Destroyer of Worlds - Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

We commemorate today the dropping of the atomic bomb, code-named Little Boy, by the US Air Force on the Japanese city of Hiroshima seventy years ago. Along with one dropped on Nagasaki a few days later, it killed tens of thousands of people, left many more with severe burns, radiation sickness and later generations with genetic illnesses. It heralded the beginning of a new nuclear age where once the USSR had also acquired these weapons, a balance of terror appropriately termed Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) existed for over four and a half decades between the world's two main superpowers.

It is difficult to judge from this distance in history about the motives and reasons of 1945: Nazi Germany was working hard to create an atomic bomb and so it followed the Allies did the same. At the time, because of its hitherto unimagined power, many thought it would make war obsolete because of the consequences of a nuclear exchange. Even Gandhi initially welcomed it for this perceived reason, but its actual use in 1945 was enough in itself to cause Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who led the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb, to question what had been done.

And indeed any thoughts of benefit were soon to be disavowed: the weapons became bigger and ever more powerful to the tens and hundreds of times the power of the Hiroshima bomb, but the wars continued and grew worse. In Korea, in Malaysia, in Vietnam and the Middle East and then all across the southern hemisphere as proxy armies for the USA and USSR battled over the corpses of millions. There was no direct confrontation, but the military in the USA began to develop the ludicrous concept of limited or tactical nuclear war and the line between conventional and nuclear weapons became blurred. Both the UK and USA, for example, used depleted uranium tipped missiles in Serbia in the 1990s and in Iraq in 2003 and subsequently. DU is a by-product of the enrichment process used to make nuclear weapons.

The consequences for the local population have been insidiously devastating - birth defects in Iraq have rocketed since the 2003 invasion with the most obvious reason being the prevalence of DU-related radiation from munitions used in urban zones. The rate of genetic defects and mutations, as well as related illnesses such as cancer, is considerably worse in parts of Iraq now than thosd measured in post-1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (More information HERE; caution contains extremely graphic and upsetting images)

"Highly stimulating" -  Dr Strangelove satirised the atomic fetish

The fetishistic attachment of some political leaders to nuclear missiles has been satirised many times over, perhaps most powerfully by Peter Sellars in Dr Strangelove, but it is a case where real life has at times been too extreme to be believable.

This last few weeks, we have seen a potential breakthrough in limiting the spread of these awful weapons. Although it is questionable whether Iran has been planning on building its own nuclear bomb, an outline agreement with the international community paves the way to halt any such possibility. The US Congress Republicans have been indicating hostility to the agreement, but as President Obama has observed, rejecting it would leave them with the sole option of fighting yet another war in the Middle East.

Iran, centre, & where nuclear bombs are in the Middle East

There are now more nuclear weapons states than ever - Iran is surrounded by them, with Israel holding the largest arsenal in the Middle East and steadfastly refusing to let anyone from the UN inspect it. India and Pakistan have atomic bombs and Saudi Arabia almost certainly has the capacity to create one. Only South Africa and some of the former Soviet states have ever renounced their nuclear weapons, while the British political establishment is hell-bent on renewing our Trident nuclear system at huge cost - as much as £100 billions even although the global scene is now so changed from when it was originally acquired.

There is enough weaponry on the planet to eradicate all life five or six times over within a few hours. In order to carry on living, we may put this fact to the back of our minds, but the awful truth is that by this time tomorrow, we could be extinct along with every other living thing. Indeed, in 1983, technical accident almost led to an all-out holocaust had it not been for the prompt and courageous thinking of a sole Soviet officer, Stanislav Petrov, who realised just in time what was happening.

So the real remembrance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should not simply be to solemnly remember the dead. It must also be to determine now more than ever that the greatest testament to those who perished would be if humanity does indeed work to renounce and remove these planet-killing weapons once and for all.

Moviewatch and The Coming War On Iran

Israeli Options: possible strike routes to Iran by the Israeli Defence Force (graphic from Heartland Geopolitics)

The British Sunday Times today carried a low level report that in the recent Cabinet reshuffle, the Lib Dem Defence Minister, Nick Harvey, was dismissed to make it easier for his party leader, Nick "Cordite" Clegg, to give his blessing to an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear development facilities. Whatever the truth of Harvey's dismissal, the evidence is clear - the Israelis are continually heightening the chatter around their claims of having a right to attack Iran; only today, Israeli PM Netanyahu has stated that Iran is building a nuclear bomb and must be resisted, while President Obama has repeatedly indicated use of force to be an option. Meanwhile the American and British military are positioning themselves to counter any Iranian retaliation and in particular any use of the Iranian navy to blockade the narrow Straits of Homuz at the far end of the Persian Gulf, which would close off western access to key sources of Saudi and Kuwaiti oil. An attack is not far away.

In spite of Iran's repeated assurances that it is not developing nuclear weaponry (a claim largely supported by all the neutral assessments and evidence available), Israel is keen to strike - as are various Sunni dictatorships, such as Saudi and Bahrain, whose Governments (Wikileaks has shown us) have long petitioned for a western-backed assault on the Shia lands of Persian Iran. The period up to the US elections have long been seen as a prime time for an assault, with the narrative being that any US Presidential candidates, rather than opposing or criticising an attack, will instead vie with each other to show support for plucky little Tel Aviv. 

The current round of anti-western riots sweeping various Muslim countries  may well be used as a suspiciously useful pretext for the long-awaited attack. Unreported in the mainstream media is the growing view by many well-researched activists on the Net that the frankly bizarre video at the centre of the riots was not the production of the Egyptian-born con man, Nakoula Bassey, presented to the media. Rather it is the work of one Jimmy Israel, a film-maker  who goes under the pseudonym "Sam Bacile" and who originally cited Israeli backers as the funders of the film. And, in turn, the man who translated the film into Arabic, giving it the boost to reach a mainly Muslim audience, was Morris Sadek, who is closely aligned to the pro-Israeli neocons in the US Republican Party. Both Sadek has obvious interests in whipping up any situation that strengthens the hand of the pro-war argument on Iran; while Nakoula, nominally (and usefully) a Coptic Christian, is clearly motivated by money alone - as witness the previous work he has carried out for people with strong links to Islamic activists.

Predictably, the Western media dutifully parrots the line that Iran should not have nuclear weapons and that, because of President Ahmadinejad's reported hostility to Israel, any attack by the IDF's airplanes or missiles will be justified. If there was any truth to his alleged comments - that Ahmadinejad said, "Israel must be wiped off the map", it might be possible to have some sympathy for Israel; but the plain truth is that he has never uttered these words. What he did say was ”Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.” This literally translates from Farsi to English as “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” Neither the words "Israel", nor "map", nor "wiped from" feature - nor indeed was he making his own statement, but quoting from a much older speech by Ayatollah Khomeini. There is, consequently, a huge difference between opposing a specific regime, or government, and seeking to obliterate a country or race of people - and the comment in any case is specific to the illegal occupation of Jerusalem, not the existence of Israel or the Jewish people.

Yet while the Israeli Government and the western media repeatedly quote a quote that was never made, they completely ignore the pretty unambiguous statement by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in 2006 that: "We have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state.”

In any case, even setting aside Iran's insistence that it is developing nuclear energy for the time when its oil reserves diminish, if like the USA and the UK, you claim nuclear deterrence works, why on Earth would Iran not develop nuclear weapons? It is, after all, surrounded by nuclear weapon states - Pakistan and India, as well as US forces in Afghanistan, to its east; Russia to the north; to the south, American forces ranged across the Gulf states in support of Saudi and its allies; and, to the west, Israel, its 200 warheads making it one of the biggest nuclear weapons states on the planet.

Iran is surrounded by hostile nuclear weapons' states or forces.

It seems it is ok for these states, all of whom have launched aggressor wars in recent decades, to have nuclear weapons. Iran, by contrast, in spite of not actually having developed a nuclear weapon yet and having not invaded another country since 1826, is fair game for an attack. Ironic beyond all measure, Israeli generals have even been contemplating exploding a high altitude nuclear pulse weapon above Iran to "blast it back to the Stone Age". All with at least the tacit approval of the USA and its British allies (the Israeli military is 20% funded by the US taxpayer) - and even the British Lib Dem leader, whose party once prided itself on its opposition to the Iraq war, appears to be clearing the way to at least not be too opposed to the latest military adventure.

How in any deluded scenario an assault on Iran is going to make the world more peaceful, or help to reconcile the Muslim and Western worlds, only the insane neurons in the helmet-heads of the Israeli and US military can possibly explain. These, of course, are the same men (and nearly all of them are men) who gave us the lie of the Weapons of Mass Destruction justification for invading Iraq. Given the monstrous dissimulation perpetrated to launch that war, who is to say they and their associates would not happily create a new crisis such as the one we are currently witnessing to pave the way for a "necessary" bomb-run or missile strike on Iran?

These men, we are told, are the guardians and saviours of our civilisation and way of life. And in hours, days or at most a few weeks, they will unleash the means of that salvation on the people of Iran.

Only we can stop them: protest now; contact your representatives and MPs, get active. Thousands of Israeli citizens are taking action by petitioning Israeli pilots to refuse to take part in bombing Iran. Please join them by signing the anti-war petition from the American Peace Movement here!

Just like Iraq and Libya, the threatened military adventure is about assaulting dissenting states - it is not about democracy or peace, as witnessed by America's continued support for vicious regimes in Saudi and Bahrain. The American neocons who did so much damage and took so many lives in Iraq are the real movers behind this latest aggression. Don't let them away with it again!

Between A Rock and A Hard Place - The Syrian Mirage

Men are huddled, naked and bleeding, by a wall as a crowd swarms around them, ready for the kill. A few moments later, gunfire blazes and they lie dead, butchered by a mob of supposedly democratic rebels.

This then is the face of "free Syria" - revealed today in a sickening video just as it is announced that the rebels have now received heavy armaments and surface-to-air missiles from anonymous donors via Turkey. And who are these patrons of the allegedly peace and freedom loving insurgents battling the Assad regime in Aleppo and Damascus?

None other, it seems, than our old friends, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. That's right, the same regimes that have sponsored the bloody crackdown on democracy protesters in Bahrain, and just last week in one of Saudi's eastern provinces. The enlightened despots, promoting a deeply fundamentalist strain of Wahabist Islamism, are funding the increasingly violent assault against the secular regime of Baathist Syria, just as previously they sponsored and, in Qatar's case, sent troops to support the battle against Gaddaffi's Libya and interfered in Iraq. They are even paying a wage to rebel fighters - all to advance their particular form of faith, probably the most repressive in the Muslim world and one disavowed by hundreds of millions of Muslims.

Just as the fall of the secular Libyan regime saw the al-Qaeda flag hauled above a courthouse in Benghazi, so violent jihadists are flocking to Syria, set on turning the country into the latest arena in their long war: and, it seems, with at least the passive support of the West. The Assad regime, which has long campaigned against fundamentalism, among other measures banning the niqab and hijab in universities, is particularly disliked by Islamists - just as was Gaddaffi.

Why? What possible motive could there be for the USA and its European allies to connive, albeit covertly,  with the very people they have spent so much time and squandered so many lives, military and civilian, in the mountains of Afghanistan?

Syria under Bashar al-Assad and his late father has of course been no picnic - the regime has been brutal and repressive itself (and indeed almost certainly was behind the Lockerbie bombing rather than the Libyans). Yet in terms of personal freedom, especially for women and minority faiths (its has one of the largest Christian populations in the Middle East) it is light years apart from the monolithic dictatorship of the Kingdom of Ibn Saud. Its military opponents, while masquerading as democrats, have ranks filled with mainly people from a fairly narrow segment of the Sunni section of the Syrian community; this is why Shia Muslims, Alawites and Christians - as well as many Sunnis- have stayed loyal to the Assad regime, deeply anxious about precisely what form their "liberation" might take.

Yet America and the UK especially keep parroting the line that Assad must go, weeks ago destroying the Kofi Annan peace plan that might have fumbled its way towards some sort of peaceful, negotiated settlement. Repeatedly, they have taken at face value the often spurious claims - on a number of occasions shown to be downright lies - made by the Free Syrian Army, and they have ignored the calls by a wide range of other opposition groups inside and outside the country for a negotiated path to be followed. Instead, just as Iraq unravelled into bloody sectarian conflict, the West and its fundamentalist allies in the Gulf seem intent on providing the rebels with the means of turning a low level conflict into a bitter and bloody conflagration out of which who knows what horrors may emerge.

But peace and democracy is not what any of this is about. Rather, it is about neutralising an opponent of Israel and an ally of Iran in the wider geopolitical game played by the White House. As it skirts round and round Iran in ever decreasing circles, readying to strike, what is more obvious than ever is America's willingness to let millions suffer war simply to punish those regimes which, unlike Saudi and Qatar, dare to refuse to comply with US foreign policy.

As for their domestic policies, Washington is as unconcerned about the rights of Arabs under the Ibn Sauds as it was unfazed by the repression of regimes like Somoza's Nicaragua and Pinochet's Chile. It has never yet criticised Saudi Arabia for its oppressive regime, which reaches into the most private aspects of the Kingdom's subjects' lives, and it stood aside while Saudi troops assisted Bahrain in crushing democracy protests almost at the gates of the biggest US military overseas base in the world.

Just today, Iran was joined to al-Qaeda and the Taliban by a US judge who ruled it should pay compensation for the 9/11 atrocity - completely ignoring the fact that Bin Laden and his Taliban allies have always been sworn enemies of Tehran and Iran lent the US vital support both in capturing scores of al-Qaeda suspects and persuading the Northern Alliance to ally with the USA in the Afghan invasion. But of course, a similar, equally spurious claim was made against Saddam just before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

So we know what to expect next and, as former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, unapologetically told the BBC about US policy in the Arab world not so long ago, "It's not about democracy. It never has been."

Nuclear Weapons That Can Hit London: from Israel

Who is the real threat?

ISRAEL:
- has invaded its neighbours countless times: Jordan (1951), Egypt (1956), Egypt, Syria and Jordan (1967), Lebanon (1978), Lebanon (1982- 1984), occupied Lebanon (1984-1990), Lebanon (2006) and Gaza (2009).
- has repeatedly intervened in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank and Gaza, besieging their inhabitants, bulldozing thousands of houses and constructing huge barriers and walls to hem people into large concentration camps
- carried out airstrikes on Iraq's nuclear energy reactors in 1981
- sponsored terrorist organisations - supporting Hamas to undermine the PLO
- carried out terrorist attacks, car bombing four Iranian scientists in the last few years, as well as being involved in assassinations and abductions around the world, often in collusion with the US and "friendly" Arab dictatorships
- has attacked and seized aid ships in international waters, killing several unarmed occupants - even including attacking a US warship and killing 34 American sailors.
- has developed a large arsenal of nuclear weapons - well over 200, making it the fourth or fifth largest nuclear weapons state in the world. In this, it was helped by France and Britain in the 1960s. It has never admitted to having nuclear weapons, but their existence was revealed in the 1980s by the former nuclear technician, Mordechai Vannunu, who was jailed for his troubles. Israel is believed to have developed or be developing a longe range missile - the Jerhico 3 - that will have a reach of over 5,000km, making it feasible to target and hit London; maybe even within the fabled 45 minutes Tony Blair lyingly claimed for Saddam Hussein's non-exisent WMDs.
- has repeatedly refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and refuses all access by the International Atomic Energy Authority to its civilian and military sites
- receives over $8 millions every day from the US in military aid.

OR

IRAN:
- has not invaded a neighbouring state (or any other country) in nearly three centuries
- has no current links to any international terrorist organisations: it did sponsor Hizbollah in Lebanon for a time, but somewhat at arms-length and bearing in mind that Hizbollah (now a peaceful, mainstream political party with support across the faith divides) was formed in response to the Israeli invasions of the Lebanon. But there is only very patchy evidence linking Iran to any other violent acts in other countries - some Iranian elements may have been involved with some Shia groups in Iraq in the middle of the last decade, but this was after the US had invaded and largely destroyed the country on their doorstep. In fact, after 9/11, Iran arrested and handed over scores of al-Qaeda suspects to the USA.
- has no nuclear weapons
- has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and has allowed International Atomic Energy Authority officials to inspect its nuclear facilities
- receives no funding from the USA.

Any attack on Iran will be self-defeating, massively damaging in human costs, and will make a difficult situation far worse. President Obama originally promised to extend the hand of friendship to Iran, but quickly his outstretched palm clenched into a fist, his intransigence aiding rather than hindering the elements in Iran that do favour confrontation and understandably rallying Iranians to an anti-American position. Bear in mind many Iranians can still remember the toppling of Iran's first democratically elected government by the CIA and MI6 back in 1953 when it dared to nationalise the British and American owned oil industry. Premier Mossadeq was put under house arrest for life and the Shah was reinstated to become an absolute monarch employing brutal terror and repression against his people.

But above all, an attack on Iran for developing nuclear weapons it does not have by the only nuclear weapons state in the Middle East - Israel - will isolate tens of millions of Muslims and others there and around the world even further from a West that increasingly functions very openly on the basis of total self-interest and hypocrisy. The key issue here is simply wanting to ensure the continued compliance of governments across the Gulf Region with the national interests of the USA and its allies; so who is the real threat?

Minding Your Ns and Qs on WMDs - IRAN, not Iraq! Doh!

Well, it's an easy mistake to make...

From Facebook - "Labour: Taking Back Our Party" group


CHECK OUT - THE FIFTY AMERICAN MILITARY BASES SURROUNDING IRAN @ THE ECOSOCIALIST- click HERE

BUSH: "This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table."
OBAMA: "“No options off the table means I’m considering all options (on Iran).”

WHY THE LONG FACE?

Obama Campaign To Launch...Missiles at Iran?

OBAMA TO LAUNCH ELECTION CAMPAIGN ON THE END OF A PATRIOT MISSILE

From the Jerusalem Post:
"Last week, Lt.-Gen. Frank Gorenc, commander of the US’s Third Air Force based in Germany,
 visited Israel to finalize plans for the upcoming drill, expected to see the deployment of several thousand American soldiers in Israel."
http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=250249

It has long been anticipated, but it increasingly looks as if American-Israeli strikes against Iran are drawing near. This is in spite of repeated assessments by the Intelligence community that Iran is not actively developing nuclear weapons and in spite of the long standing historical fact that Iran has never attacked another country in modern times. It is worth reflecting though, that Iran is surrounded by hostile nuclear weapon states, including Israel and other US satellites.

But with rightwing Republicans cheered by the emergence of Rick Santorum in Iowa's primary caucuses, Obama will be wanting more than ever to appeal to the voters the surging challenger thanks God for wanting to "cling on to their guns and bibles!"

A bad new year looms in the Gulf. As ever. Arab Spring, followed by nuclear winter?

Iran's nuclear noose:

Iran's nuclear noose - its' neighbours India, Pakistan, Russia and Israel are armed with nuclear weapons, while US & UK forces based nearby in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Cyprus have ready access to atomic arsenals.

Murder On The Cheap - America's B-Movie "Bomb Plot" Plot

"It reads like the pages of a Hollywood script," FBI Director Robert Mueller conceded yesterday as his officials outlined what is fast becoming a widely debunked and ludicrous set of claims that the Iranian Government was involved in a plot to hire Mexican drug runners to bomb a Washington, DC restaurant and kill the Saudi ambassador to the USA, along with a very precise 100 bystanders.

The handler of this plot, the alleged deep-sleeper (comatose, it appears, for the last 30 years), is Manssour Arbabsiar, an American-Iranian car salesman from Texas, who was allegedly given $100,000 by Iran to set up the plot, the idea being that if Mexicans carried out the attack, no one supposedly would point a finger at the Middle East, let alone Iran.  The Quds Force, a unit within the Iranian military that has been involved in military activities in neighbouring countries such as Afghanistan, has been accused of planning the operation - except that commentators around the world have quickly pointed out that the amateurish nature of the plot and the high risk step of involving Mexican drug dealers would be totally out of character for this highly professional organisation.

It would be out of character, too, for Quds Force or indeed Iran itself to be involved in any terrorist activities against the USA. Quds, set up during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s (when Saddam Hussein was the West's favoured belligerent), has a history of involvement beyond Iran's borders - but only just. It has been active in Kurdistan, Lebanon and Yemen. Its main focus over the years has actually been in its troubled neighbour, Afghanistan, where Iran long opposed the Taliban regime, and actively supported the American invasion of 2001. Indeed, Quds operatives fought alongside the Americans in the attack on Herat, a key point in the ousting of the Taliban regime. Of course, as blogged last year, America was quick to turn on Iran in spite of then President Khatemi's repeated attempts at reconciliation.

With many in the international diplomatic community sceptical of the US claims, which Tehran hotly denies, the story may begin to unravel, though today President Obama appears to be clinging, Bush-like (or Bush-lite) to the ludicrous claims about a bomb plot. Not only would Mexican drug runners appear to be a strange choice of operative for Quds, the alleged price of the deal, $100,000, frankly seems a bit on the cheap side for such an important operation. On the other hand, it might have sounded like quite a large amount to the drug dealer the FBI co-opted to sting the car dealer in return for immunity from prosecution. That said, he turns out to have been a drug dealer with a heart - worrying about bystanders being killed, to which the wild-eyed crazy car salesman reportedly told him “They want that guy [the Ambassador] done [killed], if the hundred go with him f**k ‘em.” 

Iran claims the whole thing is a plot by Obama to distract Americans' attention from the Wall Street protests and bad economic news. While this may well be a side-effect the White House will eagerly wish for, it seems unlikely. The truth may lie somewhat closer to Iran's borders, with the beleaguered Saudi kingdom. The Sunni regime in Riyadh has been nervous of growing restlessness among Shia Muslims in the Gulf states, not least in Bahrain where earlier this year they sent their military to crush the pro-democracy protests. With America very gradually courting other regional powers, the House of Ibn Saud has increasingly needed a perceived Iranian threat to provide the counter-balance and keep America on side with the Saudi regime. And so, if we discount the car dealer simply being an affluent fantasist, we are left with the real possibility that sabre rattling Saudi Arabia, which Wikileaks showed has repeatedly lobbied the USA to go to war with Iran, has been doing a spot of conjuring. President Obama might want to reflect on who his bedfellows are before killing any Persians.

It is possible some rogue individuals, possibly Arbabasiar and associates, have planned something on their own initiative, but Iran itself would have nothing to gain from the alleged plot other than to be confirmed as the bogeyman the American media and political establishment repeatedly portray it as being. Again and again, US sources vaguely imply Iranian sponsorship of terrorism. But the truth is very different - Iran does fund Hizbollah in the Lebanon, but the nature of its support is as often in the form of funding for building reconstruction (especially after the pulverising of tens of thousands of civilian homes by Israel during its 2006 invasion) and health services as any military support. Hizbollah itself, while maintaining a lot of fiery anti-Israeli rhetoric, is now in effect a relatively normalised political party, elected as part of a multi-faith coalition, the March 8 Alliance,  including Catholic and Maronite Christians and Druze, in the Beirut Parliament and part of the governing coalition since January this year.

By contrast, repeatedly under-reported in the west is the ongoing terror campaign against Iran, and especially against its scientific community, by Israel with at least the tacit support of the USA. This "decapitation" strategy was launched in 2009 in the dying days of the Bush Presidency, when Dubbya's hopes of attacking Iran were stymmied by a CIA report that declared Iran was not developing nuclear weapons. Reported in the UK Daily Telegraph, the Israeli Government then sanctioned the use of hitmen to kill Iranian scientists and academics involved in the country's development of nuclear energy.

Since then, they have been busy. Three top Iranian scientists have been bombed to death - the last just a month ago - and a fourth narrowly escaped assassination along with his wife. Claims that the Israeli secret service, Mossad, is behind this have met with silence from Tel Aviv. Given the heavy funding and support the USA provides Israel, paying for nearly its entire armed services (a cost of $8.2 millions of US taxpayers' money every single day) and funding a huge chunk of its economy, there is no possibility that any such activity would go on unless Washington approved. So who, then, are the terrorists?

We are in difficult days: the neocons in America have long hankered for a military assault on Iran, which is still one of the world's largest oil producers and which sits starkly independently of the USA compared to the Saudi kleptocracy and the fiefdoms of the Emirates. As you can hear in the video below, people like John Bolton, who was Bush's ambassador to the UN, keenly want to provoke confrontation, expressing disappointment at Iran's relatively moderate tone in reply to western sanctions. (It seems Bolton was actively hoping Iran would leave the nuclear non-prolilferation treaty (NPT) to make it easier to garner support for action against Iran).

Somewhere, the scriptwriters are hard at work on coming up with the plot twists and turns (the more bizarre it seems the better) to begin production of the biggest disaster movie yet.

Butcher Blair - Keep His Bloody Hands off Iran

Facing his questioners at the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq invasion earlier today, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair deftly deflected the line of investigation from his support for President Bush' bloody and illegal attack to make a call for the West to take on Iran in a new military adventure (click here for video in immediately previous post).

Ignoring the fact that, even as he spoke, Iran was opening discussions in Istanbul with a range of countries to seek a resolution of the nuclear issue, Blair said the time had now come to "get our heads out of the sand" and take action against Iran.

"I say this with all the passion I possibly can," insisted former "straight kind of guy" and now multi-millionaire Blair, bizarrely now a Peace Envoy for the Middle East, as he went on to claim that Iran's malign influence is everywhere. This from the man who used to claim that Saddam was supposedly capable of striking almost anywhere with his non-existant weapons of mass destruction. He opined yesterday, "The fact is they (Iran) are doing it because they disagree fundamentally with our way of life and they'll carry on doing it unless they are met by the requisite determination and, if necessary, force."

His lies are breathtaking. Totally discredited over his misleading of the British Parliament over weapons of mass destruction, here he now is smugly proclaiming a new crusade before sanctimoniously expressing his dry-eyed regret for the deaths caused by his last war.

Iran's current Government has a troubled record - but mostly within its own borders. To portray it as some sort of international pariah is to mistake or misrepresent the rhetoric of some of its political leaders for actual acts. Iran has no links to al-Qaeda - quite the contrary: its last President rounded up hundreds of al-Qaeda suspects after 9/11; Iran was instrumental in persuading the Northern Alliance to ally with the USA in its invasion of Afghanistan; Iran tracked down and arrested Bin Laden's son and offered him up to the Americans in 2002 - only to be rebuffed by George Bush and then denounced as part of the utterly fictitious "Axis of Evil". Even just three weeks ago, Iranian authorities arrested seven of Bin Laden's associates - a fact largely unreported in the West.

Blair is a man ignorant of the past and Britain and Iran's historical relationship - intertwined in many ways, with much in common, but also much confused and damaged by British economic imperialism and military interference, including the subversion of the Iranian democracy of 1953. He remains as ignorant of the present, callously using the prejudices of the rightwing media to try to deflect criticism of his blood-soaked intervention in the Fertile Crescent in 2003.

Iran is surrounded by nuclear weapon states - Pakistan, India, Russia, Israel (which, as revealed by the badly persecuted Vanunu Mordechai, has long had an nuclear arsenal of as many as 200 warheads) and the American forces in the Gulf and Mediterranean. By the warped logic of nuclear deterrence theory, the Tehran Government would be crazy not to seek a nuclear arsenal of its own to deter these states, none of which have shown any particular benevolence previously. If the world wants real reassurance that Iran will not develop these awful weapons, it would do well to seek international disarmament, rather than somehow expect it to remain non-nuclear and trust in its neighbours' previously unproven goodwill.

The outcome of the Chilcott Inquiry will be a report on "the lessons to be learned" from the Iraq war and the actions of Blair and his cohorts. It is frankly rather unlikely to have him arrested and carted off to The Hague to face arraignment as a war criminal for his past acts of aggression. But it could at least make clear that, as he pleads some special insight in spite of his ill-informed, prejudiced take on the world, no one shares his analysis, no one cares or believes what he thinks and, perhaps what would hopefully sting this would-be latter-day Caesar the most, no one is listening any more.

Iran's nuclear noose - its' neighbours India, Pakistan, Russia and Israel are armed with nuclear weapons, while US & UK forces based nearby in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Cyprus have ready access to atomic arsenals.

Why Do They Hate Us So Much?

The ghost book of the year is published today. "Decision Points" (allegedly) by George W Bush recounts the Texan Cowboy's eight year stint at the Whitehouse and to perhaps no one's surprise is his disclosure that he actively planned for attacks on Iran. Ultimately, these came to nothing - Bush's finger was itching on the trigger for months, but even he had to stand down when in 2008 the CIA declared that there was no evidence of a current Iranian nuclear weapons programme. His successor, Barak Obama, has however repeatedly refused to rule out a military assault on Iran and the nuclear issue refuses to go away.

Bush: linked Iran and Iraq to 9/11 with
 no evidence at all

Bush's closest (maybe only) ally, the then British PM Tony Blair had similarly wielded the figurative cudgel at Iran. Blair reportedly bleated to journalist, Jon Snow, in reference to Iran, "Why do they hate us so much?" Snow in response suggested, "Perhaps because of Mossadeq..." to the blank stare of the hapless Premier. Now while most westerners would undoubtedly have shared Blair's bafflement, the would-be war leader's ignorance of Mossadeq is in fact quite inexcusable, though it is also certainly a penetrating insight into the shallow understanding of Iran among politicians in the West.

Iran was once the superpower of the world, the Persian Empire, creating many innovations, including the first postal service. Although remaining a significant realm for much of its history, by the 19th century, it was hard pressed by the two global players of the age, Russia and Britain, who saw Iran as an objective in their "Great Game" of colonial ambition. The Qajar dynasty of Shahs (kings) tried to modernise in response, reforming Iran's education and finance systems. The Majlis, an elected parliament, was established and began to assert a degree of control over the Shah's government.

A recommended history
of ancient Persia

However, Iran's blessing and curse was the discovery of massive oil fields by a British prospector, in Khuzestan in the south-west in 1901. When British dreadnought battleships converted from coal to oil for their fuel, Iran was cajoled into major concessions to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (which would later become BP). For a tiny annual fee, the country's entire oil reserves were handed over to the British, a state of affairs that would continue, with the Americans joining in, for over 75 years. And just to be sure, in 1921, with British support, a junior army officer, Reza Pahlavi, seized the throne, guaranteeing continued hegemony for the UK.

By the 1940s, however, Reza's ineffectual son, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was struggling to stem calls for democracy. In 1944, elections were held which saw success for democratic nationalists. Prominent among these was Mohammed Mossadeq, a 70 year old reformist from a patrician background elected on a ticket of nationalising the oil industry. By 1951, he was Prime Minister.

Western "democracy" - tanks
correct the election result,
Tehran 1953

Prompted by alarmed British Premier Winston Churchill, the USA actively undermined Mossadeq, who continued to plan to sequester BP's assets in his country. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 sponsored a military coup d'etat which deposed Mossadeq and placed him under house arrest for the remaining 14 years of his life. The Shah's powers were reinstated, the Majlis downgraded and the Iranian secret police, SAVAK, instituted a regime of torture and suppression of anyone suspected of the vaguest opposition to Pahlavi. While the Shah and his Queen courted the western mass media with a film-star like existence, Iranian democracy was savagely crushed. The only outlet for expression became the mosques, where even many religious leaders were harassed or driven into exile - including a cleric from the city of Qom, Ruyollah Khomeini.


Ex-Premier Mossadeq was tried and
confined for life after the coup

Over the next 25 years, the Shah's regime was slowly worn down until in early 1979 it collapsed and Ayatollah Khomeini returned from France to head a new regime. An initially pluralist revolution was quickly subverted by religious radicals and the leftist elements led by Bani-Sadr were suppressed. Yet even then Iran never quite became the monolithic Islamic dictatorship it is portrayed as in the West. The Majlis continued to be elected, although candidates are now vetted by the "Council of the Guardians of the Islamic Republic" as opposed to by the Shah. Women continued to have the vote and by the late 1990s reformists were gaining ground. Iran also played a generally supportive role towards the USA during the 1990-1 Gulf War crisis, even although the Americans' rush to defend Kuwait from Saddam Hussein contrasted sharply with their readiness to supply Iraq with arms for its long and bloody war of aggression against Iran from 1980-1988.

In 1997, President Khatami was elected on a platform of constitutional government and legal reform. Women's rights increased, with many in the cities undertaking the so-called "Lipstick Jihad" where they pushed dress code increasingly to a point of meaninglessness. The press and media became more and more plural, and some rapprochement with the USA was sought.

Following the 9/11 attacks on the US, the Iranians quickly condemned the event, with the government banning the revolutionary slogan "Death to America". In the streets, thousands of Iranians held candlelit vigils as a mark of respect for the American dead. Khatami sent envoys to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan to persuade it to side with the US invasion and to accept democratic elections. The Iranians arrested and handed over scores of suspected al-Qaeda operatives to the USA and even offered to deport Osama Bin Laden's son, Saad, in 2003 - an offer that Bush rejected, to the bewilderment of the Iranians.

But all became clear shortly after when, in return for all their gestures and actions of goodwill to the USA, Bush rounded on Iran and declared it to be part of his spurious "Axis of Evil", allegedly in league with Iraq and, even more bizarrely, with North Korea. Without a shred of evidence to back his claims, Bush then trundled his tanks into Iraq, unleashing years of mayhem and over 100,000 deaths - a higher rate than anything seen under Saddam - and repeatedly menacing Iran,now just a short Humvee ride away for the huge American forces based out of Bagdhad.

Unsurprisingly, when Iranians next went to the polls, anti-American candidates performed well and the conservative President Ahmadinejad, renowned for his anti-corruption drives when he was mayor of Tehran, was elected. The gulf between the American government and Iran soon widened further. Although in 2009 the new US President Barak Obama initially offered talks, many analysts speculate that with his recent drubbing in the mid-term elections, the chances of him undertaking a military operation have grown. He has certainly left his options open following America's partial withdrawal from Iraq, possibly with Israel as his proxy.

It can only be hoped that Obama is dissuaded from such a dreadful, self-serving course. Iran is an ancient nation which does not respond positively to the posturings and threats of others. America and the West are living with the consequences of our own hypocrisy of calling for democracy as long as it gets the "right result". It is not the first time - as Spain in 1936, Chile in 1973 and Gaza in 2006 show clearly - and it may not be the last. They may or may not hate us, but it has certainly left our victims confused and sceptical about us. And in many cases bloodied and dead as well.

Does that answer your question, Mr Blair?

NOW WATCH A VIDEO ABOUT THE COUP - BASED ON STEPHEN KINZER'S BOOK, "ALL THE SHAH'S MEN"