Cheney
Raises The Rhetoric
Against Iran
By Jim Lobe
23 October, 2007
Inter Press
Service
WASHINGTON, Oct 21
(IPS) - In the harshest speech against Iran given by a top
George W. Bush administration official to date, Vice President Dick
Cheney Sunday warned the Islamic Republic of "serious consequences"
if it did not freeze its nuclear programme and accused it of "direct
involvement in the killings of Americans".
"Given the nature of
Iran's rulers, the declarations of the Iranian president, and the trouble
the regime is causing throughout the region -- including the direct
involvement in the killing of Americans -- our country and the entire
international community cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state
fulfills its most aggressive ambitions," Cheney warned in a major
policy address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
"The Iranian regime
needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international
community is prepared to impose serious consequences," he added.
"The Untied States joins other nations in sending a clear message:
We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."
In his nearly 30-minute speech,
an uncompromising defence of the Bush administration's record in the
Middle East, Cheney also claimed that, with Washington's "surge"
strategy working well against al Qaeda in Iraq, the "greatest strategic
threat that Iraq's Shiites face today in consolidating their rightful
role in Iraq's new democracy is the subversive activities of the Iranian
regime."
And he accused "Syria
and its agents" of using "bribery and intimidation ...to prevent
the democratic majority in Lebanon from electing a truly independent
president."
"Lebanon has the right
to conduct the upcoming elections free of any foreign interference,"
he declared, adding, "the United States will work with Free Lebanon's
other friends and allies to preserve Lebanon's hard-won independence,
and to defeat the forces of extremism and terror that threaten not only
that region, but U.S. countries (sic) across the wider region."
Cheney's speech comes at
a moment of rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Just last week,
Cheney's boss, George W. Bush, warned during a brief press appearance
that Tehran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon -- or even the expertise
needed to make one -- could lead to a new world war.
"I've told people that
if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought
to be interested in preventing (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary
to make a nuclear weapon," he told reporters, although the White
House later insisted that the president was merely making a "rhetorical
point" and still believed that the nuclear issue could be resolved
diplomatically.
Two days later, Iran's lead
nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, had resigned and would be replaced
by a less prominent diplomat Saeed Jalili. Although the government later
announced that both Larijani and Jalili will attend talks Tuesday in
Rome with European Union (EU) foreign-affairs chief, Javier Solana,
the move was widely interpreted here as a major victory for the hard-line
anti-western faction behind President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against more
pragmatic elements in the regime.
While Jalili lacks experience,
noted Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the University of Hawaii, "(w)hat
Jalili does have is a very close relationship with Ahmadinejad. As such,
the move, if it is confirmed, reflects yet another enhancement of Ahmadinejad's
fortunes in Iranian politics."
Like Ahmadinejad, Cheney
has long been seen as the leader of hard-line forces within the administration,
and the mere fact that his speech -- which must have been cleared at
the highest levels -- was as belligerent as it was, especially in accusing
Iran of "direct involvement in the killings of Americans",
suggests that the hawks are trying to take the offensive.
Neither Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice nor Pentagon chief Robert Gates has made such an unequivocal
accusation; indeed, Gates has tried to downplay such charges when they
have been voiced by military commanders in Iraq.
The forum chosen by Cheney
to deliver his speech was in many ways as significant as its timing
and context. WINEP, a generally hawkish think tank, was founded some
20 years ago by the research director of the highly influential lobby,
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and is funded
by many of the same donors.
AIPAC, in turn, has led a
high-powered effort to persuade Congress to impose tough new sanctions
against Iran and foreign companies that do business with it, and, more
recently, to have Tehran's Revolutionary Guard declared a "terrorist"
organisation.
As Cheney himself noted Sunday,
his own national security adviser, John Hannah, once served as WINEP's
deputy director. While WINEP does not take specific positions on pending
legislation or policies, it is generally regarded as at least sympathetic
to AIPAC's efforts and often provides the research AIPAC uses in its
lobbying activities.
Cheney's speech was remarkable
on several counts, beginning with the fact that it came less than a
week after Gates gave a much more restrained presentation on U.S. Middle
East policy and the threat posed by Iran to a yet more-hawkish pro-Israel
group, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
While Gates called Tehran's
government "an ambitious and fanatical theocracy," he also
stressed the importance of diplomatic pressure and, in marked contrast
to Cheney, dwelt much more heavily on the threats posed by al Qaeda
and other Sunni "jihadist" movements.
Indeed, the rhetorical differences
-- including Gates' effort to distinguish between Sunni jihadism and
Iran and Cheney's attempts to blur the two -- could not be more pronounced.
Cheney's speech was also
notable for its aggressive and unapologetic defence of the Bush administration's
conduct of its war on terrorism; its insistence that the surge has turned
the tide of the war in Iraq; and its repetition of neo-conservative
notions about the importance of reacting with "swift and dire"
punishment against challenges to U.S. power in the region and the possibility
that Tehran is deeply threatened by the emergence of "a strong,
independent, Arab Shia community" in Iraq.
He charged that Iran is a
"growing obstacle to peace in the Middle East," and he recited
a long litany of grievances against it. "This same regime that
approved of hostage-taking in 1979, that attacked Saudi and Kuwaiti
shipping in the 1980s, that incited suicide bombings and jihadism in
the 1990s and beyond, is now the world's most active state sponsor of
terror," he declared, quoting the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen.
David Petraeus for the proposition that it is fighting a "proxy
war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq."
"Fearful of a strong,
independent, Arab Shia community emerging in Iraq, one that seeks guidance
not in Qom, Iran, but from traditional sources of Shia authority in
Najaf and Karbala, the Iranian regime also aims to keep Iraq in a state
of weakness that prevents Baghdad from presenting a threat to Tehran,"
he added, blaming the Quds Force, an elite branch of the Revolutionary
Guard, for providing "weapons, money and training to terrorists
and Islamic militant groups abroad, including Hamas; Palestinian Islamic
Jihad; militants in the Balkans, the Taliban and other anti-Afghanistan
militants; and Hezbollah terrorists trying to destabilize Lebanon's
democratic government."
He also strongly implied
that Washington continues to seek "regime change" in Tehran,
noting that "the irresponsible conduct of the ruling elite in Tehran
is a tragedy for all Iranians" and insisting that "the spirit
of freedom is stirring Iran...America looks forward to the day when
Iranians reclaim their destiny; the day that our two countries, as free
and democratic nations, can be the closest of friends."
Iran, indeed, dominated the
last 10 minutes of the speech. By contrast, Lebanon received only two
paragraphs while the administration's efforts to renew U.S.-Palestinian
peace talks drew only the briefest of mentions.
Bush, he said, has "announced
a meeting to be held in Annapolis later this year to review the progress
towards building Palestinian institutions, to seek innovative ways to
support further reform, to provide diplomatic support to the parties,
so that we can move forward on the path to a Palestinian state."
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