Senate resolution ratchets up pressure

From hostile propaganda, to military threats and pressure, to actual small-scale attacks inside Iran, the Bush administration refuses to rule out any options in its confrontation with that oil-rich country.

The Senate on July 11 unanimously passed a resolution, introduced by the war hawk Sen. Joseph Lieberman, calling on Iran to end all forms of “support that it or its agents are providing, and have provided, to Iraqi militias and insurgents, who ... are responsible for the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces.”

U.S. Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, speaking at a press conference in Baghdad in early July, tried to bolster the charges in Lieberman’s resolution. He claimed that Lebanese Hezbollah instructors trained Iraqis in three camps near Teheran, and that the Qods Force, a special forces section of the Iranian military, funded these “special groups” with up to $3 million per month.

The U.S. propaganda campaign against Iran also raises what it calls human rights abuses, Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s “meddling” in the internal affairs of Iraq.

It’s hard for Washington to make these charges stick in the international arena, since they come from a government whose violations of human rights in Iraq and the U.S. itself are well known, a government that has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world and is actively pursuing new generations of tactical nuclear weapons, and a government that not only “meddles in the internal affairs of Iraq” but has half-destroyed that country while occupying it with hundreds of thousands of troops.

Iran has been firm in maintaining its right to a peaceful nuclear program, aimed at research and power generation. While the U.S. has been successful in pushing through a couple of U.N. resolutions that impose limited sanctions on Iran, its major European imperialist allies have been reluctant to push further. Discussions among the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany are continuing.

Two aircraft carriers, the USS John C. Stennis and USS Nimitz, are currently in the Gulf, conducting war “games” against Iran. The nuclear-powered carrier USS Enterprise left Norfolk for the Gulf in early July and is scheduled to replace them for a few months before another carrier is sent.

However, according to an AP news report, if the Pentagon wants to ratchet up the pressure on Iran it can hold either the Stennis or the Nimitz in the Gulf or send their replacement early.

The U.S. naval buildup in the area is prodigious. Half of all the U.S. Navy’s 277 warships are stationed close to Iran, alongside most of Teheran’s estimated 140 naval surface ships and six submarines. (Los Angeles Times, July 11) More than 60 aircraft are aboard the Stennis, along with dozens more on the Nimitz. U.S. carriers have the facilities to deploy nuclear weapons.

As part of the psychological warfare that goes along with the presence of so many death-dealing machines able to wreak havoc on Iran, the U.S. makes sure to politely notify the Iranians about its maneuvers.

Capt. Bradley Johanson, commanding officer of the Stennis, makes it all sound like a tea party. He says the Iranians respond professionally and courteously, saying “Thank you very much for the information.” (LA Times, July 11)

The AP reported July 12 that Iran shelled the Iraqi border region of Hajji Umran after an incursion of Kurdish irregulars over the Iraq border into Iran. It said shells also fell as far as 18 miles from the border in the Peshdar region northwest of Sulaimaniyah. Back in May, Iran conducted artillery attacks in the same general region.

The exact role the U.S. is playing in the Kurdish attacks is kept secret, but it appears to be doing more than just furthering its political alliance with Iraqi Kurdistan.

Moreover, it has its ally Turkey to consider. The Turkish government has protested the continuing attacks from the Autonomous Kurdish areas in northern Iraq; Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy says he does not believe the U.S. is supplying weapons directly to fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), but that Pentagon weaponry is funneled to the PKK by Kurdish members of the Iraqi government. (Chicago Tribune, July 12) This “government,” of course, owes its existence to Washington.

The PKK, operating through a group that calls itself Kurdistan Free Life Party (known as PJAK), has also reportedly been involved in the attacks in Iran. According to Reese Erlich, a freelance journalist working with the magazine Mother Jones, the U.S. is trying to support the PJAK’s attacks in Iran while opposing any it carries out inside Turkey.

The seesawing U.S. approaches to Iran—U.N. sanctions but not very severe ones, a Senate resolution that does not explicitly authorize force, supporting armed attacks inside Iran but on a small scale—point to a debate inside not just the Bush administration but the broader political establishment of the U.S. ruling class over how to increase their domination of the region without falling deeper into a quagmire. Meanwhile, the debacle in Iraq hangs over George W. Bush’s head, yet he continues to “stay the course” of occupation and war.