By Kenneth J. Theisen July 2, 2008
In a poll released by Public Agenda on
June 5, 2008, 47% of Americans surveyed said that the U.S. should use
diplomacy with Iran, as opposed to military options. Five percent favored
threatening military action and 7% supported taking military action
against Iran. This confirms other polls taken in past years.
A May 2007 Opinion Research Corporation poll done for CNN indicated
that 63 per cent of respondents would oppose the U.S. government if
it decides to take military action against Iran. A 2006 World Public
Opinion poll reported that 75% of respondents preferred trying “to
build better relations” with Iran, rather than “pressuring it with
implied threats that the U.S. may use military force against it.”
You may think that given the opposition to war with Iran that the Bush
regime would not even be thinking about launching a military attack
against that nation.
But the Bush regime has made it eminently
clear that it does not make decisions based on public opinion.
In March, Dick Cheney was confronted with the fact that two-thirds of
Americans did not think the war in Iraq was worth fighting and his response
was – “So?”
The Bush administration does not determine
policy in the interest of the majority of people in the U.S. or of the
world, but rather in the interest of the imperialists that run this
country. It is they who have determined that the U.S. must control
the Middle East, both for its energy resources and for its strategic
location, in order to maintain hegemony over the world. Saddam
Hussein’s regime was determined by the U.S. to be an obstacle to this
control, and that is why the 2003 invasion was launched by the Bush
regime. So too, the Bush administration has determined that the
reactionary Iranian regime is an obstacle that must be removed. Iranian
regime change is official U.S. policy, just as Iraqi regime change was
American official policy. And Bush and all his henchmen and women
have made it clear that all options, including the military option,
are on the table to achieve this end.
Toward the end of removing the Iranian
regime, the Bush administration has utilized all weapons at its disposal,
including diplomacy, sanctions, threats, propaganda, and military preparations.
These should not be seen in isolation from each other, but rather as
part of an arsenal of tools used by U.S. imperialism.
A Propaganda War Preparing for a Shooting
War
As part of the propaganda war, Iran has
been “linked” by the Bush administration with al Qaeda and other
groups it labels terrorists, including the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah,
and the Iraqi “special groups.” If you listen to Bush regime
spokesmen, the lack of peace in the Middle East is all Tehran’s fault.
The argument is that in Palestine the Iranians use Hamas to keep an
Israeli/Palestinian “peace” from happening. In Lebanon, they
utilize Hezbollah and Syrians to keep that country from achieving a
peaceful settlement. In Iraq, Iranian armed and trained “special
groups” are destabilizing the country by killing U.S. and coalition
forces. In Afghanistan, the fundamentalist Shi’a Iranians are
allegedly supporting the fundamentalist Sunni Taliban. We are
supposed to believe that If only the Bush regime could remove those
meddling Iranians, peace would break out all over the Middle East and
the surrounding area.
Of course Bush’s propaganda team sees
no “meddling” by the U.S. – which has actually invaded both Iraq
and Afghanistan and continues to occupy both of these countries.
But then the Bush regime has brought eternal peace to over one million
Iraqis and Afghans by hastening their deaths.
Through the use of the diplomatic weapon,
the U.S. has been increasingly isolating Iran. This so-called
diplomacy has included increasing economic sanctions against the Iranian
people. The U.S. has used its political clout to get European nations
and the European Union (EU) to follow its lead by implementing crippling
trade, financial, and other economic sanctions against the Iranian nation.
Readers should be clear that sanctions kill. Between the two Gulf
Wars the U.S. used sanctions to kill over one million Iraqis, including
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. The sanctions allegedly are
meant to deter Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, despite the fact
that there is no proof that the Iranian regime has a nuclear weapons
program of any kind. In fact the Bush regime’s own National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) reported in December 2007 that the Iranians
do not have such a program. I have written about this before on
this site. But in the word of Cheney – “so?”
In addition, the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) has published numerous reports that indicate there
is no evidence Iran has or is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. IAEA
Chief Mohammed El Baradei recently stated, “I don’t believe that
what I see in Iran today is a current, grave and urgent danger. If a
military strike is carried out against Iran at this time ” it would
make me unable to continue my work. A military strike, in my opinion,
would be worse than anything possible. It would turn the region into
a fireball.”
An Assist from Congress
But despite the NIE and IAEA reports,
the U.S. Democrat-led Congress has taken up the Bush Regime program.
Resolution 362 has 170 Democratic and Republican co-sponsors in the
House. (The Senate has a similar resolution pending.) The resolution
virtually parrots all the Bush regime charges against Iran, but it was
introduced by Democratic Congressman Gary Ackerman. It is meant to give
the Bush regime political cover for its military machinations against
Iran. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office says the resolution will
pass “like a hot knife through butter.” Since Nancy
and her party have so often assisted the Bush regime, she should know.
The resolution “demands that the
president initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically
increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to
verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia,
prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing
stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes,
trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international
movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension
of Iran’s nuclear program.” In effect, it is calling for launching
an economic war against Iran. It increases the chance of a war
breaking out by demanding that Bush impose a blockade (an act of war).
This could only be imposed by armed force. It is unlikely that the Iranians
would meekly submit to this.
But it is likely that armed force is
what the Bush regime will use to remove the Iranian regime if it can
not remove it any other way. Earlier this month, on June 4th
Bush stood with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and called Iran a
“threat to peace.” And after meeting with Bush, Olmert said the
following, “We reached agreement on the need to take care of the
Iranian threat. I left with a lot less question marks [than] I had entered
with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions, and American resoluteness
to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the
Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on that
matter before the end of his term in the White House.” Just two
days before this meeting, Israel using over 100 U.S. supplied jets,
conducted massive military air maneuvers in the Middle East. Little
effort was made to keep this “military secret.” The media referred
to this as a “dress rehearsal” for an attack on Iran’s nuclear
facility.
Beside its loyal ally, Israel, the U.S.
has vast military resources, including nuclear carrier task forces presently
stationed in the Persian Gulf area. Bombers stationed on the island
of Diego Garcia and even in the U.S. are capable of reaching over 1000
Iranian targets. These targets have been pre-selected by U.S. planners.
Both Bush and Cheney have made recent trips to U.S. allies in the region
and have made no secret that dealing with Iran was one of the primary
reasons for the visits to these nations. U.S. military attack plans
have been drawn up and refined over the last year. Covert operations
and targeted assassinations have been authorized by the Bush regime
to remove the Iranian regime.
While diplomacy, sanctions, blockades,
etc. can be used to avoid war, this is not the object for the Bush regime
or apparently any other so-called national leaders. Similar tactics
were used to prepare for war against Iraq. Congress with its resolutions
is urging on the Bush regime, as are the two leading presidential hopefuls.
John McCain has stated the only thing worse than a war with Iran would
be a nuclear-armed Iran, and Barack Obama recently declared that he
would keep the military option against Iran on the table, adding that
“sometimes there is no alternative to confrontation.” He also
made it clear in a recent speech that he would do “everything” to
keep nukes out of the hands of the Iranians.
But keeping nukes out of the hands of
the Iranian regime is just the cover for any attack on Iran, just as
the so-called weapons of mass destruction were the cover used to invade
Iran. No matter what the excuse used to justify an attack against
Iran, the war is unjust, against the interests of the people of Iran,
the U.S., and in fact the entire world, and must be opposed. Such
a war could well be even more destructive of human life and social resources
than the Iraq war. Millions could die in Iran and the surrounding
region. The war could even lead to a nuclear holocaust.
Can you live with yourself if you do not do everything possible to prevent
this?
In 2003, millions were suckered into
believing the Bush administration when it lied about the Iraqi invasion.
But this time there is no excuse for anyone to believe the lies of the
regime. Before the Iraq war, millions of us throughout the world
took to the streets to oppose the coming war. In order to prevent
the possible coming war with Iran, tens of millions must mobilize to
oppose the Bush regime and it cronies in Congress. We can not wait until
others act, we must begin to act now. You know the truth. Now
is the time to act on it.
Ken Theisen is a
veteran activist of movements opposing U.S. imperialism, its wars and
domination of countries throughout the world, and an advocate against domestic
violence in the San Francisco
Bay Area.