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ImcIranPossibilities
As of February 2006, it seemed like the US+Israel were really serious about launching an attack (possibly nuclear) on Iran, and possibly as soon as March. As of late March 2006, the threats remain (Security Council stuff), and the activist community has been alerted about the risks. On 22 March 2006, gdm proposed and confirmed a clarification question on a proposal to encourage work on a new version of the article for proposal to www-features some time in the future (April, May, ...). In the absence of IMC Iran, this remains a controversial task, since the grassroots legitimacy of the article is unclear. Please invite any Iran-based activists (independent of the US State Department - USAID etc.) you know to contribute.
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March 2006
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IRAN: Stop US/Israel attack on Iran!
LONG TITLE
US/Israel threaten attack (possibly using nuclear weapons) on Iran
PICTURE
ABSTRACT
The US and
Israeli governments have
made plans for a military attack against
Iran. Since the
new US nuclear weapons doctrine authorises
"pre-emptive nuclear strikes against non-nuclear adversaries",
Michel Chossudovsky [1],
Jorge Hirsch [2],
[3] and
William Arkin [4] claim that
there is a risk that
nuclear bombs
may be used.
It is unknown when the attacks would happen, and
opinions differ on
the probability of an attack (whether nuclear or non-nuclear).
Possible reasons for the attack include:
control of
Khuzestan province
[1]
[2]
[3]
where most Iranian oil lies, on the border with Iraq
(US war plan OPLAN 1002-04);
to distract attention from USA domestic political problems;
for Christian fundamentalist reasons -
Bush says he was just following God's orders when he ordered the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq;
and/or stopping
the planned opening
of an international oil-petrochemical-gas stock exchange for oil
trade in
euros
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5].
The official excuse for the attack is
the possible nuclear weapons program in Iran: ex-CIA agents
Paul Pillar and Ellen Laipson as well as retired United Nations weapons inspector
Hans Blix
state that if Iran were really trying to build atom bombs, then
the most effective way to stop this
would be a guarantee from the US and Israel not to attack Iran.
Key facts:
info:
iranbodycount |
wikipedia |
Iranian blogs |
Workers' Left Unity Iran
action:
campaigniran |
defendiran |
stopwaroniran |
medialens.org |
StopWar.org.uk |
Global Days of Action 18-20 March
CONTENT
Three years after the US attack on Iraq, controlled by the
dictator Saddam Hussein
53 years after the
US+UK coup d'etat in Iran
against the democratically elected prime minister
Mossadegh
and 18 years after the shooting down by the USS Vincennes of
Iran Air Flight 655, killing the 290 people on board ( 274 passengers, 16 crew),
the USA and Israeli regimes plan a military attack against the theocratic democracy in
Iran.
The new US nuclear
weapons doctrine authorises
"pre-emptive nuclear strikes against non-nuclear adversaries" according
to a petition signed by over 1600 US physicists. The physicists describe
the policy as "shocking" and state that
"this new U.S. policy conveys a clear message to the 182 non-nuclear
weapon states that the United States is moving strongly away from
disarmament, and is in fact prepared to use nuclear weapons against
non-nuclear adversaries. It provides a strong incentive for countries
to abandon the NPT and pursue nuclear weapons themselves and
dramatically increases the risk of nuclear proliferation, and
ultimately the risk that regional conflicts will explode into all-out
nuclear war, with the potential to destroy our civilization."
Because of this and other reasons, various analysts
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4] claim that
the threatened attack on Iran may use
"mini-nukes" (small nuclear bombs),
in order to destroy deep underground facilities, breaking the taboo on
first-strike use of nuclear weapons, and blurring the boundary between
non-nuclear and nuclear weapons.
Because of the official reason for the attack
(the possible
Iranian program to build nuclear bombs),
the US and/or Israeli attack on Iran is expected to be
a single, fast, massive simultaneous attack
on nuclear energy (civilian or suspected military)
and military facilities in sixteen different towns in Iran
[1]
[2]
including e.g. Bushehr
(165,000 inhabitants),
Arak
(511,000), the mountain town of
Natanz (40,000),
Isfahan
(2,000,000) and
Tehran (12,000,000) -
for a total population in the listed towns (including Tehran metropolitan area) of 23 million.
Even though it's realistic that some sectors of the Iranian government
may be
hoping to build nuclear bombs in violation of the
Iranian head of state's
fatwa (religous order)
banning the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons,
there are several reasons why this alleged bomb-building program is not
a credible reason for the planned attack:
- practical:
Iranian engineers and scientists would have great difficulty building
nuclear warheads, since Iran has been party to the
NPT
since
1970.
It is credible that there has been some transfer of technical knowledge
from Pakistan and
P.R.China to Iran.
However, in November 2004, Iranian authorities voluntarily accepted to follow
an Additional Safeguard Agreement, under which during the last few years,
the IAEA has carried out
frequent and intrusive inspections of Iranian facilities and
on 6 March 2006, IAEA chief El Baradei
reported that "During [investigations by the IAEA over the prevous
three years], the Agency has not seen indications of diversion of
nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.".
According to the Iranian authorities, 1200 person-days of inspections were carried out
from November 2003 to November 2005, while the total number of person-days of
inspections carried out by the IAEA each year
is about 10,000 for 140 states;
-
motivational:
the threat of attack by the USA/Israel is a strong motivating factor
for Iranian politicians and voters to build atom bombs.
Ex-CIA agents
Paul Pillar and Ellen Laipson and the previous IAEA chief
Hans Blix have
said that
if Iran were really trying to build nuclear weapons, then the most
effective way of stopping this would be for USA and Israel to provide
guarantees that they will not attack Iran - which the USA seems to have done
for North Korea;
- ineffectiveness:
Many analysts
e.g. at the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies say that since
the most likely effect of the attacks would be to increase motivation
to build nuclear bombs without destroying the existing uranium supplies
(underground) nor being able to totally destroy the technological knowledge
among Iranians, the attack would only delay a nuclear bomb building program
by a few years.
A more credible reason for the attack is control of
Khuzestan province
[1]
[2]
[3]
where most Iranian oil lies, on the border with Iraq. British troops
and US marines have already been accused of
carrying out provocations in Khuzestan and
studying ethnic tensions
there in order to more efficiently provoke local conflict and "justify"
military intervention. Iranian authorities have claimed that
a letter calling for Arabs from Khuzestan to be moved to another part of Iran was a fake intended to provoke ethnic conflict (which it did),
and that
recent bombings in Khuzestan were provoked by British agents, and that
two recent military plane crashes occurred due to radio-jamming.
The
British Ahwazi Friendship Society, which states that it
does not support separatism and opposes any invasion of Iran by foreign forces and
condemns all forms of terrorism and has no links to any armed group,
disagrees with at least some of these claims.
The US war plan for invading Khuzestan apparently
has a codename
OPLAN 1002-04.
According to
William Clark,
Elias Akleh,
Krassimir Petrov
and Chris Cook, a more realistic reason for the planned attack is to stop the
creation of an
International Oil Bourse (or
Iran Petroleum Exchange) on the island of
Kish, at which
oil trading in euros (the so-called
petro-euro) will
become possible.
At present, international oil trade happens in US dollars.
European, Chinese, Japanese, West Asian and other companies and institutions
wishing to buy or sell oil are presently forced to trade using large quantities
of dollars, and in practice to keep large reserves in dollars.
The Iranian oil exchange had initially been announced to open
for the Iranian New Year, 20 March 2006,
but is certain to be greatly delayed.
If the exchange is successful, it would enable
buying and selling oil directly in euros. The risk for the USA would be loss of
control over a large part of the world economy due to selling of the dollar,
possibly leading to either an economic depression or hyperinflation in the USA.
In late 2000, Saddam Hussein changed oil related transactions
from the dollar to the euro. Also, he changed $US 10 billion in the Iraqi reserve fund
at the United Nations to euros. These are considered to be important
factors in the US decision to invade Iraq.
On 23 March 2006, the
Federal Reserve (central bank in the USA) will stop publishing the "M3" statistic, which (more
or less) represents the amount of US cash dollars circulating around
the world.
Other likely factors in the threat to attack Iran are Christian fundamentalist reasons, both
for retaining support from the Christian fundamentalist electorate in the US - and for what seems to be Bush's personal belief that God has as much (if not more)
right to make US foreign policy decisions as the US electorate:
Bush says he was just following God's orders when he ordered the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq.
The
mainstream media propaganda is focussed on the possible Iranian program for developing nuclear weapons, even though:
- there is not (yet) any evidence that Iran has violated the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) even after 1200 person-days of intrusive inspections from Nov 2003 to Nov 2005,
though the
National Intelligence Community in the USA (CIA, etc.)
estimates that Iran could build nuclear bombs in about 10 years' time, and organisations more pro-war than the CIA claim shorter delays
- USA, France and the UK grossly violate
Article VI of the NPT, which requires disarmament
- Germany violates Articles I and II of the NPT by
nuclear sharing
- Israel has about 75-200 nuclear bombs and has neither signed nor ratified the NPT, but it is a member of the IAEA - the agency making inspections for the NPT.
- On 4 November 2004, at the
59th General Assembly of the United Nations
147 countries (including Iran) voted in favour of creating a committee
for the
negotiation of a treaty against producing fissile material
which could be used for producing nuclear weapons; 2 countries abstained
(UK, Israel); only one country voted against (USA);
(see also other related votes);
- the world's largest democracy, India, struggled for many decades in favour of nuclear disarmament
and did not ratify the NPT. However, in 1998, India
became an overt nuclear weapons state (Pokhran II). According to the Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists, India now has
about 40-50 nuclear warheads and by 2010-2012 may have about 300-400 nuclear
and thermonuclear weapons.
During the first week of March 2006, Bush visited India in recognition of India's status as a nuclear weapons state
and signed a deal with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
allowing the sale of nuclear fuel and reactor components to India to enable
India to increase its rate of
nuclear weapons production.
Mainstream media attention has also focussed on comments
by the recently elected president of Iran,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad spoke
against the existence of Israel as a state and expressed
doubts about the Holocaust, leading to strong media and parliamentary criticism in Europe.
Ahmadinejad made statements relating to the "wiping out" of the state
of Israel in a similar way, according to him, that the USSR,
the regime of
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlawi and Saddam Hussein's regimes were "wiped out".
The accuracy of the
translation of his words from Farsi to English remains disputed.
The article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel discusses this
in more detail.
See also
the explanation on 20 Feb 2006
by Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
Much less media attention has been focussed on
Ahmadinejad's calls for a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East.
Ahmadinejad's election and somewhat weakened power as president demonstrate
the complex balance of political forces in post-1979 Iran:
Can activists stop this attack?
Regular
ZMag contributor
Norman Solomon
visited Iran in June 2005
to see how to support activists there, and a month ago claimed
that US antiwar activists mistakenly
"seem eager to believe that [air attacks on Iran] won't happen" and
urging activists to prevent the possible attack.
There are some signs that the US may decide not to attack Iran if
it has
insufficient support from rich European states and other "NATO allies", so
public pressure on national governments
from activists in Europe and elsewhere may be more effective
this time than it was three years ago against the threats to attack Iraq.
more info:
iranbodycount |
wikipedia | Iranian blogs |
Workers' Left Unity Iran
Do something! Stop the attacks before they start!
campaigniran |
defendiran |
stopwaroniran |
medialens.org |
iransolidarity.endofempire |
StopWar.org.uk |
Global Days of Action 18-20 March
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