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Background To The Conflict |
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ElBaradei's swan song? by Gordon Prather At the insistence of the Cheney Cabal, the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency had a "special" meeting a month ago and passed a resolution which requested that the IAEA director-general: continue with his efforts to implement the Agency's Safeguards Agreement with Iran, to implement the Additional Protocol to that Agreement pending its entry into force – with a view to providing credible assurances regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran – and to pursue additional transparency measures, required for the Agency to be able to resolve outstanding issues and reconstruct the history and nature of all aspects of Iran's past nuclear activities.
Now, according to the IAEA Statute, the IAEA's primary mission is "to seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world." However, the IAEA has a secondary mission: To establish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that special fissionable and other materials, services, equipment, facilities, and information made available by the Agency or at its request or under its supervision or control are not used in such a way as to further any military purpose.
Read more: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12242.htm
The next Iran war A new report examines the likely course and proliferating dangers of a United States attack on Iran. by Paul Rogers Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University and is openDemocracy’s International Security Editor. A consultant to the Oxford Research Group, the second edition of his book Losing Control has just been published by Pluto Press Iran's apparent resumption of uranium enrichment at its Natanz nuclear facility, reported on 13 February , does not in itself breach any formal treaty, even if it breaks the voluntary agreement reached in October 2003 with three European Union states designated to negotiate with the Tehran regime (France, Germany and Britain: the "EU3"). Nor is this action necessarily a prelude to the early development of nuclear weapons, as the pilot-scale plant that is being used means that it would take many years for Iran to produce enough enriched uranium for even a basic nuclear device. In the technical sense, though, the enrichment decision does take Iran one step further along the road to indigenous uranium production for civil-nuclear power while also gaining competences that would enhance a nuclear-weapons programme if that is part of its underlying strategic planning. More significant is the political impact of the decision. Read more: http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/war_iran_3274.jsp
Iran: Consequences of a War by Professor Paul Rogers
February 2006 This briefing paper, written by Oxford Research Group Global Security Consultant, Professor Paul Rogers, provides a comprehensive analysis of the likely nature of US or Israeli military action that would be intended to disable Iran's nuclear capabilities. It outlines both the immediate consequences in terms of loss of human life, facilities and infrastructure, and also the likely Iranian responses, which would be extensive. An attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure would signal the start of a protracted military confrontation that would probably grow to involve Iraq, Israel and Lebanon, as well as the USA and Iran. The report concludes that a military response to the current crisis in relations with Iran is a particularly dangerous option and should not be considered further. Alternative approaches must be sought, however difficult these may be.
America and Iran: At the Brink of the Abyss We can stop a "pre-emptive" nuclear strike by Jorge Hirsch Professor of Physics at UCLA, San Diego Whether the U.S. will use nuclear weapons against Iran if a military confrontation erupts is in the hands of a single person, President Bush, as stated in NSC 30 from 1948: "the decision as to the employment of atomic weapons in the event of war is to be made by the Chief Executive when he considers such decision to be required." Bush will certainly not ask Congress nor the public permission once hostilities start. Whether or not tactical nuclear weapons should be deployed and used against Iran is a matter that needs to be faced by America right now! So are U.S. tactical nuclear weapons deployed in the Persian Gulf, on hair-trigger alert, and ready to be launched against Iran at a moment's notice? Read more: http://antiwar.com/hirsch/
US Asks Georgia to Use Bases and Airfields for Attacks on Iran by Moscow News 02/20/06 American officials are probing whether Georgia, situated just northwest of Iran, will allow Washington to use its military bases and airfields in the event of a military conflict with Teheran, The Jerusalem Post reported Monday citing an unnamed Georgian official. The Americans have been putting out feelers, the source, a high-ranking Georgian government foreign affairs official said, in advance of a possible military strike to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability. Read more: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11996.htm
Silence the War Drums Before the US House of Representatives, February 16, 2006 By Ron Paul
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas 02/20/06 Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this very dangerous legislation. My colleagues would do well to understand that this legislation is leading us toward war against Iran. Those reading this bill may find themselves feeling a sense of déjà vu. In many cases one can just substitute "Iraq" for "Iran" in this bill and we could be back in the pre-2003 run up to war with Iraq. And the logic of this current push for war is much the same as was the logic used in the argument for war on Iraq. As earlier with Iraq, this resolution demands that Iran perform the impossible task of proving a negative – in this case that Iran does not have plans to build a nuclear weapon. Read more: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11995.htm
Churchill, Hitler, and Newt by Patrick J. Buchanan Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. 02/20/06 You can always tell when the War Party wants a new war. They will invariably trot out the Argumentum ad Hitlerum. Before the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam had become "the Hitler of Arabia," though he had only conquered a sandbox half the size of Denmark. Milosevic then became the "Hitler of the Balkans," though he had lost Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia, was struggling to hold Bosnia and Kosovo, and had defeated no one. Comes now the new Hitler. "This is 1935, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as close to Adolf Hitler as we've seen," said Newt Gingrich to a startled editor at Human Events. Read more: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48905
Why America will reap in Iran what it doesn’t expect by Abid Ullah Jan Abid Ullah Jan's latest book, The Musharraf Factor was released in December 2005. His book, Afghanistan: The Genesis of the Final Crusade will be released shortly 02/19/06 Many anti-war analysts believe that Iran has no nuclear weapons program in place and no one has ever produced a shred of credible evidence to the contrary. Yet they fear that the Bush administration’s spurious accusations and subsequent war will lead to a wider World War. If Iran has no nuclear weapons, as concludes Mohammed el-Baradei the respected chief of the IAEA, the war on Iran, in itself, will not lead to the speculated World War 3. It will only worsen the situation worldwide. Instead of directly ending up in a World War, the war on Iran will only become a next phase in spreading the World War that is already on without our realizing that we are passing through its initial phases. [1] Read more: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11981.htm
Rank Ignorance Reigns by Paul Craig Roberts Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. 01/30/06 In keeping with its established role as purveyor of disinformation, Fox "News" talking head Brit Hume misreported Fox’s own poll. On "Special Report" (January 26) Hume said that 51% of Americans "would now support" air strikes on Iran. What the poll found is that if diplomacy fails, 51% would support air strikes. Can we be optimistic and assume that the American public would not regard an orchestrated failure by the Bush administration as a true diplomatic failure? Alas, we cannot expect too much from a population in thrall to disinformation. Read more: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11723.htm
The Next War on Iran Like the invasion of Iraq, an attack on Iran has an agenda that has nothing to do with the Tehran regime's imaginary weapons of mass destruction. by John Pilger John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, filmmaker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia. "Has Tony Blair, our minuscule Caesar, finally crossed his Rubicon? Having subverted the laws of the civilized world and brought carnage to a defenseless people and bloodshed to his own, having lied and lied and used the death of a hundredth British soldier in Iraq to indulge his profane self-pity, is he about to collude in one more crime before he goes? Perhaps he is seriously unstable now, as some have suggested. Power does bring a certain madness to its prodigious abusers, especially those of shallow disposition. In The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, the great American historian Barbara Tuchman described Lyndon B. Johnson, the president whose insane policies took him across his Rubicon in Vietnam. "He lacked [John] Kennedy's ambivalence, born of a certain historical sense and at least some capacity for reflective thinking," she wrote. "Forceful and domineering, a man infatuated with himself, Johnson was affected in his conduct of Vietnam policy by three elements in his character: an ego that was insatiable and never secure; a bottomless capacity to use and impose the powers of his office without inhibition; a profound aversion, once fixed upon a course of action, to any contradictions." Read more: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=021306123535
Nuking Iran With the UN's Blessing: Only the American people can stop it by Jorge Hirsch Professor of Physics at UCLA, San Diego In the "global war on terror," Iran is the next target, having been designated by the U.S. State Department as "the most active state sponsor of terrorism" in the world. The United Nations has given its blessing, and the U.S. will fill in the blanks. Before we analyze this, however, let us ask ourselves: why not Florida instead? In fact, Florida should be way ahead on the list. Family considerations should not play a role in U.S. policy decisions. Read more: http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/war_iran_3274.jsp
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