-------
So how have the US/Israeli efforts to isolate Iran fared around the world?
“I think it's very important for the world to unite with one common voice, to say to the Iranians that, 'if you choose to continue forward, you'll be isolated,' … Let's work in concert to convince the government that it's not just the Israeli voices speaking or the United States voices speaking, but there's a lot of other voices saying the exact same thing, …” – President Bush
Although the US imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran after the Iranian people ousted the US puppet dictator, Shah Pahlavi, these sanctions have never really been taken overly seriously. Within a couple years of the Islamic Revolution, Washington was already in business with the Islamic Republic selling weapons in what later became known as the “Iran-Contra Affair” and this trend continued up until just a couple years ago, with Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton firm dealing with Iran.
Despite the rather tongue-in-cheek nature – especially among Republicans - of the US sanctions, efforts to isolate Iran have been seriously ramped up over the last couple of years. This is part of the campaign to keep the Iranians dependent by denying them their completely legal right to develop nuclear energy on the grounds that at some point in the future Iran may opt to create a nuclear weapons program. Luckily, most of the interests that rallied behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq are either doing fine as it is (e.g. oil companies, defense contractors) or are currently stretched (e.g. the US military, the “Coalition of the Willing”) and only one major interest is pressing for war on Iran today. In that this sole faction is pressing for war and has not succeeded in this goal, the alternative position that has been accepted by the United States government as a whole has been an effort to impose tighter sanctions and internationally isolate Iran.
This campaign for sanctions and isolation has been in full swing for about two years now, coupled with a constant barrage of patently false reports attempting to portray Iran as a threat to global security. So the question is how has this campaign been going? How successful have efforts to isolate Iran been to date? Does the rest of the world take US/Israeli propaganda seriously?
Click here for the detailed report and relevant sources.
The InternetActivist.Org blog is meant to provide periodic commentary of interest to progressive anti-Imperialists. InternetActivist.Org is an independent network of websites dedicated to opposing war, American imperialism, Zionism, racism and other forms of nationalist imposition and domination on others around the world.
