More signs of Israeli-US preparations for attacking Iran

By Peter Symonds
World Socialist Web Site, 28/06/08

The visit by US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen to Israel yesterday is one more indication that the two countries are actively discussing a military strike on Iran. Mullen’s trip followed news that the Israeli air force carried out a major exercise earlier this month involving 100 fighter jets, backed by midair fuel tankers and rescue helicopters, flying some 1,500 kilometres westward over the Mediterranean Sea—roughly the same distance as eastward from Israel to Iran’s nuclear facilities.


Mullen’s trip was only the second by a joint chiefs chairman to Israel in more than a decade. Last December Mullen also visited Israel in the wake of an unprovoked attack last September by Israeli warplanes on a building in northern Syria. In April, the Bush administration authorised a CIA briefing, which claimed, on the basis of limited evidence, that Syria had been constructing a nuclear reactor at the site with the assistance of North Korea.

Few details of Mullen’s latest trip are available, but Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell did acknowledge that Iran was at the top of the agenda. "Obviously, when Chairman Mullen goes to Israel and speaks with the Israelis, they will no doubt discuss the threat posed by Iran, as we discuss it in this building, in other buildings in town," he said.

Two other top US military officers were also in Israel this week. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead met with his Israeli counterpart, as did General William Wallace, commander of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command. Roughead’s presence is particularly significant, as the US navy would be central in countering any Iranian retaliation in the Persian Gulf following an Israeli strike.

The high-level visits follow a series of threats against Iran by senior Israeli figures, most explicitly by Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz. He told an Israeli newspaper on June 13 that "if Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it". The Israeli ambassador to the US, Sallai Meridor, told CBS News last week that time was "running out" for a diplomatic action to force Iran to shut down its nuclear programs. "We cannot take this threat lightly and as our prime minister recently said Israel will not tolerate a nuclear Iran," he said.

Like the US, Israel claims, without any substantive evidence, that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program, which, according to Israeli intelligence, could manufacture a bomb as early as next year. Unlike Israel, Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its nuclear facilities are monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A series of IAEA reports confirm that Iran is enriching uranium only to the low levels required to fuel its planned power reactors—as Tehran has insisted all along. A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) by US intelligence agencies last December found that Iran had ended any weapons program by 2003.

Israel, however, is determined to maintain its military supremacy in the Middle East and to prevent any, even remote, possibility that Iran, or any other neighbour, will master nuclear technology that would in the future assist in the building of weapons. Hypocritically, both Israeli and US officials remain silent on what is an open secret—that Israel maintains its own substantial arsenal of atomic bombs. In order to retain its nuclear monopoly, the Israeli regime is prepared to risk plunging the entire region into a conflagration through an unprovoked and criminal attack on Iran.

The Bush administration, which regards Iran as an obstacle to US dominance in the oil-rich Middle East, is complicit in these plans. As a number of defence analysts have pointed out, the Israeli military does not have the capacity to carry out the type of sustained air war needed not only to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, but to level Iran’s air defences and military capacity to retaliate. Moreover, any Israeli air strike on Iran is limited in its choice of routes—the most obvious one being over US-occupied Iraq. Whatever is the case, Israel needs the tacit political support, if not active military assistance, of the US.

Israeli impatience has nothing to do with Iran’s alleged weapons program. If time is "running out", the main consideration is a political one—that the Bush administration is due to leave office early next year. Analyst Michael Oren from the Jerusalem-based Shalem Centre told CBS News that Israel would not wait for a new US administration. "The Israelis have been assured by the Bush administration that the Bush administration will not allow Iran to nuclearise. The Israelis are uncertain about what would be the policies of the next administration vis-à-vis Iran," he said.

Within the Israeli establishment, an attack on Iran is openly discussed. In a comment on Tuesday, provocatively entitled "...but someone has to do it", the right-wing Jerusalem Post pointed out that the not-so-secret Israeli "dress rehearsal" over the Mediterranean was aimed to pressuring "the world"—-particularly the US—into taking on the task. After discounting the possibility that Bush or either of the US presidential contenders would authorise a US attack on Iran, the article bitterly concluded that in the event that Israel had no partners in such an enterprise, at least the "Jews can lean on themselves".

A second article in the Jerusalem Post the following day attacked a New York Times editorial that had argued against attacking Iran, not because of its criminal character, but because the consequences would be "disastrous". The Jerusalem Post writer argued that there was little doubt that Iran would respond to a direct attack, or a blockade, "but its options, heated rhetoric notwithstanding, are actually limited". Tacitly acknowledging that Iran posed no real threat to either Israel or the US, he commented: "Instead of unwarranted, self-deterring risk aversion, let us not forget who wields the incalculably greater ‘stick’: Iran certainly will not."

Israel has been intensifying its propaganda against Iran. According to Ha’aretz, Foreign Ministry Director General Aaron Abramovich secretly visited IAEA headquarters in Vienna on Wednesday to demand that the body "act more quickly and efficiently to block Iranian nuclear ambitions". Abramovich, the first senior Israeli official in several years to visit the IAEA, reportedly briefed a group of ambassadors on Israel’s belief that Iran has a secret military nuclear program.

Israeli officials are claiming that the purpose of Syria’s alleged nuclear reactor was to supply its ally Iran with plutonium for a nuclear weapon. An adviser to Israel’s national security council told the Guardian this week: "The Iranians were involved in the Syrian program. The idea was that the Syrians produce plutonium and the Iranians get their share." Given that it is yet to be demonstrated that Syria was even building a nuclear reactor, the Iranian connection, for which no evidence has been offered, has been concocted to add further fuel to the scare campaign. IAEA inspectors this week visited the site of the bombed building in Syria and said it would be some time before any conclusions could be reached.

Admiral Mullen’s visit this week makes clear that far from being left to its own devices, Israel enjoys collaborations with the highest levels of the US military. Moreover, discussion about a possible attack on Iran is taking place within the American political establishment and is not confined to the Bush administration or its extreme right-wing allies.

A statement released this month by the Presidential Task Force on the Future of US-Israeli Relations convened by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy focussed almost exclusively on the issue of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Its key recommendation called on the US president to initiate a dialogue with the Israeli prime minister using "the most trusted advisers" to consider "the costs and benefits" of "the entire range of policy" including diplomacy, "coercive options" including an embargo of Iranian oil, and "preventative military action".

Ha’aretz noted this week with some satisfaction that the task force included prominent Democrats such as Susan Rice and Tony Lake, who are among Senator Barack Obama’s senior foreign policy advisers, as well as representatives from the camp of Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate. While it indicated that the statement was of course suitably nuanced, the article bluntly characterised the underlying message as follows: "If you want it in a journalistic headline format: Obama, McCain advisers agree: US-Israel should discuss preventative military action against Iran."

Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who openly advocates attacking Iran, suggested last week that Israel would most likely launch a strike after the US elections in November and prior to the inauguration of the next US president. However, an article in the Jerusalem Post on Thursday made clear that tactical considerations might dictate a far earlier date. It noted that Tehran is believed to have purchased the sophisticated Russian-made S-300 air defence missile system, which the Israeli military has warned "cannot be allowed to reach the region".

After reviewing the implications of Bolton’s remarks, the article concluded: "There is no guarantee, however, that Israel can wait that long."

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Operation Iranian Freedom?

By Geoffrey Kemp
National Interest, 27/06/08

Israel's decision to conduct a massive air exercise over the eastern Mediterranean in recent weeks has raised questions as to whether this is a rehearsal for an eventual air strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. The exercise involved hundreds of aircraft including strike, reconnaissance and aerial tankers for in-flight refueling.


But how realistic is it to contemplate a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran? Two basic facts stand out. Israel could conduct such an attack with cruise missiles from its small fleet of tactical submarines from locations in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf. Yet these submarines have limited inventories of missiles. A purely seaborne strike could do little more than mount a token attack on the key Iranian facilities "especially the well-protected and deeply buried uranium enrichment facility at Natanz" unless it used nuclear weapons.

In terms of conventional air-strike capabilities the Israeli Air Force is certainly capable of reaching a number of targets in Iran. The problem is it would have to pass over either Turkey; Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq; or fly a nearly three-thousand-mile-long one-way route via the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. It is inconceivable that Turkey would give permission for the use of its airspace though Israel might be prepared to ignore the wishes of the Arab countries. But once its aircraft enter Iraqi and Gulf airspace, they will encounter the full array of air defenses that the United States has established since the beginning of the Iraq War. Unless the United States gave permission for such an Israeli attack Israel would risk encountering U.S. anti-air action before it even reached Iran.

Most experts calculate that causing serious damage to Iran's nuclear facilities would require multiple attacks over the course of days, if not weeks unlike the Israeli air strikes against the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in May 1981 and Syria's presumed nuclear facility in September 2007. But if Israeli strikes were part of a joint U.S.-Israeli operation, then the effectiveness of the overall mission would undoubtedly be greater.

So what are the chances the Bush administration will contemplate either giving Israel permission to strike on its own or cooperating in such an attack? Nothing can be ruled out especially given President Bush's statements that he would never allow Iran to achieve a nuclear-weapons status. The most plausible scenario for a U.S. strike would grow out of other military encounters with the Iranians in Iraq or naval encounters between U.S. and Iranian ships in the northern Gulf. In these situations tactical retaliatory attacks by the United States on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps positions or Iranian ships could escalate to an all-out strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. It must be noted that the United States has a formidable arsenal of precision munitions, long- range missiles and aircraft to use should it choose to do so.

Nevertheless the consequences of such an attack on oil markets, U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the reaction of Iraq's government and possible Iranian retaliation against Israel are awesome and suggest such action has a low probability of being authorized. Most significant, bombing Iran's nuclear facilities would be pointless unless a well-thought-out plan was in place on how to deal with the day after. Is it conceivable that a positive political outcome might emerge from such a strike? Purely punishing the Iranians and setting back their nuclear program for months or years will reinforce the nationalism of the country and give the mullahs a further lease on life. A strike would almost certainly lead to an acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program. Even if it flattened most of Iran's known nuclear facilities, it would not be able to destroy Iran's knowledge of nuclear enrichment and bomb making. Israeli or U.S. action would likely leave the mullahs determined to redouble their efforts at any hidden facilities that might escape the bombs.

Could or would Israel try to drag the United States into such a confrontation? The answer is no, unless this is what the Bush administration wants to happen. The indications are that while some White House advisors may still contemplate such an action, it would be far more difficult to convince the secretaries of defense and state that another Middle Eastern war would serve American interests.

Geoffrey Kemp is Director of Regional Strategic Programs at the Nixon Center. He served in the White House during the first Reagan administration as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council Staff.

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More talk of war as Iran delays response to demand it end uranium enrichment

By James Cogan
World Socialist Web Site, 20/06/08

The Iranian government is seeking to delay its response to the latest demands that it suspend its uranium enrichment operations in the face of threats of new European Union economic sanctions and more talk of unilateral US or Israeli air strikes.


European Union Foreign Secretary Javier Solana delivered a "Proposal to Iran" on behalf of the US, Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the European Union last Saturday. The proposal demanded that Iran "suspend its [uranium] enrichment and reprocessing activities" and submit to inspections of its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In return, the major powers offered to assist Iran develop a nuclear power industry—supplied with fuel from outside the country—along with "steps towards the normalisation of trade and economic relations".

Iran has always stated that its Natanz plant has no purpose other than generating low-enrichment fuel for nuclear power plants. No evidence to the contrary exists. The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) issued last December assessed that Iran had not had a nuclear weapons programs since 2003 and, even if it did, it would not be able to manufacture a weapon until at least 2015. The latest IAEA report in May presented no evidence that Iran had pursued nuclear weapons since 2004.

Last Saturday’s demand is based on the Bush administration’s accusation that the Iranian government is lying. The major powers stated they "recognise Iran’s right to nuclear energy for exclusively peaceful purposes in conformity with its NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) obligations". Yet they have again demanded that Iran cease processing the fuel needed for nuclear power reactors—which it is entitled to do under the NPT—until "international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program is restored".

The European powers, Russia and China are playing a similar role as they did in response to Iraq’s denials of the US accusations it possessed "weapons of mass destruction". Instead of the US being obliged to produce evidence to support its claims of secret weapons programs, the burden of proof has been placed on Iran. Tehran has been told that the only way Iran can demonstrate its peaceful intentions is to close down its nuclear industry and submit to a regime in which it will be dependent on other powers to provide nuclear fuel.

That the proposal should have been entitled an "Ultimatum to Iran" was spelt out by US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday. Brown declared that if Iran did not accept the demand, the EU states would join the US in imposing even harsher economic sanctions, directly targeting the operations of Iran’s major state bank, Bank Melli, as well as its oil and gas industry. Bush reiterated that "Iranians must understand all options are on the table, however," effectively threatening Iran with US military strikes.

Moreover, Iran is being ordered to accept IAEA and UN weapons inspectors roaming the country at will, supposedly looking for alleged hidden facilities. It is well established that many of the so-called "inspectors" that Iraq allowed in during the 1990s were in fact CIA agents, who collated targeting information that was later used during the 1998 US air bombardment and the 2003 invasion. Under conditions where the Bush administration has also hinted at military action against Iran over unsubstantiated allegations that Tehran is supporting anti-US militias inside Iraq, the Iranians have legitimate concerns about submitting to an inspection regime.

Officials have indicated that Tehran is inclined to reject the terms. A government spokesman, Glolam Hossein Elham, stated just hours after Solana’s arrival in Iran that "the precondition of a halt and suspension of nuclear activities cannot be brought up". The country’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, stated in a speech on Wednesday that the demand that Iran end its pursuit of nuclear energy was "illegitimate and illegal" under the NPT.

Officially, however, no rejection of the document has been issued. A top Iranian leader, Ali Larijani, instead stated that Iran would "carefully study" the proposal. The government also denied a report in an Iranian newspaper that it had withdrawn $75 billion from European banks in anticipation of EU sanctions. The European Union has not yet taken any steps toward freezing Iranian assets—contrary to Gordon Brown’s premature declaration on Monday that the EU would announce such a measure at an EU foreign ministers’ meeting the same day.

Iran’s maneuvering for time stems from the recognition in Tehran that any negative response could be seized upon to justify a unilateral strike by Israel against the Natanz enrichment plant and other nuclear facilities, followed by a massive, combined US and Israeli response to any real or invented Iranian retaliation.

Earlier this month, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz made explicit the widely-held position in Israeli ruling class circles. He declared sanctions were "ineffective" and that "attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable". On the weekend, Mofaz’s statements were echoed by former Israeli Labor Party Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh, who told Israeli Radio, "the Jews stand alone against evil in the end" and war with Iran would take place "in the coming years".

A feature in Spiegel Online on Monday reported: "There is a consensus within the Israeli government that an air strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities has become unavoidable. ‘Most members of the Israeli cabinet no longer believe that sanctions will convince President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to change course’, says Minister of Immigration Absorption Yaakov Edri."

Bruce Riedel, a Middle East expert, told the journal: "There is some risk that Israel thinks it has limited time to act and it has a green light from American politicians"—above all in the Bush White House.

New accusations of Iranian weapons program

Ominously, new allegations have surfaced to fuel the anti-Iranian campaign in the US and Israel by calling into question the NIE assessment that Iran was years away from being able to field nuclear weapons.

Until now, the only "evidence" that Iran was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons had consisted of plans for a nuclear warhead, supposedly found on a stolen laptop supplied to the CIA by an informant inside Iran. The Iranian government dismissed the plans as forgeries.

The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal—all major propagators of the Iraq "weapons of mass destruction" lies—published claims on Sunday and Monday by David Albright, from the US Institute for Science and International Security, that sophisticated Pakistani designs for nuclear weapons may have been sold to Iran by nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

The designs were allegedly discovered among computer files seized from three Swiss citizens who had been detained over their association with Khan. The three men, under detention in Switzerland, reportedly agreed in 2003 to cooperate with the CIA to provide information on Khan’s sales to Libya. Albright claims that they did not inform US intelligence about their possession of more advanced weapons designs.

Albright’s report, published on Monday, stated: "... The designs in Switzerland included one for smaller, more sophisticated nuclear weapons than those found in Libya. These would have been ideal for two of Khan’s other major customers, Iran and North Korea. They both faced struggles in building a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop their ballistic missiles, and these designs were for a warhead that would fit. These designs would also simplify the task of building a nuclear weapon for anyone who obtained them."

Swiss officials reportedly had difficulty decrypting and deciphering the files. For unexplained reasons, Albright claims they did not request assistance from the IAEA until 2006. The US government requested and received copies. The Swiss government then allegedly destroyed the originals.

The main purpose of Albright’s report appears to be to create a pretext to demand that the newly-elected Pakistani government allow Khan to be interrogated over whether he sold the designs to Iran. The Wall Street Journal commented: "Iran’s possible possession of the Khan network’s weapons designs particularly worries US and Western counter-proliferation experts."

Khan responded to Albright’s allegations in statements to Agence France Presse this week. He declared: "This is all a lie. There is no truth in this. We never prepared [weapons blueprints]. We are not the designer. We are not the proliferators."

The scientist was pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf in 2004 but placed under house arrest after he admitted to selling nuclear technology. He retracted his admission after the defeat of Musharraf’s supporters in the February elections, declaring that he had only confessed due to force and intimidation.

An attack on Iran, regardless of how it were justified, would be a crime of immense dimensions. Behind all the manufactured hysteria over nuclear weapons programs lies the determination of the US ruling elite and their Israeli proxies to ensure that no state or combination of states threatens their dominance in the Middle East and, therefore, over the world’s main source of oil. The Iranian regime’s efforts over a number of years to cultivate political and economic relations with the EU, Russia and China are viewed in Washington as a direct threat.

More than two years ago, writing in the New Yorker magazine, journalist Seymour Hersh exposed detailed plans for massive US air strikes on Iran, involving the possible use of nuclear weapons against fortified underground bunkers. Hersh’s sources revealed that the list of targets ran into the "hundreds" and included not only military facilities and government buildings, but power plants, bridges, electricity grids and other civilian infrastructure.

There is no question that a deranged right-wing constituency exists within Israel for utilising its nuclear arsenal to slaughter millions of Iranians and reduce the country to rubble. In April, Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said a war with Iran would result in "the destruction of the Iranian nation". Der Spiegel cited this week the recent remarks of Israeli historian Benny Morris, who declared: "If the issue is whether Israel or Iran should perish, then Iran should perish".

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Israeli attack on Iran: "not a matter of if, but when"

By Stefan Steinberg
World Socialist Web Site, 20/06/08

An Israeli military strike is not a matter of if, but when, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel. The latest edition of the news weekly carries a four-page article entitled "Plan to Attack" devoted to preparations currently underway in Israel for air strikes against Iran.


The article begins by noting that the Israeli government has rejected economic sanctions as a means of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It states that "a broad consensus (in Israel) in favour of a military strike against Tehran’s nuclear facilities-without the Americans, if necessary-is beginning to take shape."

The main propagandist for a military strike against Iran is the current Israeli Transport Minister and former defence minister Shaul Mofaz, who has been widely quoted as saying that military action against Iran is "unavoidable." Mofaz first made this remark following recent talks with senior US officials in Washington.

He repeated his comments most recently in an interview with the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper last Friday. Referring to threats made by the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against Israel, Mofaz declared menacingly that Iran "would disappear before Israel does."

Mofaz continued: "If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective... Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable."

With his close links to the military establishment, Mofaz is regarded as a "hardliner" on the issue of Iran. Illustrating the "broad consensus" that exists in Israel for a military strike against Iran, Der Spiegel also cites the opinion of Dani Yatom, a retired major general and member of the Israeli parliament for the Labour Party. Yatom declares: "We no longer believe in the effectiveness of sanctions...A military operation is needed if the world wants to stop Iran."

The article then quotes Israeli historian Benny Morris, who also favours a military solution: "If the issue is whether Israel or Iran should perish, then Iran should perish."

Der Spiegel concludes: "In truth...there is now a consensus within the Israeli government that an air strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities has become unavoidable."

Agreement over a military strike against Iran is virtually unanimous in the Israeli cabinet, the article argues. The only outstanding issue is the timing of an attack: "In Israel, it is no longer a matter of whether there will be a military strike, but when."

According to Der Spiegel: "The doves argue that diplomatic efforts by the United Nations should be allowed to continue until Iran is on the verge of completing the bomb. That way, Israel could at least argue convincingly that all non-military options had been exhausted.

"The hawks, on the other hand, believe time is running out. They stress that there is now a ‘favourable window of opportunity’ that will close with the US presidential election in November, and that Israel can only depend on American support for as long as current US President George W. Bush is still in charge in Washington."

The report then deals with the feasibility of an Israeli air strike, featuring a map of Iran with potential targets for Israeli aircraft. The article notes that the Israeli air force had already carried out a successful bombing raid against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 and more recently in September 2007 destroyed a target identified by Israeli intelligence as a suspect nuclear site in eastern Syria.

Israel recently signed a deal with Washington involving the purchase of F-22 Stealth bombers, which are ideally suited to the type of targeted bombing raids planned by the Israeli air force command. Israel’s existing fleet of F15 jet fighters could also be used to launch a multi-pronged attack on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities.

The article concludes by citing Middle East expert and former CIA agent Bruce Riedel, who declares that while an American president could anticipate opposition to a US-led strike, "the situation is different from Israel’s perspective...There is some risk that Israel thinks it has limited time to act and it has a green light from American politicians."

Questioned as to the consequences of such an Israeli strike, Riedel stressed that it would be seen as a US attack, and Iranian retaliation would be directed "at both Israel and the US." The consequences, says Riedel, would be fatal. "We will see a Middle East in flames."

Israeli war plans and a flurry of diplomatic activity in the Middle East

Barely a day passes without reports of new diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East—either directly or indirectly involving the Israeli government. On the same day—Thursday June 19—that the government in Jerusalem announced a cease-fire with the Hamas movement in the Gaza strip, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert also declared his government’s readiness to open direct peace talks with Lebanon. Israel has long been conducting regular military operations against Palestinians in the Gaza strip and fought a fierce border war with Hezbollah militias located inside Lebanon in 2006.

Other countries, notably France, Germany together with Turkey, have also been active in pushing to re-establish improved international relations with the Syrian regime, which has long been branded by both Israel and the United States as a "pariah" nation and an original candidate for inclusion in Washington’s "axis of evil." French President Nicholas Sarkozy recently visited Damascus, leading a large French delegation, and has invited Syrian President Bashar Assad to Paris to join in French National holiday celebrations. Sarkozy has also invited the Israeli Prime Minister and hopes that the two sworn enemies can be persuaded to shake hands and reconcile in Paris.

Any close examination of the rival "peace initiatives" reveals that different strategies are being followed by the Israeli and European governments. Israel is using the propaganda campaign conducted by Washington demonising the regime in Tehran to prepare its own military strike against Iran. At the same time, Jerusalem is seeking to politically neutralise a number of traditional allies of the Iranian government—the Hamas movement in Gaza, the Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Syrian government led by Assad—in order to minimise the risk of retaliation from these forces following a military strike against Iran.

European governments, such as France and Germany, are certainly well aware of the threat of a military strike on Iran by either the US or Israel, which would endanger their own considerable economic and political stakes in the Middle East. Urgent warnings of the consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran were already raised by Ruprecht Polenz (Christian Democratic Union), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the German parliament, in November 2007, and just two weeks ago by the former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

But while they are vigorously conducting their own diplomacy in the Middle East, European governments are not prepared to publicly challenge the belligerent propaganda campaign being undertaken by both Israel and America against Iran.

This was the significance of the recent tour of European countries undertaken by the US president. In one country after another, George Bush was able to repeat his threats against Iran, unchallenged by a single European leader.

The article in Der Spiegel makes this same point and notes that the standpoint of the Israeli hawks who are demanding rapid military action against Iran has been strengthened by the recent Bush tour.

"President Bush, however, has recently been sending out signals that are suspiciously reminiscent of the run-up to the Iraq war. Then, as today, he insisted that ‘all options are on the table.’ And then, as today, he sought to appease the Europeans by saying that all diplomatic channels would be exhausted first. But during his recent visit to Slovenia, Bush said: ‘There’s a lot of urgencies when it comes to dealing with Iran, and the Israeli political folks ... if you go to Israel and listen carefully, you’ll hear that urgency in their voice.’"

The parallel drawn by Der Spiegel with the run up to the Iraq war is entirely appropriate. Prior to the launching of the military invasion in 2003, spineless European leaders faithfully supported the sanctions campaign against the regime of Saddam Hussein, which cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. They then either remained silent (France and Germany) or complicit (Great Britain) as the Bush government trotted out a string of lies to justify its devastating assault on Iraq.

In a similar fashion, the current silence on the part of European governments (and much of the European media) on the danger of a US-backed Israeli military strike on Iran is deafening. After the events of the Iraq war, no politically conscious person can claim that the consequences of a similar unilateral "pre-emptive strike" against Iran remain unclear. Another catastrophic war crime is being prepared in the Middle East under the noses of the European ruling elites, and not a single government on the continent is prepared to challenge the administrations in Jerusalem and Washington.

On the contrary, they are already sending signals that they will side with the Israeli regime in the event of war with Iran. The same German politician who warned so dramatically of the consequences of Israeli action against Iran last November makes clear in the latest Der Spiegel report that Germany would unquestioningly side with Israel in the event of open hostilities.

Ruprecht Polenz sums up the European role in encouraging tougher sanctions against Iran as a possible deterrent to military action—a strategy which at the same time binds European nations closer to Israel.

"By issuing this warning, we are taking even more responsibility for (guaranteeing that) our favoured approach will yield results," Polenz says. In other words, if Iran continues to pursue its nuclear program, the Wes

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More US, Israeli threats against Iran

By Peter Symonds
World Socialist Web Site, 05/06/08

Strident remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Tuesday once again raised the prospect of a military attack on Iran before the end of the Bush administration.


Olmert, who met with President Bush yesterday, bluntly told the pro-Israeli lobby group: "Israel will not tolerate the possibility of a nuclear Iran, and neither should any country in the free world." Dismissive of current international sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programs, Olmert called for their dramatic increase but then left no doubt that military strikes had to be put on the agenda.

"The Iranian threat must be stopped by all possible means. International economic and political sanctions on Iran, as crucial as they may be, are only an initial step and must be dramatically increased," Olmert said. "The international community has a duty and responsibility to clarify to Iran, through drastic measures, that the repercussions of their continued pursuit of nuclear weapons will be devastating."

Like Bush, Olmert has repeatedly declared that the military option is on the table in dealing with Iran. Leaks in the British press over the past two years have pointed to advanced Israeli military preparations for air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, including its uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Last September Israeli warplanes carried out an unprovoked attack on a building in Syria’s eastern desert that the Bush administration claimed in April had been a nuclear reactor under construction.

Iran has repeatedly denied that it has a nuclear weapons program and insisted that it has every right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium to provide fuel for power reactors. The Bush administration and its allies have seized on the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report to back allegations that Iran is planning to build a nuclear bomb. Nothing in the report, however, indicates that Tehran has any current nuclear weapons program. Moreover, the report verified that the Natanz plant is enriching uranium to the low levels required for fuel, not the high levels needed for a bomb.

What is driving the Olmert’s threats of military action is his government’s determination to maintain Israel’s military superiority over any potential rival and to undercut Iranian influence in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. While warning of the menace of a "nuclear Iran", Olmert maintained the official silence on Israel’s own considerable nuclear arsenal—recently put at more than 150 weapons by former US President Jimmy Carter. As for the Bush administration, the campaign against Tehran is part of broader ambitions to establish US dominance throughout the energy-rich Middle East and Central Asia.

In remarks prior to talks with Olmert yesterday, Bush confirmed that Iran was at the top of their agenda. "We’re going to be spending a lot of time talking about Iran. Iran is an existential threat to peace and [it is] very important for the world to take the Iranian threat seriously," he said. Olmert echoed the US president, declaring that "the main threat to all of us... is Iran".

With less than a year left of Bush’s second term, the Israeli government is pressing for tougher US action against Iran. In a front-page story yesterday, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot, citing sources close to Olmert, reported that the prime minister would tell Bush that "time is running out" on efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear programs by sanctions. According to Yediot Achronot, Olmert intended to say that the US should therefore attack Iran.

When Bush visited Israel last month, the Jerusalem Post, citing a senior Israeli official, reported that the president and Vice President Dick Cheney told a meeting that "military action [against Iran] was called for". The article blamed the hesitancy of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Rice for delaying a decision on an attack. While the White House abruptly dismissed the report, there has been a steady drumbeat from Israeli and US officials, including Rice, setting the stage for more aggressive action against Iran.

In her speech to AIPAC on Tuesday, Rice repeated Bush’s comment to the Israeli parliament last month: "For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon." She criticised Tehran for refusing to cooperate with the IAEA, accused Iranian agents in Iraq of "attacking our troops" and branded Iran as "an extremist and dangerous state". In particular, Rice sought to pressure the European powers to take tougher action, declaring: "Our partners in Europe and beyond need to exploit Iran’s vulnerabilities more vigorously and impose greater costs on the regime—economically, financially, politically and diplomatically."

Rice stopped short of explicitly raising the "military option" but, as the New York Times noted, the tenor of her speech was "unusually sharp". She acknowledged that "there is a serious debate right now, both in our country and in Israel, about how to address the threat posed by the Iranian regime." In introducing her, AIPAC chairman Howard Friedman pointed to the character of the debate by imploring Rice "to use your remaining time in office to ensure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon".

AIPAC is a notorious for its connections to the most militarist sections of the political establishment both in Israel and the US. Its close connections with the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon were exposed in 2005 when Defence Department analyst Lawrence Franklin was charged with providing classified information to two AIPAC officials—Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman—who in turn passed on the material to the Israeli state. Franklin, who worked for undersecretary for policy Douglas Feith, himself a prominent neo-conservative, was the Pentagon’s top specialist on Iran and well-known for his hard-line views. Most of the 83 classified documents concerned US policy toward Iran.

IAEA meeting

The comments of Olmert and Rice come in the midst of a meeting of the IAEA board of governors in Vienna that is being exploited by the US and its allies to intensify the pressure on Iran. US envoy to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, provocatively declared yesterday: "Iran continues this work [uranium enrichment] apace, while it stalls the IAEA with non-answers and obfuscation. Every passing day leads Iran closer to mastering the technology it needs to build a weapon."

Slovenian and European Union (EU) representative Bojan Bertoncelj also expressed "serious concern" that the IAEA had been unable to determine the full nature of Iran’s nuclear program. Referring to 18 documents provided by the US and other intelligence agencies to the IAEA, he declared: "A simple rejection by Iran of this information as not authentic, forged or fabricated is neither credible nor acceptable, given the quality and quantity of the documents." The three major EU powers—Britain, France and Germany—described the issue as "a long and slow crisis, but a grave crisis," saying Iran was expanding its enrichment capacity, while appearing to cover up its past activity.

All these comments involve deliberate deception. None of the documents have been publicly released, but as listed in the IAEA report, all are at least three years old. In particular, as several commentators have noted, this latest intelligence does not contradict a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) last December, which concluded that Iran had ended any program related to nuclear weapons in 2003. As the IAEA report noted, the nuclear body is yet to assess Iran’s response to a series of questions sent to Tehran based on the documents.

The Bush administration and the Israeli government have made no secret of their hostility to the NIE and have sought to systematically undermine its conclusions. Many of the 18 documents had previously been provided to the IAEA, but they were only formally released to the body in February to help create the climate to push through a new set of UN sanctions against Iran. The IAEA is still prevented from showing some of the documents to Iranian officials, making any response from Tehran problematic.

While the international media routinely dismisses Iranian suggestions that the documents are fabricated, the US and Israel have a long history of employing such methods. On the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, documents emerged purporting to demonstrate that the Baghdad regime was importing uranium ore from Niger. The papers were quickly exposed as forgeries but that did not stop the US and Britain from continuing to circulate the lie. It is certainly not far-fetched that Israeli or American agencies would concoct evidence to provide the pretext for a new war of aggression against Iran.

Opening the Vienna meeting on Monday, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei noted that Iran’s alleged nuclear studies remained "a matter of serious concern" and pressed Tehran to provide access to documents and individuals that would clarify the nature of Iran’s past and present nuclear program. But he added: "To put things in their perspective, let me emphasise that the Agency has no information—apart from the uranium metal document—on the actual design or manufacture by Iran of nuclear material components, or of other key components, of a nuclear weapon. Likewise, the Agency has not seen indications of the actual use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies."

While ElBaradei is engaged in a cautious balancing act, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was more emphatic an interview in Le Monde last weekend. Asked if Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, he declared: "I don’t believe so. Nothing indicates it." Pointing out that Iran’s activities were not in breach of international law, Putin said: "I am serious. On a legal level, Iran has infringed nothing at the moment. They have the same right to enrichment [as other countries]. The paperwork says so. Iran is accused of not displaying all its programs to the IAEA. This point remains to be resolved."

All of this evokes a sense of déjà vu. Just as before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration and its allies are again concocting a pretext for war based on half-truths, distortions and outright lies. The efforts of the IAEA over the past six months to clarify all outstanding questions concerning Iran’s nuclear programs have been constantly criticised and belittled. When the UN body began resolving outstanding issues, new doubts and documents were released to ensure the process was not concluded.

The most ominous development is the increasingly intimate collaboration between the US and Israeli governments amid growing signs of a debate in both countries over when and how, rather than if, to launch a new military adventure against Iran.

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Burma, Victim Of The "War On Terror"

By John Pilger

03/06/08 - Writing for the Guardian, John Pilger marks the Burmese junta's renewal of the house arrest of Aung San Suu Ky with an examination of the intimidations of the 'war on terror' on those who help to free her and her people.

When I phoned Aung San Suu Kyi's home in Rangoon yesterday, I imagined the path to her door that looks down on Inya Lake. Through ragged palms, a trip-wire is visible, a reminder that this is the prison of a woman whose party was elected by a landslide in 1990, a democratic act extinguished by men in ludicrous uniforms. Her phone rang and rang; I doubt if it is connected now. Once, in response to my "How are you?" she laughed about her piano's need of tuning. She also spoke about lying awake, breathless, listening to the thumping of her heart.

Now her silence is complete. This week the Burmese junta renewed her house arrest, beginning the thirteenth year. As far as I know, a doctor has not been allowed to visit her since January, and her house was badly damaged in the cyclone. And yet the secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, could not bring himself to utter her name on his recent, grovelling tour of Burma. It is as if her fate and that of her courageous supporters, who on Tuesday beckoned torture and worse merely by unfurling the banners of her National League for Democracy, have become an embarrassment for those who claim to represent the "international community". Why?

Where are the voices of those in governments and their related institutions who know how to help Burma? Where are the honest brokers who once eased the oppressed away from their shadows, the true and talented peacemakers who see societies not in terms of their usefulness to "interests" but as victims of it? Where are the Dennis Hallidays and Hans von Sponecks who rose to assistant secretary-general of the UN by the sheer moral force of their international public service?

The answer is simple. They are all but extinguished by a virus called the "war on terror". Where once men and women of good heart and good intellect and good faith stood in parliaments and world bodies in defence of the human rights of others, there is now cowardice. Think of the parliament at Westminster, which cannot even cajole itself into holding an inquiry into the criminal invasion of Iraq, let alone to condemn it and speak up for its victims. Last year, 100 eminent British doctors pleaded with the minister for international development, then Hillary Benn for emergency medical aid to be sent to Iraqi children's hospitals: "Babies are dying for want of a 95 pence oxygen mask," they wrote. The minister turned them down flat.

I mention that because medical aid for children is exactly the kind of assistance the British government now insists the Burmese junta should accept without delay. "There are people suffering in Burma," said an indignant Gordon Brown, "there are children going without food - it is utterly unacceptable that when international aid is offered, the regime will try to prevent that getting in." David Miliband chimed in with "malign neglect". Say that to the children of Iraq and Afghanistan and Gaza, where Britain's role is as neglectful and malign as any. As scores of children in Shia areas of Baghdad are blown to bits by America and what the BBC calls Iraq's "democratic government", the British are silent, as ever. "We" say nothing while Israel torments and starves the children of Gaza, ignoring every attempt to bring a ceasefire with Hamas, all in the name of a crusade that dares not say its name. What might have been a new day for humanity in the post- cold war years, even a renewal of the spirit of the Declaration of Human Rights, of "never again" from Palestine to Burma, was cancelled by the ambitions of a sole rapacious power that has cowed all it. The "war on terror" allows Australia and Israel to train Burma's internal security thugs. It consumes most humanitarian aid indirectly and the very internationalism capable of bringing the "clever" pressure on Burma, about which Aung San Suu Kyi once spoke. Dismissing the idiocy of a military intervention in her country, she asked, "What about all those who trade with the generals, who give them many millions of dollars that keep them going?" She was referring to the huge oil and gas companies, Total and Chevron, which effectively hand the regime $2.7 billion a year, and the Halliburton company (former CEO Vice President Cheney) that backed the construction of the Yadana pipeline, and the many British travel companies that send tourists across bridges and roads built with forced labour. Audley Travel promotes its Burma holidays in the Guardian. The BBC, in contravention of its charter, has just bought 75 per cent of Lonely Planet travel guides, a truculent defender of "our" right to be tourists in Burma regardless of slave-labour, or cyclones, or the woman beyond the trip wire. Shame.

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