Well, is it? According to Condoleezza Rice, our esteemed Second Lady, Iran is the neverending threat to world peace we’ve all been waiting for since the Soviet Union collapsed:
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described Iran as “increasingly dangerous” and refused to rule out US military action if Tehran refuses to suspend its nuclear program. […]
“This is a relationship that is, I think, increasingly difficult in a country that is increasingly dangerous,” the chief US diplomat told CNBC television.
Rice outlined Washington’s numerous complaints about Iran, saying it supports terrorism, backs armed militias threatening US forces in Iraq and pursues technologies “that would lead to a nuclear weapon.”
Now, I know that Iran’s government is evil incarnate. I’m well aware that they do not allow dissent, execute teenagers for homosexuality, and enforce a strict religious code on their people. I know their nutjob of a President is a holocaust revisionist, and hates Israel enough to wish it wiped off the face of the earth. But let’s be realistic here.
When did Iran invade another country in order to guarantee access to its oil? In fact, when was the last time Iran invaded or occupied any country? How many civil airliners has Iran’s military shot down “by mistake?” When was the last time that Iran’s intelligence services overthrew a democratically elected government in another country and installed a dictator in its place, a man who brutalized and terrorized his own people? Has Iran supported, sheltered and armed terrorists that have carried out terror attacks against civilians inside the United States? Has Iran ever supported a rogue regime to enable it to prosecute an illegal war of aggression against the United States using weapons of mass destruction? And has Iran ever labeled another nation part of an “axis of evil” or threatened to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state?
Of course, if you followed the links I provided above, you would realize that Iran has done none of those things, but another country with which we are all familiar is guilty of each one of the events described in the articles and reports to which the links in the paragraph above led. The name of that country is the United States of America.
(cont.)
America deposed the democratically elected regime in Iran of Prime Minister Mossadeq in 1953, and installed the brutal regime of the Shah of Iran, our ally and puppet, in it’s place. The Shah, with our support, brutally repressed dissent in Iran through the use of torture and other abusive measures carried out by his secret police, the infamous SAVAK, and also purchased billions of dollars of arms from American defense contractors.
Once the Shah was overthrown, we supported the megalomaniacal Saddam Hussein in the war he commenced against Iran to acquire the oil rich fields of Khuzestan in southwestern Iran, even going so far as to help Saddam acquire the means to make chemical weapons which he then used against his own people as well as the Iranians. More recently the Bush administration has financed terrorist groups such as MEK and Jundallah to carry out terrorist attacks inside
Iran against innocent civilians, while also drawing up plans for military strikes against Iran in which the use of nuclear weapons may be employed.
So, the question really shouldn’t be how much of a danger Iran has become to the United States. The proper questions to ask are why has the United States consistently carried out policies over the past 6 decades that have led to the deaths, directly or indirectly, of millions of Iranians, undermined the current Iranian government with violence, economic sanctions and threats of violent regime change and authorized the US military to prepare plans to attack Iran at a moment’s notice?
I suspect the answer to that question can be found right here:
… At the end of 2000, Iran had the second largest natural gas reserves (23 trillion cubic meters) and the fifth largest crude oil reserves [89.7 billion barrels (Gbbl)] in the world according to the Oil & Gas Journal (2000b). These figures apparently do not include 1999 or 2000 Iranian reserve additions. […]
On 29 October 2004 Iran and China announced the signing of a deal on Chinese investment in Iran’s oil fields and the long-term sale of Iranian natural gas to China that could eventually be worth $100 billion. The gas deal entails the annual export of some 10 million tons of Iranian liquefied natural gas (LNG) for a 25-year period. The deal could eventually reach 15-20m tons a year, taking the total value to as much as $200bn. Delivery could not begin for at least five years, as Iran must first build the plants to liquefy the natural gas. This stunning development was widely considered a major blow to the Bush administration’s sanctions on Iran.
After all, Bush himself has confessed we are in Iraq for the oil. The neoconservative organization, the Project for a New American Century, whose members include Vice President Cheney and many current and former members of the Bush administration, has had its sights set on regime change in Iran for the very same reason that they favored an invasion of Iraq: to assure access to Middle Eastern oil.
In 1992, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had a strategy report drafted for the Department of Defense, written by Paul Wolfowitz, then Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy. In it, the U.S. government was urged, as the world’s sole remaining Superpower, to move aggressively and militarily around the globe. The report called for pre-emptive attacks and ad hoc coalitions, but said that the U.S. should be ready to act alone when “collective action cannot be orchestrated.” The central strategy was to “establish and protect a new order” that accounts “sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership,” while at the same time maintaining a military dominance capable of “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” Wolfowitz outlined plans for military intervention in Iraq as an action necessary to assure “access to vital raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil” and to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and threats from terrorism.
We would be fools not to take them at their word. And we would be equally fools to believe the rhetoric issuing from the mouths of Bush administration officials, such as Secretary Rice, when they claim Iran is the greatest threat to peace in the world, and the greatest danger to our national security. Unfortunately, the truth is that the greatest threat to our nation now sits in the Oval Office of the White House dreaming of initiating more wars in the Middle East, secure in the delusional belief that he has been appointed by God to carry out these “holy wars” in his name.
