[News] Surrender now or we'll bomb you later
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Apr 10 16:47:56 EDT 2012
Surrender now or we'll bomb you later
By Pepe Escobar
4/11/12
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ND11Ak02.html
Former United States president George W Bush issued an ultimatum to
Saddam Hussein before bombing and invading Iraq.
Nine years later, US President Barack Obama has issued an ultimatum
to the leadership in Tehran before ... setting optimal conditions for
an "all options on the table" exercise.
Obama has made an offer to Tehran to "negotiate" its nuclear program
- ahead of long-delayed talks between the "Iran Six" (P5+1 - the five
permanent members of the UN Security Council - the US, the United
Kingdom, China, Russia and France - plus Germany) and Iran scheduled
for Istanbul on Saturday.
For starters, it's not an offer; it's a list of demands - even before
any negotiation takes place. And these "near term" concessions are
packaged - according to the president's own rhetoric - as a "last chance".
In modern times, this used to be known as an ultimatum. In the
post-everything era, it passes for "international diplomacy".
Obama wants Tehran to shut down and in fact destroy the Fordow
enrichment plant, built under a mountain outside the holy city of
Qom; he wants Tehran to definitely renounce and "surrender" its
entire stockpile of uranium enriched to 20%; to stop any sort of
enrichment, even to harmless 5% (which means Iran renouncing its
whole civilian nuclear program, to which it has a right according to
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ); to allow International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors full access to all Iranian nuclear
sites (they already have it); and to let the inspectors talk to all
top Iranian nuclear scientists (that's not exactly possible; quite a
few have been assassinated by Israel's Mossad).
So welcome to the "roll over and die" school of diplomacy - as
perfected by the Obama administration, with vital input from the
Israel lobby in Washington. It's our way of the highway. And the
highway is to hell - to the sound of "Bomb Bomb Iran".
Another war for the 1%
No wonder the proverbial "Israeli officials" are delighted that Iran
- via its Foreign Ministry - has rejected all these demands as
"irrational"; for Tel Aviv, the Iranian response is "good".
"Good" means the list of demands spells out the inevitable failure of
the talks - which is the core of the Israeli strategy. Afterwards
Obama may (will) use the failure as the perfect excuse to apply even
harsher sanctions - and who knows what else.
The whole Israeli official apparatus for months have been
brainwashing Israeli, American and European public opinion for war on
Iran by all means necessary - manipulating everything from a
nonsensical "existential threat" to the coming of a "second Holocaust".
Now the whole Fordow controversy is linked to the Israeli spin of
another shady concept - known as "sphere of immunity". Tel Aviv
insists Fordow will allow Tehran to protect the more sensitive
elements of its nuclear program literally inside a mountain - immune
from the most powerful GBU-28 bunker buster bombs (which Obama, by
the way, agreed to sell to Israel).
This is absolutely nonsense. Tel Aviv invented this "sphere of
immunity" smokescreen after civilian nuclear activity was already
taking place in Fordow, under IAEA supervision.
Yet the tail once again wags the dog. Washington once again is
remote-controlled by Tel Aviv.
Polls have shown that a majority of Israelis - in a fabulous display
of ... altruism? - only want a war on Iran if the American Big
Brother leads (and faces the direst consequences). And it doesn't
matter that the nebula of Israeli intel is itself divided.
Context is key. The wealthiest 500 Israelis are worth roughly $75
billion. That in a country with a gross domestic product of only $205 billion.
The wealthiest 20 Israeli families control almost half of the stock
market. Their collective wealth is 25% bigger than Israel's budget
for 2011. And guess who these people are? The top supporters of the
Likud-Ysrael Beitenu coalition in power, with Prime Minister Benjamin
"Bibi" Netanyahu at the helm (Ysrael Beitenu is led by former Moldova
bouncer turned Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman).
So it's the cream of the 1% in Israel that want war on Iran - as much
as quite a few scoops of the cream of the 1% in the US.
The point in this whole nuclear "negotiation" shadow play is to sell
to American - and world - public opinion the notion that Iran once
again is stalling; has a lot to hide; and simply cannot be trusted to
be engaged in any "serious" negotiations.
US corporate media has already pre-empted the negotiations with the
usual rhetorical missiles - to the delight of armchair warmongers in
the US Congress and vast sectors of the industrial-military complex.
The "Bomb Iran" crowd will do everything in its power to merge
Obama's "last chance" into the deafening drums of war.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World
is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone
Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His most recent book,
just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com
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