue Iran , like North Korea , should build a nuclear deterrent.

18. An attack on Iran will unite Iranians against the US and its allies. A great majority of the public in Iran support the country’s right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. This has been confirmed by all opinion polls conducted in the country, including polls taken by Western institutions. Therefore, a bombing campaign will not lead to an uprising by the Iranian people for regime change as envisaged by the US . Rather, it would ignite nationalist feelings in the country and unite the population, including most of the government’s critics, against the West.

19. A nuclear attack on Iran would fuel a new nuclear arms race and ruin the NPT. Any military intervention against Iran will lead to a regional catastrophe and expanded terrorism. Senator McCain, the Republican presidential hopeful, who has himself advocated the use of force on Iran , has predicted that an attack against Iran will lead to Armageddon. American or Israeli aggression on Iran , coming on the heels of the Iraq disaster, would inflame the grievance and outrage of Muslims worldwide and help jihadi extremists with their recruitment campaign. The region wide conflagration resulting from an Israel/US attack on Iran would dwarf the Iraq catastrophe.

20. The cause of democracy in Iran will suffer gravely if the country is attacked. President Bush’s “axis of evil” rhetoric severely undermined the reformist movement in Iran at a time when the country’s president promoted Dialogue Among Civilizations. Bush’s hostile posture strengthened the hands of Iranian hardliners and contributed to the reformist movement’s electoral defeat in 2005. That setback would be dwarfed by the consequences of a military assault on the country.

Copyright 2008, CASMII

H. Con. Res. 362 and S.R. 580: No Lies! No War!

from Counterpunch:

There are now 238 members of the House signed on as cosponsors of House Concurrent Resolution 362 “expressing the sense of Congress regarding the threat posed to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital national security interests of the United States by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional hegemony.”

On Wednesday, William Lacy Clay, Jr. of Missouri’s 1st District became the first and only member to withdraw his sponsorship.  On Tuesday afternoon, a group of fifteen of us visited Clay’s St. Louis office and spoke with him for 30 minutes via teleconference.  While we would like to claim that our conversation with him and our subsequent refusal to leave his office at closing time were key to his reversal, this isn’t the time for tallying political wins.

House Concurrent Resolution 362 and its companion, Senate Resolution 580, pave the way for open war with Iran.  It is that simple, and we must be equally clear and bold in our opposition.

full article here

Is U.S. preparing another war—on Iran?

Is U.S. preparing another war—on Iran?
By Deirdre Griswold
Published Jun 29, 2008 10:39 PM

Israel on June 2 carried out military maneuvers over the eastern Mediterranean. As many as 100 F-16 and F-15 jets supplied to Israel by the Pentagon were involved alongside Israeli helicopters with long-range fuel tanks. The F-16 is a jet fighter also equipped to carry a wide variety of air-to-ground missiles, rockets or bombs.

The target of the exercise was 900 miles from Israel, roughly the same distance as Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz. Numerous news accounts said the maneuvers were a rehearsal for an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

What was Washington’s reaction to Israel’s blatant threat to commit aggression and violate international law with U.S.-supplied weapons?

Two days after the war move, President George W. Bush held a press conference in Washington with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Bush tried to deflect criticism of Israel’s military moves by saying, bizarrely, “Iran is an existential threat to peace.” He might as well have said, “Bring ‘em on!”

Yet another war?

U.S. imperialism is already bogged down in highly unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it is pressuring and bribing other countries to put up troops that the Pentagon can’t provide, short of reinstating the draft and igniting a rebellion among the youth of this country.

Every “sweep” or bombing by U.S. forces, with the inevitable widespread death and destruction that powerful weapons cause, just stiffens the resolve of millions of people in these countries and throughout the region to resist the invaders.

The people of the U.S. have turned decisively against these wars. They remember the lie about Iraq having “weapons of mass destruction” that Bush used to bulldoze support from Congress and the media and which paved the road to invasion.

The U.S. has recently bombed within Pakistan in the name of Bush’s fictitious “war on terror.” It has sponsored an Ethiopian-backed invasion of Somalia, backed up by the CIA and ships of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, including the humongous aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower.

Yet the warmakers in Washington are now brazenly organizing an international campaign of intimidation against Iran, laying the basis for a possible air attack on yet another country. While the Iranian government is taking all these threats very calmly, the potential for the threats to turn into actual aggression is real.

On June 23, undoubtedly after much pressure from Washington, the European Union announced it was imposing sanctions on Iran, including a freeze on the assets of the Melli Bank, the country’s biggest.

Iran has done nothing wrong

The excuse given for all this warlike activity against the country with the world’s fourth-largest known oil reserves is that Washington “suspects” it has a nuclear weapons program. This is such a huge lie that the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad El-Baradei, has threatened to resign if Iran is attacked.

Here are the facts:

Back in 2003, the Iranian government signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Under that treaty, it has the right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

According to the IAEA, which has carried out many inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, there is absolutely no evidence that it is building weapons. Iran has said publicly many times that it has no weapons program and needs to develop nuclear power for the day when its oil starts running out.

With the world demand for oil rising every day, this is a real possibility that all oil-producing countries face. Iran, however, is not a small sheikdom like Kuwait (2.5 million people) or a desert kingdom like Saudi Arabia (27 million), but a country with more than 65 million people and a developing economy that needs energy. Its oil reserves are about 83 percent of Iraq’s, but its population is almost two and a half times as large.

It is not surprising or sinister that it would want to invest in diversifying its energy sources now, at a time when its oil sales are still ample and command a strong price.

On the other hand, everyone knows that Israel does have nuclear weapons. Jane’s Defense Review, which is considered the most authoritative source in the world on this subject, says Israel has up to 200 nuclear warheads and that its nuclear weapons program began in the 1960s. Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician, was abducted by Israeli agents in 1986 for revealing details of this program to the world media.

Israel, unlike Iran, has never signed the non-proliferation treaty or joined the IAEA.

So why isn’t Bush saying that Israel is an “existential threat to world peace”?

Israel is the tail, not the dog

Some rabid anti-Semites in the U.S. say this is because Israel dictates U.S. foreign policy. This is saying that the tail wags the dog. The truth is that the non-Jewish ruling classes in the U.S. and some European countries, especially Britain, have long regarded a Zionist settler state in the Middle East as a potent ally in their struggle to deny the Arab and Persian peoples control over their land and most valuable economic asset—oil.

That is why the U.S. has bankrolled the state of Israel to the tune of $102 billion since 1948. By the Pentagon’s standards, it’s been a cheap way to project U.S. imperialist power in that part of the world. By contrast, the war in Iraq has cost more than $531 billion in five years—and that’s not counting the future costs of disabled veterans and other “collateral” expenses.

Oil companies, the huge transnational banks linked with them and their associated think tanks—like the Rockefeller-funded Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission—have been dominant players in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. They have produced many of the political figures who have persuaded the government to launch wars over this lucrative commodity.

Today, workers in the U.S. are hurting badly over high oil prices. The imperialist war policies of the Bush administration have contributed mightily to this—by creating havoc in Iraq, by the Pentagon’s consumption of vast quantities of oil and by creating an atmosphere akin to panic in the futures markets.

But where is the political opposition to all this? Not in Congress. No one is rising to condemn Bush for using Israel against Iran. No one is linking the oil companies’ record profits—in a time of recession—to U.S. wars of aggression in the Middle East. No one is telling workers here that their enemy is not Iran or Iraq, but ExxonMobil and BP.

In the presidential race, Barack Obama says he’s for negotiations with Iran’s leaders while reiterating his unconditional support for Israel. John McCain goes even further and rejects diplomacy. But diplomacy, it should be said, is only another tactic in imperialism’s overall strategy of world domination. If talks don’t produce the results the imperialists want—in this case, Iran’s capitulation—what comes next? Neither imperialist party rules out military action against Iran.

All this leaves any hope for real struggle against the warmongers on the shoulders of the masses of people themselves. Turning from passive opposition to active resistance is needed more than ever.

For information on mobilizing against a new war on Iran, see www.StopWarOnIran.org.

Sy Hersh: Congress Is Funding Major Escalation in Secret Operations Against Iran

reposted from Alternet:

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on July 1, 2008, Printed on July 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/89963/

Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing Iran’s leadership. This according to a new article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine.

The operations were set out in a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which, by law, must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees. The plan allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from supporting dissident groups to spying on Iran’s nuclear program. full article here

Pentagon faked Iran boat ‘attack’

Anti-war group demands investigation of U.S. war provocation

By Sara Flounders

Published Jan 17, 2008 1:38 AM

The Bush administration has been caught red-handed in manufacturing evidence of a “provocation” off the Iranian coast on Jan. 6, in which five small Iranian open-air speedboats were alleged to have threatened three massive U.S. guided missile warships. The U.S. Navy now admits that audio and videotape given to the media and widely publicized had been spliced together.

What is most ominous in all this is that no major U.S. politician or institution, or any international body, has denounced this dangerous and deceptive move, nor have they called for an inquiry or investigation. Neither the U.S. Congress—now in session—nor any of its committees, all of them now controlled by the Democratic majority elected on an anti-war vote, took action.

With almost half the U.S. Navy hovering off the coast of Iran, this war provocation must be challenged and confronted.

The media is giving wall-to-wall coverage to both Democratic and Republican politicians campaigning in primary elections. Each of these politicians could and should be confronted on where they stand on this Pentagon fraud and what steps they personally plan to take to pursue the matter.

The corporate media in the U.S., which gave the story days of coverage, should also be challenged.

The Stop War on Iran Campaign has taken the first steps. It has begun an emergency alert and petition to demand a full investigation of this war provocation and the illegal war games that the U.S. Navy has been staging in the Persian Gulf. The goal is to prevent President George W. Bush and the Pentagon from using this scenario or another staged operation to launch an attack on Iran.

The Stop War On Iran Campaign has also urged rank-and-file Navy personnel on U.S. ships in the Gulf and officers to reveal what they know of U.S. war preparations and past war games in the region.

Manufacturing a war crisis

For three days before Bush departed on an eight-day trip to the Middle East, the media were full of denunciations of Iran by Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and top generals and Navy commanders, all denouncing Iran for a “dangerous provocation” and “a threat to world peace” based on this phony incident.

On arriving in Israel, even as the story was unraveling, Bush again threatened Iran and ominously warned that “all options are on the table to protect our assets.”

The U.S. Navy has now admitted that the video of the “incident” between the U.S. warships and the Iranian patrol boats was heavily edited and that the threatening voice on it warning “You may explode” may not have belonged to any Iranian sailors. Yet this video was the basis for the latest threats against Iran.

Who manufactured this video? Who spliced together completely different sound and video footage? Who signed off on it? Who distributed it to all the major media? It was viewed and commented on at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

This is hardly the first time that a manufactured U.S. crisis has launched a war.

On Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary of State and former Gen. Colin Powell presented satellite photos to the United Nations to prove that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. This false charge, endlessly repeated, became the justification for the U.S. bombing, invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq.

Before the first Gulf War in 1991, photo images of Iraqi units supposedly massed on the Saudi Arabia border for an invasion also turned out to be totally fraudulent.

Manufactured evidence was also used in the famous Gulf of Tonkin incident, when North Vietnamese Coast Guard boats supposedly attacked two U.S. destroyers off the coast of Vietnam in August 1964. This fraud provided the justification for a congressional resolution authorizing the escalation of the U.S. war against Vietnam.

This latest fabrication comes after a National Intelligence Estimate from 16 top U.S. spy agencies publicly reported that Iran has not had a nuclear weapons program since at least 2003, nor does it possess any nuclear weapons.

This NIE Report exposed to the world a rift within the top levels of the U.S. military and the ruling class, where there is concern that the Bush/Cheney push for a wider war involving Iran would boomerang.

The attempt by the administration to suppress the NIE Report and the fact that it was publicly released are signs of just how overstretched and conflicted the U.S. government is as it faces massive popular resistance in both Iraq and Afghanistan, along with growing instability in Pakistan.

Even after the NIE Report, Bush’s threats on Iran continued unabated. But the U.S. charge of a Jan. 6 Iranian “provocation” began to unravel by Jan. 9 and soon turned into a miniscandal.

Iran charged that the U.S. footage was a “bad fake” and that the audio and video were not even synchronized. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard released its own four-minute video clip showing its two- and three-person, clearly unarmed speed boats asking the U.S. warships to identify the number on their ship and their reason for being in the area. A U.S.-accented voice responded by giving the number of his ship and claiming to be operating in international waters.

Blog commentaries asked the obvious question: Why in the U.S. Navy’s video was there no ambient background noise of water, wind and motors as the small open Iranian boats supposedly made threats to “explode” the warships? This and other discrepancies discredited the U.S. story.

By Jan. 10 the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain cast doubt on the earlier U.S. version of the incident. “There is no way to know where this [radioed threat] exactly came from. It could have come from the shore … or another vessel in the area,” Lt. John Gay told the French Press Agency. Some media speculated the message was from “a prankster.”

But none of the corporate media have even once asked what this deadly array of U.S. warships is doing in the narrow waters off the coast of Iran that are vital to shipping. This is the real issue.

U.S. warships violate international law

The largest and deadliest ships in world history, armed and in attack mode, with targets already selected, are now off the coast of Iran. This is international lawlessness on a grand scale.

Contrary to what the corporate media claim, the conduct of the vast U.S. armada in the Gulf is in explicit and continual violation of international law and United Nations treaties.

According to a Jan. 15 article by Kaveh L. Afrasiabi in Asia Times OnLine, there is no “international water” in the Strait of Hormuz. The two-mile-wide inbound traffic lane there is within Iran’s territorial waters.

Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgiff claimed that the U.S. ships were “five kilometers outside Iranian territorial waters.” This is impossible. Even a voice from one of the U.S. ships says, “I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law,” making it clear that the commanders recognized that they were inside Iranian waters. Peaceful transit through passageways is permitted, according to the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The U.S. has refused to sign this international treaty, along with countless other international agreements, yet it invokes its right to avail itself of convenient parts of the UNCLOS treaty, such as transit for its giant warships through the territorial waters of other countries. On the other hand, the U.S. Navy flagrantly violates the provisions that explicitly prohibit actions like the continual war exercises, nor does it bring its submarines to the surface as required.

U.S. position slipping

Bush’s visits to the Israeli apartheid state and to the occupied Palestinian West Bank confirm that the U.S. president has no solutions and no proposals even worth coverage in the corporate media. U.S. credibility is at an all-time low throughout the Arab world. On a world scale there is a drastic decline in the ability of U.S. imperialism to influence events or impose its colonial solutions.

Even in the United Arab Emirates, Bush’s lecture on democracy to a gathering of oil-rich feudal monarchs, their political appointees, wealthy corporate investors, and police and military functionaries aroused only a perfunctory scattering of applause. By all accounts his efforts to rally support for a U.S.-led Arab alliance to financially squeeze and isolate Iran flopped.

Throughout the region, U.S. puppet rulers fear their own masses and fear standing too close to Bush. For imperialism and for the thin strata of corrupt rulers in the area, the war in Iraq is a disaster. And the war in Afghanistan is in serious disarray. The U.S. alliance with the Pakistani military is in crisis. Israel, Washington’s one totally dependent and usually dependable military outpost, proved unable to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon or even to defeat Hamas by starving and surrounding Gaza.

While each of the many ships in the U.S. armada has the deadly power to destroy entire cities with one launch, the political, diplomatic and economic position of the U.S. is slipping faster than the dollar. This can drive U.S. imperialism to ever more drastic adventures and desperate measures. It is also what silences large sections of the U.S. ruling class and top political leaders of both parties.

The world movement for human progress and all opponents of endless U.S. wars must be on full alert at the possibility of a new, deadly military offensive. They must continue to expose this phony incident off the coast of Iran and confront the U.S. war makers.

ALERT: U.S. war provocation against Iran

Published Jan 9, 2008 9:25 PM

What is an armada of U.S. warships doing off the coast of Iran?

The Pentagon has initiated an extremely dangerous war provocation just off Iran’s coast, in the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S. Navy has gathered nuclear-armed aircraft carriers, guided-missile destroyers, frigates, cruisers and submarines thousands of miles from the U.S. off the coast of Iran.

Isn’t this massive mobilization of deadly, nuclear-armed equipment a major provocation?

On Jan. 6, the U.S. claims a “confrontation” took place between three massive guided-missile U.S. attack vessels and five small, open Iranian speedboats at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Iranian media on Jan. 9 denied the U.S. claims, saying Washington fabricated a video showing the skirmish.

At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is only 34 miles across. However, there is only a 2-mile-wide navigable channel for inbound and outbound tanker traffic, as well as a 2-mile-wide buffer zone. Roughly 40 percent of all globally traded oil supply flows on ships through this narrow chokepoint of water between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

It is essential to take note of when this dangerous “incident” took place. It was on the eve of President George W. Bush’s trip to the region. Bush is expected to spend eight days visiting Kuwait, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. The purpose of his trip is to convince these corrupt, feudal regimes, which are dependent U.S.-client states, that Iran represents a dangerous threat.

Isn’t this threatening trip to the countries surrounding Iran a provocative act?

While the Iranian government has attempted to downplay the incident, Washington has gone out of its way to further threaten Iran. The corporate media has, with one voice, uncritically reported the U.S. charges that what happened was an Iranian “provocation.”

President Bush claimed Iran committed “a provocative act and a dangerous situation.” Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff attacked Iran as “unnecessarily provocative.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described the move as “provocative and dangerous.” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesperson, charged the Iranians with acting in a “reckless and dangerous manner.”

U.S. warships a constant threat

None of the corporate media has even once asked what this deadly array of U.S. warships is doing in this narrow chokehold of vital shipping off the coast of Iran.

The U.S. Navy has again and again held major war games to plan for and stage just such a confrontation with Iran. The Pentagon has announced that it has already set targets on thousands of sites in Iran.

A video released to the media belies the very story that is being drummed up by the Bush administration. It shows five small open-air Iranian speedboats buzzing in the distance, far from the USS Hopper. Iranian boats have every right to patrol and defend their own coastal waters.

It should be noted that, according to the Pentagon’s own description, the USS Hopper is a guided-missile destroyer. It carries an M240 machine gun that can fire 10 armor-piercing projectiles per second and is capable of carrying nuclear missiles that can destroy whole cities. This high-tech ship weighs 8,373 tons and measures 504 feet in length. It was traveling in convoy with the USS Port Royal—a guided-missile cruiser that weighs 9,600 tons fully loaded and has a length of 567 feet and is also capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles—and the guided-missile frigate USS Ingraham, weighing 4,100 tons and measuring 445 feet in length.

These three deadly ships are just a small part of the U.S. Navy armada arrayed off the Iranian coast, which includes aircraft carriers that can carry out prolonged bombing missions. In addition, heavy armor and military supplies for the U.S. occupation in Iraq and other Gulf countries pass through the channel aboard U.S. Navy-owned, U.S.-flagged and foreign-flagged ships.

The Bush administration has continued to threaten Iran even since 16 of the top U.S. spy agencies publicly released a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran has no nuclear program, at least since 2003, nor nuclear weapons. This NIE Report was a public rift within the top levels of the U.S. military and the ruling class, who are concerned that the Bush/Cheney push for a wider war involving Iran would boomerang.

The attempt by the administration to suppress the NIE Report and the fact that it was publicly released are signs of just how overstretched the Pentagon is as it faces massive popular resistance in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Bush, speaking to the press after the release of the NIE report, could only say, “Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will continue to be dangerous.” Bush’s trip to the region is seen as another attempt to ratchet up a confrontation with Iran. Just before departing, Bush’s repetitive message was: “Iran was a threat, Iran is a threat, and Iran will continue to be a threat.”

Gulf of Tonkin ‘incident’ in 1964

It is important to remember that the massive U.S. bombing of Vietnam and the Johnson administration’s escalation of the war was preceded by reports of an attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam—which years later was finally admitted to be phony.

On Aug. 2 and 4, 1964, the Pentagon claimed that small Vietnamese boats had fired on the USS Maddox and another destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin. Lyndon Johnson used this “attack” as pretext for ramming a resolution through Congress giving him the power and funds to wage war on Vietnam.

Johnson’s own papers later revealed it was a fraud, and then Defense Secretary Robert McNamara admitted in the film “Fog of War” that the whole incident had been phony.

The U.S. military has prepared a plan to attack more than 10,000 possible targets inside Iran, which could destroy the country’s entire infrastructure.

Nearly all the Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress, including the present major contenders for the presidential nomination, voted for resolutions against Iran. In a staged or fraudulent confrontation with Iran, with wild charges from the corporate-owned media, Congressional opposition is highly unlikely.

It is vital that the anti-war movement be on full alert regarding the danger of wider war with Iran. It could well start, as it did in Vietnam, with a staged “provocation.”

As in both Vietnam and in Iraq today, once the Pentagon initiates a war of colonial conquest it can drag on for many years at a cost of millions of lives and untold destruction. But in the long run the popular determination to resist occupation is more powerful than the Pentagon’s deadliest weapons.