On August 6, 1945 the United States killed over 100,000 men, women and children at Hiroshima, Japan with the newly invented atomic bomb. Three days later a second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Some victims were incinerated into thin air, others fled in agony with their skin hanging from their bodies. Thousands more died in the weeks, months and years that followed.

The justification for this horror is the usual one for blood thirsty behavior. We killed people in order to help them, a convenient explanation for the perpetrators.

In fact, large numbers of civilian casualties were not an incentive for the Japanese to surrender. The napalm fire bombing of Tokyo and other cities created similar numbers of casualties but the Japanese didn't surrender after those human catastrophes. More than likely the Soviet Union's declaration of war against Japan motivated the raising of the white flag. The mass murder of thousands served only as a test for a new weapon, a horrific experiment in mass murder.

The United States is still the only nation to use an atomic weapon on human beings. Keep that fact in mind when we are whipped into a frenzy of fear regarding the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.

Every impartial observer of Iran's nuclear program agrees that it is at least five to ten years away from attaining a nuclear weapons capability. You wouldn't know it to hear members of Congress, the lapdog press and the Israeli government.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinajed already had a bulls eye on his head when he quoted the Ayatollah Khomeini's decades old call to "wipe Israel off the map." Cooler heads know that Israel, unlike Iran, already has a nuclear capability. Estimates range from 75 nuclear warheads to 300. A country without nukes can't harm a country that has at least 75.

The numbers are only estimates because Israel has never acknowledged the existence of its nuclear weapons and has never submitted to the same international inspections that it demands of Iran. Iran is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel is not. Iran, without nukes, is called a threat to Israel, which is armed to the teeth with them.

While we are being propagandized into creating another human rights and foreign relations nightmare, it is the United States that has single handedly killed nuclear non-proliferation with its recent deal to boost India's nuclear capability. India may keep China in check so India gets the nuclear goodies.

The United States gives India, already a nuclear power, greater nuclear capability, but threatens war, death, the destruction of Iran's oil supply, and a world wide financial catastrophe if Iran dares to want the same thing. The United States created the nuclear world and now sustains it through rank cynicism.

Politicians and the press constantly make the case for war by declaring that Iran is run by "crazies." As usual, a history lesson is in order. The Iranians elected a secular democratic government in the early 1950s. Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh made the mistake of getting a little too uppity and had the gall to think he could nationalize oil production in his own country. The British and American governments weren't having any of it. They overthrew Mossadegh and installed the Shah.

On July 3, 1988 the U.S. navy shot down, accidentally we are told, an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people. When Bush the elder became president he awarded the Legion of Merit for "exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of an outstanding service" to the commander who ordered the shot fired. Whose country is crazy?

The United States let the nuclear genie out of the bottle 60 years ago. The United States encourages the non-nuclear world to want to join the club. The lesson of the now three year old occupation of Iraq is simple. Get the bomb and the Americans will leave you alone.

The Iranians deny wanting to use their nuclear technology for military means. They may be lying about their intentions but it hardly matters. The reality is that Iran won't threaten Israel, or the United States either. They won't give a bomb to Hamas. They are not crazy.

Politicians who say that the military option can't be taken off the table or Iran must not be allowed to get the bomb, either believe what they say and are insane, or know there is no threat but cynically go along to get elected. Death and destruction are always political winners in America.

It would be wonderful to have a non-nuclear planet, but the nuclear have nots are being rational when they want to change sides. North Korea may be called a "crazy" nation but it is a nuclear nation and gets a little more respect. North Korea moved ahead with its nuclear plans even as its citizens were starving to death. North Korea concluded that starvation was a small price to pay in order to join the killer elite.

When you watch John McCain or a Democratic presidential hopeful foam at the mouth about the prospect of a nuclear Iran, don't fear the Iranians. Fear your own government instead. Its plans are always crazy.

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BC. Ms. Kimberley is a freelance writer living in New York City. She can be reached via e-Mail at margaret.kimberley@blackcommentator.com. You can read more of Ms. Kimberley's writings at freedomrider.blogspot.com.

"There can't be any stalling. The international community has got to act," the chief US diplomat told reporters after talks here with Greek Foreign Minister Theodora Bakoyannis.

Citing what she called an "erosion of confidence" in Iranian statements that its nuclear program was strictly peaceful, Rice again called for a united front to press Tehran to give up suspected plans to build a nuclear bomb.

"People are looking to the international community to show that this can indeed be dealt with diplomatically," she said. "We are committed to a diplomatic solution, but it has to be dealt with."

Her tone contrasted with her remarks a day earlier while on a trip to the Bahamas, where she expressed confidence the UN Security Council would eventually agree on the language of a statement on Iran.

"We will come up with a vehicle (for addressing the Iranians), I am quite certain of it," she had told a news conference. "If it takes a little longer, I'm really not concerned about that."

A Western diplomat reported Thursday that the UN Security Council would not reach agreement this week on a Franco-British statement demanding that Iran suspend all uranium-enrichment activities.

The diplomat, who asked not to be named, said the council's five veto-wielding permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- were too far apart for a deal to be sealed this week.

The talks among the so-called P-5 have been bogged down by Russian and Chinese opposition to any hint of punitive measures, including sanctions, in the Franco-British statement.

The United States' UN ambassador, John Bolton, told reporters in New York that the P-5 ambassadors were awaiting the outcome of conversations at the ministerial level before deciding their next move.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said: "There are discussions going on, and clearly we haven't reached a final agreement on a text, so we're going to have to continue with our diplomacy."

He said Rice in recent days had spoken to her British counterpart Jack Straw on several occasions but did not report any other contacts.

"We believe it's moving in the right direction," McCormack said, adding that "right now, our focus is on a presidential (non-binding) statement" that requires unanimity by the 15-member council.

Washington and its European allies have been pressing Tehran to suspend its uranium-enrichment activities and return to negotiations on economic and other incentives for abandoning any nuclear weapons aspirations.

NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings described
Iraq as “a magnet for international terrorist activity.” Last October,
in a speech billed by the White House as a major policy address delivered at
the NED (the National Endowment for Democracy, a neoliberal “democratization” NGO
that is not an NGO but a front supported and funded by neocon reactionaries) Bush told
us if the U.S. left Iraq the “insurgents” would “use the
vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country, a base
from which to launch attacks and conduct their war against nonradical Muslim
governments.”

Prior the invasion, Bush’s neocon handlers went all out to convince
us that Saddam had trained “al-Qaeda” terrorists and after the
invasion the rationale for invading morphed into an effort to fight terrorists
there instead of here. Once again, through Zalmay Khalilzad, the excuses for
the invasion and occupation of Iraq have changed and the violence no longer
comes from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and “al-Qaeda in Iraq” but from
Shia militias.

No mention here of the fact the CIA promised to spend $3 billion over three
years, beginning in early 2004, to recruit and train “Iraqi exile groups,
Kurdish and Shi’ite forces” and “former mukhabarat agents” to “quell
the insurgency,” according to the UK Telegraph.
Obviously, so long as CIA fostered “militia groups” were “patrolling
cities and towns in many areas of Iraq” and engaging in “an increasing
number of extra-judicial killings of prominent former Ba’athists,” there
was no problem for Khalilzad and the neocons. However, the predictable (and
in fact engineered by the neocons) internecine violence must now be portrayed
as out of control and a threat to the entire “democracy” project
in Iraq—more of a threat, if we are to believe Zalmay Khalilzad, than
the “insurgency” itself. It is relatively easy to see where all
of this is going.

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday the United States—probably
Khalilzad—will talk to Iran about Washington’s accusations of Iranian
destabilization of Iraq, in the first public acceptance of an Iranian offer
to meet,” writes Nick Olivari for Reuters.
Naturally, any “talk” with Iran is designed to fail and portray
the evil mullahs as intransigent, yet another building block pretext for an
ultimate shock and awe campaign.

Last June, “several top U.S. officials” accused “Iranian
intelligence agents” of fomenting violence in Iraq. One such “official” is
Iran-Contra figure, “universal fascist,” and neocon éminence
grise Michael Ledeen, a “scholar” at the criminal American Enterprise
Institute. “We are drowning in information about Iranian activities in
Iraq,” Ledeen told NewsMax. “After
the battles of Fallujah and Hilla, we found names of Iranian contacts, locations
of safe houses, telephone numbers, and photographs that document Iranian activities.” According
to Ledeen,
the United States has obsessed over the alleged “al Qaeda and/or Zarqawi” connection
in Iraq and has thus missed “the full context,” in other words
the involvement of Iran and Hezbollah. It appears Zalmay Khalilzad and the
Bush neocons are now taking Ledeen’s appraisal to heart. Iran remains
firmly in the crosshairs of the Straussian neocons.

Earlier this month, Matt
Sherman, writing for the New York Times, explained how “the followers
of the young anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr” have “gained
significant influence over police and governors in the south of the country.” According
to the Voice
of America, dubbed the official broadcasting service (or propaganda organ)
of the United States government, “Moqtada al-Sadr is linked both to
terrorist groups and to one of the leading state sponsors of terrorism, Iran.” In
short, through a complaisant al-Sadr, the Iranian mullahs are not only calling
the shots in Iraq but also exact “significant influence over police
and governors in the south of the country.”

Get ready for a sustained propaganda campaign against Iran that will rival
the one used against Iraq and Saddam Hussein. “Like a roomful of Energizer
bunnies,” writes Andrew
I. Killgore, the neocons “just keep going and going and going,” marching
with determination toward conflict with “axis of evil” Iran, the
next target on the neocon hit list. Zalmay Khalilzad is in essence announcing
a new sustained propaganda campaign against Iran as the Straussian neocons
prepare to sabotage any “talks” with Iran over “how to stabilize
neighboring Iraq,” billed as “high-level meetings,” according
to the Associated
Press, approved by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s
supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Of course, these “talks” will fail and fail spectacularly, as
the Straussian neocons do not intend to resolve political issues in the Middle
East through negotiation. ‘’We announced that we do negotiate with
the U.S. on Iraq regarding the interests of all Iraqis and the world of Islam,'’ Ahmadinejad
said. However, once again, Ahmadinejad will serve as a useful idiot and the
Iranians will be demonized as intransigent terrorists, determined to engage
in suicidal attacks against Israel and U.S. proxies in Iraq—and according
to Michael Ledeen, the United Stagtes proper. In the meantime, no deviations
from the Straussian neocon script for total war in the Islamic and Arab Middle
East will be tolerated.

On Wednesday a judge in U.S. District Court in Chicago extended the period of oversight on museums that have custody of Iranian historical artifacts. In early April, the judge will rule on whether the Americans are entitled to take the artifacts as compensation for the injuries they suffered in a bomb blast in Israel in 1997.

It's the latest chapter in a drama pitting Americans against a foreign country - as well as their own government. The case has also put the spotlight on the controversial origins of some priceless collections in American museums.

Deadly 1997 bombing

On Sept. 4, 1997, three bombs packed with nails, screws and glass ripped through a pedestrian mall in Jerusalem, killing five people and injuring nearly 200 others. The militant Palestinian group Hamas claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings.

Eight Americans who were "severely and permanently injured" in the carnage filed two suits, Diana Campuzano v. the Islamic Republic of Iran et al, and Jenny Rubin et al. v. the Islamic Republic of Iran, et al. Their target was Iran because it is widely believed to fund Hamas.

Represented by Rhode Island attorney David J. Strachman, the victims sued the Iranian government and three top Iranian officials in federal court.

When none of the defendants appeared, the Americans won a default judgment in September 2003. Ruling that Hamas "has a close relationship with Iran," and that the bombing "would not have occurred without Iranian sponsorship," U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ordered Iran to pay $423.5 million in damages to the eight plaintiffs.

Realizing it would be impossible to collect from the Iranian government, Strachman set his sights on Iranian antiquities, arguing that museums illegally removed historical artifacts from sites in Iran during the 1930s, making them a legitimate form of compensation for his clients.

Targeting antiquities

Since then Strachman has been pursuing artifacts from several institutions, including the University of Chicago; the University of Michigan; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which has an ancient Near Eastern collection with artifacts from Iran, Iraq and other points in the Middle East; and the Detroit Institute of Arts, which has an Islamic art collection dating from the 1100's.

Despite the court victory, the plaintiffs still face another hurdle: the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, which has provisions for excluding some foreign property from seizure. The federal government says museum collections fall into that category.

In 1996 Congress amended the law to permit suits against countries considered sponsors of terrorism, including Iran. The American hostages released by Iran after the 1979 hostage crisis sued and won a judgment in 2001.

But the Bush administration decided the suit violated the Algiers Accords, the January 1981 agreement that secured the hostages' release after 444 days in captivity, and under which the United States pledges "not to intervene directly or indirectly, politically or militarily in Iran's internal affairs."

Old battle grinds on

A judge threw out the hostages' lawsuit in 2002, and the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in 2004. The Washington Post reported recently that the hostages have not given up and are appealing to Congress for help.

But after more than a quarter century, their progress has been meager, in large part because of diplomatic and political exigencies, and their case could be instructive for the Hamas victims.

Making the government's case in the Hamas bombings, U.S. attorney, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, now special counsel in the CIA leak investigation, said that only the foreign property of another country that is used for "commercial purposes" can be seized for compensation and that museum artifacts don't fall into that category.

Strachman continues to maintain that many artifacts are really the property of the current Iranian government. "The [U.S.] government is making a specious argument," he told MSNBC.com. "The State Department has consistently opposed efforts to compensate victims of terrorism, and has interfered in all these cases. ... What kind of message does that send to Iran? What does it say when our own government seems intent on hurting us?"

Strachman has had experience with such suits before. In July 2004 he won a $116 million judgment against the Palestine Liberation Organization in connection with the shooting deaths of an American couple in the West Bank in June 1996. He's still trying to collect on that judgment.

Museums keeping tabs

Museums are closely watching the antiquities lawsuits. Joseph Brennan, general counsel and vice president of Chicago's Field Museum, whose collection of Iranian antiquities may be targeted, rejected the idea that artifacts obtained in the last century are subject to current laws.

"If you can impose modern standards on acquisition methods of a hundred years ago, I'm going to be in the business of litigating permanently," Brennan told the Chicago Tribune on March 13.

Since then, the museum has refused to comment, other than to commiserate with the victims. "We are very sympathetic," Brennan said, "but we don't think that this is what those laws are for."

Iranian Judaica is intertwined with Iranian culture - whether Iranians are Jews or non-Jews. Iran remains the land of Queen Esther, Mordechai and Daniel, bearing their traditions, their stories and their triumphs. On Friday Shabbat, in one of the oldest Iranian cities, Isfahan, when Iranian Muslims light candles, they light them in memory of their Jewish ancestors. So even if they are sincere converts today, living their lives as secular or practicing Muslims, they have not forgotten their Jewish past nor the traditions of their ancestors.

Further emphasizing Iranian connectivity is the long-standing and considerable Jewish population - before 1979, it was between 80,000 and 150,000; and today, even with the presence of a hostile government and the migration of thousands to the United States and Israel, the population survives at around 35,000.

Despite the meddling throughout history to destroy it, Iranian Jewry is more than 2,000 years old, nearly as old as the Iranian civilization itself - and inherently connected to it.

Even though Ahmadinejad's government and his position toward Jews fail to represent the Iranian people, the situation should be of caution to the average Iranian. For the Iranian regime is not only in a position of high disdain toward the international community, it reflects a theocracy that seeks eventual destruction of the very traditions that have made Iran great throughout its history.

For the individual Iranian who not only may feel solidarity with the Jews of his homeland but also carry the ancestry of a 2,000-year-old practice, condemning the regime's anti-Semitic language and acts of hatred quietly, out of fear, may no longer suffice.

This time, the regime's complete disregard is personal - it insults a tradition that has contributed fundamentally to Iranian customs and culture, and should be confronted loudly and without compromise. In doing so, Iranians may not only bolster the country's Jewish community, but continue to prove that the Iranian majority stands apart from the present extremist regime, and remains innately connected as a people through tradition.