Another Day in The Empire

It is interesting to follow the corporate media’s take on Iran’s response to threats of military action, most recently amplified by John Bolton and Dick Cheney in speeches delivered to the primary constituency of the United States government, AIPAC. Iran’s “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s [comments about retaliating if his country is attacked] came as Tehran struck an increasingly threatening tone, with the top Iranian delegate to the U.N. atomic watchdog agency warning a day earlier that the United States will face ‘harm and pain’ if the Security Council becomes involved,” according to ABC News. “Some diplomats saw the comments as a veiled threat to use oil as a weapon, though Iran’s oil minister ruled out any decrease in production. Iran also has leverage with extremist groups in the Middle East that could harm U.S. interests.”

Of course, the “veiled threats” of Cheney and Bolton do not merit such commentary from these anonymous diplomats, more than likely neocons. ABC simply characterizes U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns’ threat to “seek a so-called [United Nations] Chapter 7 resolution, which can be enforced with military action” as the “toughest talk so far has come from Washington.”

It would be perfectly natural for Iran to use oil as a weapon if attacked by the United States, Israel, and any nation that supports a Chapter 7 resolution resulting in a military attack. It also makes perfect sense for Iran to leverage “terrorist” organizations during an attack (Iran allegedly supports Hamas, the PIJ and Ahmad Jibril’s PFLP-GC in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon; it should be noted that both Hamas and Hezbollah are democratically elected political organizations).

Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei was spot on when he declared: “This time they have used nuclear energy as an excuse. If Iran quits now, the case will not be over. The Americans will find another excuse” as a pretext to shock and awe his country, as they went through several excuses in the lead-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In addition to the United States, several European countries are lining up behind the Straussian neocon threat to attack Iran, as most recently demonstrated by Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, who indicated the “USA, Russia, China and Europe are in agreement on” preventing Iran’s nascent nuclear program, completely legal under Article IV(1) of the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, signed by Iran in 1970.

“Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” the article states. Iran claims its nuclear program is for energy purposes.

Meanwhile, in the House of Corporate Whores, otherwise known as the House of Representatives, Thomas Lantos of California, senior Democrat whore on the International Relations Committee, has declared his intention to “push forward with legislation imposing mandatory sanctions on foreign firms working in Iran, despite administration concerns that the bill could split the international coalition against Iran’s nuclear programme,” in other words such a bill may jeopardize the impending Straussian neocon effort to shock and awe Iran.

“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,” averred Lantos. Of course, an effort to “squeeze Iran’s economy” will result in misery and privation for the Iranian people, but then this does not bother Democrats. It should be remembered that the “feel your pain” Democrat Bill Clinton was responsible for most of the human misery inflicted under the medieval siege-like Iraq sanctions.

“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,” Nicholas Burns warned. For the Straussian neocons, such a blow-out would be unfortunate, although it certainly wouldn’t put a kink in their effort to target Iran, as they have held this threat dear for more than a decade.

Finally, Condi Rice has thrown in her two cents. “We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran, whose policies are directed at developing a Middle East that would be 180 degrees different than the Middle East we would like to see develop,” Rice told a Congressional hearing in Washington. “This is a country that is determined, it seems, to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance of the international community which is determined that they should not get one.”

Never mind that the above mentioned countries are not about to give up their nukes and the sanctimonious United States is the only country to actually ever use nukes—not against a true adversary, mind you, but an all-but defeated enemy, or rather its civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Rice also alleged that Iran was the ‘central banker for terrorism” in the Middle East, accusing the Islamic Republic of supporting terrorist attacks in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon,” reports al-Jazeera. Of course, Condi did not offer any evidence that Iran supports attacks against the occupiers in Iraq—never mind that Iran’s support of the Sunni and Ba’athist resistance would be absurd, considering the country fought a horrific war against the secular Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

No mention either of Israel’s terrorist attacks against thousands of people in “the Palestinian territories,” the vast majority innocent civilians (according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the IDF, or rather IOF, since September 29, 2000, 3,821 Palestinians and 1,084 Israelis have been killed; see this chart). Nor did Condi bother to mention that in fact the “terrorist” group in Lebanon is Hezbollah, a legitimate resistance organization formed when Israel illegally invaded Lebanon and supported by most Lebanese.

As the shock and awe campaign against Iran unfolds before our eyes, such details are irrelevant. However, it appears the United Nations is no longer irrelevant, as Bush claimed it was in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and Europe is eager to put to rest its stigmatization as a passel of wimps, irresolute in the face of Islamic terrorism, never mind that much of this terrorism was created by the United States, Britain, and their various clients.