FAQs on Iran

Does the London-Washington- Tel-Aviv axis have a leg to stand on , legally or morally, in its campaign to isolate Iran internationally and to deny her a nuclear programme on the grounds that it will necessarily be used to create nuclear weapons?

No.

Is Iran in breach of the Non-proliferation Treaty?

No.

Is Britain in breach of the NPT?

The announced programme for a new generation of nuclear weapons places Britain, as a signatory to the NPT, in clear breach of that agreement which obliges Britain to endeavour to phase out nuclear weapons .

Why would Iran want a nuclear programme if not to create nuclear weapons?

The same reason that we want to renew our programme viz. in order to guarantee energy supplies in an unstable world. The fact that a country already has significant supplies of oil or gas doesn’t mean they can afford to be complacent. Just look at Britain! - we had such reserves but now they’ve run out leaving us high and dry.

Is there any evidence that Iran is constructing nuclear weapons?

No. IAEA inspectors have had unrestricted access to Iran’s nuclear facilities and have found no evidence of a nuclear weapons programme.

Is Iran a threat to us?

Iran has no means to pose a serious threat to Britain.

Are we a threat to Iran?

Undoubtedly. Our ally George W. Bush has labelled Iran as “evil”. Blair has spoken of the need to “deal with “ Iran. Coalition forces are arraigned on Iran.s Western and Eastern border. We have endeavoured to encircle Iran, isolating it internationally. We are in the midst of an extraordinary campaign of demonisation of Iran reminiscent of that which preceeded the disastrous invasion of Iraq. A press release from strategic command appears to confirm insider leaks that Cheney had requested that they prepare for nuclear strikes against Iran.

Tony Blair considers Iran to be a sponsor of international terrorism and Iran has been linked to the 7^th July bombings in London. Could they carry out terrorist attacks against us?

Since the Bush/Blair faction describes all its enemies as terrorists and they are making enemies faster than they can kill them, it follows that virtually anyone could be accused of carrying out terrorist attacks. Terrorist attacks are criminal acts. Rather than leaving the press to speculate about who may or may not be behind the London bombings, and since we have both police detection agencies and a criminal justice system, I recommend that Blair and co. find out by carrying out a rigorous investigation into the facts, beginning with a full inquest into the deaths of four Asians allegedly implicated.

Isn’t Iran an easy target so shouldn’t we just attack them anyway?

Iran is a proud nation of 80 million people. They we will react fiercely to any aggression against their independence and sovereignty . They are closely allied to Russia, who have provided them with state of the art missile systems, and China for whom they are increasingly important as an energy supplier.

Could an attack against Iran then lead to a global war?

Certainly, it would be a grossly irresponsible, as well as criminal , act.

Who described the idea of attacking Iran as “silly”.

Sir Alan West, head of UK naval forces.

Should Blair be impeached?

According to General Sir Michael Rose, yes. However, he is not acting alone and appears to be part of a wider circle which is using its control of our media, institutions and political parties to advance its own, utterly reckless and ruinous agenda. These people need to be exposed and suitably restrained from further mischief.

Comrade Callinicos renders his position more profound.

Comrade Callinicos is back again on Iran( Socialist Worker 21st January) and there has been a certain evolution in his views; from they would have to be stupid to attack Iran ( so, surely, they won’t do it) to they’re stupid enough to do anything( and, therefore, may well do it). So in the last couple of months he’s arrived at a conclusion many of us reached a long time ago – the War Party are stupid( I would rather say, mad). He’s come late to this dread realization but better late than never.

What conclusion does he draw from this last-minute embrace of reality. Is his article an appeal to the British people and his own membership to get out and mobilise against a terrifying escalation into the next phase of War without End( such as Tony Benn, president of Stop the War made last summer), a plan in which our own government is clearly implicated?

Not at all! After “guessing” that Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons Callinicos muses, like a cheap tabloid journalist, on “what the US and its allies can do to punish Iran’s defiance” whether his “guess” is correct or not. The punch line is the speculation that the results of an attack

“ are likely, once again, to demonstrate the limits of US power”.

Oh well, that’s all right then! Why not just sit back and watch it on TV?

Prepare to oppose a nuclear attack on Iran!

The eerie silence over the Iran crisis is I think portentous and suggestive of danger for us all. The evidence is clear enough : a statement from Strategic Command has effectively confirmed ex-CIA agent Philip Giraldi’s claim in The American Conservative( 1^st August 2005) that Cheney had requested that Statcom prepare for nuclear strikes against Iran(See Nuclear War against Iran- Michel Chossudovsky, 3^rd January at globalresearch.ca). Given forty years of agitation in this country against nuclear weapons you may be excused for thinking that people would be shouting from the rooftops about this mortal threat to us all: but the people don’t know and evidently the likes of CND and Stop the War don’t want to know. Are these organisations then guilty of criminal neglect in terms of not carrying out their self-proclaimed tasks? Undoubtedly. Are they in fact integrated into the empire and using their influence to clear the way for their masters? Who knows? The reality we face is , however, implacable in its awfulness; we are heading inexorably towards the tragic denouement of the imperial war machine: those who are itching to use “those wonderful weapons “, as Madeleine Albright would have it, have manoeuvred themselves into precisely the place where they can finally achieve what they have been bragging about for so long. Before discussing what action we should take to try and prevent disaster I will try to summarise the method in this madness in order to shake up the attitude of the sceptics, the “they wouldn’t do a thing like that tendancy” which, apart from simple treachery, is the main obstacle to action.

A nuclear attack on Iran would be a crime of inconceivable proportions and totally unpredictable outcomes. It would be opposed by Russia, as well as China, contrary to mendacious press reports from who have an obvious motive in convincing us otherwise.

Do the USA and Britain have the means to carry out such an attack?

A thousand times over.

Have they a history of war crimes including nuclear war crimes?

Clearly.

Could the criminals involved be said to have a longstanding predisposition to this type of action; is it a crime fortold?

Clearly it is. Anecdotal evidence shows the likes of Richard Perle as braggarts when it comes to nuclear weapons. Geoff Hoon made clear Britain’s predisposition to the use of these weapons. But the evidence is much more plain than that- the US nuclear doctrine has been transformed in order to put pre-emptive first strike nuclear attacks on the order of the day: hence the opposition of 1500 US scientists who have petitioned against it (http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition/). All these modifications to US nuclear doctrine have been carefully monitored by journalists like Gordon Prather.( see antiwar.com)

Do they have a motive?

Obviously they think they do; Iran has been placed in “the axis of evil”.

In terms of the Bush doctrine is Iran with us or against us?

Iran is a large nation with a young, educated population and rich in natural resources. Left undisturbed one would expect it to become the dominant power in the Middle east. It has formed close diplomatic and commercial ties with countries ranging from China to Venezuela. It is planning to set up a euro spot market in oil which many see as a mortal threat to the US dollar. It appears to be prepared to take on the US head on. The US, as long as it conceives of itself as an empire, has a clear interest in eliminating a dangerous and resourceful rival.

Do the Anglo- Americans have opportunity?

This is, if you like, a silly question. Through the manipulation of media and terror ( see Ivashov’s speech translated on this blog ) they create opportunity. Iran is a virtual enemy in the virtual world of CNN, FOX and the BBC and the potential virtual author of another, unfortunately all too real, massacre of innocents.

So there you have it: means , history, predisposition, motive and opportunity.

But the sceptics object: “ Is this a reasonable thing to do?” “What do they have to gain from such recklessness?” “ Wouldn’t they themselves end up the losers themselves?”

I would answer: “It is the logic of a madman, the psycho-pathology of an elite who are themselves the expression of an empire which is doomed”

Let’s look at their predicament

They are obviously losing the war in Iraq. If they stay much longer their army will cease to exist. The US is bankrupt , has destroyed most of its productive capacity and the dollar is on the verge of collapse( just look at the explosive growth of the gold price). One option would be to renounce the whole imperial project and reinvent the USA( and Britain) as a sovereign nation coexisting with others on a basis of equality, not domination. No doubt , this will be the eventual choice but it cannot be carried out by this leadership who have burnt their boats and are totally committed to the present strategy, not least because of the crimes that have brought them thus far. As in Macbeth, the pursuit of power involves crimes, the immunity from which can only be bought by new crimes: regression is unthinkable, renunciation of power, fatal. The necessary policy shift away from empire therefore entails a revolution, albeit a legal and democratic one. Since, for the war party, things cannot go on as they are and retreat is not an option, escalation imposes itself as the only remaining option.

“Yes but,” you will object, “the army is not up to occupying Iran”

True. The army has already shown that it is not up to occupying Iraq. Its “occupation” has degenerated into the aerial destruction of a nation- in fact a genocide.The Anglo-American empire is basically an offshore, financial, maritime empire. Its strength never rested on its land army but in its navy and now, its air force and nuclear capability. The height of its power was its success in dividing Eurasia, pitting the armies of France and Germany against Russia. We must be clear about one thing – there will never be an Anglo-American world empire! Furthermore, since 1990 the strength of the US army has decreased immensely. As a military power today it is either nuclear or it is nothing, Rumsfeld’s drivel about special forces and mercenaries notwithstanding. If it is not a military power how much less is it an economic or diplomatic power. So it is not hard to see that to assert itself in the world requires a nuclear show of strength , or at least so it would be perceived in the minds of those for whom supreme US power is axiomatic. With or without an attempted occupation of Iran, the US appears poised to play to its one perceived strength in endeavouring to destroy Iran from the air. The argument put forward that failure in Iraq precludes an attack on Iran has been turned on its head by the War Party: failure against Iraq means upping the ante against Iran- escalating the war not just geographically but in terms of means employed.

You may object ,” this war is not good for business.”

In other words, the quaint old marxist notion that “our business is business”. Our business is war and has been since the Whig financiers took over England and created Great Britain. The Bank of England became the supreme instrument of war as contemporaries like Defoe and Swift could see. But there was flaw in the edifice of absolute power, a fissure whose opening, even as the vicious, ancestral strain reasserts itself for the last time, betokens the doom of the House of Usher. The imperial leadership faces an impossible conundrum which lies at the root of their delusional insanity – only empire will do but it can only ever fail.

So madness will prevail and if this horror doesn’t happen it will only be because someone gets to Cheney before Cheney gets to the button. We can hope or pray for this outcome but I prefer that we take matters in our own hands. What must we do?

Another anti-war movement is possible!

Nothing is happening because the War Party so fear the potential of opposition to their aggression that they have pulled out all the stops , standing down all the oppositional organisations which they can control or influence. Amazingly, this appears to be virtually all of them and they may now just be tying up some loose ends in the shape of both George Galloway’s Respect and the Lib-Dems. We are in a stranglehold from which we must break loose, breaking in the process the unnatural silence around the approaching danger. We must embark upon a massive publicity campaign to alert the public to what is happening. The internet is our best hope but we cannot rely on that alone. We need “Hands off Iran” committees set up in every town to organise leafletings, meetings, demos, pickets etc. We must act, inform , communicate and convince. No one supports what they are planning other than the deranged. We are the mainstream and must act as such. I am already encouraged by the amount of stuff circulating on the net. Let it become a torrent not just about what they are doing but what we are doing.

The die is cast and in reality it was cast long ago. Swift in his clairvoyance would have been unsurprised and unfazed by the pretty pass in which we find ourselves. To us has fallen the task of constraining the Whigs in the final delirium of their madness. We are entitled to fear the worst but also to hope for a new era of lasting peace if this madness can be stopped. Ironically, the Anglo-Americam globalisation of death and destruction has led to a counter- globalisation of life and construction throughout the rest of the world. As we look on from here in the heart of darkness it seems that we must only reach out to become part of it. But the evil remains and must be met head on. Let us acquit ourselves well for the sake of this new, emerging life, for future generations and for our own humanity which can only affirm itself against the prevailing cacophony of falsehood and betrayal.

This posting was originally a reply to "Ask not what Stop the War can do for you -Ask what you can do for Stop the War" posted on Medialens.

Ask not what the left can do for us...

nothing! has to be our working assumption until proved wrong by their actions

...but what we can do to stop the planned genocide in Iran.

A lot of excellent stuff is going around on the net and that is all very encouraging but certainly will prove insufficient.It must be combined with action on the ground. I propose setting up local bodies of some form, however informal, but with a name, an E-mail address and preferably a website. These should not be regarded as being "left" organisations i.e. the domain of representatives of a single philosophical tendency, but should be open to people of all beliefs backgrounds, political persuasions and denominations. They are citizen bodies for those who realize that in a democracy we are ultimately reponsible for the actions carried out in our name, if the word democracy is to have any meaning at all.

Realistically these will consist only of a few, perhaps only one or two activists to begin with but matters is that they exist and people come to know about them.

Our first job is to inform and convince: we need an extraordinary publicity campaign to alert people to dangers of which they have probably only the faintest notion. However, the increasingly hysterical campaign against Iran makes our case more than credible.
I suggest that we should attempt to integrate web work with work on the ground, meetings , educationals, leafletings etc. so that they mirror and reinforce each other- I see some kind of multiplier effect here. We must be able to create as much stir as possible in as short a time as possible- time clearly is running out for us.Each body must act and communicate - the net must be saturated not only with analysis of what they, the war party, are doing but of reports of what we are doing in each locality. In the process we draw together a national network, laying the foundation for regional and national conferences.

Even if we are unable to stop the next phase of the war it is most important that we establish these networks in order to have oppositional and organisational forces in place as disastrous war plunges us into as immense political, economic and even, existential crisis.

To this end I have called a meeting in Glasgow this Thursday and I appeal to others to do something similar.

Colin Buchanan

This is my translation of a speech given by General Ivashov at the Axis for Peace conference in Brussels in november 2005. Original in French on voltairenet.org or axisforpeace.net

As the global situation shows, terrorism appears wherever contradictions are exacerbated, be it through a change in social relations or of regime, the appearance of political, social or economic instability, the unleashing of aggresion, moral decline, the triumph of cynicism and nihilism or the legalization of vice and the explosion of criminality.

It is globalisation which creates the conditions for these extremely dangerous phenomena. It is within this framework that we see the new rupture within global geopolitics, the redistribution of global resources, the redrawing of national boundaries, the unraveling of the system of international law, the destruction of cultures and the impoverishment of spiritual life.

Analysing the process of globalization, in its essentials, as well as the political and military doctrines of the USA and certain other countries, proves that terrorism contributes to the attainment of global domination and the subordination of nation states to a global oligarchy.Thus, terrorism cannot be considered independantly of these global trends : it is , rather, an instrument, a means of imposing a unipolar world with a single centre of control, an expedient for eliminating national frontiers and inaugurating the rule of a new global elite. It is precisely this new elite which is the force behind international terrorism, its ideologue, its “godfather”. The target of this new elite is tradition , culture and history, the existing system of international relations, human civilization itself as founded within the nation state and national identity

.International terrorism as it now exists is a phenomena which combines the use of terror by state and non-state structures as a means of attaining political goals through intimidation, social and psychogical destabilisation , crushing the will of the organs of power to resist and the creation of conditions conducive to the manipulation of states and their citizens.

Terrorism is the means of waging a war of a new type. Together with the media, international terrorism becomes the controlling force in global developments. It is precisely this symbiotic relationship between terror and the media which creates the conditions allowing shifts in international politics, adjustments to the existing reality./

Analysing the events of September 11, 2001 in the USA in this context, one can draw the following conclusions :

1. These attacks were ordered from within political and business circles which had an interest in destabilizing the world order and had the means to finance this operation. This act had been shaped by tensions over the control of financial and other resources. The reasons for these attacks should be sought in the clash of interests within big capital at a transnational and global level, in those circles unhappy with the pace and direction of the globalization process. In contrast to traditional wars conceived by politicians and generals, those behind 9/11 were oligarchs and politicians subordinate to them.

2. Only the secret services and their present or retired heads( having maintained their influence inside state structures) are capable of planning and carrying out an operation of this order of magnitude. In general, it is the secret services who create, finance and control extremist organizations. Without their support these organizations can’t exist let alone carry out operations of this scope inside a particularly well protected country, To plan and put into effect an operation like this is extremely difficult.

3. Osama bin-laden and Al-quaeda cannot have organized or carried out the 9/11 attacks. They have neither the organization, the know-how or the personnel necessary. Consequently, a professional team must have been formed with the suicide bombers in the role of puppets to front the attacks. The 9/11 attacks changed the course of world events in a direction favourable to international oligarchs and the mafia.

The use of the term « international terrorism » aims to fulfill the following objectives :

► To conceal the aims of those forces throughout the world which seek global control and domination;

►To divert public opinion towards a war with uncertain goals against an invisible enemy; the destruction of international norms and to change the meaning of terms such as aggression, state terrorism, dictatorship or national liberation movement;

►To deprive peoples of their legitimate right to armed resistance against aggression and their right to take action against the subversive activities of foreign intelligence agencies;

►The renunciation of the priority of the defense of national interests in favour of the war against terrorism, replacing the logic of national defence through a system of alliances with the idea of a coalition against terrorism.

►The resolution of economic problems through military force under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

In order to oppose international terrorism effectively, it is necessary to take the following measures :

►reaffirm, at the General Assembly or the UN, the principles of the Charter of The United Nations and of international law as applying to all nations ;

►form a geostrategic alliance for civilization( possibly based the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which includes Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kirgistan, Tajikhstan and Uzbekhistan) based on values opposed to those of the Atlanticists ; elaborate a strategy for development, a system of international security and another economic and financial model( to put the world back on a sound basis)

►bring together leading intellectuals, under the aegis of the UN, to draw up and promote a humanistist philosophy for the 21st century ;

►mediate between the world’s religions with a view to creating conditions favourable to human development, security and mutual support.

General Leonid Ivashov is vice –president of the Academy for Geopolitics. He was head of the Department of General affairs of the Defense Ministry of the Soviet Union, secretary of the Council of Defence Ministers of the Community of Independent States, head of the Department of military cooperation of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. He was Chief-of-staff of the Russian Armed forces on 11^th September , 2001.