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Slouching Towards Tehran

By Radha Surya

05 April, 2013
Countercurrents.org

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Tehran to be born?
(with apologies to WB Yeats)

Has the time come to make good on a decade of US threats of visiting
the horror and devastation of war on Iran? Is the sword that the
US-Israeli axis has kept in suspension over Tehran with the cooperation
of the EU set to come crashing down at long last? These are well
founded fears. Consider President Obama's record on overt as well as
unconventional military warfare--authorizing the surge in Afghanistan,
escalating the drone warfare in Pakistan and Yemen, and spearheading
the savaging of Libya by NATO. Hitherto the Nobel peace prize winning
President has shown no hesitation in heaping humiliation on the
Norwegian Academy that awarded him the top prize for seeking peaceful
solutions to international conflicts. So it is legitimate to ask if he
is on the brink of trumping the violence that has characterized his
administration to date by unleashing the dogs of war on Iran.

Ever since the launching in 2001 of the global war on terror the sound
of the drums of war -muted or strident-has come to constitute a
permanent feature of political discourse in America, Much of the
American public has become habituated to tuning out or turning a deaf
ear to this cacophony which nevertheless continues to rage away.
Sometimes the noise remains in the background. At other times the din
of war moves into the foreground of political life. Over the last ten
years spokespersons for US foreign policy have stated repeatedly that
all options are on the table with respect to Iran. This veiled threat
has been an unnerving one for those in America and around the world who
believe that amity between nations or at least nonaggression is the
only ethically permissible basis of international relations.
Nevertheless the making of this threat has become accepted practice
among official spokes persons for US foreign policy. American
political discourse has succeeded in normalizing war talk. In
consequence an ethical perspective that permits the recognition of the
waging of war as cruel and barbarous has become unavailable to the
average American.

Accordingly on his recent trip to Israel (March 20-22) President Obama
made the usual threat about initiating a military attack on Iran. He
also reiterated afresh his interest in finding a diplomatic solution to
the nuclear standoff. In fact President Obama enjoys the luxury of
sitting pretty on the issue of going to war against Iran. In contrast
to the run up to the invasion of Iraq the need does not exist for a
prolonged campaign that will make the case for war against Iran to the
national and international public. The rationale for dispatching the
war machine to Iran has been many years in the making and can be
harnessed at short notice. Since 2003 multiple presidential
administrations have been engaged in inflating the significance of
Iran's nuclear program and in manufacturing an image of the country as
a threat to international peace. The passage of years has witnessed
minor mutations in this ongoing effort. With the coming to power of
President Obama the open bellicosity of the Bush-Cheney years has been
abandoned. However the President's pious words about resolving the
conflict with Iran by diplomatic means have not been followed up by
corresponding actions. Under President Obama the Iran policy of the
United States has remained unchanged in essentials. Iran is the sole
regional power with the will and the ability to challenge US-Israeli
hegemony over the vital energy resources of West Asia. As during the
dark night of the Bush-Cheney years the ultimate objective of US
foreign policy remains bringing Iran to its knees by any means
available.

Currently the Obama administration is engaged in giving economic
warfare a chance. In the most recent phase of this warfare Iran's
currency weakened sharply under the onslaught of ever intensifying
sanctions which clamped down at the end of July 2012 and severed Iran's
access to the international banking system. Thanks to what has been
called a choke hold of unprecedented international sanctions the oil
trade on which Iran's economy depends has been effectively sabotaged.
State department officials gloated as the rial lost 75% of its value in
comparison with the end of the previous year. Fifty-seven percent of
the loss had taken place in the course of the three preceding months.
Riots broke out on the streets of Tehran as food prices skyrocketed. A
spate of media reports predicted the coming implosion of Iran's
economy. In his foreign policy debate with presidential candidate Mitt
Romney President Obama boasted that his administration had "organized
the strongest coalition and the strongest sanctions against Iran in
history, and it is crippling their economy." The Nobel peace laureate
has not considered it necessary to be concerned about the suffering
that his administration's economic warfare is inflicting on the people
of Iran.

A grim picture emerges when reports on the impact of the sanctions are
accessed. They are said to be destroying Iran's society. Speaking at
an art festival in November 2012, activist and independent researcher
Mehrnaz Shahabi has testified as follows:

The prices of imported machinery, medicine, and many types of foodstuff
have risen beyond the reach of ordinary people. Many factories and
businesses have folded, and unemployment is mounting. However, the
most critical impact of sanctions is on the availability of drugs and
the health of the population.
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/sanctions-are-destroying-iranian-society/5315115/).

In recent months the global news media has carried a large number of
articles on the toll taken by the sanctions on Iran's health sector.
The Guardian has reported that these coercive measures have resulted in
dire shortages of life-saving medicines such as chemotherapy drugs for
cancer and blood clotting agents for haemophiliacs and that hundreds of
thousands of Iranians with serious illnesses have been put at imminent
risk (The Guardian, January 3, 2013). Doctors and pharmacists have
warned that operating theatres will close as hospitals run out of
anaesthetics (The Guardian, March 18, 2013). According to some
observers Iran's health sector is witnessing the commencement of a
humanitarian crisis.

In an open letter of January 2013 the nonprofit forum "Iranian mothers
for peace" has called the US-EU led sanctions inhumane and has spelled
out the lethal consequences of blocking the procurement of medical and
health-related items and raw materials needed for the production of
domestic pharmaceutical drugs, The group has appealed to UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon and Dr. Margaret Chan, the Director General of the
World Health Organization to create mechanisms that will honor the
fundamental human right of access to medicine and medical treatment.
Defenders and apologists for the US-EU imposed sanctions say that the
shortfall in life saving medications is inadvertent as there is no
prohibition on trade in goods that are intended for humanitarian
purposes. The disclaimer is comparable to setting a locked house on
fire and then exhibiting astonishment when the inhabitants perish in
the flames. In February 2013 the Treasury department clarified that
the sanctions were not applicable to humanitarian assistance including
food, medicine and money sent by Americans to help the Iranian people.
The exemption is laughable. In Iran the price of drugs has gone up by
50 percent. The shortage of drugs and medical facilities is said to
affect 6 million chronically ill patients (Nature 495, 314 (21 March
2013). What is the likelihood that private charity can muster the
resources to meet the needs of the millions who are exposed to the
US-EU imposed sanctions. The only viable solution is to reopen the
intentionally blocked channels of international commerce.

When the enactment of the draconian US led sanctions is questioned
invariably, the argument is made that they are the deserved consequence
of Iran's recalcitrance with respect to its nuclear program. Iran has
repeatedly stated that its uranium enrichment program is intended for
medical research and for developing the nuclear energy sector.
Assertions to the contrary notwithstanding political elites in the US
with the connivance of the EU persist in peddling the unsupported and
unproven claim that Iran is hell bent on building nuclear weapons. The
parallel with the build-up to the invasion of Iraq is chilling. As in
the case of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction the fiction about Iran's
insane pursuit of nuclear weapons has acquired the force of dogma by
dint of assertion and repetition. And as in the tragic case of Iraq,
the mainstream media in the US have cooperated in the construction and
dissemination of an unsubstantiated narrative. The media are also
complicit in suppressing the sane and rational counter narrative which
highlights for example the connection between Iran's legitimate
security concerns and its uranium enrichment program.

That states seek nuclear weapons capability in order to deter real and
perceived adversaries is not an arcane fact. It is possible that Iran
is seeking nuclear weapons capability for the purpose of self-defence.
But for reasons that have to do with over three decades of implacable
US hostility to Iran the rational security concerns of Tehran are made
out to be perverse and deserving of opprobrium. The tenth anniversary
of the Second Gulf War has recently reminded the world of the grim fate
that could await states that are exposed to powerful and belligerent
enemies. Little wonder that the anniversary went virtually unnoticed
in Washington. It's also unsurprising that the reporting and analysis
put out by the mainstream media on this bleak occasion avoids
mentioning the obvious conclusions that a non-nuclear weapons state
like Iran might draw from the illegal and unprovoked invasion and
occupation of Iraq. Unheeded by Washington a non-belligerent approach
to the confrontation with Iran waits in the wings. This approach is
associated with experts like Hans Blix, chief UN weapons inspector for
Iraq from 2000-3 and former head of the International Atomic Energy
Agency. Hans Blix has said that the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is
overhyped and has repeatedly advocated the wisdom of offering Iran
diplomatic relations and guarantees against armed attacks/subversion as
a part of a nuclear deal. The US-EU axis has responded by seeking to
throttle Iran via the sanctions weapon.

National Intelligence estimates, the documents which carry the
coordinated judgments of the United States Intelligence Community
consisting of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, have repeatedly given Iran
a clean chit with respect to its alleged nuclear ambitions. As
recently as last month US National Intelligence Director James Clapper
testified before Congress (as reported by Reuters and cited at
http://tinyurl.com/cerozcc) that it's not known if Iran will decide to
build a nuclear weapon. Nevertheless President Obama continues to
mouth and thereby perpetuate the hype as to Iran's frightening nuclear
intentions. In choosing to take this line he is disregarding not just
the peaceniks but his own intelligence community.

At the dawn of his first presidency, President Obama initiated the
annual practice of greeting the people of Iran on the occasion of
Navruz. The gesture was in keeping with the hopes that had been
aroused for national and international transformation by the seductive
rhetoric of candidate Obama. Over the years this once welcome gesture
has degenerated into a hypocritical ritual but the practice remains in
place. In this year's Navruz greeting President Obama intoned as
follows to a people reeling under the ruthless onslaught of US led
economic warfare: "It will take a serious and sustained effort to
resolve the many differences between Iran and the United States. This
includes the world's serious and growing concerns about Iran's nuclear
program, which threatens peace and security in the region and beyond."
The hypocricy and the deceit are breathtaking. President Obama has
been apprised of the facts but acts as if he doesn't know them. Unlike
the US and its allies Iran has never been guilty of waging wars of
aggression. Could it be that the President is trying his hardest to
talk himself into believing that Iran is a danger to regional and world
peace?

Radha Surya has an academic background in English Literature and
Library and Information Science and holds a computing job at
Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

 




 

 


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