Attack Iran? Part 2

In 1951, democratically-elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who held the quaint notion that a country's natural resources should benefit the country's population rather than foreigners, proceeded to nationalize the oil industry. As a result, the US and British secret services orchestrated a coup, overthrowing Mossadegh and replacing him with Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. The Shah was a pro-Israeli/Western puppet famous for his murderous security service Savak with its gruesome torture techniques. As Robert Fisk points out ("The Great War For Civilisation" p. 99), "A permanent secret US mission was attached to Savak headquarters." By 1979, the Iranians had had enough and overthrew the Shah, seizing the US Embassy, and taking American hostages. Fisk writes (p. 127-128) that 2300 documents, shredded by the Americans, were pasted back together over six years revealing much incriminating information, such as associations between Savak and Mossad, Israel's secret service. The next year, the US supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran. Fisk notes, "Iraq was already using gas to kill thousands of Iranian soldiers when Donald Rumsfeld made his notorious 1983 visit to Baghdad to shake Saddam's hand and ask him for permission to reopen the US embassy." (p. 166) Fisk also documents the fact that the US supplied Saddam with materials for both chemical and biological WMD. (p. 211-212) It would appear that instead of invading Iran, we should apologize to them.

Attack Iran? Part 1

The Israel Lobby, determined to attack Iran, is forever quoting Iranian President Ahmadinejad's expressed desire to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Actually, this sentiment is commonplace in the Arab and Muslim worlds, thanks to the sin that dares not speak its name (in the US), i.e. the Israeli occupation and persecution of the Palestinians. (This is why establishing justice in Palestine is key to peace in this region.) Whereas Israel occupies Palestine and parts of Syria and Lebanon, and whereas the US occupies Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran occupies nobody. Indeed, it was Iraq, backed by the US, which invaded Iran in 1980, initiating the Iran/Iraq War in which a million soldiers died. Our war-mongering, trigger-happy president, who is allergic to diplomacy and oblivious to the other side of any issue, is threatening an attack on Iran. Given his pathological history, we must take such threats seriously. President Bush is apparently not content for our soldiers to be merely fighting Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, al-Queda, and messianic cults in Iraq, he wants them to take on the Iranian army as well. Could he be suffering from megalomania?