In the last 48 hours all the major players in the Bush administration have issued statements warning of the impending danger of Iran.

Cheney blasted the Islamic regime saying there would be "meaningful consequences" if it refuses to comply with international demands to stop its nuclear program.

Condoleezza Rice said, "We face no greater challenge from a single country than Iran… This is a country that seems determined, it seems, to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance of the international community that is determined that they should not get one."

Donald Rumsfeld warned at a press conference on Wednesday, "I will say this about Iran. They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq. We know it, and it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment."

Bush chimed in too, "Iran must not have a nuclear weapon. The most destabilizing thing that can happen in this region and in the world is for Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

And then there was Bolton, the most vehement of all, saying that the Security Council should issue a "vigorous response" to Iran's nuclear ambitions or the United States might have to consider other steps.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said, "It's going to be incumbent on our allies around the world to show that they are willing to act."

Congress also added their support led by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) "Iran's quest for nuclear arms requires us to do two things: squeeze Iran's economy as much as possible and do so without delay." Lantos claims that more than 300 lawmakers will support sanctions.

Israel's Defense Minister joined the chorus as well," If the UN Security Council is incapable of taking action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel will have no choice but to defend itself."

Bush, Cheney, Bolton, Rice, Rumsfeld, Burns, Congress, and Israel.

Whoa! That's quite a line-up.

All in the last 48 hours!

Was it spontaneous or a calculated public-relations campaign?

Beyond the political speechmaking are literally hundreds of articles, full of the same predictable fictions and demagoguery which have mischaracterized Iran's nuclear program from the get-go; fueling the hysteria for another preemptive war.

Did Iran become nuclear superpower overnight?

Apparently, so. But, just for the sake of argument, let's remember that according to the IAEA there is "no evidence of a nuclear weapons program or any diversion of nuclear material."

That is the judgment of the Nobel Prize-wining chief of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, Mohammad ElBaradei. ElBaradei warned that there were no nuclear weapons programs in Iraq and he has drawn the very same conclusion in Iran.

"No evidence" still means "no evidence" except in Washington, DC, where it is a mere stumbling block for a massive media-blitz to manipulate public perceptions and whip the masses into war-fever.

It's hard not to be impressed by the sudden ratcheting-up of inflammatory statements and spurious claims that blast from every media-soapbox across the country. Who could have imagined 4 years ago how utterly corrupted our media really is?

Try this: do a Google search through the 2,400 articles on Iran right now on and see what you find.

You'll find that all 2,400 articles reiterate the same bland deceptions and wearisome lies as all the others. You'll see that the forth estate provides neither facts, nor context, nor analysis, just the endless, repetitive fear-mongering of administration officials.

That's it; just manipulation through state-sponsored demagoguery 24-7.

You won't find anything about the IAEA inspection team that rummaged through Iran's nuclear sites for the passed two years in the most thorough examination of any country in the history of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) You won't hear anything about the "go anywhere, see anything" inspections that allowed officials from the IAEA to investigate any location or facility they felt was suspicious. You won't hear that the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) predicted that it would take 10 years for Iran to build a nuclear weapon. (If, in fact, that is even their intention) You won't hear that Iran temporarily sacrificed its legal right to enrich uranium and accepted "additional protocols" because it trusted the EU-3 (Germany, France and England) who, it turns out, were simply acting as Washington's agents. You won't find one single article that clarifies the most fundamental issue of the entire confrontation; that Iran has an "inalienable right" to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes unless it can factually established that it has not complied with the terms of its agreement.

It has complied. There is no violation. That is why there will be no "punitive action".

Instead, the United States is hoping for a "presidential statement"; a bogus "slap on the wrist" from the Security Council because the individual members can't muster the courage to do their duty and defy the US.

Perhaps, the Security Council could offer a "supplemental presidential statement" at the same time, condemning the Bush administration, for developing a new regime of low-yield, bunker-busting "usable" nukes, and for its involvement in poisoning the groundwater and great swaths of the Iraqi countryside with Depleted Uranium; ensuring environmental devastation, cancer and birth defects will continue into perpetuity.

Will the Security Council have time to reprimand the real nuclear terrorist or will it limit itself to the imaginary villain who refuses to prostrate itself to Washington?

Iran has weathered this farce with great dignity. They understand the gravity of the situation when the media begins swarm to their victim. They know that there are Carrier groups in the Gulf and AC-130s in bases in Iraq. They know that Israeli commandoes have infiltrated the countryside and are scoping out potential targets. They know that satellites and unmanned drones have mapped out every square inch of territory from Iraq to Pakistan and the B-52s are tucked away close by where they can "liberate" another 100,000 or so Iranians.

How do they know?

Because it is the same lame script that was used in the lead up to the war in Iraq.

The Iran Bourse

On March 20 the Iran Bourse will formally open and allow countries to break to US monopoly on oil purchases in petrodollars. The central banks across Europe and Asia will trade in part of their stockpiles of greenbacks for euros, and dollars will come flooding back to the homeland. $3 trillion of American cash and securities are owned by people or institutions outside of the United States. If just a small portion of them pour back into the US, Depression will follow.

Is the impending war with Iraq merely an effort to shore up the debt-ridden greenback? (which is now underwritten by $8.2 trillion in debt)

If not, then how do we explain the Federal Reserve's surprise announcement that it would stop releasing the M-3 in late March, 2006 coinciding with the opening of the bourse? (The M-3 provides the aggregate statistics on US dollars around the world)

Don't you think the American people would like to know when the central banks begin tossing their stockpiles of greenbacks overboard?

And won't this "weakening of the dollar" curtail Washington's ability to print unlimited amounts of money to fund a powerful standing army and provide lavish tax cuts to the wealthy?

The Iran bourse is a direct threat to the present economic system of extorting labor and resources from the developing world for worthless paper.

The Bush administration will do everything in its power to defend that system.

Berkshire-Hathaway chief, Warren Buffet recently noted, "Right now, the rest of the world owns $3 trillion more of us than we own of them. In my view, it will create political turmoil at some point. …Pretty soon, I think there will be a big adjustment."

"Political turmoil"?"big adjustment"?…"Pretty soon, I think"?

'nuff said.

Bush regularly urges Iranians to seize the "freedom they seek and deserve". In Tehran's ministries, that sounds like a call for regime change. He has ignored past Iranian offers of talks and tightened US economic sanctions.

Official Washington's quickening drumbeat of hostility is beginning to recall political offensives against Libya's Moammar Gadaffi, Panama's Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein, which all ended in violence. Rightwing American media are urging action, deeming Iran "an intolerable threat" that is the "central crisis of the Bush presidency".

As was the case with Iraq, administration tub-thumping is influencing public opinion -- notwithstanding subsequent debunking of many of its Iraq claims. Polls suggest many Americans are now convinced Iran is the new public enemy No 1. Forty-seven percent told Zogby International they favoured military action to halt its nuclear activities.

While hopes of avoiding confrontation are not yet dead, warnings by John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations, that Iran could face "painful consequences" over its nuclear activities were a reminder of Bush's repeated refusals to eschew armed force. Iranian officials believe the US is determined to undermine and if possible overthrow Iran's theocracy and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government -- regardless of whether a nuclear compromise is reached. That helps explain Tehran's hardline negotiating stance.

They cite a US decision to spend $75-million on funding potential Iranian opposition forces, including NGOs, trade unions and human rights groups, and local language propaganda broadcasts -- tactics pioneered in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. Iran accuses the US of stirring discontent among its Kurdish, Baluch and Azeri minorities, suspicions fed by a US marine corps investigation to gauge the strength of opposition to the central government among non-Persian groups. Tehran also believes the US is using the People's Mujahideen, an anti-regime group once backed by Hussein and blamed for many terrorist attacks, for intelligence-gathering and destabilisation.

It recently demanded that British troops quit Basra after linking them to unrest among Arab Iranians in Khuzestan, abutting south-east Iraq. Britain has rejected the claims.

The "EU three" -- Britain, France and Germany -- remain focused on the nuclear controversy rather than on broader Iran-related issues. A senior British official said they would, if necessary, support "graduated" pressure on Iran via the UN Security Council, which meets in New York next week, "possibly leading to trade restrictions or more likely, travel and financial sanctions on individuals". But the official said the Europeans "do not have a clear view of what we will do at a later stage" should Iran refuse to bend.

This lack of an agreed strategy may encourage US hawks, egged on by Israel, to seize the initiative -- even at the risk of an Iraq-style split with Europe. They have been biding their time for three years. Now they want action. For starters, Bolton is expected to seek a 30-day UN deadline for Iran to back down or face counter-measures.

And on Wednesday the American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Greg Schulte, called for "special inspections'' by the UN nuclear teams in Iran, in effect giving them carte blanche in their detective work. The mechanism has been used only once before, unsuccessfully, in North Korea 13 years ago.

Resorting to special inspections would be "much more intrusive'' than the IAEA's ongoing inspections in Iran, said a diplomat. But was up to the IAEA to decide.

Spinning a web for India
A world away from its self-declared international war on terror, Washington has spied greater and more potent threats on the horizon, argues Randeep Ramesh. India's nuclear programme -- built in isolation, from scratch, after American-imposed sanctions in the 1970s -- is such a threat.

Not only has a poverty-stricken country, without outside help, built a nuclear industry, but its scientific community has also mastered the technically difficult reprocessing cycle and achieved a series of unique breakthroughs in nuclear technology. India might one day be "free'' to assemble as large an atomic arsenal as possible and, even more problematic for Washington, end up with a monopoly on an energy source of the future.

By comparison, the United States has not built a nuclear reactor for three decades. Conscious of being dependent on oil in a time of rising prices, George W Bush decided to reactivate the country's nuclear programme and capture the benefits of the labour of others. It is this that informs American thinking on how to deal with incipient risks to its global dominance, not some fuzzy talk of a special relationship with India built on a sense of shared values.

Yet US propaganda continues. Condoleezza Rice neatly encapsulated the Bush policy as a "balance of power that favours freedom'', which also appeals to Indians' view of their country as a moral force in the world. Casting India as a friend and Iran as a foe can also be conveniently justified in such terms. However, American bullying of smaller states undermines this moral consensus around democracy and freedom. India's size, geography and economic clout mean it is less susceptible to the kind of tactics used to intimidate Tehran.

The US is determined to ensure that the rise of India, and its neighbour China, will not mean the decline of the US. Washington may be prepared to concede that there might be bigger economies in the world, but aims to remain pre-eminent in industrial power.

To do so it is willing to restrict access to capital markets and technology, promoting its national interest under the guise of a moral foreign policy. The blocking of a Chinese oil company's bid for a US rival last year is one example of this new policy, and Indian potential could be restrained by similar means. As Bush's own nuclear negotiating team has made clear in testimony to Congress, the administration wants to "lock in'' India to a deal before moving to tie down and restrain the country's nuclear potential in non-proliferation discussions.

Unlike the cold war, where the US shut out its rivals from the world market, its policy in the coming decades is to entangle rising powers in a web of rules designed to favour itself. As India may find to its cost, getting into a hot embrace with Washington is easy; getting out may be much harder. --

© Guardian Newspapers 2006

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee that the Security Council would begin debate on Iran next Monday and Tuesday, and gradually escalate pressure if Tehran refused to halt uranium enrichment activities.

But Rep Thomas Lantos of California, the panel's senior Democrat, insisted that "Iran's quest for nuclear arms requires us to do two things: squeeze Iran's economy as much as possible and do so without delay".

He said that the committee next week would consider a bill signed by more than 300 lawmakers requiring US sanctions on any company or nation investing more than $20 million in Iran's energy sector.

It would also require US-based pension funds to disclose Iran-related investments. Washington already has long-standing sanctions prohibiting American companies or individuals from doing business with the Islamic republic.

Meanwhile, the White House rejected as provocative Iran's warning that the United States could feel "harm and pain" if the Security Council took up the issue of Tehran's nuclear research. "Provocative statements and actions only further isolate Iran from the rest of the world," spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters travelling with President George W Bush in New Orleans.

Burns said that the administration could support legislation imposing sanctions on foreign firms, which would replace the expiring Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, but it should be modified to give Bush greater flexibility. After a year of intensive diplomacy, the five major nuclear powers – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China – are united in agreeing that "Iran is seeking nuclear weapons" but the proposed law could blow the coalition apart, he warned.

In recent years, foreign firms have signed more than $100 billion in energy-related deals with Iran but US presidents sidestepped imposing sanctions to avoid a diplomatic or trade row, especially with European allies, lawmakers said. Burns said that the Security Council would start with a statement demanding that Iran halt uranium enrichment and cooperate with the international community.

The only real way to stop Teheran's race to obtain the bomb apart from military action was through tough economic sanctions that caused the Iranian people to suffer. "Once the people understand that their government is bringing upon them a disaster will they realize that the [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's regime needs to be replaced," the official said.

Iran, the official said, was doing all it could to stall for time, including holding "pointless" talks with Russia concerning the enrichment of its uranium. "They are just trying to get more time and they will continue lying and deceiving the international community while simultaneously trying to obtain nuclear power," he said.

While it was complicated to overthrow the current regime in Teheran, "it is not impossible," the official said. If the world stopped refining Iranian oil, the official said as an example, the country would not have gas for its cars. "If the people start to suffer then they will understand that a change in government is needed." But if the diplomatic course failed, Israel and the US needed to be prepared, the official said, to take military action against Teheran. "This option may be needed but it should only be used as a last resort," he said.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told reporters in Germany on Wednesday that Israel had all it needed to defend itself against Iran. Asked by reporters if Israel had a military plan handy in a desk drawer to strike Iran, Mofaz said: "Israel has many drawers containing everything it needs to defend its citizens." Israel, Mofaz told senior German officials, would not stand by idly while its very existence was at risk. "We do not plan to turn a blind eye to these threats and we will do everything possible to make sure they do not materialize."

This after the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions, sent in a report this week saying it could not verify that Iran's atomic activities were purely peaceful.

''We want the Iranians to see that the world is speaking with one voice when it comes to their capacity to develop a nuclear weapon,'' Bush said.

Bush also said he was concerned about the message being sent to Middle Eastern allies by the collapse of efforts by a Dubai company to manage major U.S. ports. ''UAE is a committed ally, in the war on terror. They are a key partner for our military in a critical region,'' Bush said.

Speaking to the newspaper group a day after the DP World ports deal fell apart, Bush also pledged to work with members of Congress on how to improve the process that led his administration to approve the transaction.

''I'm concerned about a broader message this issue could send to our friends and allies around the world, particularly in the Middle East,'' Bush said.

© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.

Yaalon told Israel TV on Friday that he stood by his earlier comments, but he didn't repeat his reported assertion that Israel had the capacity to attack Iran's nuclear program alone.

"I spoke about the military option of the West, whether it's U.S. forces, NATO, also the Israeli army that deal with the Iranian capability," Yaalon said. "There is a military capability that will set back the program for many years."

Israel considers Iran one of its top enemies and says Iran's nuclear program is meant to produce weapons. Tehran says the nuclear program is for energy production. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be wiped "off the map."

Although Israel has backed international efforts to get a resolution against Iran's nuclear plans passed in the U.N. Security Council, it has tried to maintain a low profile, preferring to let its main ally, the U.S., take the lead.

Yaalon reportedly made the initial comments Thursday in a question and answer session after a speech he gave at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank. Several calls to the institute requesting a transcript of Yaalon's comments were not returned Friday.

The reported comments caused an uproar in Israel.

"This is a very sensitive period in which the matter of Iran is being referred to the (U.N.) Security Council," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the TV. "As soon as Israel jumps forward and says this is our issue and we will attack ... this is so needless to say now."

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz called Yaalon's remarks "unnecessary" and said Yaalon should have been more responsible when speaking publicly about matters key to Israel's security.

In response to the criticism, Yaalon said from the U.S. that he didn't understand "what all the fuss is about in Israel.

"In the West and in many places there is a baseless claim, in my eyes, that allegedly there isn't an (military) ability, and thus it was important for me to make these remarks clearly," Yaalon said.

On the March 8 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly stated: "You know, in a sane world, every country would unite against Iran and blow it off the face of the earth. That would be the sane thing to do." O'Reilly made the remark during a discussion of Iran's recent threat to cause "harm and pain" to the U.S. if it pursues sanctions against Iran in the U.N. Security Council because of Iran's developing nuclear program.

As Media Matters for America has documented, O'Reilly recently declared that "it's just a matter of time ... before we have to bomb" Iran.

From the March 8 edition of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: And let's do the No-Spin News. In Vienna, Iran has threatened the U.S.A. with, quote, "harm and pain" for its role in trying to get the United Nations to discipline Iran over the nuke issue. OK. It's the usual saber-rattling. You know, we'll hurt you, we'll do this, that, and the other thing. Now, what Iran is doing is they perceive that America is weakened because of the conflict in Iraq and the division at home, OK? So they're saying, "Hey, we'll just push the envelope as far as we can push it and see what happens. So we think that Bush is a damaged president, his approval ratings are low, Iraq is chaos -- we're helping that out, by the way." Iran is helping Iraq to be in chaos by allowing the terrorists to go through that country and arming them and teaching them how to make bombs and all of that.

You know, in a sane world, every country would unite against Iran and blow it off the face of the earth. That would be the sane thing to do, just go in and remove the government, because this is a terrorist state. But we can't do that, and now, the U.S.A. is basically has to take this kind of rhetoric. I mean, there's nothing else we can do but go to the United Nations and say to the Security Council, "Look, you can't let these people have nuclear weapons. If you do, there's going to be a war." So it's between war and sanctions.