Stop war on Iran!

All the major media around the world are worrying over whether the U.S. is planning a devastating wave of air attacks on Iran, possibly using tactical nuclear weapons, with the objective not just of destroying its nuclear program but also of “regime change”—that is, overthrowing the government.

Articles in the New Yorker magazine and the Washington Post have touched off this recent round of speculation. Seymour Hersh, an investigative reporter whose specialty is writing on what is going on behind the scenes in the military and intelligence communities, presents a great deal of evidence in the New Yorker dated April 17 (but issued a week earlier) that such plans are far advanced.

He says the U.S. already has Special Forces on the ground in western Iran—which is both near the Iraq border and also where Iran’s richest oil fields lie—whose mission is to foment ethnic tensions, prepare for sabotage and scope out targets to attack. Hersh adds that U.S. planes off the Iranian border have deliberately been carrying out maneuvers imitating a nuclear attack, in which the planes drop their payload and then climb steeply to avoid the blast wave.

Some view these reports as part of psychological warfare meant to intimidate the leaders of Iran and open rifts among them over whether to proceed with developing nuclear energy. If that was their purpose, it didn’t work. On April 11, the leaders of Iran announced they had succeeded in enriching uranium and were proceeding with the development of nuclear energy
for peaceful purposes.

Many of the sources quoted by Hersh, however, believe the planning is now so advanced and involves such a huge part of the military bureaucracy that it must be for more than bluff. The official position of the Bush administration, reinforced again this winter, is that it reserves the right of first-use of nuclear weapons whenever it deems them necessary. In other words, it will not abide by any international agreements barring a first strike—yet a criminal U.S. attack on Iran, which international inspectors say has no weapons program and couldn’t possibly build bombs sooner than a decade from now, is presumably justified because it’s a potential “nuclear threat”!

Regardless of what Iran does, this sword of Damocles posture by the administration and its threat to reintroduce into warfare the most fearsome weapons ever built should be forcefully answered by progressives everywhere—especially by the anti-war movements around the world.

A major March for Peace, Justice and Democracy will be held on April 29 in New York City. The main slogan is to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home. This is good, and should be supported by all people who oppose the war and occupation. But those who recognize the ominous significance of what is happening must also do all they can to make the message “Stop War on Iran!” an inescapable element in this and every major demonstration from now on.