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Prior to the invasion of Iraq a US poll indicated that some 75% of Americans would support a war if it could be demonstrated that the country had, or was developing nuclear weapons. This paved the way for Condoleezza Rice's fear-mongering yet completely unfounded statement that she hoped the smoking gun would not turn out to be a mushroom cloud. Is it any wonder therefore that the Bush administration is once again pushing all the right nuclear 'panic' buttons over its next target, Iran?...
At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn. That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran's nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world's fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly. Will the world's central banks then begin to shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar?
Like the invasion of Iraq, an attack on Iran has a secret agenda that has nothing to do with the Tehran regime's imaginary weapons of mass destruction. That Washington has managed to coerce enough members of the International Atomic Energy Agency into participating in a diplomatic charade is no more than reminiscent of the way it intimidated and bribed the "international community" into attacking Iraq in 1991.
Iran offers no "nuclear threat". There is not the slightest evidence that it has the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has repeatedly said his inspectors have found nothing to support American and Israeli claims. Iran has done nothing illegal; it has demonstrated no territorial ambitions nor has it engaged in the occupation of a foreign country - unlike the United States, Britain and Israel. It has complied with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to allow inspectors to "go anywhere and see anything" - unlike the US and Israel. The latter has refused to recognise the NPT, and has between 200 and 500 thermonuclear weapons targeted at Iran and other Middle Eastern states.
Those who flout the rules of the NPT are America, Britain and their anointed friends. Both India and Pakistan have developed their nuclear weapons secretly and in defiance of the treaty. The Pakistani military dictatorship has openly exported its nuclear technology. In Iran's case, the excuse that the Bush regime has seized upon is the suspension of purely voluntary "confidence-building" measures that Iran agreed with Britain, France and Germany in order to placate the US and show that it was "above suspicion". Seals were placed on nuclear equipment following a concession given, some say foolishly, by Iranian negotiators and which had nothing to do with Iran?s obligations under the NPT.
At the same time, Iran has lived with the real threat of an Israeli attack, possibly with nuclear weapons, about which the "international community" has remained silent. Recently, one of Israel's leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, wrote: "Obviously, we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I don't know if they?re developing them, but if they're not developing them, they're crazy."
But what of Iran's promise of "a crushing response"? Last year, the Pentagon delivered 500 "bunker-busting" bombs to Israel. Will the Israelis use them against a desperate Iran?
Bush's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review cites "pre-emptive" attack with so-called low-yield nuclear weapons as an option. Will the militarists in Washington use them, if only to demonstrate to the rest of us that, regardless of their problems with Iraq, they are able to "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major-theatre wars", as they have boasted? That a British prime minister should collude with even a modicum of this insanity is cause for urgent action on this side of the Atlantic.
At all times keep in mind the fact that Iran is a willing signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), and despite claims that it must be 'brought into line' and statements that the international community is 'sending a strong message', Iran is not actually in breach of anything. Just as the 'babies being ripped from incubators in Kuwait' story was later shown to be wholly untrue many people still think it really happened. Proof once again that if a lie is repeated often enough it becomes an accepted fact.
The truth is that the only nuclear 'crisis' surrounding Iran at the moment comes from Israel - a country that cannot be in breach of the NPT having refused to sign it and yet has upwards of 200 nuclear weapons pointed out into the Arab world (all developed without one IAEA inspector having ever set foot in the country), and from the US administration itself - with 'low yield' battlefield nuclear weapons (low yield, amazingly, being defined as 80% the size of the Hiroshima bomb).
It's not hard to see a scenario unfold in the near future whereby Israel attacks Iran, and if Iran retaliates (name me one country that wouldn't) then the US cavalry will ride in with their missiles to in order to 'protect' their ally, the aggressor, Israel.
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