Iran defiant despite U.S. threats
By
Sako Sefiani
Published Feb 23, 2005 10:41 AM
The U.S. intelligence community is reportedly
conducting a broad review of its Iran assessments, including a new look at
information about the country's nuclear program, according to administration
officials and congressional sources. (Washington Post, Feb. 19) A similar
review, called a National Intelligence Estimate, formed an important part of the
administration's case for war against Iraq.
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The revolution of 1979 overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah and
established the Islamic Republic of Iran. This was the beginning of the "clash"
between the Muslim world and U.S. imperialism.
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However, this time the
Pentagon is already bogged down, fighting a stubborn war in Iraq against a
popular resistance that is straining U.S. troop levels, adding to its budget
deficits and cutting into domestic programs.
Nevertheless, the Bush
administration has been flying surveillance drones over Iran for nearly a year
to seek evidence of nuclear weapons programs and detect weaknesses in air
defenses, according to three U.S. officials with detailed knowledge of the
secret effort.
The small, unmanned planes, penetrating Iranian airspace
from U.S. military facilities in occupied Iraq, use radar, video, still
photography and air filters designed to pick up traces of nuclear activity to
gather information that is not accessible by satellites, the officials said. The
aerial espionage is standard in military preparations for an eventual air attack
and is also employed as a tool for intimidation.
Bush's senior advisers,
including Sec retary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, said in mid-February that a U.S. attack on Iran is not imminent but
that the option remains available.
U.S. preparing to attack
Iran?
U.S. officials have confirmed that the drones were indeed
deployed along Iran's northern and western borders, first in April 2004 and
again in December and January. A former U.S. official with direct knowledge of
earlier phases of the operation told the Washington Post that the U.S.
intelligence community began using Iraq as a base to spy on Iran shortly after
taking Baghdad in early April 2003. Drones have been flown over Iran since then,
the former official said, but the missions became more frequent last year.
The spring 2004 flyovers led Iran's military to step up its defenses
around nuclear facilities in the southern cities of Isfahan and Bushehr, where
locals first reported sightings of unidentified flying objects. Defenses were
added around those sites and others last month, Iranian officials said, after it
became clear they were being observed by the drones.
"It was clear to our
air force that the entire intention here was to get us to turn on our radar,"
the official said.
That tactic, designed to contribute information about
what the Pentagon calls an "enemy order of battle," has been used by the U.S.
military in the Korean and Vietnam wars, against the Soviets and the Chinese,
and in both Iraq wars.
"By coaxing the Iranians to turn on their radar,
we can learn all about their defense systems, including the frequencies they are
operating on, the range of their radar and, of course, where their weaknesses
lie," said Thomas Keaney, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and executive
director of the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
After a briefing by their air force three weeks ago, Iran's national
security officials ordered their forces not to turn on the radar or come into
contact with the drones in any way. "Our decision was: Don't engage," an Iranian
official said. Leaving the radar off deprives U.S. forces of vital information
about the country's air defense system, but it also makes it harder for Iran to
tell if an attack is underway.
During the 12 years between the two wars
against Iraq, the U.S. and Britain routinely flew over and targeted Iraqi
military installations, in defiance of international laws and the United
Nations, prompting the Iraqi air defenses to turn on their radar. Later, U.S.
and British bombers used this information to identify and locate Iraqi air
defense systems in order to bomb and destroy them. They also called the turning
on of the radar--which is meant to warn of an air attack--a "provocation," a
pretext for bombing.
So far, the drones have provided little information
to the U.S., according to U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the
mission.
Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear power, has
hinted it could hit Iran militarily to stop it from getting the
bomb.
Israel has warned that it may consider a preemptive strike against
Iranian nuc lear installations like it did in 1981 against an unfinished Iraqi
nuclear reactor at Osirak near Baghdad, but Iranian officials have said any
possible attack would fail. Iran's nuclear facilities are spread through out the
country and partly built underground, making an aerial attack
difficult.
Iran responds to U.S.
and Israeli
threats
Iran has warned it would both retaliate and accelerate its
drive to master nuclear technology if the United States or Israel attacked its
atomic facilities. (Reuters, Feb. 6)
Iran's negotiator, Hasan Rowhani,
told the state-run television on Feb. 8, "We are not seeking tension with the
United States. We are seeking to resolve our problems with America but it's the
Americans who don't want problems to be resolved." Rowhani is secretary of
Iran's Supreme National Security Council.
Rowhani also said that a U.S.
military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities would fail.
"Iran's
nuclear technology is in the hands of its scientists and workshops throughout
the country. All of them have the ability to produce centrifuges. There fore,
America will not be able to destroy our nuclear facilities and mines through a
military strike," he said.
The broadcast said Iran had begun a new round
of nuclear talks with the Europeans in Geneva.
The Bush administration
claims that Iran is using its nuclear energy program to conceal an effort to
manufacture nuclear weapons, but has offered no evidence. The International
Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog agency of the United Nations, has
said there is no evidence to prove this claim. As a result the U.S. has been
lobbying to remove its director, Mohammed El Baradei.
Under an agreement
reached with the European Union in November, Iran will continue suspension of
its enrichment activities during negotiations with the Europeans. Iran has said
it will decide within three months whether to continue its suspension, which is
monitored by UN nuclear inspectors.
Rowhani said Iran won't give up its
rights under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which allows Iran access to
peaceful nuclear technology.
"The condition to continue the talks is
progress," said Rowhani, adding that Iran would not be obliged to continue the
talks after March 20 if there is no progress.
In his first interview with
a U.S. journalist since 1997, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 70,
told USA Today on Feb. 6 that Iran was not concerned about tough statements from
President Bush and Secretary of State Rice, which he called "nonsense."
He
urged the White House to unfreeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets as a
sign of goodwill that could help end 25 years of estrangement. He added that
Iran has no use for a nuclear bomb: "We will never use such weapons; therefore
they have no utility for us."
Iran and Israel
The Islamic
Republic of Iran considers the settler state of Israel illegitimate and its
ethnic cleansing of Palestinians genocidal. Israel maintains that it will not
allow millions of Palestinians, many of whom were driven out of their ancestral
homes during the 1948 war that established Israel, to return home from the
refugee camps in which they and their parents have been living for the past 58
years.
The ideological differences between the two states go back to the
relation each has with U.S. imperialism, which is trying to maintain and further
its hegemony over the strategically vital and oil-rich region, as well as the
role of each in the international class struggle being waged between the poor of
the world--especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America--and world imperialism
headed by the U.S.
Since its formation in 1948, Israel has been used by
the U.S. to put down national liberation movements in the region that could
potentially go against the interests of U.S. imperialism, most notably that of
the Palestinians for freedom and self-determination. In 1967, while the U.S. was
busy destroying villages in Vietnam, Israel attacked Egypt and Syria to defeat
Arab nationalism, which threatened to overthrow the rule of U.S. imperialism in
the entire region.
For years Israel has occupied Pales tin ian land, has
kept millions of Pales tinians from returning to their homes, has demolished
their homes on occupied land, and has killed tens of thousands--all in defiance
of dozens of United Nations resolutions and numerous international laws. None of
this would have been possible without the U.S.
Israel, with less than
one-thousandth of the world's population, gets more money from the U.S. than the
billion people living in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean put
together.
Roots of the clash
Iran used to be under the thumb
of U.S. imperialism when the infamous Shah of Iran was on the throne. He was put
there by the CIA after a coup which overthrew a democratically elected prime
minister who had gone against the wishes of Britain and the U.S. and
nationalized the oil. But the revolution of 1979 overthrew the Shah and
established the Islamic Republic of Iran. This was the beginning of the "clash"
between the Muslim world and U.S. imperialism.
What the Iranian people
wanted was to break free of the tyranny and super-exploitation imposed upon them
by the U.S. transnational corporations. Working class organizations, having been
decimated by the Shah with the help of the CIA, were unable to provide the
needed leadership. Religion under these circumstances became the rallying point
and filled the vacuum. Mosques became the meeting place for the
opposition.
Thus, the battle lines were drawn between a united front of
workers and the petty bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the local
pro-imperialist bourgeoisie and imperialism on the other. The left, representing
the interests of the working class, wanted to overthrow capitalism as the
domestic base of foreign imperialism and domination. The petty bourgeoisie, on
the other hand, wanted to overthrow imperialism but keep an "independent"
capitalism.
In light of the leadership role of the religious sector and
the fact that the latter was historically aligned with the petty bourgeoisie,
this sector won and established the Islamic Republic. Later, the regime attacked
and obliterated what was left of the pro-socialist forces.
The capitalism
that came out of this, however, was no longer aligned with Wall Street,
international finance capital or the multi-billion-dollar corporations whose
interests were being advanced by U.S. imperialism. Iran, in their view, had been
"lost."
They had lost a trusted and reliable U.S. ally who, together with
Israel, had policed the region for them. They lost a nation of 70 million people
that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank had woven their web around,
in the name of free trade and neo-liberalism, and made a meal out of for giant
U.S. corporations. They lost a puppet regime that had to ask them how, where and
how much oil it could sell.
Shortly after the 1979 revolution, the Islamic
Republic established ties with the Shiites in Lebanon, specifically with the
Hezbollah, who in 1983 bombed U.S. Marine barracks there, forcing the Reagan
administration to withdraw U.S. forces from the country. The Hezbollah was also
able to drive the Israelis out--the only defeat of Israel at the hands of
Islamists until then.
Other Islamic forces--most notably in Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Indonesia and elsewhere--took up the banner of anti-imperialist struggle.
These struggles have erupted as a result of imperialist exploitation and the
requisite tyranny that goes along with it. The Islamist movement in the world,
just as in Iran, rose up to fill the vacuum created when secular working class
organizations were wiped out.
Recently, in elections in Pakistan, two
Islamist parties won two key provinces bor dering Afghanistan. In previous
elections they had won at most 5 to 6 percent of the vote. In explaining the
victory, one Islamist leader said: "We didn't do anything but attack the
American Empire. No one else was doing it. That won us the
elections."
Oppressed people may suffer defeats, but sooner or later they
will stand up once again and wage their battle in whatever form and under
whatever leadership or organization is available to them, using whatever means
are available. If they don't have fighter jets, they will invent some other way
to deliver their explosives.
Iranians defiant
Washington
recently recalled its ambassador to Syria after the killing of former Lebanese
Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a bombing, although Washington has not directly
accused Damascus of responsibility.
Since the U.S. escalated its threats
against Syria, Iran has pledged to back that country. "We are ready to help
Syria on all grounds to confront threats," Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza
Aref said after meeting Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otar. (BBC News, Feb. 21)
"Our Syrian brothers are facing specific threats and we hope they can benefit
from our experience. We are ready to give them any help necessary."
Back
in October, BBC News had interviewed people in Iran on their attitudes about the
U.S. threats. "Why should the U.S., Britain and Israel all have nuclear weapons
and not us?" asked student Saida Hussain. "I want to tell outsiders not to think
that young people today are different from young people in the early days of the
revolution... ."
Professor Zibakalam of Tehran University's political
science department said that "if the United States or Israel attacks Iran over
the fact that Iran has been trying to develop its nuclear industry, then I think
that public support would rally around the regime.
"No government in Iran
can afford to say that because of international and U.S. pressure it will cancel
the nuclear program altogether."
Washington also has the gall to accuse
Iran of influencing Iraqi politics. This is because its favored candidate, Iyad
Allawi, failed to win a majority in Iraq's elections, even though they were
staged by the U.S. Those who got the most votes have closer ties to
Iran.
This worries Washington, which has quite different plans for Iraq.
Washington envisions an Iraq that will allow the building of 14 military bases
it is already planning; will let the U.S. decide what Iraq can do with its oil;
and will allow the Pentagon to use Iraq as a base to attack other nations such
as Iran and Syria. It wants an Iraq "friendly" with Israel, and one that will
implement neo-liberal policies.
While an attack on Iraq or Syria would
only compound U.S. imperialism's problems, Bush himself says no options are
closed. It is incumbent upon all anti-war and anti-imperialist people to get out
on the streets to demand that the U.S. bring the troops home now.
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