"The Onus is on Washington, as Usual-- Fingers Itch for a War on Iran" (by vijay prashad, 1 / 30 / 12):
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/30/ ... r-on-iran/
. . . the war against Iran has already begun. In 1953, the US fired its first shot across the bow, taking out a democratically elected government in a CIA coup. And political and financial subvention was given to Saddam Hussein by the Atlantic states and the Gulf emirs to invade Iran and crush the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Millions died in that futile war, whose conclusion left a battered Saddam turning to the Gulf Arabs, an unpaid bill in hand . . . Gulf Arab reticence to pay up led to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and the full-scale entry of US troops into Saudi Arabia (which enraged Osama Bin Laden and his minions) and into a decades long war against Iraq (1991-2011).
. . . the Atlantic world has conducted a war against Iran on three fronts: First, diplomatic: By 2003, the United States delivered Tehran a gift-- new regimes in Kabul and Baghdad had close ties to the Iranians, and the latter exerted themselves to help bring a measure of stability to their neighbors. But the Bush administration saw Iran through the eyes of Tel Aviv, as the Great Satan . . . and the Bush administration began a campaign to isolate Iran. In 2005, Condoleezza Rice traveled to India to offer to recognize its nuclear program if India voted with the U.S. in the International Atomic Energy Agency meetings against Iran . . . having conducted an “illegal” nuclear test in 1998, India had been boxed into sanctions. The U.S. deal not only ended the sanctions but enabled India to secure a “legal” stream of uranium . . . India voted against Iran, and the US signed an alignment treaty with India. These two gestures isolated Iran and created tensions between India and Pakistan (which was carrying the heavy water for the US in the Afghan War and saw this new treaty as a betrayal by the US) . . . the U.S. raised the tension level in South Asia.
ah yes, our usual suspects again. now that we "took care of" those pesky oil problems in iraq and libya, what better time to put the screws to iran more seriously?Second, Economic. . . . the newest sanctions by the U.S. (signed by Obama on Dec. 31) and by the Europeans (signed on Jan. 23) are designed to bring the Iranian economy to its knees . . . as European oil sanctions to set in, exports will decrease. As if by clockwork, oil prices began to rise . . . But oil analysts say that this is not a long-term problem. Samuel Ciszuk of KBC Energy Economics notes, “Volumes from Iraq should be up significantly, Libya is doing very well . . . NATO’s wars have turned the pipelines of Iraq and Libya toward Europe and the United States. They will more than compensate for lost Iranian oil.
Third, Covert. Since 2010, four nuclear scientists in Iran have been mysteriously killed. In January 2010, explosives stashed in a motorcycle killed Professor Masud Ali Mohammadi of the Department of Physics at the University of Tehran. In November 2010, Professor Majid Shahriari, who worked at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran was killed when motorcycle-riding assassins attached magnetic bombs to his car. In July 2011, Dariush Rezaeinejad was shot dead as he waited to pick up his child from daycare. He worked at K. N. Toosi University of Technology in electrical engineering as well as the Atomic Energy Organization. And on January 11, 2012, a motorcycle-riding assassin attached a magnetic bomb to the car of Mustafa Ahmadi Roshan, a scientist at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
Four days after Roshan’s assassination, the Sunday Times (London) reported that these killings are part of “Israel’s secret war.” One Israeli source told the reporters, Uzi Mahnaimi and Marie Colvin, “The killings were merely a precursor to a military strike, not merely an alternative, to make it more difficult for Iran to rebuild facilities if they are bombed.” The US and Israel, it has been alleged, attacked Iranian computer facilities in 2010 with the Stuxnet worm . . .
and another . . .. . . as pressure on Iran mounts, there is a temptation for the Iranians to lash out, perhaps close the Straits of Hormuz. If they do so, the Atlantic powers, the Israelis and the Gulf Arabs will take this as a casus belli. It will be enough to power up the cruise missile delivery systems . . . an attack or possible war on Iran would have the added effect of derailing the Arab revolutions and revolts and justify the continued presence of a large US military force in the oil-rich region . . . If a shooting war begins, establishment intellectuals will return to the television sets, long faces and small mouths telling us about the warlike culture of the Arabs and the Persians . . .
"Bring on the Sanctions; Send in the Clowns. Nuclear Iran" (by robert fisk, 1 / 26 / 12):
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/26/nuclear-iran/
The Israeli President warns us now that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon . . . Yet we reporters do not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing in 1996. That was 16 years ago. And we do not recall that the current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999. That would be 13 years ago. Same old story.
anyway, enough for now . . .When did all this start? The Shah. The old boy wanted nuclear power. He even said he wanted a bomb because “the US and the Soviet Union had nuclear bombs” and no one objected. Europeans rushed to supply the dictator’s wish. Siemens – not Russia – built the Bushehr nuclear facility . . . when Ayatollah Khomeini took over Iran in 1979, he ordered the entire nuclear project to be closed down because it was “the work of the Devil”. Only when Saddam invaded Iran – with our Western encouragement – and started using poison gas against the Iranians (chemical components arriving from the West, of course) was Khomeini persuaded to reopen it. All this has been deleted from the historical record . . .
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