Iran
IRAN: Who is the real threat?
Test your knowledge, take the World Can't Wait quiz!
|
|
The Ongoing War on Iran
- Category: Iran
by Patrick Coburn
“Long embargoes kill more people than brief wars”
The way in which the growing confrontation with Iran is being sold by the US, Israel and West European leaders is deeply dishonest. The manipulation of the media and public opinion through systematic threat exaggeration is similar to the drum beat of propaganda and disinformation about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction that preceded the invasion in 2003.
The supposed aim of imposing sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and central bank, measures officially joined by the EU, is to force Iran to abandon its nuclear program before it reaches the point where it could theoretically build a nuclear bomb. Even Israel now agrees that Iran has not yet decided to do so, but the Iranian nuclear program is still being presented as a danger to Israel and the rest of the world.
FAQs on Possibility of War on Iran
- Category: Iran
What should I say to people who think the Iranian government is undemocratic and a danger to the region and world?
First of all, what is the nature of YOUR government and what is IT doing in the region and around the world? Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, indefinite detention and torture, thousands of civilians in Pakistan and elsewhere dead in the undeclared drone wars... the whole "war on terror" has been a horror for the people of the Middle East and beyond. In the context of the history of United States in the twentieth century the past ten years is simply an accelerated and aggressive form of the role the US has played for decades: Iraq alone suffered through two invasions, a decade of sanctions following the crippling of its infrastructure in the ‘90s (which lead to the death of 4,000 children every month due to preventable disease), and then something like a million deaths during the completely unjust war based on Bush's lies most recently. Meanwhile, Iran saw its prime minister removed through a CIA-backed coup in the 1950s and the installation of an extremely repressive autocratic regime headed by the Shah up until its revolution in 1979.
No War on Iran!
- Category: Iran
NO war! NO sanctions on Iran! NO intervention! NO assassinations in Iran!
In many ways,
The
The
Will we allow another
Download Flyers for the Day of Mass Action to Stop a U.S. War on Iran February 4:
NYC PDF
Other areas (editable: add local info, keep both files together): DOC JPG
In Spanish
European Union Pushes Toward War with Iran
- Category: Iran
by Chris Floyd
This week, the lords of the West took yet another step toward their long-desired war againt Iran. (Open war, that is; their covert war has been going on for decades -- via subversion, terrorism, and proxies like Saddam Hussein.)
On Monday, the European Union obediently followed the dictates of its Washington masters by agreeing to impose an embargo on Iranian oil.
The embargo bans all new oil contracts with Iran, and cuts off all existing deals after July. The embargo is accompanied by a freeze on all European assets of the Iranian central bank. In imposing these draconian measures on a country which is not at war with any nation, which has not invaded or attacked another nation in centuries, and which is developing a nuclear energy program that is not only entirely legal under international law but is also subject to the most stringent international inspection regime ever seen, the EU is "targeting the economic lifeline of the regime," as one of its diplomats put it, with admirable candor.
New U.S. Commando Team Operating Near Iran
- Category: Iran
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran are at a high point, as the Islamic Republic threatens to close off a vital waterway and two U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups sit in the seas off the Iranian coast.
But across the Persian Gulf, the U.S. has a previously unacknowledged weapon in reserve: a new special operations team.
Answers to the Quiz on Iran
- Category: Iran
Thanks for taking the quiz!
Download the quiz as a flyerAlso see: Who Is The REAL Nuclear Threat in the Middle East? |
Answers to IRAN: Who is the real threat?
Question #1
What country in the Middle East refuses to confirm or deny that it has a nuclear weapons program and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
Answer: Israel has not signed the treaty and does not publicly admit it has nuclear weapons, although the fact that it does is common knowledge. Iran has signed the treaty and does not have a nuclear weapons program.
Sources:
Associated Press, September 20, 2007
The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) at a Glance (Arms Control Association)
Question #2
What country agreed to be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and has repeatedly opened up its country to IAEA inspectors?
Answer: Iran
Sources:
Iran President Vows to Ignore U.N. Measures, N.Y. Times
U.N. Finds No Nuclear Bomb Program in Iran, Washington Post
Report Showing Rise in Iran's Nuclear Activity Exposes Split Between U.S. and U.N., N.Y. Times
Question #3
Which country’s prime minister has been attempting to persuade members of his cabinet to make a pre-emptive military strike against a neighboring country?
Answer: Israel
Source:
Netanyahu Trying to Persuade Cabinet to Support Attack on Iran, Haaretz
Question #4
True or False:
"The International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.S. have provided evidence that Iran is attempting to obtain nuclear weapons."
Answer: False - neither have provided any evidence that Iran is attempting to obtain nuclear weapons.
Source:
Iran and the I.A.E.A. by Seymour Hersh, New Yorker
U.S.-Israeli Assault on Iran Escalates, Danger of War Grows, by Larry Everest
Question #5
The IAEA severely criticized which country for falsifying information on Iraq and Iran’s nuclear programs?
Answer: United States
Source:
IAEA blasts U.S. intelligence report on Iran, CNN
Question #6
According to the UN Charter and Nuremberg Tribunal, what is the gravest war crime of all?
Answer: Attacking a country which hasn't attacked you. This is called a war of aggression, which "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Source:
War of Aggression, Wikipedia
International Justice and the International Criminal Court (2 ed.) by Bruce Broomhall, published by Oxford University Press.
Question #7
Which is the one country on the planet which has actually used nuclear weapons against a civilian population?
Answer: the United States, which bombed the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagaski during WWII, killing between150,000 - 246,000 people within just the first 4 months, half within the first 24 hours.
Source:
Newsreel footage
Tale of Two Cites: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, National Science Digital Library
How did you answer these questions? How do you think many Americans would answer these questions?
Now that you know, what will you do?
Join the Spring Sustainer Drive: Commit to Humanity and the Planet
|
Share the quiz with friends via email |
Charlottesville, Va., City Council Passes Resolution Opposing War on Iran
- Category: Iran
The City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia, home of Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and the University of Virginia, passed on Tuesday evening, January 17, 2012, a resolution believed to be a first in the country, opposing the launching of a war on Iran, as well as calling for an end to current ground and drone wars engaged in by the United States and urging Congress and the President of the United States to significantly reduce military spending. Below is the text of the resolution, followed by an account of how it came to be. As other towns and cities have been inquiring about how they can do the same, this may prove helpful.
No War, No Sanctions on Iran
- Category: Iran
By Debra Sweet
When Iranian director Asghar Farhadi received the Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Film Sunday night, he said:
When I was coming up on the stage, I was thinking what should I say here. Should I say something about my mother, father, my kind wife, my daughters, my dear friends, my great and lovely crew. But now I just prefer to say something about my people. I think they are a truly peace-loving people. Thank you very much.
The film, "A Separation" is about, what? The life of one married couple coming apart; the choices people make to stay or go; the fractures between men and women; classes; secular thinkers and fundamentalists? It may be all of that. Yet, somehow the film got past the mullahs and censors, and Farhadi was in the U.S. to make such a simple and eloquent statement.
Sanctions: Not a “Diplomatic Alternative” to War, but Mass Murder of Civilians
- Category: Iran
Via Revolution:
In the aftermath of more than a decade of U.S.-orchestrated sanctions against Iraq, an economic blockade that set the stage for the U.S. invasion in 2003, a 60 Minutes reporter asked U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright this question:
“We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
Albright replied, “We think the price is worth it.”
* * * * *
In 1990, a U.S.-sponsored and enforced UN resolution imposed financial and commercial sanctions against Iraq. The sanctions banned most foreign trade with Iraq, with supposed exceptions for food and medicine. The sanctions were branded an “alternative to war” and stayed in effect until the U.S. invasion overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The U.S. Drive to Attack Iran - and the Urgent Need to Resist
- Category: Iran
The push to attack Iran has been on for so long that entire categories of arguments for it (such as that the Iranians are fueling the Iraqi resistance) have come and gone. At DontAttackIran.org we've been collecting the arguments for and against attacking Iran for years. We've campaigned against an attack, but never been able to claim a success, because decisions not to launch wars are never announced, because those pushing for wars never give up, and because those believing what their government tells them think the Pentagon never campaigns for wars but is forced into them defensively on short notice by attacks from evildoers.
While Iran has not attacked any other country in centuries, the United States has not done so well by Iran. Remember (or, like most U.S. citizens, learn for the first time): the United States overthrew Iran's democracy in 1953 and installed a dictator. Then the United States aided Iraq in the 1980s in attacking Iran, providing Iraq with some of the weapons (including chemical weapons) that were used on Iranians and that would be used in 2002-2003 (when they no longer existed) as an excuse for attacking Iraq.
We Can't be Silent on U.S. Threats to Iran
- Category: Iran
By Debra Sweet 
What people began to regain in 2011 -- or discover for the first time -- most importantly, is their power and their voice to make change.
Let's work together to make 2012 a year of visible resistance against the continuing - and new - crimes of this government.
In 2007, World Can’t Wait led protests against what seemed then a likely U.S. attack on Iran, accompanied by threats from the Bush Regime to send “bunker buster” missiles deeply into Iran’s territory. War could have happened then.
Iran