Israel tightens NATO ties amid Iran nuke jitters
Mon May 29, 2006 8:24am ET
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel announced on Monday it would fully
participate in a NATO naval exercise for the first time, bolstering
defense ties with the Western military alliance in the face of arch-foe
Iran's nuclear program.
Israeli military officials said the exercise, dubbed Cooperation Mako,
would take place next month in the Black Sea and involve simulated
combat between missile boat fleets as well as search-and-rescue drills.
"This marks the first time a unit of the Israel Navy will fully
participate in an operational NATO exercise," said an Israeli military
statement. Israel had previously held only observer status in such
maneuvers.
Alon Ben-David, Israel analyst for Jane's Defense Weekly, said
Cooperation Mako aimed mainly to improve NATO security missions in the
Mediterranean and that Israel was especially interested in combined air
force exercises.
"Given Israel's strategic reality, it is crucial to be part of a
defensive coalition," Ben-David said.
Israel, Algeria and Morocco agreed in April to join NATO
counter-terrorist patrols along their shores.
Ben-David noted Israel has stepped up its cooperation with foreign
military forces as part of preparations for a possible showdown with
Iran, whose nuclear program and calls for the Jewish state's
elimination have raised concern in the West.
Iran, the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter, says it seeks nuclear
technology for energy needs only.
Some Western officials have speculated that Israel would eventually
apply to join NATO's 26 member-states. "If Iran feels that Israel is
.... in the pact, it will behave differently," former Spanish Prime
Minister Jose Maria Aznar said in March.
But full membership is seen as unlikely in Israel, given its tradition
of going it alone on matters of top military priority.
Believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, Israel sent
warplanes to bomb Iraq's atomic reactor in 1981 and has not ruled out
similar action against Iran. For now, though, it backs U.S.-led efforts
to defuse the dispute with diplomacy.
"A defense pact has advantages and disadvantages," Israel's military
chief, Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz, told the Yedioth Ahronoth
newspaper this month. "Under a NATO pact, every decision would require
consensus of 26 nations."
President Bush has pledged to defend Israel should it come under
Iranian attack. Some analysts interpreted the statement as an
admonition to Israel from its chief ally not to launch a preemptive
strike on Iran unilaterally.
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-05-29T122419Z_01_L29367736_RTRUKOC_0_US-ISRAEL-NATO.xml
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| Title: Re: ISRAEL TIGHTENS NATO TIES AMID IRAN NUKE JITTERS |
29 May 2006 11:35:19 PM |
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Funny skull caps & silly black hats & black suits 4 sale !!!!!
Going **real** CHEAP !!!!
he he he ;-)
HOOROO
UNCLE WALLY
----0----
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| Title: Re: ISRAEL TIGHTENS NATO TIES AMID IRAN NUKE JITTERS |
29 May 2006 11:47:13 PM |
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U=2ES. Aggression-Time Once Again
The Fourth U.S. "Supreme International Crime" in 7 Years Is already
Underway
by Edward S,. Herman and David Peterson
May 21, 2006
Counterpunch
U=2ES. Aggression-Time Once Again: The Fourth U.S. "Supreme International
Crime" in Seven Years Is Already Underway, With the Support of the
Free Press and "International Community"
With the United States having initiated wars in violation of the UN
Charter, and hence engaged in the "supreme international crime,"1
against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq in 1999, 2001, and 2003, one
might have expected that its commencement of a fourth aggression only a
few years later against Iran would arouse the UN, EU, other
international institutions and NGOs, and even the supposedly moral and
independent Free Press, to serious protest and counter-action,
including referral to the UN Security Council under Chapter VII=E2=80=99s
"threat of peace" articles and support of possible diplomatic and
economic sanctions. This has not happened, and in fact the Bush
administration has successfully mobilized the UN, whose "primary
responsibility" is the "maintenance of international peace and
security," and the EU, as well as the Free Press, to facilitate its
fourth attack.
We say that the fourth aggression is already underway, because once
again, as in the Iraq case, the United States has been attacking Iran
for many months, and not just with verbal insults and threats. It has
been flying unmanned aerial surveillance drones over Iran since 2004;
it has infiltrated combat and reconnaissance teams into Iran "to
collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government
ethnic minority groups" (Seymour Hersh);2 it has bestowed an ambiguous
"protected" status upon the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a group which, since
1997, the U.S. Department of State has designated a Foreign Terrorist
Organization, but a group that the Washington regime now uses to launch
cross-border attacks on Iran from within U.S.-occupied Iraq;3 and it
and its Israeli client have repeatedly threatened larger scale and more
open attacks. This pre-invasion aggression was an important feature of
the overall aggression against Iraq, where the US and British greatly
increased their "spikes of activity" with massive bombing well before
the March 19, 2003 invasion4=E2=80=94major acts of war and aggression begun
as early as April 2002, that were almost wholly ignored by the Free
Press and "international community."
What is mind-boggling in all this is that new attacks and threats by a
country that is in the midst of a serial aggression program, that runs
a well ocumented and widely condemned global gulag of torture,5 that
has committed major war crimes in Iraq=E2=80=94Fallujah may well replace
Guernica as a symbol of murderous warfare unleashed against
civilians6=E2=80=94and that openly declares itself exempt from international
law and states that the UN is only relevant when it supports U.S.
policy,7 is not only not condemned for its Iran aggression, but is able
to enlist support for it in the EU, UN and global media. This
enlistment of support occurs despite the further fact that it is now
generally recognized that the Bush and Blair administrations lied their
way into the Iraq invasion-occupation (but still quickly obtained UN
and EU acceptance of the occupation and ensuing ruthless pacification
program),8 and that they cynically misused the inspections program, all
of which makes the new accommodation to the aggression-in-process and
planned larger attack truly frightening.
The mechanism by which this is accomplished by the aggressor state is
to cry-up an allegedly dire threat that Iran might be embarking on a
program to obtain nuclear weapons=E2=80=94it might be doing this secretivel=
y,
and although it has submitted itself to IAEA inspections for the past
three years, it has not been 100 percent cooperative with the Agency.9
Combining this with demonization,10 intensive and repeated expressions
of indignation and fear, and threats to do something about the
intolerable threat, the Washington regime has managed to produce a
contrived "crisis," with huge spikes in media attention and supportive
expressions of concern and actions by the UN, IAEA, and international
community.11 These groups join the aggressor partly to avoid offending
it, but also to try to constrain its determination to get its way=E2=80=94b=
ut
in the process they accept its premises that there is a real threat and
hence give at least tacit support to its aggression program, and
sometimes more. On the home front, with the acceptance of the
seriousness of the manufactured crisis by the mainstream media and
Democrats, and with leading politicos like Hillary Clinton and Evan
Bayh even egging Bush on, the noise creates its own self-fulfilling
pressures on the leadership that manufactured the crisis, who now must
"do something" about it to avoid political loss.12
This time, the EU appears to be cooperating even more fully in the
developing aggression against Iran than it did in the Iraq case.
Although Iran has an absolute and "inalienable" right to enrich uranium
under NPT rules (i.e., the NPT=E2=80=99s sole condition is that the
enrichment can only be "for peaceful purposes"), and although the NPT
imposes upon other parties to the treaty the obligation to
"facilitate=E2=80=A6the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials a=
nd
scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of
nuclear energy,"13 under British, French and German urging Iran, in
November 2004, agreed "on a voluntary basis to continue and extend its
suspension to include all enrichment related and reprocessing
activities," while these states agreed to continue negotiations in good
faith for the sake of an agreement that "will provide objective
guarantees that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful
purposes," and "firm guarantees on nuclear, technological and economic
cooperation and firm commitments on security issues."14
But subsequent stages of negotiations foundered mainly because the
three EU states could not provide Iran with guarantees on
security-related issues without also securing U.S. guarantees for the
same=E2=80=94and not only were U.S. guarantees never forthcoming, but
Washington and Israel escalated their threats instead. Moreover, it is
the longstanding U.S. position that "no enrichment in Iran is
permissible," in the words of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
John Bolton. "The reason for that," he added, "is that even a small
so-called research enrichment program could give Iran the possibility
of mastering the technical deficiencies it's currently encountering in
its program. Once Iran has the scientific and technological capability
to do even laboratory size enrichment, that knowledge could be
replicated in industrial-size enrichment activities elsewhere, that's
why we've felt very strongly that no enrichment inside Iran should be
permitted, and that remains our position."15 In short, the United
States unilaterally refuses to allow Iran its rights granted it by the
NPT.
Now some 18 months later, a U.S.-led consortium of states has
introduced a draft resolution within the UN Security Council with the
intent of imposing upon Iran a deadline for terminating all indigenous
"enrichment-related and reprocessing activities" (pars. 1-2), as well
as calling on all states to prevent the transfer of the technology and
the expertise "that could contribute to Iran=E2=80=99s enrichment-related a=
nd
reprocessing activities and missile program" (par. 4)=E2=80=94thereby
following the U.S. lead and criminalizing Iran=E2=80=99s and only Iran=E2=
=80=99s
pursuit of its "inalienable" rights under Article IV of the NPT, and
treating Iran=E2=80=99s otherwise legal, NPT-sanctioned enrichment program =
as
a Chapter VII threat to international peace and security. Equally
striking, this draft resolution also expresses the Security Council=E2=80=
=99s
"intention to consider such further measures as may be necessary to
ensure compliance with this resolution=E2=80=A6" (par. 7).16 This is exact=
ly
the kind of phraseology that, if adopted, the Washington regime would
have be eager to interpret as a use-of-force type resolution,
regardless of whether other members of the Security Council went along
with it.
We regard the terms of this draft resolution as well as the general
thrust of British, French, German, and European Union diplomacy on the
Iranian nuclear issue to be a perfect accommodation to the needs of the
aggressor state, which openly denies Iran its "inalienable" rights
under NPT rules. This also constitutes a death-blow-by-politicization
to the NPT and a gross abuse of the functions and powers of the
Security Council, all in deference and service to a program in
violation of the most basic principle of the UN Charter=E2=80=94that all
members "shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means"
and refrain from the "threat or use of force" (Article 2).
Since the spring of 2003, U.S. power has produced a steady and
indignant focus on Iran=E2=80=99s alleged foot-dragging on inspections. As
in the case of Iraq=E2=80=99s failure through March 2003 to prove that it d=
id
not possess any "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD), the U.S.-driven
allegations and inspections regime channeled through the IAEA have
focused on Iran=E2=80=99s parallel failure to disprove a negative=E2=80=94n=
amely,
that Iran prove that it is not secretly engaging in practices that are
prohibited under the NPT and subsequent Safeguards Agreement (May 15,
1974) and the Additional Protocols (signed December 18, 2003, though
only observed "on a voluntary basis"). Moreover, throughout the
current 38-month cycle of allegations and inspections to which the IAEA
has now subjected Iran, the IAEA has repeatedly adopted a phraseology
to the effect that the IAEA is "unable to confirm the absence of
undeclared nuclear material and activities inside Iran"=E2=80=94an inherent=
ly
politicized condition that no state would be capable of meeting, no
matter what it agreed to do, and whose application depends ultimately
on the strength of the political forces that pressure the IAEA to
continue the search.17 With enough political pressure, no amount of
"transparency" and "confidence-building" measures on the part of the
accused state can meet it, as was evident in the Iraq case. And as
long as the IAEA reports that it is unable to confirm the absence of
undeclared nuclear material and activities inside Iran, Iran is
helpless before the IAEA=E2=80=99s negative condition.
The "threat" and crisis have been sustained in the media by the use of
patriotic and fear-mongering frames and suppressions of relevant fact
that may even be more brazen and misleading than those justifying the
invasion of Iraq. The crisis-supporting frames are: (1) that Iran is a
dangerous theocratic state, with an irrational and unstable political
and clerical leadership that has supported terrorists and threatened
Israel and is therefore not to be trusted with a nuclear program; (2)
that it has been secretive about its nuclear program, has not been
fully cooperative with the inspections program of the IAEA, and that
the reason for this secrecy is Iran=E2=80=99s intention to develop nuclear
weapons; (3) that its acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability would
be intolerable, would destabilize the Middle East if not the whole of
Western Civilization, and must be stopped.
In sustaining these frames it is necessary to suppress major facts,
such as: (1) that there is no proof that Iran plans to go beyond the
civilian uses of nuclear materials to which it is entitled under the
NPT and the IAEA has never claimed that it has evidence of such weapons
efforts or plans; (2) that both the United States and Israel possess
large and usable nuclear arsenals,18 and both have attacked other
countries in violation of the UN Charter, which Iran has not yet done;
(3) that Iran is far less dangerous than Israel and the United States
because it is very much weaker than the two that threaten it, and could
only use nuclear weapons in self-defense=E2=80=94offensive use would be
suicidal, which is not the case should the United States and Israel
attack Iran; (4) that Iran was secretive about its nuclear program
because it recognized that the United States and Israel would have
opposed it bitterly, but Iran at least did sign up with the NPT and has
allowed numerous intrusive inspections, whereas Israel was allowed to
develop a nuclear weapons program secretly, with U.S., U.K., French and
Norwegian aid, refused to join the NPT, and remains outside the
inspections system;19 (5) that both the United States and Israel are
virtual theocratic states, profoundly influenced by religious parties
whose leaders are arrogant, racist, and militaristic, and who have
posed persistent threats to international peace and security; (6) that
both the United States and Israel have supported terrorists on a larger
scale than Iran (e.g., Posada, Bosch and the Cuban terrorist network,
the Nicaraguan contras, Savimbi and UNITA, the South Lebanon Army,
among many others); and (7) that it is the United States and Israel
that have destabilized the Middle East, by aggression and ethnic
cleansing in violation of international law and by forcing a huge
imbalance in which only Israel is allowed nuclear weapons among the
countries of the Middle East, a condition which allowed Israel to
invade Lebanon and enables it to ethnically cleanse the West Bank
without threat of retaliation.
A first alternative-frame that might be used but is not to be found in
the mainstream media is based on the fact that, year-in and year-out,
the United States has been a chronic violator of the NPT=E2=80=99s Article =
VI
requirement that all parties "pursue negotiations in good faith on
effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an
early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and
complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."
In the context of the U.S.-driven accusations about Iran=E2=80=99s
violations of the NPT, it is worth emphasizing that in a 1996 decision
by the International Court of Justice, the fourteen judges on the Court
ruled unanimously that "There exists an obligation to pursue in good
faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear
disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international
control."20 The United States has brazenly ignored this ruling,
refusing to countenance any form of disarmament or international
control over its sovereign rights on questions of war and peace, openly
working on improving its nuclear weapons,21 and even threatening to use
them against Iran.22
Hence the United States not only has unclean hands, but its own illegal
policies and threats pose a clear and present danger that the UN and
international community should be addressing right now. Furthermore,
not only is Iran not an immediate threat, but given the U.S. threat to
Iran and the U.S. refusal to work toward the elimination of nuclear
weapons and to pledge non-use against nuclear weapons-free countries
like Iran, Iran has a moral right to try to acquire such weapons for
self-defense. Noting what the Americans had done to a
nuclear-weaponless Iraq in 2003, the Israeli historian Martin van
Creveld has written, "Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear
weapons, they would be crazy."23
This point is reinforced by a second alternative frame: namely, that
the United States is using the Iran nuclear threat as a gambit closely
analogous to the WMD claim that it employed as the lying rationale for
the invasion-occupation of Iraq. As before, the gambit is a cover for
a desire to force a "regime change" in Iran to make it into another
amenable client state. This is sometimes even openly acknowledged, and
helps explain the frenzied threat-inflation and artificial creation of
a crisis that can be used as the pretext for an attack and possibly
produce turmoil and political change in Iran. It also helps us
understand the continual U.S. refusal to negotiate with Iran and/or to
offer a security guarantee in exchange for possible Iranian concessions
on its nuclear plans. The same process occurred in the run-up to the
Iraq invasion=E2=80=94the United States inflated the threat, created a
crisis, refused to negotiate with Iraq, and would not allow inspectors
to complete their search for WMD allegedly because of the dire threat,
but more plausibly because of a longstanding U.S. determination to
engineer a regime change.
As noted, the mainstream media have followed the party line on the Iran
"crisis" and failed almost without exception to note the problems and
deal with matters raised in the alternative frames. Remarkably,
despite their acknowledged massive failures as news organizations and
de facto propaganda service for the Bush administration in the lead up
to the Iraq invasion,24 with the administration refocusing on the new
dire threat from Iran it took the mainstream media no time whatsoever
to fall into party-line formation=E2=80=94from which they have not deviated.
Thus, they never go into the U.S. violations of its NPT obligations,
never discuss international law and its possible application to U.S.
pre-invasion aggression and threats of open attack, just as they
ignored the subject in reference to the Iraq invasion.25 They never
challenge the threat-inflation or consider any possible Iranian right
of self-defense. (We may recall that the Free Press was able to make
an almost completely disarmed Guatemala a frightening threat back in
1954, as well as the badly weakened Iraq in 2002-3.) The media never
suggest that the United States may be abusing the inspections
process=E2=80=94never harking back to its abuses and outright lying as rega=
rd
the Iraq inspections effort=E2=80=94and they never suggest ulterior motives
for the aggressor.
In treating EU, UN and IAEA responses, the media never suggest that the
real problem is containing the United States. In the comical version
offered and hardly contested in the media, it is often suggested that
there is a threat of "appeasement" of Iran, and that if the world is
"to avoid another Munich," and the "Security Council fails to confront
the Iranian threat," it is up to the United States to "form an
international coalition to disarm the regime."26 But there is never a
hint that the problem might be appeasement of the United States. Or
that the applicable Munich analogy might not apply to the Iranian
nuclear program at all, as the 1938 Pact among the European powers that
impelled Czechoslovakia to accept the cession of the Sudetenland to the
Nazis is analogous to the ongoing UN and EU role in facilitating the
designs the United States is pursuing toward Iranian territory.27
Pravda could not have done a better job for any planned Soviet venture
abroad than the Free Press is once again doing for the Bush
administration.
Conclusion
It is clear that when it comes to actions that the superpower (or its
leading client states) chooses to take, international law is completely
inoperative, and that this has become institutionalized and accepted by
the "international community" (which doesn=E2=80=99t include the global
underlying population). In the case of Iran, it is as if the lessons
of the recent past, and even of the ongoing present in Iraq, simply
disappear, and similar imaginary "threats" and misuse of supposedly
neutral international bodies like the IAEA and its "inspections" can be
re-run in a miasma of hypocrisy. In fact, as we have noted, the
situation has deteriorated, with the UN and EU now playing an active
aggression-supportive role, following the U.S. lead in denying Iran its
"inalienable" rights under the NPT and making its pursuit of those
rights into a criminalized "threat to peace," setting the stage for a
more direct U.S. attack.
Our conclusion is twofold. First, given the U.S. and Israeli
possession of nuclear weapons, their threat to possibly use them in
attacking Iran, and the record of both countries in major law
violations such as the U.S. violation of the UN Charter prohibition of
aggression and the Israeli violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention
on obligations of an occupying power, and given the fact that the
Washington regime is already in the early phases of aggression against
Iran, the UN and Security Council should be urgently focusing on the
U=2ES. aggression instead of some minor inspection delinquencies on the
part of Iran (and it goes without saying, instead of giving positive
aid to the aggressor=E2=80=99s program).
Second, if there is a concern over violations of the NPT, far more
important than Iran=E2=80=99s deficiencies are the U.S. failure to undertake
any measures to eliminate nuclear weapons and its protection of Israel
as the sole nuclear power in the Middle East, and remaining outside
IAEA jurisdiction. In fact, the United States is improving its nuclear
arsenal with the express intention of making nuclear strikes more
"practicable." As these threaten Iran as well as many other countries,
common sense dictates that this violation of the NPT is vastly more
important than any attributable to Iran=E2=80=94real or imaginary.
In a decent and sane world, bringing the U.S. violations of the NPT and
its nuclear improvement actions before the UN and Security Council
ought to have a very high priority, second only to stopping the U.S.
aggression already underway against Iran and which threatens an
enlargement of the conflagration begun by its prior and still raging
"supreme international crime" in Iraq.
----------------------------------------------------------
Endnotes
1=2E "To initiate a war of aggression=E2=80=A6is not only an international
crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other
war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of
the whole." See "The Common Plan or Conspiracy and Aggressive War ," in
Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German
Major War Criminals , part of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials website
maintained by the Avalon Project at Yale Law School .
2=2E Seymour Hersh, "The Iran Plans ," New Yorker, April 17, 2006.
3. See "Foreign Terrorist Organizations ," Ch. 8 of Country Reports
on Terrorism 2005 , U.S. Department of State, April, 2006, pp. 30/212
=E2=80=93 31/213. On the U.S. Government=E2=80=99s decision in July 2004 t=
o grant
"protected" status to the MEK members semi-permanently encamped at
Ashraf in eastern Iraq, see "Daily Press Briefing ," Adam Ereli, Deputy
Spokesman, U.S. Department of State, July 26, 2004. As the spokesman
for Tehran=E2=80=99s Foreign Ministry noted in reaction, "The United States
is using its fight against terrorism as a tool, and we knew from the
beginning that this fight is void and they are not serious. Using the
Geneva Convention to protect this terrorist group is naive and
unacceptable." "U.S. war on terror is a sham, says Iran ," Daily Times
(Pakistan), July 28, 2004.
4. See Matthew Rycroft, "The secret Downing Street memo ," July 23,
2002 (as posted to the Times Online, May 1, 2005); also Michael Smith,
"The war before the war ," New Statesman, May 30, 2005; Michael Smith,
"General admits to secret air war ," Sunday Times, June 26, 2005; David
Peterson, "'Spikes of Activity' ," ZNet, July, 2005; and David
Peterson, "British Records on the Prewar Bombing of Iraq ," ZNet, July,
2005.
5. Jonathan Steele and Dahr Jamail, "This is our Guernica ," The
Guardian, April 27, 2005; Mike Marqusee, "A name that lives in infamy
," The Guardian, November 10, 2005.
6. See, e.g., Gretchen Borchelt et al., Break Them Down: Systematic
Use of Psychological Torture by U.S. Forces , Physicians for Human
Rights, May, 2005; Leila Zerrougui et al., Situation of detainees at
Guant=C3=A1namo Bay (E/CN.4/2006/120 ), UN Commission on Human Rights,
February 15, 2006; and By the Numbers: Findings of the Detainee Abuse
and Accountability Project , Center for Human Rights and Global
Justice, Human Rights First, and Human Rights Watch, February, 2006.
7. At a symposium in 1994 titled "Global Structures: A Convocation:
Human Rights, Global Governance and Strengthening the UN," the current
U=2ES. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton stated: "The
United States makes the U.N. work when it wants it to work, and that is
exactly the way it should be, because the only question -- the only
question -- for the United States is what's in our national interest?
And if you don't like that, I'm sorry. But that is the fact." See
Nomination of John R. Bolton, Hearing before the Committee on Foreign
Relations, U.S. Senate, April 11, 2005.
8. The blood spilled during the criminal U.S. and U.K. military
seizure of Iraq had yet to dry before the UN Security Council placed
its stamp upon the occupation with a litany of scramble-for-Iraq
resolutions, beginning with Resolution 1483 (May 22, 2003), lifting
economic sanctions that dated all the way back to Resolution 661
(August 6, 1990).
9. See "The Iran =E2=80=98Crisis=E2=80=99 ," Edward S. Herman and David P=
eterson,
ColdType, November, 2005.
10. On demonization, see David Peterson, "The Language of Force ,"
ZNet, January 16, 2006.
11. For some recent opinion surveys of American beliefs and
attitudes, all of which, in the manufactured crisis of the moment, find
Iran and Muslims to be grave threats to Americans, see Jeffrey M.
Jones, "Americans Rate Iran Most Negatively of 22 Countries ," Gallup,
February 23, 2006; Joseph Carroll, "Americans Say Iran Is Their
Greatest Enemy ," Gallup, February 23, 2006; Claudia Deane and Darryl
Fears, "Negative Perception Of Islam Increasing ," Washington Post,
March 9, 2006; "States of Insecurity ," Atlantic Monthly, April, 2006;
Dana Blanton, "FOX News Poll: Do Not Trust Iran ," FOXNews.com, May 9;
"FOX News / Opinion Dynamics Poll ," May 9.
12. On the American Democratic Party not only "not differ[ing]
significantly from the administration," but " trying to outflank the
administration by being even more hardline," see Anatol Lieven, "There
is menace in America's policy of prevention ," Financial Times, March
20, 2006 (as posted to the website of the New American Foundation ).
The lunatic (though still counterfactual) scenario laid out by Timothy
Garton Ash in "The tragedy that followed Hillary Clinton's bombing of
Iran in 2009 " (The Guardian, April 20, 2006), is imaginable in the
first place only because in the democratically crippled American
political system, what are marketed as alternatives remain captive of
the reigning de facto consensus.
13. Here quoting Article IV of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (effective March 5, 1970).
14. See the copy of the agreement between the E3/EU and Iran signed in
Paris on November 15, 2004, as reproduced in INFCIRC 637 , IAEA,
November 26, 2004, pp. 3-4.
15. Quoted in "No uranium enrichment 'permissible' for Iran=E2=80=94US
envoy," Agence France Presse, March 6, 2006. Note that we can find no
entry for Bolton's remarks on the website of the United States Mission
to the United Nations , e.g., under Press Releases, January - March,
2006 . Also see David Peterson, "Overthrowing the NPT the American Way
," ZNet, March 7, 2006..
16. For the actual text of the draft resolution as it existed on May
3, see "TEXT-UN council gets draft text on Iran nuclear program ,"
Reuters-AlertNet, May 3. And for reporting on the May 3 draft, see,
e=2Eg., Elaine Sciolino, "U.S., Britain and France Draft U.N. Resolution
on Iran's Nuclear Ambitions ," New York Times, May 3; "UN Security
Council considers action on Iran's nuclear programme ," UN News Center,
May 3; John Ward Anderson and Colum Lynch, "U.S. Crafts Response on
Iran ," Washington Post, May 3; Maggie Farley, "Security Council Gets
Iran Nuclear Resolution ," Los Angeles Times, May 4; Warren Hoge,
"Britain and France Press U.N. to Oppose Iran Nuclear Efforts ," New
York Times, May 4; Column Lynch, "Security Council Is Given Iran
Resolution ," Washington Post, May 4; Edward Alden and Caroline Daniel,
"US pushes for Iran financial sanctions ," Financial Times, May 8.
Also see Marjorie Cohn=E2=80=99s "Bush Setting up Attack on Iran ," Truthou=
t,
May 8.
17. To quote the latest installment in the IAEA=E2=80=99s series of reports
to its Board of Governors (at least the 17th overall), "the Agency is
unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the
absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran."
Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic
of Iran (GOV/2006/27 ), April 28, 2006, par. 33, p. 7. IAEA-channeled
allegations about the Iranian nuclear program have been formulated in
this manner since the very beginning.
18. For a current assessment of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, see
Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, "U.S. nuclear forces ,"
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February, 2006; and for
Israel=E2=80=99s, see Robert S. Norris et al., "Israel nuclear forces, 2002
," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October, 2002.
19. For a history of Israel=E2=80=99s development its nuclear weapons,
entirely outside the NPT and international controls, see Avner Cohen
and William Burr, "Israel crosses the threshold ," Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, May/June, 2006; and "Israel Crosses the Nuclear
Threshold ," National Security Archive Update, April 28, 2006. And on
Britain=E2=80=99s role, see "UK helped Israel get nuclear bomb ," BBC News,
August 4, 2005.
20. See Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons ,
International Court of Justice, July 8, 1996, pars. 98 =E2=80=93 103, and
Opinion F. Although an "advisory opinion," and thus not legally
binding on states, to date this counts as the most authoritative legal
decision to have been produced on issues stemming from the existence of
nuclear weapons and states=E2=80=99 obligations under the NPT.
21. On U.S. plans to upgrade its already peerless nuclear stockpile
and the means of delivering it, see James Sterngold, "Upgrades planned
for U.S. nuclear stockpile ," San Francisco Chronicle, January 15;
Walter Pincus, "U.S. Plans to Modernize Nuclear Arsenal ," Washington
Post, March 4.
22. On the potential U.S. threat to use nuclear weapons against
Iran=E2=80=94a case in which even so much as a hint or a whisper of threat =
is
deafening, and leaked warnings about such threats even louder=E2=80=94see
Hersh, "The Iran Plans ," New Yorker, April 17, 2006; Sarah Baxter,
"Gunning for Iran ," Sunday Times, April 9, 2006; and Peter Baker et
al., "U.S. Is Studying Military Strike Options on Iran ," Washington
Post, April 9, 2006. Also see the material reported under the "Divine
Strake " entry on the Weapons of Mass Destruction webpage of
GlobalSecurity.org .
23. Martin van Creveld, "Sharon on the warpath: Is Israel planning
to attack Iran? " International Herald Tribune, August 21, 2004.
24. The classic case having been "The Times and Iraq ," New York
Times, May 26, 2004; and the accompanying webpage The Times devotes to
this topic, "The Times and Iraq: A Sample of the Coverage ," May, 2004.
Though we add the caveat that the documents contained herein, and the
conclusions affirmed by The Times about the role that it played during
the build-up for the invasion, grossly understate The Times=E2=80=99s real
culpability.
25. Howard Friel and Richard Falk, The Record of the Paper: How the New
York Times Misreports US Foreign Policy (London: Verso, 2004). In 70
editorials on Iraq between September 11, 2001 and March 21, 2003, The
Times editors never once mentioned international law. See chapter 1.
26. Nile Gardiner and Joseph Loconte, "The Gathering Storm Over Iran
," Boston Globe, May 3. Conversely, usage of the false Munich analogy
and the charge of "appeasement" abounds. See, e.g., "Iran's Nuclear
Challenge ," Editorial, Washington Post, January 12; William Kristol,
"And Now Iran; We can't rule out the use of military force ," Weekly
Standard, January 23; and Kim Willsher, "'Only a fraction of Teheran's
brutality has come to light' ," Daily Telegraph, March 19. This last
example was particularly revealing. In it, Maryam Rajavi, described as
the "leader of the largest exiled Iranian opposition group," the
National Council for Resistance for Iran, reportedly "says Western
governments must end their =E2=80=98dangerous appeasement' of Iran's regime
and recognise the worth of her group=E2=80=A6." Unmentioned is the fact that
the U.S. Government (officially, anyway) includes her group along with
the Mujahedin-e Khalq on its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
See note 3, above.
27. The Iran gambit could be a cover for a partial invasion-occupation
of the geographic region of Iran where in the words of the U.S.
Department of Energy the "vast majority of Iran=E2=80=99s crude oil reserves
are located," that is, "in giant onshore fields in the southwestern
Khuzestan region near the Iraqi border." Contrary to popular myth, this
would not entail going "all the way to Tehran," as a saying attributed
to the Neoconservatives has it, but only as far as the greatest
concentration of Iran=E2=80=99s proven oil reserves extend, where
southeastern Iraq borders Khuzestan. See "Iran ," U.S. Energy
Information Administration, January, 2006, p. 2. As this same report
adds, "in September 2005, several bombs were detonated near oil wells
in Khuzestan, raising concerns about unrest amongst ethnic Arabs in the
region" (p. 2).
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