[Peace-discuss] Obama's "missile strikes into Iran"?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[It's remarkable that sensible views on the this matter are
coming from the far right, while Congressional liberals are
busily agreeing with the Bush administration that "having a
radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is
worse [than] us launching some missile strikes into Iran"
(that's Obama's position, stated during the 2004 election
campaign, and never modified). The liberals should be ashamed.
--CGE]

  January 18, 2006
  Another Undeclared War?

Is the United States about to launch a second preemptive war,
against a nation that has not attacked us, to deprive it of
weapons of mass destruction that it does not have?

With U.S. troops tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq, and
Pakistanis inflamed over a U.S. airstrike that wiped out 13
villagers, including women and children, it would seem another
war in the Islamic world is the last thing America needs.

Yet the "military option" against Iran is the talk of the town.

"There is only one thing worse than … exercising the military
option," says Sen. John McCain. "That is a nuclear-armed Iran.
The military option is the last option, but cannot be taken
off the table."

Appearing on CBS' Face the Nation, McCain said Iran's nuclear
program presents "the most grave situation we have faced since
the end of the Cold War, absent the whole war on terror."

Meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bush employed
the same grim terms he used before invading Iraq. If Iran goes
forward with nuclear enrichment, said Bush, it could "pose a
grave threat to the security of the world."

McCain and Bush both emphasized the threat to Israel. And all
the usual suspects are beating the drums for war. Israel warns
that March is the deadline after which she may strike. One
reads of F-16s headed for the Gulf. The Weekly Standard is
feathered and painted for the warpath. The Iranian Chalabis
are playing their assigned roles, warning that Tehran is much
closer to nukes than we all realize.

But just how imminent in this "grave threat"?

Thus far, Tehran has taken only two baby steps. It has renewed
converting "yellowcake" into uranium hexafluoride, the gaseous
substance used to create enriched uranium. And Iran has broken
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seals at its
nuclear facility at Natanz, where uranium hexafluoride is to
be processed into enriched uranium. But on Saturday, the
foreign ministry said it was still suspending "fuel production."

However, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared, "There
are no restrictions for nuclear research activities under the
NPT," the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Iran has signed.

Here, Iran's president is supported by his countrymen and
stands on the solid ground of international law. Yet Secretary
of State Condi Rice said last week, "There is simply no
peaceful rationale for the Iranian regime to resume uranium
enrichment."

Is Condi right?

Unlike Israel, Pakistan, and India, which clandestinely built
nuclear weapons, Iran has signed the NPT. And Tehran may wish
to exercise its rights under the treaty to master the nuclear
fuel cycle to build power plants for electricity, rather than
use up the oil and gas deposits she exports to earn all of her
hard currency. Nuclear power makes sense for Iran

True, in gaining such expertise, Iran may wish to be able, in
a matter of months, to go nuclear. For the United States and
Israel, which have repeatedly threatened her, are both in the
neighborhood and have nuclear arsenals. Acquiring an atom bomb
to deter a U.S. or Israeli attack may not appear a "peaceful
rationale" to Rice, but the Iranians may have a different
perspective.

Having seen what we did to Iraq, but how deferential we are to
North Korea, would it be irrational for Tehran to seek its own
deterrent?

And, again, just how imminent is this "grave threat"?

"We don't see a clear and present danger," Mohamed ElBaradei
of the IAEA has just told Newsweek.

Some put the possibility of an Iranian bomb at 10 years away.
Con Coughlin, defense and security editor of the London
Telegraph, writes that the 164 centrifuges in the Natanz pilot
plant could enable Iran to produce enough highly enriched
uranium for a single bomb – in three years.

If the threat were imminent, Israel, which invaded Egypt in
1956, destroyed the Syrian and Egyptian air forces on the
ground in a surprise attack in 1967, and smashed an Iraqi
reactor before it was completed in 1981, would have acted. And
with an estimated 200 nuclear weapons, Israel is fully capable
of deterring Iran – and of massive retaliation if she is
attacked by Iran.

Iran has attacked neither Israel nor our forces in the Gulf,
and the Ayatollah Khamenei is said to be reining in
Ahmadinejad. So it would seem that Iran does not want a war.

Congress thus has the time to do the constitutional duty it
failed to do when it gave Bush his blank check to invade Iraq
at a time of his choosing.

Few today trust "intelligence reports," War Party
propagandists, or the word of exiles anxious to have us fight
their wars. Congress should thus hold hearings on how close
Tehran is to a nuclear weapon and whether this represents an
intolerable threat, justifying a preventive war that would
mean a Middle East cataclysm and a worldwide depression. Then
it should vote to declare war, or to deny Bush the power to go
to war.

The "Bush Doctrine" notwithstanding, if Congress has not put
the "military option on the table," neither George Bush nor
John McCain can put it there. That is the Constitution still,
is it not?

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
 
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