[News] Fingers Itch for a War on Iran

[Anti-Imperialist News]

January 30, 2012
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/30/fingers-itch-for-a-war-on-iran/

The Onus is on Washington, as Usual


Fingers Itch for a War on Iran

by VIJAY PRASHAD

If you ask Iranians, they will tell you that the 
war against Iran has already begun. Some will 
take you back to 1953, when the US fired its 
first shot across the bow, taking out a 
democratically elected government in a CIA coup. 
Others will point to the political and financial 
subvention given to Saddam Hussein by the 
Atlantic states and the Gulf emirs to invade Iran 
and crush the Iranian Revolution of 1979. 
Millions died in that futile war, whose 
conclusion left a battered Saddam turning to the 
Gulf Arabs, an unpaid bill in hand. It was the 
Gulf Arab reticence to pay up that led to Iraq’s 
invasion of Kuwait, and the full-scale entry of 
US troops into Saudi Arabia (which enraged Osama 
Bin Laden and his minions) and into a decades 
long war against Iraq (1991-2011). This is all 
true as context: there has been a long-standing 
animosity between the Atlantic powers and Iranian democratic ambitions.

Iran’s democratic heritage extends backwards to 
its great Constitutional Revolution (1905-06) 
that raised the spirits of a resurgent Asia. The 
British and the Russians signed an entente to 
strangle the revolution. The British Ambassador 
to Tehran, Sir Cecil Spring Rice wrote to the 
Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, “We are 
regarded as having betrayed the Persian people.” 
That assessment remains to this day.

More recently, the Atlantic world has conducted a 
war against Iran on three fronts:

Diplomatic. Having knocked out Iran’s two 
neighboring adversaries (Saddam Hussein and the 
Taliban) by 2003, the United States delivered 
Tehran with an enormous gift. The new regimes in 
Kabul and Baghdad had close ties to the Iranians, 
and the latter were prepared to exert themselves 
to help bring some measure of stability to their 
neighbors. But the Bush administration would have 
none of it. It saw Iran through the eyes of Tel 
Aviv, as the Great Satan to be given its 
deliverance. To that end, the Bush administration 
began a diplomatic campaign to isolate Iran.

What this required was to try futilely to shut 
out the Iranians from their neighbors. It also 
required that Iran be isolated from the Global 
South. The lever there was to break India’s close 
solidarity with Iran. In 2005, Condoleezza Rice 
traveled to India to offer to bring New Delhi out 
of the nuclear cold and recognize its nuclear 
program if India voted with the United States in 
the International Atomic Energy Agency meetings 
against Iran. Not being a member of the 
Non-Proliferation Treaty and having conducted an 
“illegal” nuclear test in 1998, India had been 
boxed into automatic sanctions. The US deal was 
tremendous: it not only ended the sanctions but 
enabled India to secure a “legal” stream of 
uranium from the Nuclear Suppliers Group. India 
voted against Iran, and the US signed a strategic 
alignment treaty with India. These two gestures 
isolated Iran in the Non-Aligned Movement (where 
India continues to hold sway) and created 
tensions between India and Pakistan (which was 
carrying the heavy water for the US in the Afghan 
War and saw this new treaty as a betrayal by the 
US). In its determination to isolate Iran 
diplomatically, the US raised the tension level in South Asia.

“Through the power of our diplomacy,” Obama said 
in his 2012 State of the Union address, “a world 
that was once divided about how to deal with 
Iran’s nuclear program now stands as one.” A 
caged lion is not necessarily pacified.

Economic. Sanctions by the Atlantic powers 
against Iran are not new, but the newest 
sanctions by the US (signed by Obama on Dec. 31) 
and by the Europeans (signed by EU foreign 
ministers on Jan. 23) are designed to bring the 
Iranian economy to its knees. The Iranian Rial 
dropped its value against the Dollar by over 
seventy percent this month. A currency trader in 
Tehran told Reuters, “The rate is changing every 
second. We are not taking in any Rials to change 
to dollars or any other foreign currency.” 
Imports have slowed to a trickle, and with the 
European oil sanctions to set in it is likely 
that exports will also decrease. French Foreign 
Minister Alain Juppé pretended that the sanctions 
are a means to forestall war, “To avoid any 
military confrontation, which could have 
irreparable consequences, we have decided to go 
further down the path of sanctions.” Just over 
eighteen per cent of Iranian oil exports go to Europe.

As if by clockwork, oil prices began to rise 
against the dollar. But oil analysts know that 
this is not a long-term problem. Samuel Ciszuk of 
KBC Energy Economics notes, “Volumes from Iraq 
should be up significantly, Libya is doing very 
well and Saudi Arabia will increase production to 
compensate for some of the lost Iranian barrels.” 
NATO’s wars have turned the pipelines of Iraq and 
Libya toward Europe and the United States. They 
will more than compensate for lost Iranian oil. 
The rise in price will continue (four month Brent 
hovers at $110 a barrel) not because Iranian oil 
might be off-line but because the US Fed keeps 
the greenback weak and so allows 
dollar-denominated commodities such as crude oil 
to be cheaper for those who buy it in Euros or 
Yen. Oil prices are up for speculative reasons, 
not because of geo-politics. But the economic 
sanctions against Iran are painful nonetheless, 
destroying the ability of the people to survive 
at the levels to which they have become accustomed.

Covert. Since 2010, four nuclear scientists in 
Iran have been mysteriously killed. In January 
2010, explosives stashed in a motorcycle exploded 
as Professor Masud Ali Mohammadi of the 
Department of Physics at the University of Tehran 
left his house in the Gheytarieh neighborhood. He 
was an expert in quantum field theory and 
elementary particle physics. In November 2010, 
Professor Majid Shahriari, who worked at the 
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran was killed 
when motorcycle-riding assassins attached 
magnetic bombs to his car. A separate attack that 
day injured Professor Fereydoon Abbasi, now head 
of the Atomic Energy Organization). In July 2011, 
Dariush Rezaeinejad was shot dead as he waited to 
pick up his child from daycare. He worked at K. 
N. Toosi University of Technology in electrical 
engineering as well as the Atomic Energy 
Organization. Finally, on January 11, 2012, a 
motorcycle-riding assassin attached a magnetic 
bomb to the car of Mustafa Ahmadi Roshan, a 
scientist at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.

It was the killing of thirty-two year old Roshan 
that raised the eyebrows of the UN’s Ban Ki-Moon 
who told the press in Beirut, “Any terrorist 
action or assassination of any people, whether 
scientist or civilian, is to be strongly 
condemned. It is not acceptable. Human rights 
must be protected.” Emphasis should be on the 
words, of any people; after all, what is being 
denied is that people like the Iranians have rights in any shape or form.

Four days after Roshan’s assassination, the 
Sunday Times (London) reported that these 
killings are part of “Israel’s secret war.” One 
Israeli source told the reporters, Uzi Mahnaimi 
and Marie Colvin, “The killings were merely a 
precursor to a military strike, not merely an 
alternative, to make it more difficult for Iran 
to rebuild facilities if they are bombed.” The US 
and Israel, it has been alleged, attacked Iranian 
computer facilities in 2010 with the Stuxnet 
worm, a cyberweapon that disabled the centrifuges 
that Iranian scientists use to enrich uranium. 
Ralph Langner, the scientist who identified the 
Stuxnet, said in February 2011, “My opinion is 
that Mossad is involved but that the leading 
force is not Israel. The leading force behind 
Stuxnet is the cyber superpower – there is only 
one, and that’s the United States.”

The war is on, and as pressure on Iran mounts, 
there is a temptation for the Iranians to lash 
out, to close the Straits of Hormuz for instance. 
If they do so, the Atlantic powers, the Israelis 
and the Gulf Arabs will take this as a casus 
belli. It will be enough to power up the cruise 
missile delivery systems. The political benefits 
for the US and Israel of such an attack are 
great. As Rami El-Amin puts it, “An attack or 
possible war on Iran would have the added effect 
of derailing the Arab revolutions and revolts and 
justify the continued presence of a large US 
military force in the oil-rich region.”

If a shooting war begins, establishment 
intellectuals will return to the television sets, 
long faces and small mouths telling us about the 
warlike culture of the Arabs and the Persians. 
Trans-Atlantic accents will tickle the 
sensibility of the listener who is comforted to 
hear that the Arabs and the Persians are not 
prepared for democracy; give it to them and their 
inner hate will erupt in theocracies that 
threaten the “only democracy in the Middle East,” 
Israel, whose longevity is to be guaranteed by 
F16s and an exclusive nuclear umbrella. Since 
Arabs are congenitally undemocratic, it will be 
acceptable to laud the emirs of the Gulf for 
their judicious stewardship of an overly emotional people.

Fears in the capitals of China, India and Russia 
have begun to grow. To break the sanctions, both 
Beijing and New Delhi have offered to buy Iranian 
oil and pay for it in gold (or in Yen). The 
Russians indicated that they would offer Iran a 
defensive shield against a full-scale attack. 
These are not reliable friends. India has already 
voted against Iran in the IAEA, and China and 
Russia have gone along with sanctions when they have been pressured by the US.

Iran’s response to these provocations has been 
remarkably sober. As a member of the 
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran can legally 
develop a nuclear energy program. It has been 
reasonably open to investigations by the 
International Atomic Energy Agency, whose 
strongest note in its November 2011 report was 
that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to 
the development of a nuclear device.” This is not 
a smoking gun. On January 8, Defense Secretary 
Leon Panetta mused, “Are they trying to develop a 
nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re 
trying to develop a nuclear capability, and 
that’s what concerns us.” But a “nuclear 
capability” is not outside what is permissible for a NPT member state.

There is no hope that Iran will voluntarily 
curtail its nuclear ambiguity. The first reason 
is that it lives in a neighborhood with Israel, 
which is reported to possess two hundred nuclear 
warheads, a stash that is part of its illegal 
nuclear program that is outside IAEA scrutiny – 
but no one seems abashed by the hypocrisy. The 
second reason is that nuclear ambiguity gives 
Iran a measure of insurance. “The Iranians have 
no doubt taken note of two recent and relevant 
case studies: North Korea and Libya,” writes 
Ahmed Moor. “Kim Jong-Il died of natural causes. 
Muammar Gadaffi did not.” North Korea is a 
nuclear-weapons state; Libya gave up its nuclear 
program in 2004. Pressure on Iran absent a 
drawdown of the US’s aggressive military posture 
will not result in an end to the Iranian nuclear 
program. To demand it is tantamount to goose-stepping to war.

When there will be a shooting war, it shall not 
be a mistake nor shall it be out of necessity. It 
will be calculated and vicious, and the onus for 
it shall rest as it often does
on Washington.

VIJAY PRASHAD is Professor and Director of 
International Studies at Trinity College, 
Hartford, CT. This Spring he will publish two 
books, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press) and 
Uncle Swami: Being South Asian in America (New 
Press). He is the author of Darker Nations: A 
People’s History of the Third World (New Press), 
which won the 2009 Muzaffar Ahmed Book Prize.




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