[Peace-discuss] The Iranian Threat

[John W.]

It's not difficult to see the Battle of Armageddon shaping up.  :-(



On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 10:51 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:



>        The Iranian Threat
>        June 28, 2010
>        By Noam Chomsky
>
>
> The dire threat of Iran is widely recognized to be the most serious foreign
> policy crisis facing the Obama administration. Congress has just
> strengthened the sanctions against Iran, with even more severe penalties
> against foreign companies. The Obama administration has been rapidly
> expanding its offensive capacity in the African island of Diego Garcia,
> claimed by Britain, which had expelled the population so that the US could
> build the massive base it uses for attacking the Middle East and Central
> Asia. The Navy reports sending a submarine tender to the island to service
> nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines with Tomahawk missiles, which can
> carry nuclear warheads. Each submarine is reported to have the striking
> power of a typical carrier battle group. According to a US Navy cargo
> manifest obtained by the Sunday Herald (Glasgow), the substantial military
> equipment Obama has dispatched includes 387 “bunker busters” used for
> blasting hardened underground structures. Planning for these “massive
> ordnance penetrators,” the most powerful bombs in the arsenal short of
> nuclear weapons, was initiated in the Bush administration, but languished.
> On taking office, Obama immediately accelerated the plans, and they are to
> be deployed several years ahead of schedule, aiming specifically at Iran.
>
>
>
> “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” according to Dan
> Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at
> the University of London. “US bombers and long range missiles are ready
> today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he said. “The
> firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003,” accelerating under Obama.
>
>
>
> The Arab press reports that an American fleet (with an Israeli vessel)
> passed through the Suez Canal on the way to the Persian Gulf, where its task
> is “to implement the sanctions against Iran and supervise the ships going to
> and from Iran.” British and Israeli media report that Saudi Arabia is
> providing a corridor for Israeli bombing of Iran (denied by Saudi Arabia).
> On his return from Afghanistan to reassure NATO allies that the US will stay
> the course after the replacement of General McChrystal by his superior,
> General Petraeus, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael
> Mullen visited Israel to meet Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi
> Ashkenazi and senior Israeli military staff along with intelligence and
> planning units, continuing the annual strategic dialogue between Israel and
> the U.S. in Tel Aviv. The meeting focused “on the preparation by both Israel
> and the U.S. for the possibility of a nuclear capable Iran,” according to
> Haaretz, which reports further that Mullen emphasized that “I always try to
> see challenges from Israeli perspective.” Mullen and Ashkenazi are in
> regular contact on a secure line.
>
>
>
> The increasing threats of military action against Iran are of course in
> violation of the UN Charter, and in specific violation of Security Council
> resolution 1887 of September 2009 which reaffirmed the call to all states to
> resolve disputes related to nuclear issues peacefully, in accordance with
> the Charter, which bans the use or threat of force.
>
>
>
> Some respected analysts describe the Iranian threat in apocalyptic terms.
> Amitai Etzioni warns that “The U.S. will have to confront Iran or give up
> the Middle East,” no less. If Iran’s nuclear program proceeds, he asserts,
> Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other states will “move toward” the new Iranian
> “superpower”; in less fevered rhetoric, a regional alliance might take shape
> independent of the US. In the US army journal Military Review, Etzioni urges
> a US attack that targets not only Iran’s nuclear facilities but also its
> non-nuclear military assets, including infrastructure – meaning, the
> civilian society. "This kind of military action is akin to sanctions -
> causing 'pain' in order to change behaviour, albeit by much more powerful
> means."
>
>
>
> Such harrowing pronouncements aside, what exactly is the Iranian threat? An
> authoritative answer is provided in the April 2010 study of the
> International Institute of Strategic Studies, Military Balance 2010. The
> brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people, though it
> does not rank particularly high in that respect in comparison to US allies
> in the region. But that is not what concerns the Institute. Rather, it is
> concerned with the threat Iran poses to the region and the world.
>
>
>
> The study makes it clear that the Iranian threat is not military. Iran’s
> military spending is “relatively low compared to the rest of the region,”
> and less than 2% that of the US. Iranian military doctrine is strictly
> “defensive,… designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to
> hostilities.” Iran has only “a limited capability to project force beyond
> its borders.” With regard to the nuclear option, “Iran’s nuclear program and
> its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons
> is a central part of its deterrent strategy.”
>
>
>
> Though the Iranian threat is not military, that does not mean that it might
> be tolerable to Washington. Iranian deterrent capacity is an illegitimate
> exercise of sovereignty that interferes with US global designs.
> Specifically, it threatens US control of Middle East energy resources, a
> high priority of planners since World War II, which yields “substantial
> control of the world,” one influential figure advised (A. A. Berle).
>
>
>
> But Iran’s threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its
> influence. As the Institute study formulates the threat, Iran is
> “destabilizing” the region. US invasion and military occupation of Iran’s
> neighbors is “stabilization.” Iran’s efforts to extend its influence in
> neighboring countries is “destabilization,” hence plainly illegitimate. It
> should be noted that such revealing usage is routine. Thus the prominent
> foreign policy analyst James Chace, former editor the main establishment
> journal Foreign Affairs, was properly using the term “stability” in its
> technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve “stability” in
> Chile it was necessary to “destabilize” the country (by overthrowing the
> elected Allende government and installing the Pinochet dictatorship).
>
>
>
> Beyond these crimes, Iran is also supporting terrorism, the study
> continues: by backing Hezbollah and Hamas, the major political forces in
> Lebanon in Palestine – if elections matter. The Hezbollah-based coalition
> handily won the popular vote in Lebanon’s latest (2009) election. Hamas won
> the 2006 Palestinian election, compelling the US and Israel to institute the
> harsh and brutal siege of Gaza to punish the miscreants for voting the wrong
> way in a free election. These have been the only relatively free elections
> in the Arab world. It is normal for elite opinion to fear the threat of
> democracy and to act to deter it, but this is a rather striking case,
> particularly alongside of strong US support for the regional dictatorships,
> particularly striking with Obama’s strong praise for the brutal Egyptian
> dictator Mubarak on the way to his famous address to the Muslim world in
> Cairo.
>
>
>
> The terrorist acts attributed to Hamas and Hezbollah pale in comparison to
> US-Israeli terrorism in the same region, but they are worth a look
> nevertheless.
>
>
>
> On May 25 Lebanon celebrated its national holiday, Liberation Day,
> commemorating Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon after 22 years, as a
> result of Hezbollah resistance – described by Israeli authorities as
> “Iranian aggression” against Israel in Israeli-occupied Lebanon (Ephraim
> Sneh). That too is normal imperial usage. Thus President John F. Kennedy
> condemned the “the assault from the inside, and which is manipulated from
> the North.” The assault by the South Vietnamese resistance against Kennedy’s
> bombers, chemical warfare, driving peasants to virtual concentration camps,
> and other such benign measures was denounced as “internal aggression” by
> Kennedy’s UN Ambassador, liberal hero Adlai Stevenson. North Vietnamese
> support for their countrymen in the US-occupied South is aggression,
> intolerable interference with Washington’s righteous mission. Kennedy
> advisors Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorenson, considered doves, also
> praised Washington’s intervention to reverse “aggression” in South Vietnam –
> by the indigenous resistance, as they knew, at least if they read US
> intelligence reports. In 1955 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff defined several
> types of “aggression,” including “Aggression other than armed, i.e.,
> political warfare, or subversion.” For example, an internal uprising against
> a US-imposed police state, or elections that come out the wrong way. The
> usage is also common in scholarship and political commentary, and makes
> sense on the prevailing assumption that We Own the World.
>
>
>
> Hamas resists Israel’s military occupation and its illegal and violent
> actions in the occupied territories. It is accused of refusing to recognize
> Israel (political parties do not recognize states). In contrast, the US and
> Israel not only do not recognize Palestine, but have been acting for decades
> to ensure that it can never come into existence in any meaningful form; the
> governing party in Israel, in its 1999 campaign platform, bars the existence
> of any Palestinian state.
>
>
>
> Hamas is charged with rocketing Israeli settlements on the border, criminal
> acts no doubt, though a fraction of Israel’s violence in Gaza, let alone
> elsewhere. It is important to bear in mind, in this connection, that the US
> and Israel know exactly how to terminate the terror that they deplore with
> such passion. Israel officially concedes that there were no Hamas rockets as
> long as Israel partially observed a truce with Hamas in 2008. Israel
> rejected Hamas’s offer to renew the truce, preferring to launch the
> murderous and destructive Operation Cast Lead against Gaza in December 2008,
> with full US backing, an exploit of murderous aggression without the
> slightest credible pretext on either legal or moral grounds.
>
>
>
> The model for democracy in the Muslim world, despite serious flaws, is
> Turkey, which has relatively free elections, and has also been subject to
> harsh criticism in the US. The most extreme case was when the government
> followed the position of 95% of the population and refused to join in the
> invasion of Iraq, eliciting harsh condemnation from Washington for its
> failure to comprehend how a democratic government should behave: under our
> concept of democracy, the voice of the Master determines policy, not the
> near-unanimous voice of the population.
>
>
>
> The Obama administration was once again incensed when Turkey joined with
> Brazil in arranging a deal with Iran to restrict its enrichment of uranium.
> Obama had praised the initiative in a letter to Brazil’s president Lula da
> Silva, apparently on the assumption that it would fail and provide a
> propaganda weapon against Iran. When it succeeded, the US was furious, and
> quickly undermined it by ramming through a Security Council resolution with
> new sanctions against Iran that were so meaningless that China cheerfully
> joined at once – recognizing that at most the sanctions would impede Western
> interests in competing with China for Iran’s resources. Once again,
> Washington acted forthrightly to ensure that others would not interfere with
> US control of the region.
>
>
>
> Not surprisingly, Turkey (along with Brazil) voted against the US sanctions
> motion in the Security Council. The other regional member, Lebanon,
> abstained. These actions aroused further consternation in Washington. Philip
> Gordon, the Obama administration's top diplomat on European affairs, warned
> Turkey that its actions are not understood in the US and that it must
> “demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West,” AP reported, “a
> rare admonishment of a crucial NATO ally.”
>
>
>
> The political class understands as well. Steven A. Cook, a scholar with the
> Council on Foreign Relations, observed that the critical question now is
> "How do we keep the Turks in their lane?" – following orders like good
> democrats. A New York Times headline captured the general mood: “Iran Deal
> Seen as Spot on Brazilian Leader’s Legacy.” In brief, do what we say, or
> else.
>
>
>
> There is no indication that other countries in the region favor US
> sanctions any more than Turkey does. On Iran’s opposite border, for example,
> Pakistan and Iran, meeting in Turkey, recently signed an agreement for a new
> pipeline. Even more worrisome for the US is that the pipeline might extend
> to India. The 2008 US treaty with India supporting its nuclear programs –
> and indirectly its nuclear weapons programs -- was intended to stop India
> from joining the pipeline, according to Moeed Yusuf, a South Asia adviser to
> the United States Institute of Peace, expressing a common interpretation.
> India and Pakistan are two of the three nuclear powers that have refused to
> sign the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the third being Israel. All have
> developed nuclear weapons with US support, and still do.
>
>
>
> No sane person wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons; or anyone. One
> obvious way to mitigate or eliminate this threat is to establish a Nuclear
> Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East. The issue arose (again) at the
> NPT conference at United Nations headquarters in early May 2010. Egypt, as
> chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, proposed that the
> conference back a plan calling for the start of negotiations in 2011 on a
> Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the US, at the
> 1995 review conference on the NPT.
>
>
>
> Washington still formally agrees, but insists that Israel be exempted – and
> has given no hint of allowing such provisions to apply to itself. The time
> is not yet ripe for creating the zone, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
> stated at the NPT conference, while Washington insisted that no proposal can
> be accepted that calls for Israel's nuclear program to be placed under the
> auspices of the IAEA or that calls on signers of the NPT, specifically
> Washington, to release information about “Israeli nuclear facilities and
> activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers
> to Israel.” Obama’s technique of evasion is to adopt Israel’s position that
> any such proposal must be conditional on a comprehensive peace settlement,
> which the US can delay indefinitely, as it has been doing for 35 years, with
> rare and temporary exceptions.
>
>
>
> At the same time, Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy
> Agency, asked foreign ministers of its 151 member states to share views on
> how to implement a resolution demanding that Israel "accede to” the NPT and
> throw its nuclear facilities open to IAEA oversight, AP reported.
>
>
>
> It is rarely noted that the US and UK have a special responsibility to work
> to establish a Middle East NWFZ. In attempting to provide a thin legal cover
> for their invasion of the Iraq in 2003, they appealed to Security Council
> Resolution 687 (1991), which called on Iraq to terminate its development of
> weapons of mass destruction. The US and UK claimed that they had not done
> so. We need not tarry on the excuse, but that Resolution commits its signers
> to move to establish a NWFZ in the Middle East.
>
>
>
> Parenthetically, we may add that US insistence on maintaining nuclear
> facilities in Diego Garcia undermines the NWFZ established by the African
> Union, just as Washington continues to block a Pacific NWFZ by excluding its
> Pacific dependencies.
>
>
>
> Obama’s rhetorical commitment to non-proliferation has received much
> praise, even a Nobel peace prize. One practical step in this direction is
> establishment of NWFZs. Another is withdrawing support for the nuclear
> programs of the three non-signers of the NPT. As often, rhetoric and actions
> are hardly aligned, in fact are in direct contradiction in this case, facts
> that pass with little attention.
>
>
>
> Instead of taking practical steps towards reducing the truly dire threat of
> nuclear weapons proliferation, the US must take major steps towards
> reinforcing US control of the vital Middle East oil-producing regions, by
> violence if other means do not succeed. That is understandable and even
> reasonable, under prevailing imperial doctrine.
>
>
> From:   Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
> URL:    http://www.zcommunications.org/the-iranian-threat-by-noam-chomsky
>
>
>        ###
>
>
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