The
War On Iran
By Stephen Gowans
03 February 2007
Countercurrents.org
The war has already begun
and it has nothing to do with nuclear weapons and threats against Israel
and everything to do with who rules America.
According to US economist Jeffrey
Sachs, “Bush recently invited journalists to imagine the world
in 50 years…he wanted to know whether Islamic radicals would control
the world’s oil.” Sachs pointed out that stoking fears over
who will control the world’s petroleum reserves is not new to
the Bush administration.
In the lead up to the Anglo-American
war on Iraq, US vice president Dick Cheney made the ridiculous claim
that Saddam Hussein was assembling a massive arsenal of WMD “to
take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies.”
“Perhaps though, Saddam was too eager to sell oil concessions
to French, Russian and Italian companies rather than British and US
companies,” Sachs observed. (“Fighting the wrong war,”
The Guardian, September 25, 2006) Strip away the fear-mongering, and
what Bush and Cheney are really saying is that a resource as lucrative
as petroleum won’t be allowed to remain in the hands of its true
owners. It will be stripped from them, by force if necessary.
In the Bush administration’s assessment “Iran sees itself
at the head of an alliance to drive the United States out of Iraq and
ultimately out of the Middle East,” (New York Times, January 28,
2007) forcing the US hand from the world’s oil spigot. Like Iraq,
which was said to be a WMD threat, Iran is portrayed as being on the
verge of making a nuclear breakthrough. But the fears over Iran’s
nuclear program are contrived. “Despite being presented as an
urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world power…a
number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian
program (say) it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the material
for industrial scale production.” (Observer, January 28, 2007)
The mistake is often made of assuming the absence of overt hostilities
amounts to peace. War, however, can have various faces. It’s not
only missiles crashing into buildings, tanks advancing across international
borders, and troops smashing down doors. It can be economic strangulation
(blockades and sanctions); funding and training dissidents; military
threats, to cow an enemy into submission or bankrupt its economy (as
it tries to keep pace.) By these criteria, the US is at war with Cuba,
north Korea, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Iran. War need not be Sturm und Drang.
Diplomacy, in the age of imperialism, remarked R. Palme Dutt, is simply
war by other means. Sanctions, the funding of civil society to bring
about color revolutions, war games along an enemy’s borders --
are as much manifestations of war, as overt military intervention. And
sometimes, they’re just as devastating. The sanctions on Iraq
in the 90s – what some regarded as a pacific alternative to war
-- killed hundreds of thousands.
Subversion
The US has established new offices in the State Department and Pentagon
to build an opposition movement in Iran to topple the government. US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked the US Congress a year ago
for $75 million to supplement $10 million already allocated to underwriting
the activities of dissidents in Iran and to expand Voice of American
broadcasts. (Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2006) The CIA’s budget
for programs aimed at bringing about regime change in Iran is probably
many times larger.
Financial Isolation
Last September, the new US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (as chairman
of the New York investment firm Goldman Sachs he amassed a personal
fortune of $700 million in a career than has seen him move between the
Nixon administration, the Pentagon and the world of high finance) announced
that Iran needed to be isolated financially, in the manner of north
Korea. North Korea’s foreign trade was disrupted when the US sanctioned
a Macau bank. Wary of being cut-off from the US financial system, other
banks, seeking to avoid the example of Banco Delta Asia, have steered
clear of transactions with north Korean enterprises. As a result, the
DPRK finds it difficult to export to other countries to earn the foreign
exchange it needs to import vital goods.
In Paulson’s view, Iran is still a major player globally, and
needs to suffer the same pariah treatment. (New York Times, September
17, 2006) In October, US Treasury Department officials banned US banks
from facilitating transactions involving Iran’s state-owned Bank
Saderat. In January, the ban was widened to include another Iranian
bank, Bank Sepah.
When Iran sells oil to a customer in Germany, the German customer asks
a European bank to deposit US dollars into an Iranian bank account.
The European bank then arranges for the transfer of US dollars from
a US bank to an Iranian bank account in Europe. Paulson’s ban
prohibits US banks from transferring funds if Bank Saderat and Bank
Sepah are involved. (New York Times, October 16, 2006) With oil sales
denominated in US dollars, the aim is to impede Iran’s ability
to sell oil. The way around the US manoeuvre is to sell oil in Euros,
something Iran has already begun to do. (New York Times, January 10,
2007)
This would seem to be a simple enough way of beating the US at its own
game. It also raises questions about the prudence of compelling Iran
to switch to Euros, since a change to Euros, if adopted by a number
of oil-exporting countries, would push down the value of the US greenback.
US investment banker John Hermann, a comptroller of currency in the
Carter administration, wonders whether the US is shooting itself in
the foot. (New York Times, October 16, 2006)
On the surface, these are valid concerns. But Paulson’s aims are
broader. In September he let the world banking community know that it
should stop doing business with more than 30 named Iranian enterprises.
Behind the request lay a veiled threat. Banks that deal with Iranian
businesses run the risk of jeopardizing their future access to the US
financial system. Already, a number of European banks have taken heed,
scaling back their dealings with Iranian banks and businesses. Credit
Suisse and UBS in Switzerland, ABN Amro in the Netherlands and HSBC
in Britain are starting to steer a wide berth around Iran.
Economic Warfare
Additionally, Washington is pressuring Europe to curtail exports to
Iran and to block transactions with Iranian companies. (New York Times,
January 30, 2007) For its part, Israel is campaigning to isolate Iran
economically. Israel plans to apply pressure to “major US pension
funds to stop investment in about 70 companies that trade directly with
Iran, and to international banks that trade with the oil sector, cutting
off” Iran’s access to hard currency. “The aim is to
isolate Iran from world markets in a campaign similar to that against
South Africa at the height of apartheid.” (The Guardian, January
26, 2007)
To win support for its campaign, Israel will argue that Iranian president
Mohamed Ahmadinejad is working to acquire nuclear weapons to carry out
a systematic extermination of the Jews and will pursue the Iranian leader
in international courts “under the 1948 UN Convention on the prevention
and punishment of the crime of genocide, which outlaws ‘direct
and public incitement to genocide.’” (The Guardian January
26, 2007) Former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has already filed
suit against Ahmadinejad at the International Court of Justice, claiming
the Iranian president is inciting genocide. Additionally, Bolton charged
Ahmadinejad with “making numerous threats against the United States,”
a claim so risible as to mark Bolton as a man whose chutzpah is limitless.
(The Guardian, December 13, 2006) Both Bolton’s trip to the ICJ,
and Israeli’s plan to pursue litigation against Ahmadinejad, are
mischievous. Ahmadinejad hasn’t called for genocide but for the
replacement of Israel as a Jewish state by a multi-national democratic
state based on equality among the peoples of historic Palestine. What
matters for Israel, however, is not so much winning a conviction but
incessantly repeating the lie that the Iranian leader is a new Hitler.
Who’s going to object to sanctions on a country whose president
Israel’s ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman describes as “saying,
‘There really was no Holocaust, but just in case, we shall finish
the job.’”? (Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2007)
The Israeli campaign, if successful, will add to sanctions the United
States has already imposed under the Iran Non-proliferation Act, passed
by the US Congress in 2000. The US sanctions prohibit trade with companies
that sell goods to Iran that could be used to build missiles or weapons
of mass destruction. Foreign firms that trade with Iran run the risk
of getting caught up in the sanctions and losing their access to the
US market. Since 2000, 40 companies have fallen afoul of the US law,
including Russian, north Korean and Cuban firms. (New York Times, August
5, 2006) Since any of a number of goods that have non-threatening uses
could conceivably be used in the manufacture of missiles and other weapons,
the effect of the sanctions is to isolate Iran economically by discouraging
companies from trade with Iran. A company that sells chlorine for water
treatment, for example, wouldn’t want to be accused of supplying
Iran with the means of manufacturing chemical weapons and lose its access
to US customers. As a consequence many companies tend to give Iran a
wide berth, making it difficult for the country to import the goods
it needs.
In recent weeks, Washington has opened yet another front in its war
on Iran: driving down the price of oil to reduce Iran’s revenue.
The US can’t affect the price of oil itself, but it can pressure
Saudi Arabia to increase output to bring prices down. In January, Ali
al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, vetoed an emergency meeting of OPEC
to discuss cutting production after oil dropped below $50 a barrel.
The Saudis have signalled that they’re committed to keeping the
price of oil hovering around $50 a barrel, down $27 a barrel from the
summer. From Washington’s perspective, the high prices allow Iran
(and another US bete noire, Venezuela) to export “radical agendas,”
(New York Times, January 28, 2007) or more directly, to mount a threat
of self-defense.
Intimidation
It’s unclear whether elements of the Israeli ruling circle are
preparing to attack Iran or whether they’re simply engaged in
a campaign of psychological warfare, seeking to unnerve Tehran by threatening
war. The press is full of warnings of an imminent Israeli attack. “Two
Israeli air force squadrons,” warned The Guardian (January 7,
2007) are training to use nuclear ‘bunker busting’ bombs
to demolish Iran’s heavily guarded enrichment program.”
(The Guardian, January 7, 2007.) The Independent (January 22, 2007)
concluded that “senior Israeli politicians and analysts appear
to be preparing the public for military conflict with Iran” and
(January 25, 2007) “Israeli military officials warned …
that Israel – acting alone or in coordination with the US –
could launch pre-emptive military strikes against Iran before the end
of this year.” The warnings were described by a senior British
military source as “watering the turf.” Iran, the source
said, “is not under enough pressure.” (The Independent,
January 25, 2007.)
In early January, the Pentagon deployed a second aircraft carrier, the
USS John Stennis to join a battle group led by the USS Dwight D Eisenhower,
stationed menacingly close to Iran. (The Independent, January 14, 2007.)
Britain also beefed up its complement of ships in the region (New York
Times, December 21, 2006.) At the same time, the Pentagon dispatched
a 600-strong Patriot anti-missile defense system to the Middle East.
Asked to explain why the anti-missile defense system was being deployed,
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a press conference that “We
are simply reaffirming…the importance of the Gulf region to the
United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence
in that area for a long time into the future.” (Globe and Mail,
January 15, 2007) US officials would later say the building naval presence
was intended to deter Iran from trying to dominate the region.
Provocation
US troops raided an Iranian diplomatic office in Ebril on January 11,
detaining six Iranians working inside. Despite the apparent breach of
diplomatic immunity, the incident was greeted with supreme indifference
by the Western media, which, some two and half decades ago, howled in
outrage at Iranian radicals overrunning the US embassy in Tehran and
seizing US diplomats, an event since seared into the US collective conscience
as “the hostage crisis.”
Military Industrial Complex
Elevating Iran to a threat comes in handy in justifying extravagantly
high military expenditures, incurred, not to build a legitimate national
defense, but to soak up surplus capital and provide influential corporations
with a boost to their bottom lines. The wars on Iraq and Afghanistan
help. “The steadily rising cost of the Iraq war will reach about
$8.4 billion a month this year…as the price of replacing lost,
destroyed and aging equipment mounts.” (Reuters, January 19, 2007)
Manufacturers of helicopters, airplanes and armoured vehicles -- among
the largest and most influential corporations – will rake in loot
hand over fist replacing worn out and destroyed military equipment.
British prime minister Tony Blair is proposing to spend $40 billion
to buy a new generation of submarines to carry nuclear warheads. Blair
says the expenditures are needed to counter “the desire by states,
highly dubious in their intentions, like north Korea and Iran, to pursue
nuclear weapons capability.” (New York Times, December 5, 2006)
His reasoning is chock full of holes. First, there’s no evidence
Iran is producing a nuclear weapons capability. Second, if Iran did
develop one, it would be dwarfed by Britain’s existing capability.
Iran’s arsenal would be so small and rudimentary to be nothing
more than defensive -- a way of deterring the British and American habit
of busting down the doors to take whatever they like rather than a way
of presenting an offensive threat. Third, Blair talks as if Britain
hasn’t a massive deterrent capability already.
The United States is also planning to spend over $100 billion to replace
its own nuclear arsenal, despite a study that says its existing warheads
can be expected to work reliably for a century or more. (New York Times,
January 7, 2007) This suggests the real purpose of the program has little
to do with self-defense. Massive expenditures on weapons – which
distributes income upward through the transfer of tax dollars from working
people to the owners and high-level executives of arms-producing corporations
– is an ongoing US practice, and has been since the Himalayan
military expenditures of WWII dragged the US out of the Great Depression.
It has been evident in ruling circles since that without large military
expenditures to soak up surpluses, the US economy teeters on the brink
of stagnation. Having a stable of demons that can be trotted out whenever
necessary to justify frivolous military spending is a necessary part
of keeping the profits rolling in.
The Class Basis of US and British Foreign Policy
The foreign policy of capitalist countries, including that of the US
and Britain, is driven to secure investment opportunities for the high-level
executives, bankers and hereditary capitalist families that have capital
to invest and need places to invest it in. By virtue of their wealth
and their ownership and control of major enterprises, they are able
to dominate public policy and shape it to their own interests.
Two important ways in which this class secures opportunities for the
profitable investment of its capital is by shaping foreign policy to
dominate other countries in order to secure access to their natural
resources, markets, and other assets and by providing opportunities
for profitable investment in the production of arms and the machinery
of war. Both imperatives necessitate a third: to invent threats to national
security to justify massive military expenditures, to provide the basis
for the deployment of military forces abroad to protect existing overseas
investments, and to furnish a plausible reason for wars of conquest
to pry open nationalist, socialist or communist economies to investment.
Here’s how it works. I have idle capital I need to put to work.
I loan part of my capital to the US government by buying bonds. The
government sells bonds to raise money to finance government programs,
including military and weapons programs, and pays interest to me on
my investment. I also invest part of my capital in companies that have
secured contracts with the US government to supply the Pentagon with
tanks, helicopters, bombers and missiles. Thanks to these contracts,
I receive dividends from my investments on the profits these companies
make. In effect I’m loaning my capital to the government to spend
on companies I have investments in. Moreover, the military equipment
I’ve profited from (through interest on the bonds I’ve bought
and dividends from the defense contractors I have a stake in) will be
used to deter foreign countries in which I’ve invested from confiscating
my capital through programs of nationalization and may be used to pry
open economies currently off-limits to my capital.
I use part of my capital to buy lobbyists and help fund think-tanks
and foundations to press the government to change policies I dislike
– not only in my own country, but in other countries as well.
I press for the opening of investment opportunities that are closed
to foreign investment (in the oil industry in Iraq, for example), for
the removal of restrictions on investments overseas, and for the improvement
of conditions for the profitable investment of my capital. To pre-empt
opposition to policies that enlarge my capital, I buy public relations
expertise, fund university chairs, employ sympathetic researchers and
buy media outlets to make the case that policies beneficial to me are
natural, desirable, necessary and ultimately advantageous to all.
To ensure the public policy prescriptions formulated by the think-tanks
and foundations I support are implemented (and which in turn are promoted
by the public relations network I underwrite) I put part of my capital
to work by contributing to the major political parties. I also hand
out high-paying corporate and lobbying jobs to ex-politicians who have
looked after my interests while in office. In this way, I send a message
to those who hold public office today that if they play their cards
right, they’ll be rewarded. I support the candidacies for public
office of promising high-level executives in companies I have major
investments in and the high-level operatives of the think-tanks and
foundations I support. In this way, those who implicitly share my values
and understand my objectives are placed in positions in which they can
shepherd public policy through the executive and legislative branches
of government to facilitate my profit-making activities.
The Real Reason for War by Other Means
The US, Britain and Israel are at war with Iran. The war is not conducted,
at the moment, anyway, through missile strikes, bombing campaigns or
land invasion, but by intimidation, provocation, subversion, and economic
warfare. While the war is being justified as a necessary response to
a growing threat of nuclear proliferation and to counter the alleged
existential threat to Jews living in Israel posed by the president of
Iran, the real reason for the war is to be found in the domination of
public policy by the owners and high-level executives of banks and large
corporations and in the directions in which the logic of capitalism
pushes them to shape foreign policy.
Iran is not a nuclear threat. Its nuclear program is oriented to civilian
uses, and even then is “archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks
the material for industrial scale production.” Moreover, the country
vehemently denies it is seeking nuclear weapons, and no one has produced
a shred of evidence to say it is. All we have are the unsubstantiated
claims of a Bush administration notorious for sexing up intelligence
and lying about its reasons for going to war. What’s more, even
if Iran managed to produce a nuclear weapon, it would be rudimentary
and incapable of presenting an offensive threat against the much bigger
arsenals of the US, Britain and Israel. At best, it would create a threat
of self-defense.
The president of Iran, no matter what he thinks of the truth or scope
of the systematic extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany, is not an existential
threat to the Jewish inhabitants of Israel, though he is unquestionably
an implacable anti-Zionist. Anti-Zionism, however, is not equivalent
to hating Jews, and nor is the promotion of anti-Zionist aims equivalent
to inciting genocide.
Iran is not a threat to anyone in the West, but is an irritant to a
tiny stratum of the population with capital to invest and a need, driven
by the logic of capitalism, to find places to invest it in. Iran’s
economy is in large part state-owned, inclined to attach conditions
to foreign investment, and competes with US enterprises (Iran has its
own automobile industry, for example, and has invested in automobile
factories in Syria and Venezuela.) From the perspective of the US capitalist
class, an Iran that limited itself to oil exports (preferably with plenty
of scope for US investment), recycled petrodollars through New York
investment banks, and worked with the Pentagon to crush the resistance
in Iraq, would be preferable to the current economically nationalist
regime that bristles at the idea of throwing its doors wide open to
US domination and has too many ties to Europe.
As for the Israeli ruling class, its aims are to facilitate US foreign
policy as a condition of continuing to receive the US military and economic
aid and diplomatic support it needs to remain viable to pursue the Zionist
project of dispossessing the rightful inhabitants of historic Palestine.
To secure the consent of the Israeli population for the sacrifices of
a potential war on Iran, and to play the role of potential victim of
Iranian aggression to justify an Anglo-American naval build up in the
Gulf, Israel’s ruling circles liberally employ the arts of public
relations to bamboozle Israelis, and the rest of the world, into believing
Iran is working toward the revival of the Nazi project of exterminating
the Jews. Iran’s pursuit of civilian nuclear energy becomes a
secret program to build a nuclear bomb to wipe Israel off the face of
the map. Ahmadinejad’s anti-Zionism becomes an insane anti-Semitism
headed toward a nuclear confrontation with Israel.
My Enemy’s Enemy
“The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend,” intone
those too unwilling, too frightened, too unprincipled, or too comfortable,
to rouse themselves to defend Iran. (By defend Iran I mean doing what
one can to thwart the de facto war against the country, even if it only
means challenging the deceitful pretexts used to “water the turf”.)
While it may be that my enemy’s enemy is not always my friend,
this has nothing to do with the reasons why the US, Britain and Israel
are locked in a war (by other means) with another oil-rich Gulf state.
Powerful countries driven by the expansionary logic of capitalism have
always sought, in various ways, to dominate other countries for the
purposes of opening new opportunities for the profitable investment
of capital. Imperialism is carried on independently of whether the dominated
countries are ruled by the friends of progressives in the West, or their
enemies. The Iranian government needn’t be your friend to recognize
why a war on Iran is being carried out, whose interests it serves, and
that it doesn’t serve yours. On the contrary, it detracts from
them.
Peek below the surface, and the hostility to our own interests of the
recurrent pattern of capitalist-driven expansion at the expense of the
sovereignty of other countries becomes evident. Who pays the taxes to
pay the interest on bonds sold to investment bankers and hereditary
capitalist families to refurbish nuclear arsenals that don’t need
refurbishing, to replace tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopters lost
in the wars that should never have been fought, and to build war machines
to outrage the sovereignty of other countries? Who foots the bill for
lucrative defense contracts to make the machinery of war? Who carries
the ball to finance the programs of subverting democracy in other countries?
Who sacrifices their limbs, eyesight, hearing, sanity and lives to fight
wars to secure profitable investment opportunities for the super-rich?
In this system, the bulk of us are exploited, while a tiny minority
reaps the benefit of monstrous profits. We are the cannon-fodder, the
vote-fodder, the tax-fodder that allows the system to run and the super-rich
get super-richer. True, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my
friend. But we should be clear on who – and what -- the enemy
is, who the victims are, and how the victims have a common interest
in challenging their common enemy
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