Thursday, June 26, 2008

The Iran Nuclear Issue


The entire Iran nuclear topic has strong elements of Deja-vu. The US contends that Iran is building a bomb, though utterly without proof. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which Iran has signed) a nation is allowed to enrich uranium for reactor fuel. That's what Iran claims it's doing, and we've utterly no proof to the contrary, nor has any been offered. Indeed, the US Intelligence Estimate concluded recently that the Iranian nuclear weapons program was abandoned years ago. Still, here we are at this date ever more loudly rattling the sabre. In this November 2006 video, the Australian Broadcasting Company presents a portrait of the MEK, an Iranian exile group lobbying for regime change, and claiming to have firm evidence of nuclear weapons programs. This sounds the Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress which fed us false evidence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to such devastating effect in the lead up to the Iraq war.

Iran and the MEK video

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

To know what's really going on regarding Iran, read this:

"[I]t wasn’t Iran that turned the Israeli-Iranian cold war warm – it was Israel . . . The Israeli reversal on Iran was partially motivated by the fear that its strategic importance would diminish significantly in the post-cold war middle east if the then [Iranian] president (1989-97) Hashemi Rafsanjani’s outreach to the Bush Sr. administration was successful...
Israeli politicians began painting the regime in Tehran as fanatical and irrational. Clearly, they maintained, finding an accommodation with such “mad mullahs” was a non-starter. Instead, they called on the US to classify Iran, along with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, as a rogue state that needed to be 'contained.' "
Trita Parsi, author of "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States" (YALE University Press 2003)

And Walt + Mearsheimer:
"If the United States does launch an attack, it wll be doing so in part on Israel's behalf, and the lobby will bear significant responsibility for having pushed this dangerous policy. And it would not be in America's national interest."