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Danger of wider war

U.S. targets Iran, blames Iraq

Published Oct 10, 2007 11:54 PM

The Pentagon’s plans for a massive attack on Iran are hardly a secret. For months the major corporate media in the U.S., Britain, France and other countries have described the ominous plans, the thousands of bombing targets already selected, and the hundreds of ships, warplanes and missiles arrayed just offshore. Half the ships in the U.S. Navy are now off the coast of Iran.

While the threat of war is growing, it is important to take note of a shift in the stated U.S rational or justification for an unprovoked, criminal attack.

During the late summer a whole series of articles in the U.S. media described Vice President Dick Cheney as “urging strikes on Iran.” The media coverage reached a fever pitch of demonization and insult in September during the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to New York to address the United Nations.

But the carefully choreographed propaganda hype about the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon suffered a severe blow when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that Iran’s nuclear program was of a civilian nature and that Iran has neither the intention nor the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons. On Aug. 21, Iran finalized a work plan with the IAEA to provide answers to a number of outstanding questions regarding its past nuclear activities.

Iran’s research and development of nuclear energy is clearly allowed under international law. It is at such an early stage of development that all efforts to claim that Iran poses a nuclear threat have been refuted. Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Despite its constant clarifications, however, the U.S. government has continued to openly threaten a massive strike against the Islamic republic’s nuclear research facilities and its entire industrial base.

Another WMD scam

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, says Iran does not currently pose a threat to the international community and has called for more efforts to push forward dialogue.

ElBaridei has also gone public with his warnings against the Pentagon’s war plans: “I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons.”

An article in the London Guardian on Sept. 18 headlined: “Drift into war with Iran out of control, says U.N.,” said, “The U.N.’s chief weapon’s inspector yesterday warned against the use of force against Iran in what U.N. officials said was an attempt to halt an ‘out of control’ drift to war.” Other publications around the world ran headlines that ElBaradei warned against a showdown with Iran on the nuclear issue

Since these statements the U.S. corporate media has tried to vilify ElBaradei as pro-Tehran and accused him of overstepping his authority.

The IAEA’s work with Iran also blocked U.S. efforts to impose far more injurious sanctions through the U.N. Security Council. Many feared that a new U.N. resolution would be utilized as authorization for military action.

Russia and China opposed additional sanctions, claiming that such measures could place in jeopardy Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA. Washington was forced to postpone any action in the U.N. Security Council against Iran until at least November.

Nevertheless, Washington continues to line up its imperialist allies. An Oct. 1 article in the London Independent was headlined: “U.S. plan for air strikes on Iran ‘backed by Brown.’” Gordon Brown is Britain’s new prime minister.

On Sept. 16 Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France declared: “We have to prepare for the worst—the worst is war.” Last month the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said after visiting Bush that the world had “a catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran.”

The setback for the Bush administration on the U.N. front has not stopped the Pentagon’s plans. Instead it has changed the script.

New rationale for an attack

The New Yorker magazine ran a long article in its issue dated Oct. 8 headlined “Shifting Targets: The Administration’s Plan for Iran,” by journalist Seymour Hersh, well-known for his foreign policy articles containing “insider information,” including Pentagon and White House leaks. Hersh describes how the Bush administration has redefined the war in Iraq as a “strategic battle between the United States and Iran.”

Every problem that the U.S. occupation forces face in Iraq is blamed on Iran.

There is wide speculation that the reason Gen. Peter Pace was replaced as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was based on his publicly stated view in February that he saw no firm evidence of Tehran supplying weapons to Shiite militias inside Iraq.

Pace was replaced by Adm. Michael Mullen, formerly U.S. chief of naval operations. Mullen was in charge of coordinating naval war games in 2006 and 2007 off the Iranian coastline. Mullen said he considers it “unacceptable that Iran is providing U.S. enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan with capabilities that are hurting and killing U.S. troops.” (Inside the Pentagon, June 21)

Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, is always willing to repeat the White House’s line on the U.S. occupation’s “success” in Iraq while blaming Iran for its catastrophic failure. Speaking to a group of reporters on Oct. 5 at a U.S. military base 20 miles from the Iranian border, Petraeus once again claimed that Iran was giving Iraqi militia groups advanced weaponry and guidance: “They are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers.”

U.S. military officers have repeatedly presented what they say as evidence of Iranian-produced arms, including a new concave design in improved explosive devices. The latest generation of IEDs is called explosively formed projectile bombs. The key components of these EFPs are copper discs, rolls of electrical wire, plastic pipes for casings, ball-bearings and batteries. These simple projectiles are capable of penetrating the armor of 60-ton Abrams tanks.

IEDs account for 70 to 80 percent of the U.S. deaths in Iraq. Instructions on building IEDs are readily and widely available, even on the internet. Iraq has tens of thousands of highly educated engineers, technicians, scientists and machinists. The idea that Iraqis lack technical expertise or that Iraqi resistance fighters would need to import these weapons from Iran is ridiculous. Every resistance struggle is able to develop effective low-tech weapons. As a popular insurgency grows, so does the wide application of useful technology.

But to acknowledge that there is overwhelming opposition to the U.S. occupation in Iraq is to acknowledge that the U.S. war is not winnable.

The real danger is that U.S. imperialism, unwilling to accept the inevitable, will escalate the war to other countries. The insatiable hunger of the capitalist class to control the rich resources of the entire region drives them recklessly forward. The international movement that has organized wide opposition to the horrendous devastation of U.S. war in Iraq must more seriously mobilize opposition to the growing danger of a far wider war against Iran.