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TechnoratiCondoleezza Rice's declaration of Iran's complicity in terrorism looks like another step on the White House's march to war.
The US has opened up a new front in its now sharply accelerated war drive on Iran. The announcement last week by Condoleezza Rice, branding Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization, and imposing the strongest sanctions yet since 1979 Iranian Revolution, alarmed several democratic presidential candidates who described it as an indication that the White House had begun its "march to war".
In his article in today's Guardian, Max Hastings correctly predicts that within six months these sanctions could only lead to a military attack on Iran, a prospect that he opposes. However, he plays right into the hands of warmongers by giving unequivocal support to the two main US accusations against Iran:
"Few strategists dispute either that Iranian revolutionaries are playing a prominent role in frustrating the stabilization of Iraq, or that Iran is doing its utmost to build nuclear weapons."
These are precisely the allegations that are used by the neoconservatives and Israel to demonize the Revolutionary Guards and the government of Ahmadinejad, justify the latest sanctions and pave the way for a military attack.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is an army of 125,000 and an indispensable part of the Iranian military. It was formed during the eight-year war waged against the Islamic Republic by Saddam Hussein, who was at the time fully supported by the US and its European allies. With this historic role in defeating foreign aggression, the Corps occupies a special place in the Islamic Republic, has a large domain of operation and runs a significant part of the economy.
The US designation is the first time in international relations that a military body of a sovereign state is branded as terrorist. Given the Revolutionary Guards' credibility in defending the country, the US measures will be seen in the eyes of ordinary people as an attack by the US on Iran's sovereignty, along the lines of the US-UK engineered coup against the democratically elected government of Dr Mossadegh in 1953.
As a justification for the new sanctions against Iranian banks, companies and individuals, Rice accused the Revolutionary Guards of being "proliferators of WMD". This accusation has been repeatedly contradicted by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr ElBaradei's unambiguous assertions that there is absolutely no evidence of a nuclear weaponization program in Iran. In August, the IAEA cleared Iran of its plutonium experiments and confirmed the peaceful nature of all of Iran's declared enrichment activities.
"We have not come to see any undeclared activities or weaponization of their program", Dr Mohammad ElBaradei said in September, "Nor have we gotten intelligence to that effect." This Sunday, he repeated the same assertion in a CNN interview.
But Rice's accusation against the Revolutionary Guards is not only totally unfounded, it turns the truth outrageously on its head. Throughout its eight-year war of aggression, the Iraqi army used chemical weapons on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, soldiers and civilians. The US was complicit in both the proliferation and the use of WMD against the Revolutionary Guards, who were amongst the 52,000 Iranian victims of this war crime.
In response to the latest US measures against Iran, Vladimir Putin, who along with the Chinese, has refused to back further sanctions against Iran, saying: "Running around like a mad man with a blade in one's hand is not the best way to solve such problems."
Also, Rice's accusation against the Quds force, a division of the Revolutionary Guards, of support for terrorism in Iraq and beyond, is in sharp contrast to British government's own evidence. David Miliband, the foreign secretary, in an interview with the Financial Times in July admitted that there was no evidence of Iranian involvement in the violence and instability in Iraq. Afghanistan's foreign minister has recently contradicted the US accusations against Iran by pointing out that there is no evidence for Iran arming the Taliban forces. Prime Minister Maliki and President Karzai too have repeatedly stressed Iran's positive role in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The unfounded allegations by the US and Rice's declaration to the Congress that Iran was "perhaps the single greatest challenge" for US security, is part of the unmistakable chorus of war from the US administration, following Bush's invocation of the "World War III" and Cheney's threat of "serious consequences" for Iran, the week previously. It is an ominous indication that the voices of dialogue have been decidedly drowned by the war camp who are pushing for a military attack on Iran.
In Britain, Gordon Brown has been quick to support the latest US measures and refused to rule out the military option. The new sanctions will not avert the military option by the US, as a number of leading politicians in the UK, France and Germany claim, but would only be the prelude to a military attack. Brown is placing Britain in the path of another unprovoked and illegal war with catastrophic consequences for the people of Iran, the region and the whole world.
Seymour Hersh wrote in a recent article in the New Yorker that this summer in a closed circuit video discussion between Bush and Ian Crocker, the US ambassador in Iraq, Bush said that he wanted all along the border inside Iran to be bombed and that "the British were on board".
The British public should wake up to the disastrous foreign policy the UK government is continuing to pursue after the invasion of Iraq and urgently demand their MPs to table an emergency motion in the House of Commons to oppose sanctions and any military attack on Iran.
Abbas Edalat is professor of computer science and mathematics at Imperial College London and founder of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran. Mehrnaz Shahabi is a journalist and executive editor of www.campaigniran.org.
© 2007 The Guardian
16 Comments so far
Show AllTurning truth on its head is a favorite trick of the capitalists (the American government is simply the governing body of the capitalists, and the American military their enforcement arm, with of course the American media as their propaganda arm - but that's all another story) - there are a few more examples here - 'Perverse Capitalist Lies' - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/dlp/box/app5-perverse.html
@HabitatVic: Understood. I guess we were just saying the same thing in different ways. But you add an important point about the propaganda misdirection. Thanks.
Arvy,
My fault for not being clearer. Yes, I absolutely agree that today's actions are likely predicated on getting that oil flowing to the US ten years from now. If anything, PNAC/neocons/Christofacists are very long term thinking (compared to much of the rest of the US politicians). Witness their long march to power, politically and otherwise.
My concern is when the Repubs will try a misdirection on the US public: Invade for oil? What oil? WE hardly get any from Iraq and don't even get any from Iran!
It will be yet another example of misdirection/propaganda from the right wingers.
No one should have expectations of the U.S. backing off. As far as they are concerned, they are now fighting for the survival of their system. They made their best play and, even though they were too stupid to know how to make it work, they will continue with their ill-fated strategy until they go down in flames like those disgraceful French at Dien Bien Phu or Hitler at his bunker in Berlin because that is what their stupid kind do when all is lost. They continue their losing effort way beyond reasonable expectation of success and take everybody involved down with them because that way they can't be held responsible if it is everybody's loss and everybody's fault. Bernard B. Fall reports, in his seminal work "Hell in a Very Small Place", copyright 1966, on the final conversation between General Cogny, from France, and General de Castries, in the sodden command bunker in Vietnam.
Gen. Cogny: "Tell me, old boy, this has to be finished now, of course, but not in the form of a capitulation. That is forbidden to us. There can be no hoisting of the white flag, the fire has to die of it's own, but do not capitulate. That would mess up all that you have done that is magnificent until now."
Gen. de Castries: "All right, General. I only wanted to preserve the wounded."
Gen. Cogny: "Yes; however, I do have a piece of paper. I haven't got the right to authorize you to capitulate. Well you'll do as best you can-but this must not end by a white flag. What you have done is too fine for that. You understand, old boy?"
The crass AFP tricked it out for it's history minded public, May 8, 1954.
Gen. Cogny: "You will fight to the end. There is no question about raising the white flag over Dien Bien Phu after your heroic resistance."
Don't overlook an ominous second significance in the Kyl-Lieberman bill designating the Quds force to be an international terrorist organization, beyond that legislation's function as a lead up to another preventive war: by a magic stroke of the pen, the Revolutionary Guards ceased to be soldiers in the armed forces of another sovereign nation, and instead were transformed into "enemy combatants" in the brave new world of Bushspeak.
Note too that the Iranian parliament promptly responded to Kyl-Lieberman a couple days later by passing its own mirror image, equally adolescent sabre rattling measure. It declared that henceforth, the US Army and the CIA were deemed to be international terrorist organizations.
All this would be mostly just more dangerous jingoism and posturing, but for the reality that (as Sy Hersh and others have reported) for months the US has been repositionining special forces near the Iraq-Iranian border, and clandestinely stirring up and arming Kurdish and other regional tribal factions inside Iran that are hostile to the Tehran mullahs.
So what do you think is going to happen when there are border incursion clashes, or Bush triggers a shock & awe bombing campaign against Iran, and the Persian troops retaliate against US forces stationed in Iraq?
Thanks to the 2002 gutting of the Geneva Conventions by Alberto Gonzales, Bush, Cheney, and the GWOT true believers, any American GI's unfortunate enough to be taken captive in a US-Iranian battlefield encounter are vulnerable to no longer being considered POW's, but terrorists.
So when (heaven forbid) we are subjected to the repulsive spectacle of a captured US soldier or Marine being beheaded in some Shiite militia's snuff video, be sure to remember to hold President Bush, Alberto Gonzales, Senator Kyl, Senator Lieberman, and the other recent enablers (yes, Hillary) personally accountable.
Chickenhawks, too, can circle back and come home to roost.
Bill from Saginaw
[quote]Habitat Vic October 30th, 2007 7:26 pm -- That's not to say that the US doesn't have designs on Iraqi and/or Iranian oil. Just not today.[/quote]
I think that may be a slight oversimplification.
First, it implies that those driving U.S. policies aren't doing so as far down the road as 8-10 years. I would grant you a great amount of short-sightedness on their part, but they seem much more perspecacious when it involves their own interests.
Secondly, and almost certainly more important, it's not just a question of immediate U.S. needs for oil for itself alone. The CONTROL of petroleum resources needed worldwide is a critical factor in the broader context of geopolitcal gamesmanship, especially with respect to actual and potential competitor nations, reserve currency status, and so on.
The United States is unquestionably not only the largest organized criminal syndicate in the world, but the largest and most dangerous terrorist organization. It wants nothing less than complete economic world domination. Any country in possession of coveted US resources such as oil that does not arm itself with nuclear weapons is sitting in the US cross-hairs. Iraq and Iran are proof positive.
Actually the US does not buy
ANY oil from Iran (hasn't since 1979). Iran certaily sells to other US allies, as well as Russia and China.
The play for oil - whether Iraqi or Iranian - is 8-10 years down the road (when peak oil and diminished US reserves are really impacting supplies). For the year so far, Iraq is the US' seventh largest supplier of oil; about 2.5% of our total daily consumption, or about 4% of our daily imports of 22mB. In order, the largest US oil imports come from: Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Angola, then Iraq (though Angola is slipping). Data here: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbblpd...
That's not to say that the US doesn't have designs on Iraqi and/or Iranian oil. Just not today.
I think we have finally put that old adage to bed:
"You can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people all the time."
Problem is the "some" is the majority of the population.
[quote]Dichterfreund October 30th, 2007 12:40 pm -- And what is Hillary's comment: There is no doubt (she repeats) that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard supports terrorism. But her lie is better than a Republican lie because it's a Democrat who's repeating it.[/quote]
I think you may actually have discovered the true meaning of "government of the people, by the people, for the people" in the self-proclaimed "greatest democracy on earth." Every four years "corporate persons" decide which "opposing candidates" to support and "the people" (i.e., natural persons) are allowed to choose whether to get screwed by Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee.
It may be slightly better that the "freedom and demoncracy" that the U.S. exports to other nations by force of arms, but only insofar as they aren't using depleted uranium, napalm, cluster bombs and white phosphorous to coerce acceptance by domestic "beneficiaries" -- yet. So far, they haven't had to.
Check out HR 1955..in the Senate now. Watch those comments and thoughts. Life imitating the art and prophesy of 1984. And it doesn't matter what you think, say or write. It's what THEY say is your intention. If my thought dreams could be seen, they would probably put my head in a guillotine....RZ.......See you in the gulag!
If Iran wants a nuclear weapon they will have one sooner or later. I do not understand why the Americans do not believe the Iranians when they say they have no desire for owning or making one. Besides, it would not be necessary for Iran to even make one because now the Russians are going to back them up and help them rebuild should the Americans do something as insane as invading Iran. Unfortunately, an invasion of Iran will probably happen as the USA feels the need to have the world revolve around it. Like screaming children, the Americans must have their way in foreign relations in order to be wasteful materialistic, greedy, arrogant hypocrites.
Why is the IRG considered a terrorist group in the USA? I believe your minutemen and your ICE agents are terrorists. What do you have to say about that opinion Americans? Hmmmm? Ramos and Compeon deserved what came to them too :-)
Iran deserves to make money also. Why is it ok for the Americans to sell weapons to its enemies but NOT ok for Iran to sell weapons to only their allies?
Because you are USA and you say so. No wonder the USA loses allies throughout the world. Americans should feel happy that Iran is still selling oil to them.
There is no question that the US government is the creator and supporter of terrorism worldwide. In fact, all those not addicted to Fox News know that the US and its CIA have been and are the number one terrorists in the world today. These proven liars and their enablers in the Congress bring shame to the American people. There is no honor left for them in the world. They are just a bunch of thugs and leeches that live on the blood of the innocent civilians.
These thugs falsely claim that they like the Iranian people, but are only against their government. Bullshit. That's what they said before embarking on their criminal adventure in Iraq, but the first things they bombed were the civilian infrastructures. These fascist thugs don't even care about their own people. They're so scared of their people that they constantly keep spying on them.
Let these democracy and freedom fakers attack Iran and get a bloody nose that will never heal. Let the thugs attack Iran and live the rest of their miserable lives in fear because somehow, sometime, somewhere, the survivors will surely bring justice to them and their families. They will not be far away, and will not be able to hide. So, let's roll and rumble.
Condo is marching to PNAC and AIPAC's orders. Iran needs no nukes when they have Russia's, China's and even European country's nukes poised to defend THEIR share of Iran's oil.
Condi like the rest of this evil cabal, is thrashing about trying to blend the WMD threat, you know, the "dog that wouldn't hunt," with the "they're killing our troops threat." It's supposed to be face-saving. We can't just drop the "nuclear threat" fear card entirely since they kept saying it over and over despite evidence to the contrary. So now they'll try a new tack, but layer it over the other so as to give the illusion of some consistency, while at the same time. enhance their argument. They are relentless in their pursuit of violent confrontation. We have to keep refusing to buy it at every step.
And what is Hillary's comment: There is no doubt (she repeats) that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard supports terrorism.
But her lie is better than a Republican lie because it's a Democrat who's repeating it.