Robert Parry in “Herding Americans to War with Iran” puts it this way:
For many Americans the progression toward war with Iran has the feel of cattle being herded from the stockyard into the slaughterhouse, pressed steadily forward with no turning back, until some guy shoots a bolt into your head.
Any suggestion of give-and-take negotiations with Iran is mocked, while alarmist propaganda, a ratcheting up of sanctions, and provocative actions – like Wednesday’s assassination of yet another Iranian scientist – push Americans closer to what seems like an inevitable bloodletting.
This from Ray McGovern in "US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes":
Has Iran decided to build a nuclear bomb? That would seem to be the central question in the current bellicose debate over whether the world should simply cripple Iran’s economy and inflict severe pain on its civilian population or launch a preemptive war to destroy its nuclear capability while possibly achieving “regime change.”
And if you’ve been reading the New York Times or following the rest of the Fawning Corporate Media, you’d likely assume that everyone who matters agrees that the answer to the question is yes, although the FCM adds the caveat that Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. The line is included with an almost perceptible wink and an “oh, yeah.”
However, a consensus seems to be emerging among the intelligence and military agencies of the United States – and Israel – that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a nuclear weapon. In recent days, that judgment has been expressed by high-profile figures in the defense establishments of the two countries – U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
You might think that you would have heard more about that, wouldn’t you? U.S. and Israel agree that Iran is NOT building a nuclear bomb. However, this joint assessment that Iran has NOT decided to build a nuclear bomb apparently represented too big a change in the accepted narrative for the Times and the rest of the FCM to process.
snip
Still, it is interesting that Barak’s comments on how Israeli intelligence views Iran’s nuclear program now mesh so closely with the NIE in 2007. This is the new and significant story here, as I believe any objective journalist would agree.
However, the FCM — led by the New York Times — cannot countenance admitting that they have been hyping the threat from Iran as they did with Iraq’s non-existent WMDs just nine years ago. So they keep repeating the line that Israel and the U.S. agree that Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
In this up-is-down world, America’s newspaper of record won’t even report accurately what Israel (or the CIA) thinks on this important issue, if that goes against the alarmist conventional wisdom that the neocons favor. Thus, we have this divergence between what the U.S. media is reporting as flat fact — i.e., that Israel and the United States believe Iran is building a bomb (though Iran denies it) – and the statements from senior Israeli and U.S. officials that Iran has NOT decided to build a bomb.
Parry in “Slip-Sliding to War with Iran” writes:
There is now a cascading of allegations regarding Iran, as there was with Iraq, with the momentum rushing toward war.
Just as with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the U.S. news media treats Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a designated villain whose every word is cast as dangerous or crazy. Even left-of-center media personalities, like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow, talk tough against Ahmadinejad, just as many “liberals” did regarding Hussein.
Also, as happened with Iraq – when harsher economic sanctions merged with a U.S. troop build-up, making an escalation toward war almost inevitable – tougher and tougher Western sanctions against Iran have pushed the various sides closer to war.
Iran does seem intent on continuing to work on developing nuclear energy. For peaceful -- medical -- purposes it maintains. Iran is also reacting understandably to economic sanctions inflicted onto it by the EU, bullied by the US which in turn is bullied by Israel, by threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil route for the Western nations.
The propaganda against Iran is being ratcheted up by the neocons and what Parry calls their “extensive political and media resources” to build support for future military strikes against Iran. Parry considers the Washington Post’s editorial page the neocons’ “media flagship.” It continues to urge more and more draconian sanctions against Iran and mocks anyone who does not. Parry:
In a television interview Sunday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said: ‘Our red line to Iran is: do not develop a nuclear weapon.’ He asserted that Tehran was not trying to develop a weapon now, only ‘a nuclear capability.’ The Revolutionary Guard, which controls the nuclear program, might well take that as a green light for the new enrichment operation.”
While portraying Panetta as an Iranian tool, the Post suggested that anyone who wanted to turn back from an Iran confrontation was an Iranian useful fool. ...
Chris Floyd on "Pups on Parade: EU Obediently Pushes Toward War with Iran" sums up the amorality and destructiveness, not only on Iran, of the latest embargo being leveraged:
This week, the warlords of the West took yet another step toward their long-desired war against Iran. (Open war, that is; their covert war has been going on for decades -- via subversion, terrorism, and proxies like Saddam Hussein.) On Monday, the European Union obediently followed the dictates of its Washington masters by agreeing to impose an embargo on Iranian oil.
The embargo bans all new oil contracts with Iran, and cuts off all existing deals after July. The embargo is accompanied by a freeze on all European assets of the Iranian central bank. In imposing these draconian measures on a country which is not at war with any nation, which has not invaded or attacked another nation in centuries, and which is developing a nuclear energy program that is not only entirely legal under international law but is also subject to the most stringent international inspection regime ever seen, the EU is "targeting the economic lifeline of the regime," as one of its diplomats put it, with admirable candor.
The embargo will have serious, perhaps disastrous effects on many of Europe's sinking economies, which are heavy users of Iranian oil. This is particularly true in Greece, the poster boy for our modern "Shock Doctrine über alles" global economic system. For even as Greece writhes beneath the blows of European bankers determined to bleed the country dry to avoid the consequences of their own knowingly corrupt loan policies, the Iranians have been giving the Greeks substantial discounts on oil, which has helped ease -- at least in some measure -- the economic ruin being imposed on the "birthplace of democracy."
Now this slender lifeline is being cut, leaving Greece -- and other nations under assault by the plutocrats and their political lackeys -- to seek a replacement for discounted Iranian oil in what will be a seller's market, thanks to the shortages caused by the embargo. The result will be higher prices across the board, leading to more economic ruin for all those beyond the golden penumbra of the One Percent.
And of course, the effects will be even more catastrophic for millions of innocent people in Iran. Already the lives of these innocent people -- including all of the dissidents supposedly so cherished by the West -- are being diminished and degraded by the series of sanctions imposed by the United States and its pack of tail-wagging Europuppies. But who cares about that? After all, it is glaringly obvious that our Euro-American elites are more than happy to see their own rabble go down the shock-doctrine toilet; it is inconceivable that the ruin of a bunch of dirty Mooslim furriners would disturb them for even a nano-second.
The ostensible aim of all these sanctions, we are told, is to "force Iran back to the negotiating table" on its nuclear program. This is patent nonsense.
Floyd extends a very dark take on what these seemingly over-easily pressured sanctions by both US and European officialdom (leaned on so heavily by Israel) will wreak:
First, while long-running sanctions do not in themselves overturn a regime, they do make the entire country much weaker. Infrastructure falls apart, society crumbles, communities wither, families fray, the people themselves become physically weaker -- indeed, they can die in droves, in multitudes, as in Iraq. All of this makes for a much softer target when you finally decide to pull the trigger on military action.
Second -- and I think much more relevant to this case -- there is the hope that ever-tightening sanctions will provoke a violent response from the victim, thereby "justifying" a war of "self-defense" against the "unprovoked" attack. The series of escalating provocations being carried out by Washington and its allies, chiefly Israel -- including an increasingly open program of assassinations -- is clearly designed to goad the Iranians into a casus belli retaliation.
So far, the Iranians have resisted -- a forbearance that has driven the Western warmongers into ludicrous attempts to manufacture casus belli incidents. such as the recent "Gleiwitz gambit": the story that the super-duper Iranian spymasters tried to hire a goofball car dealer to kill a Saudi diplomat on the streets of Washington. But the matches our masters keep throwing at this bone-dry pile of tinder are getting closer and closer to sparking the desired conflagration. The Iranians have already threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz if the EU goes through with its embargo. This, of course, would likely be the "Pearl Harbor" moment the war-whoopers are waiting for: an "unprovoked" attack aimed at -- what else? -- "targeting the economic lifeline" of the West. (Targeting economic lifelines is a tactic reserved solely for God's good eggs, you understand; it's an unmitigated evil when those heathen devils try it.)
The Iranians might back down on this threat, of course; the wily Persians tend to play the long game, and usually with more subtle calibration than the Western elites, who, like spoiled children, like to have their loot and power now now now! But if this latest provocation doesn't do the trick, rest assured there are more coming in the, er, pipeline. For the bipartisan goal, as noted above, remains the same: "regime change in strategic lands laden with natural resources." And our masters have already demonstrated that they do not care how many people are ruined -- or are killed -- in pursuit of this aim.
Parryreminds us how reminiscent the media stampede to war is:
So, this prospective war with Iran – like the one in Iraq – is likely to come down to intelligence assessments on Iran’s intentions and capabilities. And, as with Iraq’s alleged WMD, the many loud voices claiming that Iran is on pace to build a nuclear bomb are drowning out the relatively few skeptics who think the evidence is thin to invisible.
For instance, the recent report from the International Atomic Energy Agency about Iran’s supposed progress toward a nuclear bomb was widely accepted as gospel truth without any discussion of whether the IAEA is an unbiased and reliable source.
In framing the story in support of the IAEA, the major U.S. newspapers and TV networks ignored documentary evidence that the IAEA’s new director-general was installed with the support of the United States and that he privately indicated to U.S. and Israeli officials that he would help advance their goals regarding Iran.
Parry discloses that the Wikileaks cables have revealed an innappropriate cronyism of the new director-general to the neocon US and Israel agenda. Parry:
These facts could be found easily enough in WikiLeaks cables that the U.S. news media has had access to since 2010. Yet, the Big Media has ignored this side of the story, even as the IAEA report has been touted again and again as virtually a smoking gun against Iran.
This pattern of ignoring – or downplaying – evidence that runs counter to the prevailing narrative was a notable feature during the run-up to war with Iraq. It is now being repeated not just by the right-wing news media, but by the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC and other centrist-to-left-leaning outlets. [Update: The IAEA report was cited again on Friday in another bellicose editorial in the Times.]
snip
In other words, the emerging picture of Amano is of a bureaucrat eager to please the United States and Israel regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Wouldn’t that evidence be relevant for Americans deciding whether to trust the IAEA report? But the Big Media apparently felt that the American people shouldn’t know these facts whose disclosure has been limited to a few Internet sites. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “America’s Debt to Bradley Manning.”]
Similarly, the U.S. press corps is now reporting the dubious allegations about an Iranian assassination plot directed against the Saudi ambassador as flat fact, not as some hard-to-believe accusation comparable to Vice President Dick Cheney’s claims in 2002 that Iraqi officials had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Petraeus’s CIA Fuels Iran Murder Plot.”]
snip
Also, as happened with Iraq – when harsher economic sanctions merged with a U.S. troop build-up, making an escalation toward war almost inevitable – tougher and tougher Western sanctions against Iran have pushed the various sides closer to war.
In November, Iranian anger at escalating sanctions and other hostile acts led to an assault on the British Embassy, which then prompted new European demands for a full-scale embargo of Iranian oil. As tensions have grown, the U.S. Senate tossed in its own hand-grenade, voting 100-0 in favor of hitting Iran with ever more stringent sanctions.
In turn, Iran has threatened to retaliate against the West’s economic warfare by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil flows, thus driving up oil prices and derailing the West’s already shaky economies. That threat has led to even more bellicose language from many U.S. political figures, especially the Republican presidential hopefuls who have denounced President Barack Obama for not being tougher on Iran.
Parry asserts that President Obama is particularly vulnerable in this election year to cross the Israel-obedient media and politicians to interfere with the stampede to war.
Already, a recurring Republican talking point is that Obama’s earlier efforts to open channels of negotiation with Iran and other foreign adversaries proved his naivete and amounted to “apologizing” for America. Obama also has faced resistance within his own administration, especially from neocon-lites such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Parry reminds us that in the spring of 2010, leaders of both Turkey and Brazil were privately encouraged by Obama to get Ahmadinejad “to agree to relinquish nearly half of the country’s supply of low-enriched uranium in exchange for isotopes for medical research.” Parry writes:
But after Ahmadinejad accepted the deal, Secretary Clinton and other U.S. hardliners switched into overdrive to kill the swap and insist instead on imposing harsher sanctions against Iran.
At the time, Clinton’s position was endorsed by editors at the Washington Post and the New York Times, who mocked Erdogan and Lula da Silva as inept understudies on the international stage. If anything, the Post and Times argued, the United States should take an even more belligerent approach toward Iran, i.e. seeking “regime change.”
snip
... with Washington’s political momentum favoring another confrontation with a Muslim adversary, Obama retreated and lined up behind the sanctions.
snip
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Likud leaders appear to fear a second Obama term – when he’d be freed from the need to seek reelection – much as their predecessors feared a second term for President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Then, Prime Minister Menachem Begin thought that Carter in a second term would team up with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in forcing Israel to accept a Palestinian state.
Will Obama manage to do the right thing and push back against another looming and devastating Middle Eastern war or will he try to “out” tough the war-mongering Republican blowhard candidates insisting he and the Dems are too soft on terrorism? Can an AWAKENED citizenry force and support an Obama waging peace or are we to be completely snowed, confused and/or bullied by the war-mongering mainstream media to demonize Iran and accept another manufactured pre-emptive struck war?
The odds are not good.
Margaret Kimberley in "Freedom Rider: Defend Iran!":
Libya has been laid waste because of tall tales perpetrated by the West. Tales of civilian slaughter in Benghazi are Obama’s WMD, that is to say outright falsehoods. There will be more such story telling in the coming weeks and months, but it should not matter to anyone who claims to want peace.
Peace makers must defend Iran and condemn the American government when it launches its violence. Such actions will be the true determination of who is civilized and who is not. Our government is definitely uncivilized and we shall see how many of its people also fit that description.
I don’t know about you, but the tragedies of the Iraq and and Afghanistan wars have not faded. The obscenity of the Libyan war was not successfully covered up the amoral government and equally amoral media from me. I am sick and tired of having a “manufacturing consent” BIG MEDIA ramp up war propaganda to Orwellianly deadly proportions and ignore -- GROTESQUELY DISRESPECT -- one more -- and assuredly not the last -- time the will of the citizenry, those members one by one who are struggling to wake up to the horrifying scope of the amorality of its war criminal and domestic-abusing government. Struggling to face down the insane evil of the USWarMachine!
[cross-posted on correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
--------------
It's all about the oil. Don't let them irradiate the oil!
I didn't understand/have background on mush of this but am trying. Lately I'm just embarrassed to be a human, so many of our species are just ugly inside. Why do we let the ugliest run all the shows?
Thank you for all the work.
Thank you for all the work.
From what I read, Iran is laughing all the way to the bank. Iran has alternatives - China, India and Turkey are very happy to buy their oil - at an inflated price, thanks to all the US/Israeli saber rattling. What's more they no longer sell it for US dollars - they sell it for mainly for Euros. India is paying for Iranian oil with gold. Meanwhile the US dollar is tanking again. All Americans notice is prices gradually creeping up. But we notice it here in our exchange rate. At present the New Zealand dollar buys 82 cents US. When I first moved here in 2002, it bought 40 cents US.
The stupidity of the Obama administration is unbelievable. Because the US has no manufacturing base, the US dollar only keeps its value when other countries are forced to pay for oil in US dollars. Because of insipid America policy as regards Iran, Syria and Libya (which is currently engaged in a full scale civil war - but I doubt they mention this in the US), the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are quietly abandoning the petrodollar. And there's not a damned thing the US can do about it.
The stupidity of the Obama administration is unbelievable. Because the US has no manufacturing base, the US dollar only keeps its value when other countries are forced to pay for oil in US dollars. Because of insipid America policy as regards Iran, Syria and Libya (which is currently engaged in a full scale civil war - but I doubt they mention this in the US), the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are quietly abandoning the petrodollar. And there's not a damned thing the US can do about it.
zumalicious, it seems to have always been about the oil, and now especially about the "petro"dollar, or rather the falling "petro"dollar. military violence is such an evil choice. there are options, but as they say, when your only tool is a hammer, everything appears to be a nail.
l'Heure, thanks for your comment, as always. Wow, "Why do we let the ugliest run all the shows?" What a profound and troubling question. Yes, sociopaths seem to have a courage and bravado that makes more healthily self-doubting people at least initially give them more respect than they deserve. The seeming courage of a sociopath is really narcissism on steroids. With most of the passive rest of us? Some authoritarian-following, learned-helplessness and the toxicity of cronyism that lacks tough-love within the tribe. A morally-lazy collusion for the sake of group affinity? And the proverbial boiled frogs theory fits in here, too, I suppose.
Stuart, I love getting your geographically out of the national box takes! Which also provides you with out of the idiot propaganda american tv box takes! Yes the paranoia about the "petro"dollar that bottom lines so much of the violence. The banking rapists who are now devastating this country. We ask why they have no heart? They haven't started murdering us, at least not directly, yet. But the USWarMachine has committed massive murder for their needs and the needs of all the profiteering contractors and corporatists and ego-maniacal and avaricious politicians internationally without it would seem a second thought. It is amazing reading about Hillary as neo-con lite above, as so many think she would have been a preferable alternative to Obama.
I wish I believed there is not a thing the US can do about it, the tanking of the petrodollar. There is always the "insane thing" the US will choose to do about it. I pray that it does not. But when there is so much evidence that the "fourth estate" of journalism has turned on us so. Is as betraying as our oath-taking reps. Something so reptilian about this drumbeat of propaganda, the momentum of which as McGovern points out above that even when there is a dramatic admission among the leaders of "reality" it is not politically convenient and the momentum must be allowed to continue and so the propaganda myhologizing and demonizing will omit, disinform, distract from reality, even if it lemming-marching us is to a WWIII. Kimberley is so right. We do not have a civilized government. And it remains to be seen how many citizens can struggle to find and heed the truth and sustain a spiritual civilized state within themselves! We need the knowledge of what is really happening and we need the empathy and courage to do something about it.
libby
l'Heure, thanks for your comment, as always. Wow, "Why do we let the ugliest run all the shows?" What a profound and troubling question. Yes, sociopaths seem to have a courage and bravado that makes more healthily self-doubting people at least initially give them more respect than they deserve. The seeming courage of a sociopath is really narcissism on steroids. With most of the passive rest of us? Some authoritarian-following, learned-helplessness and the toxicity of cronyism that lacks tough-love within the tribe. A morally-lazy collusion for the sake of group affinity? And the proverbial boiled frogs theory fits in here, too, I suppose.
Stuart, I love getting your geographically out of the national box takes! Which also provides you with out of the idiot propaganda american tv box takes! Yes the paranoia about the "petro"dollar that bottom lines so much of the violence. The banking rapists who are now devastating this country. We ask why they have no heart? They haven't started murdering us, at least not directly, yet. But the USWarMachine has committed massive murder for their needs and the needs of all the profiteering contractors and corporatists and ego-maniacal and avaricious politicians internationally without it would seem a second thought. It is amazing reading about Hillary as neo-con lite above, as so many think she would have been a preferable alternative to Obama.
I wish I believed there is not a thing the US can do about it, the tanking of the petrodollar. There is always the "insane thing" the US will choose to do about it. I pray that it does not. But when there is so much evidence that the "fourth estate" of journalism has turned on us so. Is as betraying as our oath-taking reps. Something so reptilian about this drumbeat of propaganda, the momentum of which as McGovern points out above that even when there is a dramatic admission among the leaders of "reality" it is not politically convenient and the momentum must be allowed to continue and so the propaganda myhologizing and demonizing will omit, disinform, distract from reality, even if it lemming-marching us is to a WWIII. Kimberley is so right. We do not have a civilized government. And it remains to be seen how many citizens can struggle to find and heed the truth and sustain a spiritual civilized state within themselves! We need the knowledge of what is really happening and we need the empathy and courage to do something about it.
libby
rw0059, I agree. our CIA has done so much prelim destabilization work in so many countries, the budgets so black nobody gets to see them, but we are paying for them. Sorry to hear about Foreign Affairs building a case for war. I've read some sane articles there often. libby
Here is an update re Iran war scenario:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30373.htm
excerpt from War Against Iran Is Underway
The Conundrum of Iran
By Leonid Savin
"January 28, 2012 " SCF" -- The EU oil embargo recently slapped on Iran and the threats voiced by the US and other Western countries to come up with further sanctions against the country led watchers to conclude that an armed conflict between Iran and the West finally became imminent.
"The first potential scenario in the context is that the current standoff would eventually escalate into a war. The US forces in the Gulf area currently number 40,000, plus 90,000 are deployed in Afghanistan, just east of Iran, and several thousands of support troops are deployed in various Asian countries. That adds up to a considerable military potential which may still fall short of what it takes to keep a lid on everything if armed hostilities break out. For example, Colin H. Kahl argues in a recent paper in Foreign Affairs that, even though “there is no doubt that Washington will win in the narrow operational sense” (1), the US would have to take a vast array of pertinent problems into account.
"At the moment, maintaining the status quo is not in the US interests, holds Stratfor, a US-based global intelligence agency: “If al Assad survives and if the situation in Iraq proceeds as it has been proceeding, then Iran is creating a reality that will define the region. The United States does not have a broad and effective coalition, and certainly not one that would rally in the event of war. It has only Israel ...” (2) If the conflict with Iran takes the shape of a protracted bombing campaign and comes as a prologue to the occupation of the country, the US will need to strengthen its positions in adjacent regions, meaning that Washington will be trying to draw the Caucasian republics (Georgia, Azerbaijan) and those of Central Asia into the orbit of its policy and thus tightening the “Anaconda loop” around Russia.
"An alternative scenario also deserves attention. The EU sanctions would surely hurt many of the European economies – notably, Greece, Italy, and Spain - by a ricochet. In fact, Spanish diplomacy chief José Manuel García-Margallo Y Marfil bluntly described the sanctions decision as a sacrifice (3). As for Iran, the oil blockade can cause its annual budget to contract by $15-20b, which generally should not be critical but, as the country's parliamentary elections and the 2013 presidential poll are drawing closer and the West actively props up its domestic opposition, outbreaks of unrest in Iran would quite possibly ensue. Tehran has already made it clear it would make a serious effort to find buyers for its oil export elsewhere. China and India, Iran's respective number one and number three clients, brushed off the idea of the US-led sanctions momentarily. Japan pledged support for Washington over the matter but did not post any specific plans to reduce the volumes of oil it imports from Iran. Japan, by the way, was badly hit in 1973 when Wall Street provoked an oil crisis and the US guarantees turned hollow. Consequently, Tokyo can be expected to approach Washington's sanction suggestions with utmost caution and to ask the US for unequivocal guarantees that the White House will be unable to provide. Right now the US is courting South Korea with the aim of having it cut off the import of oil from Iran.
"The opposition mounted to the plans underlying the military scenario by China, Russia, and India seems to hold the promise of an alliance of countries seeking to tame the US hegemony and raging unilateralism. Stratfor analysts have a point saying that time is not on the US side, considering that the BRICs countries have some opportunities to influence the situation in the potential conflict zone by launching joint anti-terrorism and anti-piracy maneuvers in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf etc.
"Inducing the regime change in Iran, which is Washington's end goal, still takes a pretext. The US has long been eying various factions in Iran in the hope to capitalize on the country's existing domestic rivalries parallel to the employment of tested color revolution techniques such as the support for the Green Movement or the establishment of a virtual embassy for Iran. Richard Sanders, a vocal critic of the US foreign policy, opined that, at least since the invasion of Mexico in the late XIX century, the US permanently relied on the mechanism of war pretext incidents to compile justifications for its military interventions (4). US arch-conservative Patrick J. Buchanan cited in his opinion piece titled “Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?” the fairly common view that the US financial circles knowingly provoked the Pearl Harbor attack to drag the US into a war with the remote goal of ensuring the dollar empire's global primacy (5). The lesson to be learned from the history of the Vietnam War, namely the Gulf of Tonkin incident in which USS Maddox entered Vietnam's territorial waters and opened fire on the boats of its navy, is that the initial conflict was similarly ignited by the US intelligence community, the result being that the US Congress authorized LBJ to militarily engage Vietnam (by the way, no retribution followed in June 1967 when the Israelis attacked USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 172). The morally charged concepts of humanitarian interventions and war on terror had just as well been invoked to legitimize downright aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
"Speaking of the current developments around the Persian Gulf, Washington's choice of pretexts for an aggression comprises at least three options, namely (1) Iran's nuclear dossier; (2) an engineered escalation in the Strait of Hormuz; (3) allegations that Iran supports international terrorism. The US objective behind the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program - to make everybody in the world accept Washington's rules of the game – has never been deeply hidden. The abundant alarmist talk is intended to deflect attention from the simple truth that building a nuclear arsenal with the help of civilian nuclear technologies is absolutely impossible, but Matthew H. Kroenig from the Council on Foreign Relations recently went so far as to warn that Iran would some day pass its nuclear technologies to Venezuela (6). The motivation must be to somehow bundle all critics of the US foreign policy.
"The Strait of Hormuz which is the maritime chokepoint of the Persian Gulf is regarded as the epicenter of the coming new war. It serves as the avenue for oil supplies from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates and is therefore being closely monitored by all likely parties to the conflict. According to the US Department of Energy, the 2011 oil transit via the Strait of Hormuz totaled 17 billion barrels, or roughly 20% of the world's total (7). Oil prices are projected to increase by 50% if anything disquieting happens in the Strait of Hormuz (8)."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30373.htm
excerpt from War Against Iran Is Underway
The Conundrum of Iran
By Leonid Savin
"January 28, 2012 " SCF" -- The EU oil embargo recently slapped on Iran and the threats voiced by the US and other Western countries to come up with further sanctions against the country led watchers to conclude that an armed conflict between Iran and the West finally became imminent.
"The first potential scenario in the context is that the current standoff would eventually escalate into a war. The US forces in the Gulf area currently number 40,000, plus 90,000 are deployed in Afghanistan, just east of Iran, and several thousands of support troops are deployed in various Asian countries. That adds up to a considerable military potential which may still fall short of what it takes to keep a lid on everything if armed hostilities break out. For example, Colin H. Kahl argues in a recent paper in Foreign Affairs that, even though “there is no doubt that Washington will win in the narrow operational sense” (1), the US would have to take a vast array of pertinent problems into account.
"At the moment, maintaining the status quo is not in the US interests, holds Stratfor, a US-based global intelligence agency: “If al Assad survives and if the situation in Iraq proceeds as it has been proceeding, then Iran is creating a reality that will define the region. The United States does not have a broad and effective coalition, and certainly not one that would rally in the event of war. It has only Israel ...” (2) If the conflict with Iran takes the shape of a protracted bombing campaign and comes as a prologue to the occupation of the country, the US will need to strengthen its positions in adjacent regions, meaning that Washington will be trying to draw the Caucasian republics (Georgia, Azerbaijan) and those of Central Asia into the orbit of its policy and thus tightening the “Anaconda loop” around Russia.
"An alternative scenario also deserves attention. The EU sanctions would surely hurt many of the European economies – notably, Greece, Italy, and Spain - by a ricochet. In fact, Spanish diplomacy chief José Manuel García-Margallo Y Marfil bluntly described the sanctions decision as a sacrifice (3). As for Iran, the oil blockade can cause its annual budget to contract by $15-20b, which generally should not be critical but, as the country's parliamentary elections and the 2013 presidential poll are drawing closer and the West actively props up its domestic opposition, outbreaks of unrest in Iran would quite possibly ensue. Tehran has already made it clear it would make a serious effort to find buyers for its oil export elsewhere. China and India, Iran's respective number one and number three clients, brushed off the idea of the US-led sanctions momentarily. Japan pledged support for Washington over the matter but did not post any specific plans to reduce the volumes of oil it imports from Iran. Japan, by the way, was badly hit in 1973 when Wall Street provoked an oil crisis and the US guarantees turned hollow. Consequently, Tokyo can be expected to approach Washington's sanction suggestions with utmost caution and to ask the US for unequivocal guarantees that the White House will be unable to provide. Right now the US is courting South Korea with the aim of having it cut off the import of oil from Iran.
"The opposition mounted to the plans underlying the military scenario by China, Russia, and India seems to hold the promise of an alliance of countries seeking to tame the US hegemony and raging unilateralism. Stratfor analysts have a point saying that time is not on the US side, considering that the BRICs countries have some opportunities to influence the situation in the potential conflict zone by launching joint anti-terrorism and anti-piracy maneuvers in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf etc.
"Inducing the regime change in Iran, which is Washington's end goal, still takes a pretext. The US has long been eying various factions in Iran in the hope to capitalize on the country's existing domestic rivalries parallel to the employment of tested color revolution techniques such as the support for the Green Movement or the establishment of a virtual embassy for Iran. Richard Sanders, a vocal critic of the US foreign policy, opined that, at least since the invasion of Mexico in the late XIX century, the US permanently relied on the mechanism of war pretext incidents to compile justifications for its military interventions (4). US arch-conservative Patrick J. Buchanan cited in his opinion piece titled “Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?” the fairly common view that the US financial circles knowingly provoked the Pearl Harbor attack to drag the US into a war with the remote goal of ensuring the dollar empire's global primacy (5). The lesson to be learned from the history of the Vietnam War, namely the Gulf of Tonkin incident in which USS Maddox entered Vietnam's territorial waters and opened fire on the boats of its navy, is that the initial conflict was similarly ignited by the US intelligence community, the result being that the US Congress authorized LBJ to militarily engage Vietnam (by the way, no retribution followed in June 1967 when the Israelis attacked USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 172). The morally charged concepts of humanitarian interventions and war on terror had just as well been invoked to legitimize downright aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
"Speaking of the current developments around the Persian Gulf, Washington's choice of pretexts for an aggression comprises at least three options, namely (1) Iran's nuclear dossier; (2) an engineered escalation in the Strait of Hormuz; (3) allegations that Iran supports international terrorism. The US objective behind the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program - to make everybody in the world accept Washington's rules of the game – has never been deeply hidden. The abundant alarmist talk is intended to deflect attention from the simple truth that building a nuclear arsenal with the help of civilian nuclear technologies is absolutely impossible, but Matthew H. Kroenig from the Council on Foreign Relations recently went so far as to warn that Iran would some day pass its nuclear technologies to Venezuela (6). The motivation must be to somehow bundle all critics of the US foreign policy.
"The Strait of Hormuz which is the maritime chokepoint of the Persian Gulf is regarded as the epicenter of the coming new war. It serves as the avenue for oil supplies from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates and is therefore being closely monitored by all likely parties to the conflict. According to the US Department of Energy, the 2011 oil transit via the Strait of Hormuz totaled 17 billion barrels, or roughly 20% of the world's total (7). Oil prices are projected to increase by 50% if anything disquieting happens in the Strait of Hormuz (8)."
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