Letter to WW

Scapegoating Iran for Iraq failure

To enter its war against the people of Iraq, Washington manufactured the fiction of Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction.” Currently, the U.S. is laboring its mental powers to come up with a similar hoax. Now President George W. Bush, with the generous help of the mainstream media (Fox News, CNN, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and many others), has painted Iran guilty of multiple crimes that have to be confronted for the safety and security of the “international community.”

To be true to his character, Bush Jr. had to find a scapegoat for his and the U.S. mighty military’s failure to bring the people of Iraq to their knees.

No longer are Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and the U.S.-promoted sectarian conflicts between the Shi’ia and Sunni populations of Iraq, who had coexisted side by side in the same communities for centuries, sufficient and convincing explanations for sacrificing the lives of additional American troops. The U.S. administration now has to deflect from its own failures and put the blame on Iraq’s neighboring countries of Iran and Syria.

In the last century, the colonial and neo-colonial powers—France in Algeria, Britain in Iraq, the Dutch in Indonesia and the U.S. in Vietnam—exhibited very similar conduct and arguments, trying to place the blame for their own crimes on third parties.

For the White House and the Pentagon, headed now by a trickster from the CIA, Robert Gates, to receive a green light, or at least no serious opposition to continuing the war in Iraq while taking the U.S. to the brink of war with Iran and utter disaster, they have to scare the American people to death. Now, Iran is the “biggest threat to the United States,” in the words of neo-conservative hysteria-maker Michael Ledeen.

The Bush regime, in direct opposition to strong public opinion in the U.S. and internationally, has escalated the tension between the two countries and embarked on a series of provocations, which include:

• The kidnapping and threatening of Iranian diplomats in Iraq and around the world.

• The blacklisting of Sepah, Iran’s commercial bank, in the European countries.

• Arbitrarily interpreting the UN sanctions and, with the assistance of U.S. congressional legislation, imposing embargos on foreign companies in non-nuclear commercial relations with Iran. So far the U.S. has imposed sanctions on several Chinese and Russian companies, in violation of international laws.

• The deployment of Patriot missiles to Israel and the Persian Gulf states with the perceived scenario of shooting down incoming Iranian Shahab-3 missiles, in case Tehran tries to retaliate in response to American-Israeli missile attacks.

• The deployment of the USS Eisenhower nuclear strike force to the Oman Sea and the vicinity of the Persian Gulf waters.

• The baseless claim of Washington that Iranian “networks” are operating inside Iraq with the purpose of helping the guerrillas target U.S. troops.

• The constant violation of Iran’s airspace by drones to drop electronic transmission devices and collect intelligence information.

• The deployment of U.S. special forces to the border regions in Khuzistan province next to Basra in Iraq and in Sistan-Baloochistan province next to Afghanistan and Pakistan to influence ethnic minorities and stir up separatist ideas.

The same scheme used by the U.S. to exploit social tensions in Iraq, using the sectarian yardstick of Shi’a and Sunni, currently has found a greater application in the entire sub-continent of the Middle East. In this game of occupiers, the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan have become two enthusiastic and happy players, expressing dissatisfaction with Iran’s growing regional status.

Iranian historian Ervand Abrahamian told CNN’s Lou Dobbs that if the U.S. administration provoked a war between the U.S. and Iran, it would last 30 to 100 years. The U.S. ruling class may start the war, but the Iranians would finish it.

—Ardeshir Ommani
American-Iranian Friendship Committee
Ardeshiromm@optonline.net

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