Kurdish fighters defy the world from mountain fortress as bombing begins

By Patrick Cockburn in the Qandil mountains, Iraq

Turkey used its helicopters and artillery to attack Kurdish guerrillas inside northern Iraq yesterday as the Turkish army massed just north of the border. The helicopter gunships penetrated three miles into Iraqi territory and warplanes targeted mountain paths used by rebels entering Turkey.

Guerrilla commanders of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) were defiant in the face of an impending invasion. In an interview high in the Qandil mountains, Bozan Tekin, a PKK leader, said: "Even Alexander the Great couldn't bring this region under his rule." The PKK has its headquarters in the Qandil mountains, one of the world's great natural fortresses in the east of Iraqi Kurdistan, stretching south from the south-east tip of Turkey along the Iranian border. If Turkey, or anybody else, is to try to drive the PKK out of northern Iraq they would have to capture this bastion and it is unlikely they will succeed.

Despite threats of action by the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, the PKK leaders give no sense of feeling that their enemies were closing in.

For a guerrilla movement awaiting assault, the PKK's leaders are surprisingly easy to find. We drove east from Arbil for two-and-a-half hours and hired a four-wheel drive car in the village of Sangassar. Iraqi police wearing camouflage uniform were at work building a new outpost out of cement blocks beside the road leading into the mountains but only took our names.

In fact the four-wheel drive was hardly necessary because there is a military road constructed by Saddam Hussein's army in the 1980s which zig-zags along the side of a steep valley until it reaches the first PKK checkpoint. The PKK soldiers with Kalashnikovs and two grenades pinned to the front of their uniform were relaxed and efficient. In case anybody should have any doubt about who was in control there was an enormous picture of the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan picked out in yellow, black, white and red painted stones on a hill half a mile away and visible over a wide area.

There were no sign that threats from Mr Maliki in Baghdad or from the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, were having an effect. The PKK soldiers at a small guest house had not been expecting us but promptly got in touch with their local headquarters.

For all its nonchalance the PKK is facing a formidable array of enemies. The Iraqi government in Baghdad has no direct influence over the Kurdistan Regional Government, led by President Massoud Barzani whose administration is made up of his own Kurdistan Democratic Party and President Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. This is the only force capable of trying to eject the 3,000 PKK fighters.

So far the KRG shows no sign of doing so. One reason is that, paradoxically, the Turkish government will not talk to the KRG although it is the only Iraqi institution that might help it – Ankara is fearful of the growing strength of the KRG as a quasi-independent state on its borders.

So far the PKK is benefiting substantially from the crisis which started this summer when it began to make more attacks within Turkey. Instead of being politically marginalised in its hidden valleys, it is suddenly at the centre of international attention. This will help it try to rebuild its battered political base within Turkey where it suffered defeat in the 1990s and where its leader Abdullah Ocalan has been imprisoned since 1999.

Asked if the Turkish forces could inflict damage on the PKK, one of its fighters, called Intikam, said: "Three out of five of our fighters are hiding in the mountains in Turkey and, if the Turkish army cannot find them there, it will hardly find them in Iraq."

Bozan Tekin and Mizgin Amed, a woman who is also a member of the leadership, hotly deny they are "terrorists" and ask plaintively why there is not more attention given to Kurds who have been killed by the Turkish army. They add that they have been observing a ceasefire since since 1 October 2006 and fight in retaliation for Turkish attacks.

"Since then the Turks have launched 485 attacks on us," says Bozan Tekin. "Even an animal – any living thing – will fight when it feels it is in a dangerous situation," said Mizgin Amed. Both the PKK leaders were chary of giving details of last Sunday's ambush in which at least 16 Turkish soldiers were killed and eight captured. This is because the ambush is a little difficult to square with their defensive posture. But Bozan Tekin said that in reality "35 Turkish soldiers were killed and only three PKK fighters were lightly wounded. We did not lose anyone dead." He claimed that an attack on a minibus, which Turkey blamed on the PKK, was in fact carried out by Turkish soldiers on a Kurdish wedding party.

Overall, although it does not say so openly, the PKK would welcome a Turkish military invasion of northern Iraq because it would embroil Turkey with the Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi army. It would also pose almost no threat to the PKK.

Five Years Later, We Can’t Forgive or Forget

by Stephen Zunes

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the congressional vote granting President George W. Bush unprecedented war-making authority to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing. Had a majority of either the Republican-controlled House or the Democratic-controlled Senate voted against the resolution or had they passed an alternative resolution conditioning such authority on an authorization from the United Nations Security Council, all the tragic events that have unfolded as a consequence of the March 2003 invasion would have never occurred.

The responsibility for the deaths of nearly 4,000 American soldiers, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the waste of over a half trillion dollars of our national treasury, and the rise of terrorism and Islamist extremism that has come as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq rests as much in the hands of the members in Congress who authorized the invasion as it does with the administration that requested the lawmakers' approval.

Those who express surprise at the refusal of today's Democratic majority in Congress to stop funding the war should remember this: the October 2002 resolution authorizing the invasion had the support of the majority of Democratic senators as well as the support of the Democratic Party leadership in both the House and the Senate.

Seven Senators

Seven of the 77 senators who voted to authorize the invasion – Fred Thompson (R-TN), John McCain (R-AZ), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Joseph Biden (D-DE), and John Edwards (D-NC) are now running for president. While the Republican candidates remain unapologetic, the Democratic candidates have sought to distance themselves from their vote, arguing that what is important in choosing a president is not how they voted in the past, but what she or he would do now.

Such efforts to avoid responsibility should be rejected out of hand. While I personally support a full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as logistically feasible, there is considerable debate among knowledgeable, ethical, and intelligent people – including those who also opposed the invasion – as to what to do now. No reasonable person, however, could have supported the resolution authorizing the invasion five years ago.

On this and other web sites – as well as in many scores of policy reports, newspaper articles, academic journals and other sources – the tragic consequences of a U.S. invasion of Iraq and a refutation of falsehoods being put forward by the Bush administration to justify it were made available to every member of the House and Senate (see, for example, The Case Against a War with Iraq). The 2003 vote authorizing the invasion was not like the vote on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution on the use of force against North Vietnam, for which Congress had no time for hearings or debate and for which most of those supporting it (mistakenly) thought they were simply authorizing limited short-term retaliatory strikes in response to a specific series of alleged incidents. By contrast, in regard to the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, Congress had many months to investigate and debate the administration's claims that Iraq was a threat as well as the likely implications of a U.S. invasion; members of Congress also fully recognized that the resolution authorized a full-scale invasion of a sovereign nation and a subsequent military occupation of an indefinite period.

Violating International Legal Conventions

Those who voted in favor of the resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq did so despite the fact that it violated international legal conventions to which the U.S. government is legally bound to uphold. The resolution constituted a clear violation of the United Nations Charter that, like other ratified international treaties, should be treated as supreme law according to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. According to articles 41 and 42 of the UN Charter, no member state has the right to enforce any resolution militarily unless the UN Security Council determines that there has been a material breach of its resolution, decides that all nonmilitary means of enforcement have been exhausted, and then specifically authorizes the use of military force.

This is what the Security Council did in November 1990 with Resolution 678 in response to Iraq's ongoing violations of UN Security Council resolutions demanding its withdrawal from Kuwait, but the Security Council did not do so for any subsequent lesser Iraqi violations. The only other exception for the use of force authorized by the charter is in self-defense against armed attack, which even the Bush administration admitted had not taken place.

This effective renunciation of the UN Charter's prohibition against such wars of aggression constituted an effective repudiation of the post-WWII international legal order. Alternative resolutions, such as one authorizing force against Iraq if authorized by the UN Security Council, were voted down by a bipartisan majority.

Some of those who voted for the war resolution and their supporters have since tried to rewrite history by claiming the resolution had a stronger legal basis. For example, in a recent interview with The Progressive magazine, Elizabeth Edwards claimed that the resolution supported by her husband, then-Senator John Edwards, involved "forcing Bush to go to the U.N. first." In reality, not only was no such provision included in the resolution that passed, Edwards voted against the resolution amendment that would have required such a precondition, arguing that "our national security requires" that "we must not tie our own hands by requiring Security Council action."

Concerned Scholars

Members of Congress were also alerted by large numbers of scholars of the Middle East, Middle Eastern political leaders, former State Department and intelligence officials and others who recognized that a U.S. invasion would likely result in a bloody insurgency, a rise in Islamist extremism and terrorism, increased sectarian and ethnic conflict, and related problems. Few people I know who are familiar with Iraq have been at all surprised that the U.S. invasion has become such a tragedy. Indeed, most of us were in communication with congressional offices and often with individual members of Congress themselves in the months leading up to the vote warning of the likely consequences of an invasion and occupation. Therefore, claims by Senator Clinton and other leading Democratic supporters of the war that they were unaware of the likely consequences of the invasion are completely false.

The resolution also contained accusations that were known or widely assumed to be false at that time, such as claims of Iraqi support for al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States. A definitive report by the Department of Defense noted that not only did no such link exist, but that no such link could have even been reasonably suggested based on the evidence available at that time.

The resolution also falsely claimed that Iraq was "actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability." In reality, Iraq had long eliminated its nuclear program, a fact that was confirmed in a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1998, four years prior to the resolution.

The resolution also falsely claimed that Iraq at that time continued "to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability." In reality, as the U.S. government now admits, Iraq had rid itself of its chemical and biological weapons nearly a decade earlier and no longer had any active chemical and biological weapons programs. This likelihood that Iraq no longer had operational chemical or biological weapons was brought to the attention of members of Congress by a number of top arms control specialists, as well as Scott Ritter, the American who headed UNSCOM's efforts to locate Iraq's possible hidden caches of chemical and biological weapons, hidden supplies or secret production facilities.

No Evidence

Virtually all of Iraq's known stockpiles of chemical and biological agents had been accounted for and the shelf life of the small amount of materiel that had not been accounted for – which, as it ends up, had also been destroyed – had long since expired and was therefore no longer of weapons grade. There was no evidence that Iraq had any delivery systems for such weapons, either. In addition, the strict embargo, in effect since 1990, against imports of any additional materials needed for the manufacture of WMDs, combined with Iraq's inability to manufacture such weapons or delivery systems themselves without detection, made any claims that Iraq constituted any "significant chemical and biological weapons capability" transparently false to anyone who cared to investigate the matter at that time. Indeed, even the classified full version of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, while grossly overestimating Iraq's military capability, was filled with extensive disagreements, doubts, and caveats regarding President Bush's assertions regarding Iraq's WMDs, WMD programs, and delivery systems.

The House and Senate members who now claim they were "misled" about Iraq's alleged military threat fail to explain why they found the administration's claims so much more convincing than the many other reports made available to them from more objective sources that presumably made a much stronger case that Iraq no longer had offensive WMD capability. Curiously, except for one excerpt from a 2002 National Security Estimate released in July 2003 – widely ridiculed at the time for its transparently manipulated content – not a single member of Congress has agreed to allow me any access to any documents they claim convinced them of the alleged Iraqi threat. In effect, they are using the infamous Nixon defense from the Watergate scandal that claims that, while they have evidence to vindicate themselves, making it public would somehow damage national security. In reality, if such reports actually exist, they are clearly inaccurate and outdated and would therefore be of no threat to national security if made public.

Democrats' Responsibility

The Democrats who voted to support the war and rationalized for it by making false claims about Iraq's WMD programs are responsible for allowing the Bush administration to get away with lying about Iraq's alleged threat. For example, Bush has noted how "more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate – who had access to the same intelligence – voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power." In a speech attacking antiwar activists, Bush noted how "Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: 'When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security.'"

Indeed, the fact that 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry voted in favor of the resolution likely cost the Democrats the White House and, should Senator Clinton – who claimed, in justification of her vote to authorize the invasion, that Iraq's possession of such weapons was "not in doubt" and was "undisputed" – get the nomination, it could also threaten the Democrats' hopes for victory in 2008. Similarly, should Senator Dodd, Senator Biden, or former Senator Edwards – who also made false claims about Iraqi WMDs – get the nomination, it could have a similarly deleterious impact to the Democrats' chances.

It's also important to recognize that not everyone in Congress voted to authorize the invasion. There were the 21 Senate Democrats – along with one Republican and one Independent – who voted against the war resolution. And 126 of 207 House Democrats – including presidential contender Dennis Kucinich – voted against the resolution as well. In total, then, a majority of Democrats in Congress defied their leadership by saying no to war. This means that the Democrats who did support the war, despite being over-represented in leadership positions and among presidential contenders, were part of a pro-war minority and did not represent the mainstream of their party.

The resolution also claimed that "the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States ... or provide them to international terrorists who would do so... combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself." In other words, those members of the House and Senate who supported this resolution believed, or claimed to believe, that an impoverished country, which had eliminated its stockpiles of banned weapons, destroyed its medium and long-range missiles, and eliminated its WMD programs more than a decade earlier, and had been suffering under the strictest international sanctions in world history for more than a dozen years, somehow threatened the national security of a superpower located more than 6,000 miles away. Furthermore, these members of Congress believed, or claimed to believe, that this supposed threat was so great that the United States had no choice but to launch an invasion of that country, overthrow its government, and place its people under military occupation in the name of "self-defense," regardless of whether Iraq allowed inspectors back into the county to engage in unfettered inspections to prove that the WMDs, WMD programs and weapons systems no longer existed.

International Opposition

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was opposed by virtually the entire international community, including Iraq's closest neighbors, who presumably had the most to be concerned about in terms of any possible Iraqi military threat. However, the members of Congress who voted to authorize the invasion were determined to make the case that the United States – with the strongest military the world has ever known and thousands of miles beyond the range of Iraq's alleged weapons and delivery systems – was so threatened by Iraq that the United States had to launch an invasion, overthrow its government and occupy that country for an indefinite period.

This shows a frighteningly low threshold for effectively declaring war, especially given that in most cases these members of Congress had been informed by knowledgeable sources of the widespread human and material costs which would result from a U.S. invasion. It also indicates that they would likely be just as willing to send American forces off to another disastrous war again, also under false pretenses. Indeed, those who voted for the war demonstrated their belief that:

• the United States need not abide by its international legal obligations, including those prohibiting wars of aggression;
• claims by right-wing U.S. government officials and unreliable foreign exiles regarding a foreign government's military capabilities are more trustworthy than independent arms control analysts and United Nations inspectors;
• concerns expressed by scholars and others knowledgeable of the likely reaction by the subjected population to a foreign conquest and the likely complications that would result should be ignored; and, faith should instead be placed on the occupation policies forcibly imposed on the population by a corrupt right-wing Republican administration.

As a result, support for the 2002 Iraq War resolution is not something that can simply be forgiven and forgotten.

"I HOPE IT'S YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS THAT DIE" - US Representative Dana Rohrabacher

By US Army Reserves Colonel (Retired) Ann Wright

"I HOPE IT'S YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS THAT DIE" said US Representative Dana Rohrabacher to American citizens who questioned the Bush Administration’s unlawful extraordinary rendition policies.

Congressional hearings provide a deep insight into the inner spirit of our elected representatives-and sometimes, the insight is not pretty.

On April 17, we witnessed Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) unleash his unbridled anger onto members of the European Parliament’s committee on Human rights who were invited guests and witnesses in the House Foreign Affairs European subcommittee hearing. The European Parliamentary human rights committee had issued a report in January, 2007 sharply critical of the Bush administration’s extraordinary rendition program in which persons from all over the world were detained by either CIA or local police and then flown by CIA jet (torture taxi) to other countries where they were imprisoned (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Libya, Djibouti, Morocco, Yemen. The report was equally critical of European governments for allowing the unlawful flights to take place.

From 2001 through 2005, the governments of fourteen countries in Europe allowed at least 1,245 CIA flights with illegally abducted terrorist suspects to be flown through their airspace or to land on their territory. Germany, Britain, Ireland and Portugal allowed the highest numbers of covert flights. As well as at least 1,245 flights operated by the CIA, there were an unspecified number of US military flights for the same purpose.

The European Parliament report differeniated between lawful extradition of criminal suspects for trial in another country and the unlawful abduction, sending to a third country usually noted for torture of prisoners and imprisoning for years without trial persons suspected of criminal terrorist acts.

The report acknowledged that terrorism is a threat to European countries as well as to the United States, but the European Parlimentary committee said that terrorist acts must be handled lawfully by both European countries and by the United States. The report said: "After 11 September 2001, the so-called 'war on terror' - in its excesses - has produced a serious and dangerous erosion of human rights and fundamental freedoms." The extraordinary rendidition program undercuts the exact liberties we are defending, the rule of law, the right for a fair and speedy trial, the right to know the evidence on which one is held and prosecuted.

Some who were kidnapped ended up in Guantanamo. Others were flown to prisons in other countries for interrogation and torture. Many of those who were subjected to extraordinary rendition are still in Guantanano. Many have been there for over 5 years. Over 400 of the 770 persons who have been imprisoned in Guantanamo over the 5 years it has been opened, have been released. Only 380 are left imprisoned in Guantanamo. Only 3 have been charged by the Military Commission and only one tried in Guantanamo. After five years of being held prisoner, Australian citizen David Hicks was convicted in March, 2007 of material support to terrorism and sentenced to only seven months further imprisonment which he is serving in Australia. The Bush administration has said it will try only 50-70 of the 380 remaining in Guantanamo. That means that of 770 who have been in Guantanamo, on 50-70 will be tried. The others eventually will be freed due to lack of evidence of a crime. Many will have spent five years or more in imprisonment.

According to virtually every prisoner that has been released, they were tortured while imprisoned in countries such as Syria, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some prisoners say they were tortured by police or interrogators. Some say they heard American voices in the background while they were tortured. None were charged with any crimes. None went to trial. They were abducted by CIA or local authorities at the request of the United States. The United States did not present evidence of criminal actions nor request extradition from the country where the person was detained. Nor did a central approving authority look at the rationale for spiriting a person to the control of a third country for interrogation. Persons were “rendered” many times on the say-so of junior CIA officials.

Back to the Congressional hearing. With eyes narrowed and mouth in a contorted grimace, Congressman Rohrabacker attacked the two British and one Italian members of the European Parliament who testified before the committee. Reminding one of Joe McCarty in tone and substance, Rohrabacker demeaned and degraded the report and chastised, belittled and berated the Parliamentarians. Remarkably, Rohrabacker said the most of the CIA private flights that landed in Europe were to transport CIA agents all over the world, not to move prisoners. Yet the logs of the 1245 flights have been tied by date and location to the movement of specific individual prisoners from one location to another.

Rohrabacher railed against anyone who questioned the right of the Bush administration to do whatever it wanted, legal or illegal, to prevent terrorist acts and said that by not supporting the Bush policies was consigning their country to the terrorists. In particular he said that any Americans who questioned the extraordinary rendition were un-American.

Citing historic examples of other countries kidnapping persons, Rohrabacker said Israel had every right to kidnap Nazi official Adolph Eichmann from Argentina, bring him to Israel and execute him. Rohrabacher conveniently forgot to mention that the Israeli government did put Eichmann on trial, a trial which none of those who have been extraordinarily rendered have had. Rohrabacher then attacked and belittled the European Community for outlawing the death penalty saying that “You in the European community won’t stand up to evil people, you won’t execute them. Eichmann deserved to be executed, just like these terrorists must be executed.”

Rohrabacher never once mentioned due process, the rule of law, right to a trial for anyone picked up in the extraordinary rendition program. Merely because persons were “rendered” and imprisoned by the US meant to Rohrbacker they were guilty.

Rohrabacher said if European countries did not cooperate with the United States and go along with whatever the Bush administration wanted, they were condemning their countrymen to death by not using extralegal methods to imprison terrorist suspects. When citizens attending the hearing, including members of Codepink Women for Peace and Veterans for Peace, heard Rohrabacher’s statement, they collectively groaned. Then, much to the shock and disbelief of everyone in the hearing room, Rorhbacker said to those who had expressed displeasure at his statements: "I hope it’s your family members that die when terrorists strike."

At that point, I had had enough of Rohrabacher. I stood up and said "I did not serve 29 years in the US military and 16 years in the US diplomatic corps to see demise of the rule of law and violation of our own laws. Rohrback’s statements are outrageous. No wonder the world hates us!"

Chairman Delahunt gaveled for me to stop speaking and I was escorted by the police out of the committee room. I was not arrested.

Remarkably, I do agree with one thing Rohrabacker said. "They hate us."

Rohrabacker finished his sentence with "They hate us because they hate our way of life." Unfortunately, many people do hate us, but it’s not for our way of life.

Its for exactly the talk and actions that Rohrabacker and the Bush administration represent: illegal and unlawful actions, an arrogant attitude that America is always right and everyone else is wrong, that the world’s resources are for the exclusive use of the United States and we have the right to invade and occupy any country.”

Until we change the manner in which Presidential administrations and the Congress operate and the way we approach our membership in the community of nations, the world will continue to question what America stands for.

About the Author: Ann Wright retired as a Colonel after serving 13 years on active duty and 16 years in the US Army Reserves. After 16 years in the US diplomatic corps, she resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She had been assigned in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She helped reopen the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December, 2001.

Pigs of War

By Cindy Sheehan

“I believe it is imperative that we never lose our voice of dissent, regardless of political pressure. As Martin Luther King, Jr said: ‘there comes a time when silence is betrayal’…However, it is unforgivable that Congress has been unwilling to examine these matters or take action to prevent these circumstances [executive branch crimes] from occurring again.” – Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), Introduction to Constitution in Crisis (2006)

Pigs of War come in both political colors of red and blue. We are all unfortunately very familiar with the red pigs. The pigs of war who manipulated, cherry-picked, stove-piped and manufactured intelligence to suggest to the world that Saddam had mushroom cloud producing WMD and something to do with the tragic events of 9-11 that occurred six years ago now.

Many blue politicians are pigs of war and they willingly went along with the deceptions and even parroted red pig talking points whenever they got a chance but now claim that the “fiendishly clever” George fooled them into believing the nearly unbelievable. I don’t know about you, but I take small comfort in that excuse. When we have a system of government where our supposed public servants can profit off of war along with the corporations that pad their bank accounts both blue and red pigs benefit and young people needlessly lose their lives sometimes killing other humans in the process.

Our troops and the people of Iraq are the ones getting trapped between our pusillanimous politicians. These dear human beings become ciphers in purely political calculations from Congress and only an exercise in abstraction from pundits, poets, publishers and the majority of the average American who has not been personally touched by this excremental occupation. In Iraq, every citizen has been personally touched and the American occupation is a living, fire-breathing, palpable entity that has intruded its imperialistic self into every aspect of their daily lives.

How do I know that Congress is playing politics with human hearts? All one has to do is observe the lack of action on the part of the red and blue pigs to come to this sad but inevitable conclusion. Apparently, MAJORITY Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV) has spent more time over his summer recess trying to convince red pigs to go against George’s war plan than he spent trying to coalesce his blue caucus into something that would not resemble the red pigs so closely that the blur becomes purple. He and Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) have already decided that they do not have enough votes to end the occupation just as they decided that impeachment was “off the table” even before they were elected! So they will happily hand over to George more of your tax money and China’s money to continue the killing fields in Iraq. Why are they so miserly with democracy, but generous with our treasury and with our dear human treasure?

I got two very overt answers to this question one day in Congress this past spring when I was on the Hill. In one of my meetings with Congressman Conyers, he told me that it was more important to put a Democrat back in the White House in ‘08 than it was to “end the war.” After I recovered from my shock, I knew it was confirmed that partisan politics is exactly what is killing our children and the innocent civilians in Iraq. My next stop was in a Congresswoman’s office who has always been 100% correct about the war. She is a lovely woman with a lovely heart and does not in anyway qualify (and there are a few dozen others who do not) as a blue pig. She had tears in her eyes when she told me: “Cindy, when I go to Speaker’s meetings and we talk about the war, all the talk is about politics and not one of them mentions the heartbreak that will occur if we don’t pull our troops out, now.” People are dying for two diverse but equally deadly political agendas. The red pigs want to keep the war going because they feed out of the trough of carnage and the blue pigs want to keep it going for votes! Either way is reprehensible.

There is a lot of chatter about the Petraeus (written and produced by the White House ) report. Will the general recommend drawing down troops — even if he does, three-five thousand doesn’t even bring the number down to pre-surge levels — and the report says, in direct contradiction to the GAO report on the surge, that sectarian violence in Iraq is down 75%, without saying that the red pigs have re-defined the term “sectarian violence.” All I know is that the report will paint a rosier picture than what really exists on the ground in Iraq and like Ron Paul said the other day in the Fox News “Leader of the Red Pigs Wannabe” debate: “How can anyone believe anything they say?”

The blue pigs won’t believe the report, but they will expediently go along with the red pig request to further fund the disaster because they believe that it will mean political victory in ‘08.

It is up to we the people to care more about humanity and democracy than either the reds or the blues and it is mandatory that we mount campaigns to defeat the pigs and their masters: the war machine.

Twenty-one families here in America and dozens more in Iraq have felt the sting of the lethal politics of war just since the beginning of September, and the beat goes on.

What if instead of pigs of war in our government, we had elected officials who put humanity before politics and people before profits? Maybe the horrible twin tragedies of the Bush Regime and 9-11 would have never occurred within our borders and the rest of the world could look up to the USA with respect as a true leader in world peace instead of glaring at our shocking and awful quest for empire off the backs of the many who benefit the pocketbooks of the few? It’s not to late, but we are getting there.

Silence is betrayal and the silence of a host of blue pigs is the biggest betrayal of all.

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Sheehan who was killed in Bush's war of terror on 04/04/04. She is the co-founder and president of Gold Star Families for Peace and The Camp Casey Peace Institute.

Beware the Wounded Beast: America Has Lost the Iraq War

By Dave Lindorff

The Iraq War has been lost.

The British are acknowledging this fact by pulling out their troops from Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, handing over the city to the control of Shia militias. For all intents and purposes, the “Coalition of the Willing” is now dead. America is now going it alone.

Bush is not acknowledging defeat, but has indirectly admitted it by saying that some troops can start being brought home soon, even though clearly nothing has been accomplished with the addition of 30,000 troops for the last six months.

He acknowledged defeat too, by flying into Iraq stealthily in the dead of night this week, landing at a remote desert outpost in western Iraq, instead of going to Baghdad, and meeting with American military officials, instead of with the Iraqi government. (So much for Iraq’s being a “sovereign nation”! Can you imaging a head of state of some foreign government, together with his war secretary and his secretary of state, flying in unannounced to some remote American state, and not even meeting with American government officials?) Clearly the US military could not guarantee the president’s safety in Baghdad and the Green Zone, so he had to go to a remote outpost where he was safe behind razor wire, mines and an obscene arsenal of soldiers, tanks and gunships.

With the British giving up on their quadrant of Iraq—a strategically crucial location at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf, where the bulk of supplies for the US military in Iraq are offloaded, and from which the vast majority of Iraq’s dismal oil experts are exported—American troops are stranded, and dependent upon air drops for their secure delivery of supplies.

Reports say that the real reason Bush is talking about troops coming home is because the military in Iraq is broken, and can no longer sustain a commitment of 160,000 soldiers and marines in the country.

There is no choice; they have to start coming home.

As in Vietnam, where open mutiny and sullen disobedience became the norm after 1968, in Iraq, the military is finally cracking. Seven enlisted soldiers even dared to write an open and scathing critique of the war in an opinion piece in the New York Times, saying that the US was widely viewed as an occupation force in Iraq, and that Iraqis wanted us out—the sooner the better. The organization Iraq Veterans Against the War is growing rapidly in membership. The military has resorted to offering potential enlistees a whopping $20,000 bonus to go to boot camp immediately, because recruitment and reenlistment numbers for this year are so dismally low. Junior officer resignations are at a record high.

As military family members are pointing out, the American military is no longer a volunteer force. In name it may appear to be, but once stop-loss orders start routinely preventing troops from quitting the service, it is no longer volunteer, whatever it may be called. People are being coerced into fighting. And once you have a coerced army loyalty goes out the window.

While there is nothing to be done about the disaster in Iraq, which will go down in military history as one of the great defeats of all time—the most powerful military the world has ever known beaten by a disorganized assortment of ill-trained and ill-equipped guerrilla fighters—this is nonetheless a dangerous moment.

Wounded animals are dangerous animals, and President Bush and his gang of Neocon wackoes, badly wounded by defeat in Iraq, are not anxious to slither off the political stage as losers. Hence the plans in the works to go double or nothing with an all-out aerial assault on Iran.

Numerous reports, including most credibly one in The Times in London (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.), suggest that a plan has already been laid out for a three-day massive bombardment on over 1200 targets in Iran, which would attempt to destroy not just that country’s nascent nuclear processing capability, but also its government, communications, and military facilities, essentially leaving the country of 70 million a smoking ruin.

Such an attack, with no international support, no UN sanction, no threat, imminent or otherwise, and no provocation, would be, pure and simple, a war crime of the first order. It would also put the US at war, not just with Iran, but also with virtually the entire Islamic world.

The Neocon fantasy is that after such a blitzkrieg, Iranians would rise up and overthrow their leaders—those leaders who survived—but history has shown that in such times of national disaster, people don’t turn on their leaders, but rather rally to them, however unpopular they may have been. This is likely to be all the more true in the case of Iran, a country with a history going back as long as China’s with a strong sense of national identity, and a long recent history of feeling put upon by the U.S. (America, after all, overthrew Iran’s first democratic government in the 1950 in a CIA-inspired coup which set up the regime of the hated Shah Reza Palevi).

An Iran at war would be free to set its agents loose to attack American targets around the world, and inside the U.S., and under the doctrine of reciprocity, would be justified in attacking anything in America that came under attack in Iran. If we attacked Iranian nuclear facilities, they could attack American nuclear facilities, with all the concomitant resulting spread of radioactive materials. If we attacked power plants or oil refineries, they would be free to do the same. If we attacked radio and television stations, so could they. To be sure, Iran would have to use guerrilla tactics in its attacks, where America would be using B-1 and B-2 bombers and ship-launched cruise missiles, but as has been observed, a terrorist or guerrilla is just a bomber without a fancy plane.

As I’ve noted before, war with Iran would mean oil prices zooming to levels never before seen—perhaps as high as $200/barrel or 150% above the all time record of $80/barrel set a year ago. Such prices would bring America’s and the world’s economies to a screeching halt. Islamic governments allied with the US, most notably the one in Pakistan, already shaky, could fall to radical backers of Iran (and Pakistan has the Bomb).

The shocking thing is that even though all the signs of a Bush attack on Iran are there, including the build-up of an unprecedented Naval armada, armed to the teeth, in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, nobody in Congress or the American media is talking about this looming crime and imminent disaster. Most Americans are blissfully unaware, even though people in the military are watching it all unfold in horror.

In 2002, Bush illegally diverted billions of dollars Congress appropriated for the war in Afghanistan to a covert build-up of troops and weapons in the Middle East for an attack on Iraq. Now the president is asking Congress for another $50 billion for the War in Iraq, which he will almost certainly be diverting to the attack on Iran.

The pathetic Democrats in Congress, who already handed Bush $120 billion a few months ago for continuing and escalating his epic disaster in Iraq, are likely to grant him this new king’s ransom to finance an even worse disaster in Iran. If they do, the blood of Iranians and Americans will be equally on all their hands.

The clock is ticking. The only thing that could prevent this Crime Against Peace by the president would be for Congress, as one, to vote to rescind the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which Bush has claimed authorized an unending “war on terror,” and which will be his justification for attacking Iran, and to begin impeachment proceedings against the president and vice president for conspiring to violate the Nuremberg Charter by attacking a nation that poses no immediate threat.

Every American should contact their representatives to demand action (to reach your Congressional delegation, call the Capitol switchboard at 202-225-3121).


DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative reporter and columnist. His most recent book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006, and now available in a paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Interview that Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for legal and international affairs, Abbas Araghchi

By Gareth Smyth, Financial Times

The following is the transcript of an interview that Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for legal and international affairs, Abbas Araghchi, has given to UK's Financial Times.

Financial Times: What is the big obstacle to Iran and the US talking to each other?

Abbas Araghchi: We had no plan to do so, although the Americans were obviously interested … We didn't think the theatrical behavior would help with this very complicated situation, and the difficult relationship between the two sides … We need understanding of each other, and understanding of the situation in Iraq. If the US wants to solve their problems in Iraq, they should understand their mistakes so far.

Their invasion was a disaster - let there not be a double disaster with a disastrous withdrawal. If they have the good will to solve problems, they should introduce an exist strategy, and then there can be a face-saving withdrawal.

FT: So Iraq is the first step to wider progress?

AA: We want to bring stability back to Iraq - this is very important. We are interested in the peace and security of Iraq, its unity, its territorial integrity, that it be at peace with its neighbors. We consider peace and security in Iraq [to be] our own peace and security.

It is very important for us to see that the Iraqi government and Prime Minister [Nouri] Maliki are successful, because …the only alternative is absolute chaos, maybe a civil war or the breaking of Iraq into different pieces.

Iran would be the first to benefit from the return of peace and security in Iraq.

FT: And peace and security cannot come without a US withdrawal from Iraq?

AA: This is what we understand. Iraq is suffering a vicious cycle. There are foreign forces who have occupied Iraq, and justify their presence on the pretext of the 'war on terror' and terrorists who claim they are fighting occupiers …Each is justified by the other.

The only solution is to end occupation, and this means a well-planned strategy.

In his speech at Sharm el-Sheikh Mr. [Manouchehr] Mottaki [the Iranian foreign minister] tried to give some guiding principles … First of all, the government of Iraq should be supported and strengthened, it needs to be helped, and not only the government, but the whole political establishment, which is the result of a democratic process …

Second, the government should be given more responsibility - political, economic and especially in security matters. The security file should be given to the Iraqi government. It is not acceptable, not useful, for the Americans to continue to manage security by themselves ….The Iraqi government should have authority and responsibility, and then it can be held accountable.

Thirdly, enough facilities, equipment and training should be given to the Iraqi armed forces and police, to enable them to fulfill their responsibilities ….

Fourthly, help for reconstruction in Iraq. Without improving the lives of ordinary Iraqis, we cannot expect the return of peace and security. Why, for example, in Baghdad, is there only two or three hours of electricity a day? Why is there not enough safe water, or enough schools?

An exit strategy should include these principles, these guidelines. Together Iraq's neighboring countries and foreign forces, we can help the Iraqi government and have a clear prospect for the future, a bright horizon … Iran is completely ready to help in that direction. There should be good will on the other side, and a road-map and sense of co-operation.

FT: The US would say they agree with these principles. But their disagreement would be over their withdrawal. They do not seem to want to accept a timetable for a withdrawal.

AA: This is why I'm talking about an exit strategy. They think it's premature to talk about a timetable, they are afraid of 'premature' withdrawal. But this should not mean we have nothing, and continue like this … We should clear the prospects and talk about co-operation, and America should encourage the same approach by other countries in the region. To some extent, this happened in Sharm el-Sheikh. We saw more support for Iraq's government and its political establishment. The final statement … has expressed and emphasized full support for Prime Minister Maliki, and the government and the political establishment. That was good.

We can continue our efforts, to build more support, to remove the concerns of some other parties in the region, to convince some Sunni groups and their supporters that in a democratic process they can achieve what they want …If they are not happy, there are mechanisms in the Constitution they can use.

We need good-will first of all, and the Americans should stop accusing others for mistakes they have made themselves. It is useless to accuse Iran of supporting foreign fighters or sending arms. Why should we do that? We have the same interests in Iraq? Why should we undermine the Iraqi government?
Terrorist groups are against Iran as well. Al-Qaeda, for example, is a sworn enemy of Iran …. We are the first victim of terrorism ourselves.

FT: You said the US was afraid of withdrawal. What do you think they are afraid of?

AA: You should ask them.

I think there should be no place for being afraid of their withdrawal. Yes, immediate withdrawal could lead to chaos, civil war, could turn Iraq into a failed state. This is a fact. No-one is asking for immediate withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq. But there should be a plan … if we continue like this, there will be more excuses for terrorists …

I don't think they are afraid of withdrawal, they just don't know how to do it … The whole world, the region, expect the Americans, just as they had a military plan for the invasion, to have a political plan for withdrawal from Iraq. This is a reasonable, legitimate expectation, and if they fail to introduce an exit strategy, there will be a double failure.

Their invasion was a disaster - let there not be a double disaster with a withdrawal … If they have the good will to solve problems, then there can be a face-saving withdrawal.

FT: There was a report in al-Hayat [London-based, Saudi-owned Arabic newspaper] the other day that Iran was unhappy that the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, had met Condoleezza Rice …

AA: Syria has its own interests and policies. We are neither encouraging nor discouraging them from meeting Americans or anybody else. When they met Ms Rice at Sharm el-Sheikh, they briefed us on what happened between the two ministers. We had no objection.

FT: Would you say the Syrians agree with the process you have outlined for the future of Iraq?

AA: They have their own concerns and interests, each country does. We advise the Americans to acknowledge these …. In the case of Iran, we had eight years of war [with Iraq, 1980-8], and we have suffered from the dictator in Iraq [Saddam Hussein]… We have a long boundary with Iraq, and a shared history … We share religion and culture.

So we have legitimate concerns and interests. The same is true for other neighbors - Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. There is no way other than including all these countries' concerns.

This is why we insisted the meeting of Iran's neighboring countries should stay as it is. We don't think the addition of more countries to this institution can help … the P5 or G8. We have no problems with these countries, but we should keep this institution of neighboring countries so as not to complicate the decision-making process …

On reconstruction, we can have a large number of countries, as we did at Sharm el-Sheikh on the first day for the International Compact on Iraq. We had something about 70 countries. Yes, they can express their wishes to help Iraq, Iraq's reconstruction, their pledges for help, loans, grants, things like that … but when it comes to the question of security, to the question of political issues, I don't know how countries that are thousands of kilometers far from Iraq can help.

So we shouldn't complicate the process. We should keep the neighboring countries' meeting as it is. In Sharm el-Sheikh, more and more neighbors understood the points we have said before: that we need closer contact with each other … we should have our own [foreign] ministerial meetings for neighboring countries, and [also meetings of] ministers of interior …

FT: How do you assess the Saudi role in Iraq, particularly their relationship with some Sunni militants?

AA: The Saudis are trying to be constructive. We acknowledge that they also have their own concerns, and I think we should find a way to accommodate the concerns of all countries in the region. With the Saudis, we have always good and close consultation, and they know our concerns, and we try and develop understanding among each other - on the question of Iraq, on the question of Lebanon we have had good consultations. On other issues - security issues in the Persian Gulf region - we are in close contact….

We hope that a positive climate can be developed among all countries in the region, based on which we can develop a security arrangement for the region in which there would be no need for foreign forces. We think that the security of the region should be provided by the countries of the same region - I'm talking about the Persian Gulf.

FT: Do you think Saudi Arabia - and all significant forces in Saudi Arabia - are reconciled to a Shia-led Iraq?

AA: I think we should all accept a democratic process in Iraq.... We should respect the will of Iraqis … because otherwise we would have fighting and clashes between different tribes, sects, between Shias and Sunnis, between Kurds and others. There is one solution - to have a democratic structure for Iraq, and there have been good achievements so far: a general assembly, a constitution, then a constitutional-based government … so we have to admire these achievements, we shouldn't try to undermine them....

Of course there is always place for the improvement. Iraq has a federal system now, and it should remain as it is. We shouldn't consider it a Shia-led government. It is a federal one, and the political structure is based on proportional representation. The prime minister is Shia, the president is a Kurd, and the head of parliament is a Sunni. It's a very good combination of different parties in Iraq, we should respect this.

If we think there is something wrong with that, we have to go through democratic processes to correct it …

FT: What do you know about the Americans' relationship with Pejak, the so-called Iranian wing of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party)?

AA: We have some information, and some indication, that contrary to what the Americans claim, there has been some contact with some terrorist groups.
This is why I talked about good will at the beginning. One of the bad policies of the United States is this double standard towards terrorism, to divide terrorists into good and bad terrorists. This is the source of so many problems.

You named one of those groups. We may name others as well - the MKO [the Mujahedin-e Khalq], for example, which is based in Iraq under the protection of the Americans. They are terrorists, recognized by the European Union, by the United States, and they should be sent to trial.

FT: Where do you think [Massoud] Rajavi [the MKO leader] is?

AA: I don't know. He is either in Iraq or somewhere in western countries, I don't know, I have no information, no intelligence. But the kind of MKO terrorists we know are either in Iraq or in European countries, and in the US This is very bad. We see that they are doing whatever they want in European countries, in Britain, in France, in Germany. Of course, under the cover of different names, but everyone knows they are the same group.

They killed Americans before the Revolution in Iran, they have killed so many Iranian officials after the Revolution, Iranian people, and they are proud of that. Then they went to Iraq, helping Saddam Hussein in fighting with Iran during the war, then fighting with Shias and Kurds during the 1991 uprising, giving Saddam Hussein intelligence and every assistance. Now they are in Iraq. A good number of them have already been transferred to Europe, but some foot-soldiers - worthless in the current situation - have remained in camp Ashraf.
We have tried hard - from a humanitarian point of view - to help those people in Ashraf camp. We have given them an amnesty if they return to Iran. A group - 500 all together - has already returned to Iran, and they have joined their families. The Red Cross has their records, they know they have started a new life …

If they come back to Iran, they are welcomed by their families … If they have committed a crime inside Iran, they should be sent to trial, but we know that most of them have done nothing ….

FT: Do the Americans have relationships with other groups that have carried out violent acts in Iran - Baluchi groups, or Arab groups in Ahvaz?

AA: Well, we have some indications. Our intelligence ministry has said they have some indications of contacts between both American and British soldiers in Iraq with this kind of group …

FT: Have you made any estimation of the amount of arms that have come in Iran from Iraq since the 2003 invasion?

AA: I don't have any figures, but the number is high, as you can see by reading the page of incidents [crime page] of Iranian newspapers … in almost all of them where a person has killed someone, he says he bought the gun from Iraq …it was so cheap, I got one.

So we have a problem with the number of individuals who buy guns from Iraq.. Terrorist groups as well as criminals see Iraq as an opportunity.

FT: The Americans accuse Iran of supplying weapons to insurgents in Iraq, particular kinds of weapons [amour-piercing explosive devices]. Why don't you counter that by pointing out the amount of weapons coming the other way?

AA: Their claim that Iran is sending arms to Iraq is baseless. They have never been able to present any acceptable documents, valid proof that Iran has sent arms to Iraq. Even some of their own officials have questioned publicly the validity of these claims. The only things they have presented so far is that some arms and munitions they have found in Iraq are manufactured in Iran. This cannot prove anything, it cannot prove the involvement of any agency from Iran.

If governments were to be held responsible for the use by terrorists of all the weapons manufactured in their country, the Americans should be blamed first.

They haven't been able to provide any valid proof - and there is also no reason. Why should we help them? Why should we arm them? We are suffering from the same problem, terrorism.

Both us and other groups [countries] such as Turkey. This is why in the statement of the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting [paragraph 4], it is said that the transit of arms to and from Iraq should be stopped. This recognizes that there is a problem for neighboring countries, which arms are coming into their countries from Iraq as well.

FT: Again on good will. What is the latest on the 'Arbil Five' the five Iranians arrested in Arbil in January?

AA: We have just received a good will sign, that the Americans have [agreed to] let their families meet them. This will be done perhaps by the end of this Iranian week. We arranged that with the help of the Red Cross.

They have been able to send letters to their families, and even made telephone calls .. in at least one case I know …

There are also some indications by Iraqi officials they have received promises they might be released soon. Certainly, their release is very important to us, and it would be considered a good step forward. Their abduction is against international conventions, it is against the sovereignty of the Iraqi government, it undermines the government …. And very importantly, it discourages other countries from having diplomatic missions in Iraq, something the Iraqis are encouraging…

FT: How do you explain the confusion over whether the Iranian 'consulate' in Arbil was or was not a consulate?

AA: We have passed from that question, it is already solved. Our mission, our office in Arbil has been there for 15-16 years, after 1991. It has worked with the permission of Kurdish officials there. It didn't have the condition of other diplomatic missions because of the special environment in Kurdistan, but even that problem has been solved. Just a couple of months before the American invasion of our consulate [in January …unintelligible…] were exchanged between the two countries, between the Iraqi and Iranian foreign ministers, and they accepted the diplomatic status of our office in Arbil.

FT: So the Iraqi government did accept this was a consulate?

AA: Yes. In the meeting in Baghdad, in March this year, when I raised the issue in the meeting, and Mr. [Zilmay] Khalilzad [then the US ambassador in Iraq CHECK] claimed they were not diplomats, Mr. [Hoshyar] Zebari [the Iraqi foreign minister] intervened himself and said no, the Iraqi government recognized their status as diplomats, and the Iranians consulate in Arbil as an official diplomatic mission.

The Iraqis have asked the Americans to show good will, and tell us they insist …on their release.

It was a very unreasonable act by the Americans. Why did they abduct them? What is it good for?

FT: They say the five were involved in organizing insurgents.

AA: We already talked about that. The whole idea is unreasonable. Why should we do that? Why should we undermine a government in Iraq that we support more than anybody else?

FT: They would say you want to encourage the Americans to withdraw.

AA: This is not a good excuse. There are other ways, we are always encouraging the Americans to do that. They know themselves that they should withdraw.

FT: Can I ask you about the American who disappeared in Kish, Mr. Levinson? Do you have information about him, whether he has left Iran?

AA: We have heard rumors, but we have no information about him, and this is what our intelligence ministry and other relevant organizations have said. We have tried hard to help investigate the case in Kish, and we have let the Americans know we are trying our best to find the gentleman, if he is in Iran, but we haven't found anything yet.

FT: He was in Iran, wasn't he?

AA: Apparently, he has been in Iran.

FT: Well, then you would know [from entry-exit information] whether he has left.

AA: We have no information.

FT: Turning to the nuclear program, are the talks with Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, going anywhere? They seem to be turning in a big circle.

AA:They Mr. Solana, and Ali Larijani, Iran's top security official] met in Ankara and decided to continue. That itself was good news. Some new ideas and initiatives were raised in their meeting, and they preferred to have more talks, more thinking on those ideas, and to meet each other at a later time.

The western side should find a more logical and reasonable way to deal with this issue. They tried [UN Security Council] resolutions, and it proved unhelpful. There are two paths, two options - confrontation and co-operation. Each one has its own requirements.

If they prefer confrontation, okay. Let's go together. But they cannot sanction us, adopt resolutions against us, add pressure on us, and expect co-operation from us. The two options cannot go side by side - there is either co-operation or confrontation.

What has been the result of three [UN] Security Council resolutions, two introducing sanctions? Iran has quickened the pace of its peaceful activities, and reduced its co-operation with the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], of course within the framework of the NPT and Safeguards, so [there is] less transparency, and less confidence and trust. Because the core of this problem is trust, and trust is a two-way road. They don't trust us, we don't trust them either. We cannot solve this problem unless we build confidence and trust between the two sides. Resolutions have not helped, they have worsened the case…

They can continue. They could adopt a new resolution, more sanctions, and they know what would be Iran's reaction. We have no way to react but to reduce our co-operation with the agency, we may decide to go out of our relations ….

FT: Which relations?

AA: Safeguards, and international rules and regulations, because our people would ask: “They are sanctioning you, what is the use of co-operating?”

FT: Are you talking about leaving the NPT?

AA: Well, we are not talking about this. But you know there are serious debates, in the parliament, among some political people … what is the good of remaining in the NPT? …When you cannot enjoy the benefits of NPT, why have you remained there? We hope not to find ourselves in a position where we cannot answer that question.

Another resolution, harsher reactions by Iran, which would lead to another resolution and more sanctions. There is action and reaction. Step by step, we would reach the point where we have few options on the table … This can go on, but the result is escalation of the crisis whose end result will be a 'lose-lose' situation.

There are other ways. The line of co-operation is not closed. What we want is only our rights, and the materialization of our rights… We are confident about the peaceful nature of our program and we are prepared to share that confidence. They cannot ask us to give up our rights, but they can ask us for clarification, for asking their questions about diversion.

They have concerns that the Iranian program might be diverted into non-peaceful purposes in the future. Let's find a solution. Why are they sanctioning us because they think maybe in the future, Iran would go for military purposes ..? They have doubts about our intentions, they have found nothing in the ground. So they are punishing us for crimes we have not committed! This is not fair, the resolutions are not fair.

They want to be ensured about the peaceful nature of our program. Okay, let's work together … let's concentrate on the question of non-diversion, which can be a good subject for negotiations …There are different ideas and initiatives [on] how we can ensure the peaceful nature of Iran's program in the future. A good one is the idea of consortium, we may go for consortium based on the proposal of our president in the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2005. If they want to be assured about our program, okay, they can be a part of it, they can be present in a joint venture …

There might be other ideas, how we can have enough guarantees that Iran's program would remain peaceful. We are prepared to talk about that, to negotiate that. They should not ask to give up our rights, to stop our program, but they are entitled to ask anything else.

But we will pay the price for [continuing] our nuclear program. We know it may be a costly way, but this is an important juncture in our history.
The British went to the UN Security Council over Iran's nationalization of oil [in 1951] - saying it was a threat to world peace…

The Iranian people resisted …and paid a price. There was a [US engineered] coup [in 1953] …and 26 years of dictatorship [under Shah Mohammad Reza, overthrown in 1979]. But if we had not paid that price, our people would still be buying Iranian oil from BP.

The Saker on Scott Horton's radio show for KAOS 95.5 in Austin, Texas

Dear friends,

Today I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Scott Horton for the second time (click here to listen to my first interview with him after the Hamas takeover of Gaza) for his radio talk show. Scott asked me to call his show to discuss my recent article about Iranian options in case of a US attack.

Click here to listen to this interview (the interview proper begins after a 25 minutes monologue by Scott).

Let me know what you think, ok?

Cheers,

VS

(audio in ogg format available here)

Al-Qaeda threatens to wage war on Iran

Al-Qaeda Demanding Tehran Stop Supporting Iraq

CAIRO, Egypt, July 9--The leader of an Al-Qaeda umbrella group in Iraq threatened to wage war against Iran unless it stops supporting the democratically-elected Shiite government of Iraq within two months, according to an audiotape released Sunday.

Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi, who leads the group Islamic State in Iraq, said his Sunni insurgents have been preparing for four years to wage a battle against Iran, AP reported.

“We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a two-month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi Shiite government and to stop direct and indirect intervention...otherwise a severe war is waiting for you,“ he said in the 50-minute audiotape.

The tape, which could not be independently verified, was posted on a website commonly used by insurgent groups.

Iraq’s Shiite-led government is backed by the US but closely allied to Iran.
In the recording, Al-Baghdadi also gave Sunnis and Arab countries doing business in Iran or with Iranians a two-month deadline to cease their ties.

“We advise and warn every Sunni businessman inside Iran or in Arab countries, especially in the Persian Gulf not to take partnership with any Shiite Iranian businessman--this is part of the two-month period,“ he said.

Al-Baghdadi said his group was responsible for two suicide truck bomb attacks in May in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region. He said the attacks in Irbil and Makhmur showed “the holy war“ was progressing in the Kurdish areas.

At least 14 people were killed when a suicide truck bomb struck a government building in Irbil, Kurdistan’s capital, on May 9. Four days later in Makhmur, another suicide truck bomb tore through the offices of a Kurdish political party, killing 50 people.

In the recording, the extremist group’s leader did not mention Saturday’s deadly truck bomb in Armili, a Shiite town north of Baghdad, which killed more than 100 people.

The attack was among the deadliest this year in Iraq and reinforced suspicions that Al-Qaeda extremists were moving north to less protected regions beyond the US security crackdown in Baghdad.

Al-Baghdadi criticized Kurdish leaders for their alliance with Shiites in Iraq’s government and accused them of encouraging unsavory morals.

Iran's asymmetrical response options

By Vineyard Saker - an Axis of Logic exclusive

International public opinion is clearly worried about the prospects of a US aggression against Iran and many observers point to the risk to the world economy, of an Iranian attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz. Some also fear that Iran might sink a US aircraft carrier using some combination of missiles, submarines and small attack craft. It also is often suggested that Israel could become the first victim of such an Iranian counter-attack and that Iran could “rain missiles on Israel”. To be sure, most of these are possible Iranian responses, as unlikely as this may be. However, there are good reasons to doubt that the Iranian leadership would choose to respond to a US attack in that way.

One of the Planet's Most Vital Waterways, the Strait of Hormuz Has Iran on One Side, and the Gulf States of the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the Other.

The Strait of Hormuz Option

First, let's consider the “Strait of Hormuz” option. In a previous article called How they might do it, I outlined how the Pentagon could try to wage war on Iran while preventing the Iranians from shutting down the Strait of Hormuz:

"The first phase would begin by 2-3 days of combined cruise missile and air strikes. The aim would be to degrade, as much as possible, Iranian C3I capabilities and more importantly, to isolate the Iranian coastal areas from the main command centers and resupply routes. This degradation of Iranian air defense capabilities would be followed by intense bombardments and strikes all along the Iranian coast and the straight of Hormuz, combined with an effort to destroy all Iranian Kilo-class, advanced diesel, attack submarines. It's reasonable to expect "boots on the ground" *before* this phase will have been completed: U.S. Marines forces with Navy and Air Force Forward Air Controllers would land at key positions along the coast and surround pockets of resistance. Once beachheads have been secured, US Army troops would land heavy equipment and establish forward bases. The end goal of this first phase would be to control (but not necessarily occupy) most (but not necessarily all) of the Iranian coast, with the hope of protecting the Persian-Arabian Sea lines of communications from a threat of Iranian attack. This goal would need to be reached within 4-6 weeks to achieve the desired effect."

Once enough counter-battery capabilities have been concentrated along the coast (and to a depth of about 10-20km depending on terrain) and once Iranian active/passive detection capabilities have been sufficiently degraded, the USA could announce that the sea lanes are safe, open and protected from any further strikes.

The second phase would include strikes at the "national infrastructure" (read: terrorizing the civilian population into submission with the invader’s hope that the people would revolt against their leaders) and proactive support for various anti-government forces (Kurds, etc.) and an air/land/sea blockade against the remaining part of Iran. This second phase could be sustained for a very long time. In another article entitled Pentagon plans according to Scott Ritter (and the Saker), I added:

"The Strait of Hormuz is indeed narrow, and Iran does have mines and missiles capable of striking tankers in the strait. Iran also has very good Kilo-class Russian submarines which, in many ways, are better suited to coastal and 'green water' operations than AmericanSSNs. The problem is targeting: in terms of weapon- reach, the Strait of Hormuz is tiny, in terms of targeting it is huge."

To deploy mines Iran can use either small craft or submarines. The US Navy is, however, more than capable of finding and destroying such mine-laying craft. Missiles need to be fed targeting data, you cannot just shoot them across the strait and hope to hit a tanker, and in the event of an attack, this is exactly where the US Navy will lay down a huge electronic warfare blanket on the entire waterway combining both electronic countermeasures (such as jamming) and strikes (with anti-radiation missiles). Lastly, the Iranians could use coastal artillery (anything fromMRL to dug-in artillery positions). This is were the 17000 Navy Personnel currently sitting off the Persian coast come in: by physically taking over key sections of the Iranian coast and a number of islands in the strait, the US Navy would hope to make it much harder for the Iranians to close down the traffic. Once the strait is declared "safe", the Empire could then take its time to beat the Iranian "regime" (in US parlance all the governments not controlled by the White House are "regimes") into surrender or, as the Neocons always hope, to trigger a popular revolt against the "Mullahs" (again, US parlance for anybody inside the Iranian government).

This strategy would “work” in a narrow sense: it would keep the sea lines of communications (SLOC) open. In a broader sense however, I think that this strategy is based on a number of mistaken assumptions, two of the main ones are the probable length of the conflict and the likely Iranian responses to a US aggression. I will return to this issue in a moment, but first let us look at the other two options which seem to worry so many pundits in the West.

Attacking a U.S. Carrier

Could Iran really sink a US carrier? To answer this question we need to remember what the US Navy's strategy was during the Cold War.

U.S. War Ships off the coast of Iran, May, 2007

Among other things, the US had decided that in case of war with the Soviet Union in Europe it was important, in fact crucial, to protect the SLOCs across the Atlantic and that in order to do that US aircraft carrier battle groups would need to be positioned in the North Atlantic, right across the (then) Soviet Kola Peninsula. The basic goal of this strategy was to “bring the fight to the Soviets” and to prevent them from flushing their submarines down into the Atlantic. This strategy would have required the US Navy to station its aircraft carrier within striking distance of Soviet supersonic bombers armed with advanced supersonic cruise missile (equipped with either conventional or even nuclear warheads). It was assumed that these bombers would be guided by AWACS aircraft and lurking submarines (themselves armed with deadly anti-ship cruise missiles and powerful torpedoes) and protected by long range advanced interceptors like the MiG-31 andSU -27. Lastly, it was also assumed that the Soviets would have the use of various kinds of satellites which would make it possible for them to track US naval forces. In other words, the US Navy trained for literally decades for an environment far more dangerous than anything the Iranians could ever hope to muster.

Truth be told, as a military analyst, I personally always considered this strategy to be utter folly - the kind of typical imperial hubris of the Reagan era, and so did many other analysts (including in the US Navy itself). Many told me, off the record, that saturation attacks by Soviet bombers had been simulated and that these simulations had consistently shown how vulnerable the US carriers would have been, had such a forward-deployed strategy actually been implemented. Some added that the US Navy commanders were not stupid and that such a strategy would never actually have been used in case of war. But politics and warfare are two very different arts, and at least officially the US Navy was planning to do just that and therefore, it practiced for this type of high-risk environment. A lot. So unless the US Navy is ordered to do something really insane, there is simply no way that the Iranians could come anywhere near theUSN's high value ships (which would be kept well away from the Iranian cost or the Strait of Hormuz itself anyway). The entire idea of Iran sinking a US carrier is in the realm of fantasy, not real naval warfare.

Rain of Missiles on Israel

That leaves the “rain of missiles on Israel” option. I would not totally discount the possibility of Iran sending a couple of missiles at TelAviv in retaliation for any Israeli participation in a US aggression on their country. This, however, would be a purely symbolic political gesture, and not a war fighting strategy. The Iranians fully understand that no military or political advantage could result for them from inflicting heavy damage or casualties on Israel. Simply put, Iran is not Hezbollah and Iran does have the sheer number of missiles which Hezbollah had last summer (and still has nowadays). For Hezbollah, shooting short range Katusha missiles on Israel made perfectly good sense as it forced the population of the northern third of the country to either hide in shelters of flee their homes, thereby extracting a heavy economic and political price from the Israelis for their war on Lebanon. Iran, in contrast, does not have the same number of missiles capable of firing into Israel and its missiles would be far better used elsewhere (more about that in a moment).

Hezbollah, of course, could start firing its many missiles at Israel just as it did last summer and it is certain that if Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah AliKhamenei made this request, Hezbollah would act on it: it is often mistakenly claimed that the spiritual leader of Hezbollah is Sayyid Hussein Fadlallah. That is not so. Hezbollah is a general movement and its Secretary General, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in particular, are followers of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They recognize him, and not Fadlallah, as the real supreme religious authority. However, it is my guess that Iranian leaders would keep such an option in store, if only because they have a choice of several far more effective options.

Broadly speaking, we see the Neocon Empire has having two options in an attack on Iran:

1. A short, limited, attack on some Iranian nuclear and government installations. The goals of that kind of attack would be solely political: to appear to have “done something”, give the despondent Americans and Israelis some flags to wave, to “show resolve” and “send a firm message” - the kind of State Department nonsense. If lucky, they could hope to kill some Iranian leaders (although what exactly that would achieve isanyone's guess). Lastly, it would punish the Iranians for their “bad behavior”.
   
   
2. A more significant military attack, which could not be limited to an air campaign and one which would have to include at least some insertion of ground forces. That would be similar to the strategy outlined in my How they might do it article. The goal of this option would be radically different from the first one:

“to punish the Iranian population for its support of ‘the Mullahs’ (as the expression goes in the USA) via the ballot box. This is exactly the same logic which brought the Israelis to hammer all of Lebanon with bombs, missiles and mines – the same logic by which they killed over 500 people in Gaza - the same logic by which the U.S. bombed all ofr Serbia and Montenegro and the same logic which explains the bizarre embargo of Cuba. The message here is: if you support the bad guys, you will pay for it.”

Iran's response to a US attack would depend upon their analysis of the kind of attack to which they would be subjected in either scenario. The first option (a limited attack on Iran) has strong escalation-inhibiting factors built into it. It would offer the empire the ability of dramatically increasing the pace and nature of its operations against Iran with the second option. If the U.S. began with the second option, the only secondary response it would have would be the use of nuclear weapons. I will address the nuclear option last.

Iranian responses to a short, limited US/Israeli attack

Keeping in mind these two very different situations, let us now look at possible Iranian responses. There are two basic defensive strategies in any situation: denial and punishment. Denial is trying to prevent the enemy from hitting his targets, while punishment is simply payback for any attack.

In the case of a short and limited US/Israeli attack on Iran, the best option for Iran would be paradoxical: to ride out the attack and do nothing besides loud declarations of outrage. Certainly, the Iranians would have to try to use the “denial' response as best they could. For example, use of their (limited) air defenses or the capture of US forward air controllers would have their respective effects! Such action would be similar to what the Serbs did in Bosnia and would not represent more than a nuisance for the Imperial forces.

US already under siege in Iraq: As I write this the US forces in Iraq are already under siege in most of the country. The siege has been particularly effective in Sunni areas of Iraq where the Sunni insurgency has been very successful in its military operations against the occupation forces and its allies. In the Shia areas, there has been relative calm but tremendous tension. Moqtada al-Sadr has refused to be baited by the numerous US attempts to draw the Mahdi Army into a confrontation. In the Basra area the heavily protected US supply lines have been left open by the local Shia population. That, of course, could change overnight. Moqtada al-Sadr has already declared that his Mahdi Army would attack the US forces in Iraq in case of an attack against Iran. There can be no doubt that the Badr Brigades which, unlike the Mehdi Army, are truly extensions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, would also join the Mehdi and Sunni forces into an all out “Yankee hunt”. By comparison, such a maneuver would make the current plight of the US forces seem like a vacation. In such a case, the US resupply lines from Kuwait would be either severely disrupted or totally severed and the US forces in Central Iraq would be cut-off from their main logistical lifeline. The Green Zone and the Baghdad Airport would turn into a bunker under siege and the “surged” US forces would spend most of their time in a totally defensive posture, doing their best to avoid being overrun. Again, for all this to happen the Iranians would not need to do anything at all other than express outrage at being attacked.

Weakness of a limited attack: The primary conceptual weakness of the “short and limited” option is the absence of any viable exit strategy and no clearly defined outcome. The obvious “okay, now that we've bombed the Iranians, what do we do next?” question receives no answer as there would be no incentive whatsoever for the Iranians to do anything at all including no incentive to comply with any official Imperial demands. The US cannot simply bomb Iranian nuclear objectives and some government offices and then expect the Iranians to promise to stop enriching uranium. Even the blindly arrogant Neocons cannot be that naive. Such a limited and short attack would only strengthen the resolve of the Iranian leaders and general population to resist any kind of Imperial demands.

Iranians are tough: A short digression is in order here to restate a well-known, but still often overlooked fact: the Iranians are extremely tough people. Once again, history is the teacher. During the Iran-Iraq war the Iranians, even though their country had been very shaken up by a bloody revolution and much internal turmoil, successfully resisted not only against Iraq, but against all the other countries whose bidding was being executed by Saddam Hussein at that time. The Iraqis had access to US, Soviet and French weapons, to Saudi money, to US satellite data, to US and Israeli intelligence reports while the Iranians were essentially fighting only with their courage, native intelligence and numbers. This war killed more than a million people, most on the Iranian side, but the Iranians still obtained a stalemate. There is exactly nothing the Empire can throw at them today with would “frighten” them, quite to the contrary. The Shias have a saying: “every day is Ashura, every place is Kerbala” which refers to the day (Ashura) and place (the city of Kerbala) of Imam Hussein's martyrdom at the hands of the Caliph Yazid's huge army in 680 and which is understood to mean that every pious Shia Muslim should be willing to die in defense of the truth anytime and anywhere. People like these are simply not going to be intimidated by an Empire whose highest expression of purpose is the “pursuit of happiness”. Last year it took Hezbollah, (who also has this ethos of resistance common to all Shias) less than 2000 fighters to defeat the empire-funded and supplied Israeli army in Lebanon. Iran's armed forces are over 500,000 strong (including at least 100,000 highly trained soldiers) backed by another 350,000 reserves and they can be increased to over 1,000,000 in case of full mobilization. Keep in mind that these are the people who trained Hezbollah in the first place.

In contrast, the Empire has already lost three wars in a row (Lebanon in 2006, Afghanistan and Iraq), has major political problems in Gaza and the Occupied Territories and is already hopelessly overstretched. Last, but not least, a strong majority of the US public opinion is clearly against the war in Iraq and wants a speedy return home of its soldiers. Time would not be on the Empire's side in any scenario.

Iran’s multiple alternatives in the event of a major, sustained US/Israeli war

Let us now look at what could happen in case of a major and sustained US war against Iran.

The Shahab-3 Missile is one of Iran's longest range missiles

Long Range Missiles: Iran would have additional alternatives to cutting-off the SLOCs which are available to the Iranian strategists in the Persian Gulf. The most obvious one would be to actively attack US forces and allies in neighboring countries with their missile forces. Iran has plenty of missiles which could strike at a range of targets including the Green Zone, US installations and forces in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, Turkey or anywhere on the Arabian Peninsula. For example, one of the longest range Iranian missiles, the Shahab -3, has a range of about 2,100km, enough to reach any country in the Middle-East, and a reported accuracy of this missile is anywhere between 2000 meters to 30 meters (depending on the version). That is enough to precisely hit and destroy even a well protected target. These are definitely not just another longer-range “Scud” type of missile like those fired by Iraq fired into Israel in the first Gulf War. According to some reports, these missiles even have steering nozzles on their re-entry vehicle which make them capable of evasive maneuvers disallowing interception by Patriot-like air defense systems. Considering the utter uselessness of the Patriot missiles used in the first Gulf War, this Shahab-3 capability might look like over-engineering; however, the Patriots have been substantially upgraded and improved since 1991 and would probably perform better nowadays.

The Shahab -3, has a range of about 2,100km, enough to reach any country in the Middle-East, and a reported accuracy of this missile is anywhere between 2000 meters to 30 meters.

Shorter Range Missiles: To hit US forces, Iran would not even need to use such advanced missiles: shorter range missiles could be used to attack US forces in central Iraq and Baghdad and even artillery could be used to engage US forces in the Basra region. In addition, Iranian ground forces could conceivably cross the border and directly engage US forces in southern Iraq. There is no doubt that any such operation would be met by a true firestorm from CENTCOM forces in the region and that there would be huge casualties among Iranian forces. The issue is not punishment, but rather whether CENTCOM could muster enough firepower to deny such an option to Iran. Inflicting heavy casualties upon Iranian forces will feel good, but will not be enough to prevent the fall of Basra and once the Pasdaran take up positions inside Basra (with the help of the local Shia militias) the US lines of supply would be gravely compromised and panic would overcome the Imperial High Command.

The fight in the dog: History is filled with examples of military operations which were deemed “impossible” right up to the moment that they were successfully executed by an unpredictable enemy. As the US saying says:” it is not the size of the dog in the fight, it is the size of the fight in the dog” which determines the outcome of a struggle. It should be remembered here that in 1991 the US dropped the 82nd Airborne in Saudi Arabia with no other option to back them in the event for an Iraqi armored attack across the Saudi border besides using tactical nuclear weapons. What would be Washington's response in case of an Iranian attack on US forces across the border? And what if such an attack is backed by heavy missile strikes against, say, US targets in Kuwait and Baghdad? Again – we will look at the nuclear option later, but we should keep these things in mind as we we consider each alternative.

Foreign Options for Iran: Another Iranian option which has been given no serious consideration would be for them to trigger a major crisis elsewhere, and I am not referring to some “Iranian terrorist attack” on Disneyland or any other such DHS imagined scenario. I am referring to Pakistan, the country which already has nuclear weapons and whose leader, General Musharraf, has already been the target of at least a dozen assassination attempts. All Iran would have to do to trigger a real panic in the Imperial High command would be to either kill or overthrow Musharraf. While it is unclear whether Iran has the means to do the latter, there can be little doubt that Iranian special forces, which are considered some of the very best in the world, could do the former. In fact, the extremely anti-Western Pakistani armed forces, the all-mighty intelligence service (ISI) and the various Salafi militias of Pakistan might even finally succeed in killing Musharraf without any Iranian help. What is certain is that whoever would succeed Musharraf would take an extremely virulent anti-US stance and that the war against the Taliban would immediately turn into a disaster with NATO fighting in Afghanistan and US forces possibly fighting yet another war (whether over or covert) against Pakistan and the various Salafi groups inside the country.

The Saudi Theatre: Iran could also attempt to trigger an insurrection inside Saudi Arabia whose overpaid armed forces are totally inept and whose only real combat force, the National Guard, is entirely dedicated to regime protection, i.e. shooting at civilians. In case of a war with Iran, Saudi Arabia would be totally relying on the USA for national defense. It just so happens that the key Saudi petrochemical targets are in northern Saudi Arabia, very close to Iran - an area where the population is mainly composed of Shia Muslims who have been brutally oppressed by the Saudi Wahabi regime for decades.

The Afghan Theatre: Another place where Iran could create a crisis is Afghanistan where the main political and military force, besides the Taliban, is the so-called Northern alliance. The Northern Alliance has very close ties with Iran. Right now, the Imperial puppet Hamid Karzai has so little power in Afghanistan that he is jokingly called the “mayor of Kabul” where he sits protected by NATO and US Special Forces. Karzai’s only real power base is the Northern Alliance which, while composed of Tadjiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, tolerates this Pashtun “President” and his YSL fashions, only to appease Washington. This can also change overnight.

The Iranians could even bribe, cajole and coerce the Pashtuns and the Northern Alliance to find some modus vivendi as long as NATO is thrown out of Kabul. Afghanistan has a long history of shifting alliances and corrupted leaders and since everybody there hates the Empire anyway (that includes the Northern Alliance leadership who is much closer to Tehran and Moscow than it is to Washington) some kind of deal might not be so hard to broker. You can count on the Iranians to know which strings to pull.

All this simply shows that any US aggression against Iran could have unforeseen consequences for which it is very hard to plan. In its unparalleled incompetence, the Neocon Empire has managed to eliminate all the main obstacles to Iranian hegemony in the Middle-East: Saddam Hussein (ousted!), the Talibans (ousted!) and the US CENTCOM forces now bogged down and highly vulnerable in Iraq and the rest of the region. It is no wonder now that having put all the advantages on Teheran's side the Empire is left with no viable military option against Iran. Which brings up the issue of the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran.

A Nuclear Attack on Iran

What would be the advantages of using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran?

Let us consider two situations:

1. the use of nuclear munitions by Israel
   
   
2. the use of such munitions by the USA (no other country would ever contemplate such folly anyway, not even Britain).

An Israeli nuclear strike

For the Israeli government, a nuclear strike on Iran would have many positive aspects. A nuclear strike by Israel:

• would not involve the already overstretched US forces (at least not officially);
  
  
• would provide the Olmert administration with a much-needed “victory”;
  
  
• would serve as a show of power and resolve on the part of the humiliated Israeli military and
  
  
• would cater to the dearly held belief by many Israelis that “Arabs only understand force” (nevermind that the Iranians are Persians, not Arabs).

The political price for Israel to pay for such an aggression would really be minimal:

Israel is already the most hated country on the planet and the only country whose public opinion would matter to the Israeli leaders would be the USA where the mantric repetitions of the word “Holocaust”, “new Hitler” and “existential threat” will immediately “bring on board” the entire US corporate media and all of Congress. The American public might not be fully convinced this time, but since the Neocons have an iron grip on both political parties the public would have little to say about it.

The main problem for Israel is that it can only execute a very limited nuclear strike which, while possibly destroying some deeply buried Iranian installation or killing some Iranian leaders, would really fail to achieve anything significant beyond the short-term. Horrible as this may sound, an Israeli nuclear strike on Iran would probably be a combination of psychotherapy for its hapless leaders and of a public relations gambit for the confused and frustrated Israeli population. I really doubt that the Israeli military commanders would go along with that even if the political leadership demands it.

A U.S. nuclear strike

A nuclear strike by the USA would be of a much different nature. For one thing, it could be part of an overall military strategy aimed at destroying some very hardened targets (leadership, nuclear or other). Of course, nobody in the White House actually believes that Iran is developing nuclear weapons right under the noses of the IAEA inspectors – that kind of nonsense is only for public consumption. However, destroying high-value civilian nuclear objectives could very much be a part of a campaign aimed at bombing Iran “back to the stone age” (to use James Baker's threat to Tarek Aziz in 1991). Not only that, I would not put it past the Neocons to assume that somehow the use of nuclear weapons would scare the Iranians into submission. At the very least, such a use of nuclear weapons would serve as a “firm sign of resolve to the Iranian Mollahs”. No matter how misguided such a logic might seem pragmatically, the Neocons have repeatedly shown their skills at denying the obvious (just getting bogged down in Iraq will probably be consigned into history books as the single worst foreign policy decision in US history).

Unlike Israel, the USA is not the most hated nation on earth (it only holds the second position). Nonetheless, there are huge political risks for the Neocons in using nuclear weapons against Iran. While I personally predict a rather typically lame European response to a US aggression against Iran, the European public opinion would, I believe, react with such a level of outrage at a non-provoked nuclear attack on any nation on earth that EU leaders would have to strongly react or find themselves in a massive political crisis. The same goes for Asia and South America where a US nuclear strike on Iran would trigger a political chain reaction which would immensely damage US interests. Simply put, if Israel can rely on the USA to unconditionally bail it out from any crisis, who will bail out the USA?

While I do believe that a US nuclear attack on Iran is a possibility, I am also quite confident that such an attack would also result in a general political, economic and even military collapse of the Neocon Empire. Currently, while most of the world hates the USA, this hatred is still primarily directed at the person of Bush The Lesser and his administration. Should the USA actually ever be the first to use nuclear weapons in any war, the entire USA, as a nation, would achieve a pariah status worldwide and would fatally undermine its own vital political and economic interests.

Note that a US nuclear strike on Iran would in no way undermine or weaken the Iranian political leadership, quite to the contrary, it would likely to unify all Iranians into a formidable and enraged block which would wage all-out war against Imperial interest in the entire Middle-East. In such a situation a massive Hezbollah attack in Israel would be virtually certain.

Conclusions

In conclusion we can see that Iran would not have to proactively do anything to make the Empire pay for an short and limited attack. Riding out the attack and letting the Neocons pay the political price for their folly would be the most likely Iranian response. In case of a long term major Imperial war against Iran, the Iranians would have a broad variety of “asymmetrical” options from which to choose, none of which would involve shutting down the Strait of Hormuz or chasing US aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf.

In any scenario, time would always be on the Iranian side while the Empire would very rapidly run out of options to try force an acceptable outcome.

This lack of a viable “exit strategy” would rapidly force the time-pressed Imperial High Command to consider the use of nuclear weapons to avoid getting bogged down in a rapidly worsening situation. Any actual use of nuclear weapons would result into a general collapse of the entire Neocon empire of a magnitude similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In other words, there are no possible winning strategies for an Imperial aggression against Iran.

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