The Reasoned Review

Iran gets a “draft proposal” for new sanctions – Israel fires up its third nuclear reactor.

Update:

Our Vice-President has just announced a blank cheque policy for Israel, saying: “There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security“.

The Times has a hilarious investigative report in today’s issue. Apparently $100 billion in government cash has gone into the pockets of energy companies doing business with the nefarious Iran.

Its worth getting out of the way first that sanctions don’t work. They never have. Numerous studies have concluded that the net effect of “sanctions” is invariably to strengthen the targeted regime, and an article on sanctions in Iran – especially on how US companies are violating them – should probably mention this.

Instead, The Times plumps for the opposite approach – that instead of the sanctions themselves being a vicious attack on the Iranian people, the violation on the part of the US companies of the sanctions is the real crime. It bears mentioning that the major Israeli paper, Haartez, ran a similar story, “US Rewarding Firms That Defy Iran Sanctions“, with a much angrier headline. The pro-Israel lobby clearly isn’t happy about this.

The whole Times article really deserves to be read in full, as it presents a case study in systemic bias. Observe:

For years, the United States has been pressing other nations to join its efforts to squeeze the Iranian economy, in hopes of reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Now, with the nuclear standoff hardening and Iran rebuffing American diplomatic outreach, the Obama administration is trying to win a tough new round of United Nations sanctions.

The third paragraph. Note how nonchalantly The Times speaks of “squeezing” the Iranian economy and “reining in” its nuclear ambitions, as though we have an implicit right to do such things. The next sentence accuses Iran of “rebuffing American diplomatic outreach” (an Orwellianism, that), completely ignoring Iran’s agreement to ship its uranium for inspection in Russia. The US demanded to send its own specialists into Iran to “inspect” their sites, something which Iran rightfully refused. Actually, when one thinks of it, the Americans rebuffed Iran’s outreach, but in true propaganda style, The Times reverses the accusation.

After a few paragraphs describing how easily US companies and those of our “allies” can operate in Iran and how eager Iran is for foreign investment, The Times says:

One of the government’s most powerful tools, at least on paper, to influence the behavior of companies beyond the jurisdiction of the embargo is the Iran Sanctions Act, devised to punish foreign companies that invest more than $20 million in a given year to develop Iran’s oil and gas fields. But in the 14 years since the law was passed, the government has never enforced it, in part for fear of angering America’s allies.

That has given rise to situations like the one involving the South Korean engineering giant Daelim Industrial, which in 2007 won a $700 million contract to upgrade an Iranian oil refinery.

Once again, the implicit assumption is that these “sanctions” (a) work, and (b) are legitimate. After all, why shouldn’t South Korea be allowed to invest where it wishes? The Times claims that the Army’s $111 million investment in S. Korea should have bought at least some respect for our sanctions, but this is a facile argument.

Later, they complain that Brazil, the Netherlands, France, and other “US allies” are investing in Iran while taking US dollars.

The Iranian government has engaged in some unsavory acts this past year, but the amount of violence it visited upon its citizens is minuscule compared to that of our “allies”, particularly Israel. Even the highest estimates of the death toll in Iran’s post-election violence only reach the low hundreds. In January of the same year, Israel killed more than 2,000 Gaza civilians, and dozens die from lack of food, water, or sanitation as a result of that action and the surrounding blockade every day.

If we’re really going to castigate countries for human-rights violations and write massive “exposes” on US companies violating sanctions , shouldn’t we focus on a more murderous country than Iran?

Here we go again! Another evasive, revisionist piece of trash from none other than our favorite warmonger, Thomas Friedman! I hasten to point out that Friedman was one of the Iraq War’s biggest cheerleaders, once exhorting the starving Iraqi masses to “Suck. On. This.” (i.e. our bombs). That linked YouTube video comes highly recommended because it reveals, for all the world to see, just what a slimy reptile Mr. Friedman really is. But no, he’s not finished! In his February 24th New York Times column he takes his complete lack of ethics, his shifting morality, and his base “intellectualism” to a new low.

Tongue-twistingly entitled “Iraq’s Known Unknowns, Still Unknown” (a ‘clever’ play, I suppose, on Rumsfeld’s famous quote), his article begins with one of the most poorly written, eurocentric, history-denying openings I’ve ever seen:

From the very beginning of the U.S. intervention in Iraq and the effort to build some kind of democracy there, a simple but gnawing question has lurked in the background: Was Iraq the way Iraq was (a dictatorship) because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq was the way Iraq was — a collection of warring sects incapable of self-rule and only governable with an iron fist?

Maybe Iraq was “the way it was” because the Untied States actively funded Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship for decades. Has this man ever read a history book? We supported Saddam all through the ’80s, and then after his failed adventure in Kuwait we imposed “sanctions” on Iraq which had the net effect of strengthening his regime, albeit at the cost of 500,000 Iraqi children (what Madeline Albright called “a price worth paying”). Does he think that may have something to do with it? Nah, it’s much easier to just be a racist and tar Iraq as a “collection of warring sects incapable of self-rule and only governable with an iron fist”. That way the US invasion almost seems justified!

It’s hard to imagine anyone topping that astounding bit of stupidity, but really, Friedman is just getting started:

Ironically, though, it was the neo-conservative Bush team that argued that culture didn’t matter in Iraq, and that the prospect of democracy and self-rule would automatically bring Iraqis together to bury the past. While many liberals and realists contended that Iraq was an irredeemable tribal hornet’s nest and we should not be sticking our hand in there; it was a place where the past would always bury the future.

But stick we did, and in so doing we gave Iraqis a chance to do something no other Arab people have ever had a chance to do: freely write their own social contract on how they would like to rule themselves and live together.

Oh boy! I’m sure the Iraqis were just thrilled that we gave them the chance to “freely write their own social contract” – I mean, sure, it was at the barrel of US artillery, but it’s not nice to talk about that, right, Friedman? And I think you’re missing something here. Do you remember something called “WMDs”? You know, the ones that we never found? I think that was the real reason we attacked Iraq, in blatant violation of international law. All this talk of “supporting democracy” came afterward.

Also, the “liberals and realists” did not contend that Iraq was an “irredeemable tribal hornet’s nest”, you miserable racist. We said that America shouldn’t “stick [its] hand there” because attacking a country that was not actively preparing to declare war would be a monstrous act of aggression and an express violation of international law. It’s “irredeemable” to “contend” otherwise.

Then Mr. Friedman talks about his latest meeting with Gen. Odierno, who, along with Joe Biden, has apparently done the most to “coax, cajole, and occasionally shove Iraq away from the abyss”. You know, the abyss that we opened up. The Iraqis sure are lucky they had Uncle Sam around to “cajole” them away from it!

I found the general hopeful but worried. He was hopeful because he has seen Iraqis go to the brink so many times and then pull back, but worried because sectarian violence is steadily creeping back ahead of the elections and certain Shiite politicians, like the former Bush darling Ahmed Chalabi — whom General Odierno indicated is clearly “influenced by Iran” and up to no good — have been trying to exclude some key Sunni politicians from the election.

Wrong, you colossal ass, a thousand times wrong! Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you work for the New York Times. The real reason “some key Sunni politicians” are being excluded from the Iraqi election is because of a specific order by our own Paul Bremer that banned former Ba’ath party members from contesting elections. Your own newspaper reminded us of this just five days before your column ran. Don’t you read newspapers? But it’s so much easier to shift the blame onto our scapegoat Chalabi, isn’t it? Facts are just too cumbersome.

How does Friedman think the elections might play out? Well…

The ideal but least likely scenario is that we see the emergence of an Iraqi Shiite Nelson Mandela. The Shiites, long suppressed by Iraq’s Baathist-led Sunni minority, are now Iraq’s ruling majority. Could Iraq produce a Shiite politician, who, like Mandela, would be a national healer — someone who would use his power to lead a real reconciliation instead of just a Shiite dominion? So far, no sign of it.

Okay, you want to see a “Shiite Nelson Mandela”. What has the US been doing to promote this? Well, we’ve been arbitrarily arresting and throwing Shiites in jail on false pretexts for a while now. Didn’t Nelson Mandela go to jail? We’ve brutally occupied their country and left it swarming with mercenaries. I guess that’s kind of like South Africa? I don’t know. Maybe Mr. Friedman could just drop this dishonest comparison to Nelson Mandela and try and give some real solutions. Nah, that’s too hard.

So tell us what you don’t want, Mr. Friedman:

The two scenarios you don’t want to see are: 1) Iraq’s tribal culture triumphing over politics and the country becoming a big Somalia with oil; or 2) as America fades away, Iraq’s Shiite government aligning itself more with Iran, and Iran becoming the kingmaker in Iraq the way Syria has made itself in Lebanon.

Again with the racial overtures! Good lord, what kind of human being are you? “Iraq’s tribal culture”, eh? “A big Somalia with oil”? Did you really write that with a straight face? You “pundits” are all the same. If a country doesn’t have cars and multinational corporations in it, then its automatically a “tribal” culture. Man, you would have fit right in with the European imperialists laying waste to Asia and South America. You were born in the wrong century, Mr. Friedman!

As to your second scenario: forgive me, but why? Why shouldn’t Iraq be friends with its neighbor, Iran? Just because you, personally, wouldn’t like it? What do you mean by “kingmaker”? Iraq’s culture is predominantly Shi’a – so to a reasonable observer it should make sense that Iraq and Iran would be friends. Mr. Friedman, however, is not a reasonable observer.

He ends with a parting shot, and a last bit of historical revisionism:

Why should we care when we’re leaving? Quite simply, so much of the turmoil in the region was stoked over the years by Saddam’s Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, both financed by billions in oil revenues. If, over time, a decent democratizing regime could emerge in Iraq and a similar one in Iran — so that oil wealth was funding reasonably decent regimes rather than retrograde ones — the whole Middle East would be different.

Mr. Friedman, unlike myself, was actually alive to remember the Iran-Contra scandal, and thus has no excuse for this spectacular display of ignorance. “So much of the turmoil” in the region was not stoked by “billions in oil revenues”, as it was by billions in CIA dollars, paid to both sides, with express instructions to keep fighting. I mean Jesus, how can he not remember this? The United States gave arms and funding to both sides of the Iraq-Iran conflict, and used the proceeds to illegally fund a terrorist group in Nicaragua. Doesn’t he think that “stoked” some turmoil in the region? I guess when you’re Thomas Friedman, history just doesn’t matter.

I simply cannot believe this guy is writing for The New York Times while tens of millions of Americans are out of work. Anyone who has graduated from high school has a firmer grasp of history than Thomas Friedman. Anyone short of a Ku Klux Klan member has more ethical integrity. Thomas Friedman is a joke.

Anne Applebaum has won major accolades for her Gulag: A History, for which she owes a huge debt of gratitude to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and which constitutes the poor man’s history of the Soviet Union – for when you want your histories dull and without universal insights into human nature. Her work for The Washington Post, however, has been singularly atrocious, and one wonders what, exactly, she learned from all her research into the depths of evil.

Her columns consistently and unapologetically disavow international law, human rights, or any concern for civilian casualties – each week brings a new and more forceful call to “defend our allies” and “defeat our enemies”, usually with only the most token concern for anyone who might stand in our way.

Her latest article, horrifically entitled: “Prepare for War With Iran – In Case Israel Strikes” displays all of her odious tendencies, and is worth discussing in detail.

She starts by observing that President Obama is unlikely to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran. Why?

The president will not bomb Iran’s nuclear installations for precisely the same reasons that George W. Bush did not bomb Iran’s nuclear installations: Because we don’t know exactly where they all are, because we don’t know whether such a raid could stop the Iranian nuclear program for more than a few months, and because Iran’s threatened response — against Israelis and U.S. troops, via Iranian allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon — isn’t one we want to cope with at this moment.

Apparently this lady hasn’t heard of a little thing called international law. You see, under normal circumstances, countries aren’t allowed to go mindlessly bombing each other on flimsy pretexts. This constitutes “aggression”, and the Nuremberg Principles (to which we supposedly subscribe) consider it “the supreme international crime”. I mean, I get that we basically threw that idea out the window long ago, but isn’t Ms. Applebaum supposed to be a scholar who specializes in international relations? What kind of scholar thinks the only reason we don’t go around bombing other countries is because it probably wouldn’t work?

After this bald refutation of the basic principles of international law, Ms. Applebaum raises another specter of war. Even though we may consider it inconvenient to bomb Iran, that doesn’t mean other countries won’t. Other countries like Israel. As she remarks:

The defining moment of his presidency may well come at 2 a.m. some day when he picks up the phone and is told that the Israeli prime minister is on the line: Israel has just carried out a raid on Iranian nuclear sites. What then?

Yes, “what then” indeed? Well, a reasonable observer might note that such a “raid” would be an act of sheer aggression, not to mention one supremely unjustified. After all, Israel boasts of its nuclear weapons every chance it gets, and Iran hasn’t carried out any “raids” on its nuclear sites.  A country truly interested in the rule of law would chastise Israel for its wanton aggression, cut off the extravagant military aid ($2.5 billion per year) it currently supplies the aggressor, and maybe even impose those sanctions everyone likes to talk about so much. The same sanctions we’re currently threatening Iran with. I don’t remember Israel getting any sanctions when it got the bomb. Oh, that’s right. We gave it to them.

The rest of the article serves as a justification for such Israeli “raids”. As she says:

Many Israelis regard the Iranian nuclear program as a matter of life and death. The prospect of a nuclear Iran isn’t an irritant or a distant threat. It is understood directly in the context of the Iranian president’s provocative attacks on Israel’s right to exist and his public support for historians who deny the Holocaust. If you want to make Israelis paranoid, hint that they might be the target of an attempted mass murder. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does exactly that.

I have a hard time believing she wrote this passage with a straight face. Perhaps she remembers a little speech given by President Bush, charmingly nicknamed the “Axis of Evil” speech. In it, he specifically named Iran to the eponymous “axis”, and then punctuated that slur by invading another member of said axis. The US mainstream press is is full of naked suggestions that President Obama attack Iran, including this endearing piece by Mr. Daniel Pipes, ludicrously entitled How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran. “The American people would support it,” Mr. Pipes contends.

For crying out loud, Ms. Applebaum’s own article is entitled “Prepare for War with Iran”! I wonder if she thinks that might make the Iranians “paranoid”.

Of course, Ms. Applebaum doesn’t want war with Iran. But a country’s gotta do what a country’s gotta do:

I do hope that this administration is ready, militarily and psychologically, not for a war of choice but for an unwanted war of necessity. This is real life, after all, not Hollywood.

And here we see, finally, in what an alternate reality our mainstream punditry operates. Defending an Israeli war of aggression is no longer a choice, but a necessity. Should Israel, without consulting us, begin a unilaterial bombing campaign on Iran, the United States has no choice but to fight Israel’s war for it. I mean, does Ms. Applebaum expect us to buy this nonsense?

Next she’ll be telling us that it’s necessary for the US to remain the “sole superpower” for the indefinite future. Oh wait…

A new Gallup Poll:

I wonder if Iran’s low approval has anything to do with the ceaseless, virulent propaganda directed against it. After all, Egypt has just as repressive a government  (some might say more so) to Iran’s – but then, they happen to be a US-Funded dictatorship – so that makes all the difference, I guess. Israel, for that matter, is only once step removed from an outright state-sponsor of terrorism, what with its frequent, devastating raids on the Gaza strip (the last one killed more than 1,500 civilians), its continual blockade of Gaza (which starves the Gazan citizens and has been defined as a war crime), and its agressive expansion into the occupied territories (remember when aggression was considered “the supreme international crime”?)

So I guess all this poll really shows is how effective US propaganda is. Americans like countries that are “friendly” to the US, and dislike countries who are “unfriendly” – facts be damned!

The US media is predictably awash with euphoria at the latest protest movement in Iran. Originating after the botched election of June 2009, this anti-Ahmadinejad movement has whet the appetites of our policy planners, who clearly hope it will lead to a “more democratic” (read: pro-west) government in the place of Ahmadinejad’s “repressive” regime. Though the original movement died down after a couple months, this latest resurgence, on the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, proves it has not quite vanished. The US establishment could not be happier.

Read for instance this joyful op-ed in today’s Times, entitled “Will Iran become a Beacon of Liberty?” (like Iraq was supposed to be?):

A democratic revolution in Tehran could well prove the most momentous Mideastern event since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. A politically freer Iran would bring front and center the great Islamic debate of our times: How can one be both a good Muslim and a democrat? How does one pay homage to Islamic law but give ultimate authority to the people’s elected representatives? How can a Muslim import the best of the West without suffering debilitating guilt?

Wow. That’s pretty optimistic.

Two notes in connection with this:

First, it remains clear that the main opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Moussavi does not seek a dismantling of the Islamic Revolution, likely seeks to keep Khamenei in the seat of power, and has spoken repeatedly in favor of the current constitution, claiming it carries within it the “seeds of democracy” (source).  We in the West like to demonize Ahmadinejad, but the fact remains that he is a relatively minor player in Iranian politics. Ayatollah Khamenei holds all the real power, and any “reform” which leaves him in place is no reform at all.

On that note, Khameni’s behavior in this struggle is utterly inscrutable. Why does he continue to support Ahmadinejad, who is clearly unpopular, and probably incompetent to boot? Why not just tell Ahmadinejad his time is up, and let Mousavi be the puppet for a while? Khamenei’s vacillation has cost him, because now Mousavi’s supporters are shouting “death to Khamenei!” – something which Mousavi never endorsed. A situation which he could have easily contained now presents him a significant problem.

Secondly, it is clear that America is making heavy use of this protest movement, while it appears to refrain from actively funding it. Twitter, and Google, to take just two examples, have made millions off of these protests – indeed, a few bloggers have cynically termed the movement “one big advertisement for Twitter”. And while the US may have hidden its hand in these particular protests, the fact remains that it has attempted continuously to destabilize the Iranian Government for years. As Paul Craig helpfully notes in Counterpunch:

On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”

On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”

A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”

On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”

Whether these protests are a product of such “covert action” – or even what that action entailed – we’ll never know. However, recall the “National Endowment for Democracy”, a US-sponsored group which promoted several ‘color revolutions’ across Eastern Europe, and which is known to have given money to the Mousavi clique.

In the end, I wish the Mousavi protesters all the best in their efforts. I don’t think Iran will become signifiantly “more democratic” so long as Khamenei is allowed to remain in power, but with Mousavi in the presidency, it is likely to become more “western-oriented”. This, of course, means relinquishing its right to sell oil in whatever currency it wants (infuriating the US via the Iran Oil Bourse), and also relinquishing what should be its right: to develop nuclear power. So the United States’ agenda will thus be fulfilled. But one hopes the Iranian public would also incur some benefit.

(c/o Kevin Drum)

The Project for Defense Alternatives has just put up its 2011 guide to Pentagon spending, entitled Trillions to Burn – complete with nine handy charts which excruciatingly detail the United States’ military dominance of the world. We will be hearing a lot in the coming months about the US budget deficit – how this or that proposal will be “unfeasible” because of its budgetary implications, or how we must reduce social spending (via education, social security, medicare, etc.) in order to show “fiscal responsibility”. Just know that all of those statements are hogwash and bullshit (or hogshit, if you like).

In reality, the single biggest contributor to the United States budget deficit is so-called “defense spending”. We spend upwards of $5000 per second in Iraq (source) and spend a similar amount per unit time in Afghanistan. This spending does nothing for anybody. It does not make us “more safe”, it does not help these impoverished people “achieve democracy”, and it certainly hasn’t made oil any cheaper. The only thing – and I do mean the only thing – it does is transfer the nation’s wealth from the taxpayer to a select group of war profiteers.

That’s it. That’s all our “defense spending” does. The next time you hear some “Republican” or “Democrat” spout off about how we need to spend this money in order to “defeat our enemies”, check to see who their campaign contributors are (via OpenSecrets), and ask yourself if these people would still be our “enemies” if we weren’t spending the equivalent of South Korea’s GDP every year attempting to bomb them out of their homes. Remember the Fort Hood shooter, who specifically stated that his motivation was outrage over US massacres of Iraqi and Afghan civilians? Or the so-called “shoe bomber” who similarly claimed he was compelled to attack the US because of its ongoing support for Israeli atrocities in Gaza?  (Aid to Israel = “Defense spending”, in the eyes of our budget office). Osama bin Laden himself, assuming he was responsible for 9/11, repeatedly cited the US occupation of Saudi Arabia and its continued ‘aid’ to Israel as his primary beefs with the United States.

It is clear that the gargantuan sums of money we allocate for ‘defense’ have precisely the opposite of their intended effect. That we should spend our time squabbling over whether or not health care reform should “add to the deficit” demonstrates just how far removed from reality our discourse has become. Anyone who claims to worry about the deficit yet still thinks we need to prosecute our foreign adventures is either an idiot or in the pay of our ‘defense contractors’. Either way, we should all benefit from their swift and timely death.

These people, apparently.

Via The New York Times:

The Obama administration is accelerating the deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf, placing special ships off the Iranian coast and antimissile systems in at least four Arab countries, according to administration and military officials.

…

Military officials said that the countries that accepted the defense systems were Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. They said the Kuwaitis had agreed to take the defensive weapons to supplement older, less capable models it has had for years. Saudi Arabia and Israel have long had similar equipment of their own.

…

He also described a first line of defense: He said the United States was now keeping Aegis cruisers on patrol in the Persian Gulf at all times. Those cruisers are equipped with advanced radar and antimissile systems designed to intercept medium-range missiles. Those systems would not be useful against Iran’s long-range missile, the Shahab 3, but intelligence agencies believe that it will be years before Iran can solve the problems of placing a nuclear warhead atop that missile.

It’s important to remember that in the mouths of our “military planners”, words have a tendency to mean their opposite. Thus, “defensive” means “aggressive”; “defense systems” mean “offensive weapons platforms” and “deterrence” means “coercion”. With that in mind, the true designs of the United States become evident.

Iran, you see, is not allowed to have nuclear weapons – or even peaceful nuclear power plants. Only the United States is mature enough to decide who can and cannot be “trusted” with nuclear weapons. Iran, naturally, doesn’t consider this legitimate or fair. So to “protect” themselves from the Iranian “threat”, the US sets up umpteen missile bases all along Iran’s border and arms its neighbors to the teeth. For “defense’, you see.

It’s also worth mentioning that “missile defense” is error-prone, unreliable and impracticable. There is no technology capable of reliably shooting a missile out of the sky. None. The real point of setting up “missile defense” systems on Iran’s border is for offense – to have a quick button we can push if Iran further incurs our displeasure.

Two bombs went off in our war regions this week, the first deadly literal and the second no less murderous, but figurative. In Iraq a car bomb ripped through the capital, nearly demolishing their Justice Ministry and killing or wounding some 900-odd civilians. The explosion occurred just three blocks off from the “Green Zone” and emphasizes just how precarious our situation there is. Though our press continues to spout that “the surge worked” and that “violence has significantly reduced”, the fact remains that bombings in Iraq are still a weekly occurrence (Iraq has had 75 suicide bombings so far this year).

Of course, under our guiding “strategy” in Iraq, this latest attack will serve as further evidence that a troop withdrawal may be premature, instead of suggesting, as it should, that the withdrawal process has not occurred quickly enough. In particular, this episode exemplifies the inherent weakness of the al-Maliki government, and raises grave doubts as to how long he will survive our withdrawal; a fact which will probably be used in the future to justify some type of “security contingent” of residual American troops in Iraq.

Over on the other side of Iran, our Other War took a decidedly strange turn. The New York Times released yesterday the (not-so) shocking news that our corrupt friend Hamid Karzai’s improbably more corrupt brother happens to be on the CIA’s payroll. This is important news for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that Brother Karzai happens to be the single largest distributor of heroin in Afghanistan. (source 2, source 3, source 4, etc.) There goes our rationale of fighting the Afghans to stem their horrific flow of heroin. It is important to bear in mind that while Afghanistan currently supplies 90% of the world’s heroin, their large-scale poppy production began only after the US invasion, specifically in 2006-2007 (source). So if we went there to stem the tide of opium, our presence there has had a dramatically opposite effect.

This recent revelation that their largest opium producer works for the CIA can be considered a few different ways. Being that the CIA refuses to say anything about the matter, except that they paid Brother Karzai for “a variety of services”, one is left to speculate:

1. The CIA pays Brother Karzai to keep tabs on Prime Minister Hamid

This would suggest that while our CIA certainly does not care about destroying opium, they consider its production an irrelevant by-product. Here, opium production is the easiest way to control the Karzai government, making them acquiesce to US rule and sign a general blank check for us to operate on their territory

2.    The CIA actually wishes for an increase in opium and heroin production

Recently, I have heard this theory expressed quite often, and incredible though it may sound, its supporters do adhere to a sort of logic. Under this interpretation, US and CIA involvement in Afghanistan is actually designed to produce opium, one of the most profitable crops on earth. A very significant proportion of the heroin produced in Afghanistan is shipped to Europe or America, where it fetches a handsome price. The CIA, as most people know, have a rich and varied history of partnering with drug traffickers, even by their own admission. It would not be far-fetched to imagine some sort of arrangement where the CIA shares the profits from Karzai’s poppy fields and diverts it back into the US Treasury. When one considers that heroin is a multi-billion dollar per year industry, the prospect seems quite a bit more likely.

3.     The CIA has been keeping these payments to use as leverage.

This seems the most likely, when one stops to think about it. Karzai has been on the CIA payroll for more than 8 years (longer than his brother has been Prime Minister). Why would they choose to release this information now? To speculate, one might point to the recent botched elections in Afghanistan. Thus far the US has been rather supportive of the Karzai government, but they have been showing signs of impatience. It is entirely possible that some master brain within the State Department woke up one morning and decided to cut Karzai loose.  They may have decided the best way to do so would be to release sensitive information about Karzai’s brother in order to send a message, or to distance ourselves euphemistically (“Well, he’s a drug lord, you know? We don’t want to deal with drug lords…”)

All rootless speculation aside however, I think today’s news proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that our US Government engages heavily in the production and sale of illicit drugs in Afghanistan (murder, etc. not withstanding, of course.)

Iran has agreed, at least in principle, to export its proto-nuclear fuel to Russia for inspection and enrichment. The deal would have Russia “re-format” Iran’s un-enriched nuclear fuel into a form which might be used for medical purposes. Although it still has yet to be finalized, most observers are hailing this development as a “positive step” in US-Iran relations.

According to The Huffington Post:

[The deal] would commit Iran to turn over more than 2,600 pounds (1,200 kilograms) of low-enriched uranium. That would significantly ease fears about Iran’s nuclear program, since 2,205 pounds (1,000 kilograms) is the commonly accepted amount of low-enriched uranium needed to produce weapons-grade uranium.

So the deal would force Iran to export almost exactly the amount of LEU (low-enriched Uranium) required to make a bomb. Of course this would not prevent them from acquiring even more LEU at a later date, nor is it clear precisely how much LEU Iran currently has. Leaked reports of the deal suggest Iran would export almost 70% of its Low-Enriched Uranium, but this still remains to be seen.

The decision to send the Uranium to Russia also comes off as a bit strange. It is well known that Russia has been providing Iran with nuclear secrets at least since the 1990s, though they claim to have stopped.

From the Mid-East Monitor:

Russian-Iranian cooperation has been driven less by parallel aspirations or a common worldview than by reciprocal accommodation on certain issues. In the 1990s, Russia began providing Iran with arms and assistance building its nuclear program, while shielding it from the threat of multilateral sanctions. In return, Tehran largely acquiesced to heavy-handed Russian domination of the six predominantly Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union in the Caucasus and Central Asia, in spite of its strong religious ties to the region (Azerbaijan, like Iran, is majority Shiite; the rest are majority Sunni), as well as significant ethnic and linguistic links (ethnic Azeris constitute a quarter of Iran’s population, Tajikistan’s official language is a dialect of Farsi)

So it’s easy to see why Russia would still want to have its finger on Iran’s nuclear program.

Ultimately I think this deal, assuming it passes, would constitute less of a victory for the US than its cheerleaders would suggest. But it does present a welcome change from the sheer bellicosity we have heard from the US on Iran of late.

America and Iran are now engaging in high-level talks with the reported aim of inducing Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. This development comes at a point of extra ammunition for US negotiators, having just revealed their knowledge of a secret enrichment facility in Qom.

But wait a minute. The US Government admits it has known about the Qom facility for at least three years. Why should they choose this particular moment to show their hand? Given that these high-level meetings occur literally on the heels of their Qom revelation, a sort of bargain using the facility as leverage isn’t difficult to imagine. But what do we want from the Iranians?

Administration officials claim the main goal of these talks is to persuade Iran to give up its claims to a bomb, but recent events would suggest that is only a secondary objective. Primarily, our policy planners wish to ensure Iran’s cooperation with the dollar.

Last week, mere days before the US government made public the nuclear facility in Qom, Iran began shifting its foreign currency reserves from the Dollar to the Euro. This comes well after Iran created its own oil exchange, The Iran Oil Bourse, and began trading a majority of its oil in Euros or Yen. It cannot be a coincidence that the US decided to reveal its knowledge of a secret facility and ramp up its vilification campaign immediately after Iran undertook this decision.

Much has been made of the similarities between our current stance toward Iran and our statements regarding Iraq immediately before we invaded (the hysteria over “weapons of mass destruction”, the demonization of their leaders,the open threats, etc.), but to those we can add one more example: Both countries threatened to liquidate their dollar holdings shortly before the melodrama over their “weapons programs” materialized. On October 4, 2000, on the eve of President Bush’s election, Iraq decided to begin selling its oil in Euros, the only OPEC country at the time who dared to do so. The quickening drumbeat in favor of war in Iraq began soon after.

The discovery of a second uranium enrichment site in Iran has again ignited the “debate” over nuclear strategy regarding that thorn in the Middle East. Once again, the conversation centers upon how best to prevent Iran from acquiring those dastardly weapons – no mention is given to why Iran should so badly wish to join the nuclear club, nor does our mainstream even entertain the notion of what might happen should they succeed. Iran must be prevented from “going nuclear” at all costs, according to the US media. Instead of a rational debate as to the causes and possible effects of this development, the newspaper-reading citizen is treated to a variety of doomsday scenarios and chest-puffing from our sensationalists-in-chief.

For instance, here is British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, doing his best impression of John Wayne:

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, and called the Iranian facility “a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime.” Added Mr. Brown, “The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.”

The Wall Street Journal’s front page features an essay entitled: “Israel’s attack plan for Iran”, while The Washington Post’s cryptic headline reads: “President’s focus shifts from engaging Iran”. We are left to guess what he is shifting to, although the article hints at “sanctions” and possibly “military action.”

Amid the bellicosity spewing from the western media, the question of why, after all the threats, after all the entreaties to the contrary, Iran should continue to desire a nuclear weapon remains unanswered. The unspoken reason is given to be sheer madness: Ahmadinejad is a “tyrant”, a “madman”, a crazy holocaust denier who wishes nothing more than the obliteration of Israel. That, and only that, is the reason for Iran’s nuclear ambition, and, as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu thundered at the United Nations this week,

“The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

But let us suppose, merely as an intellectual exercise, that Iran is not run by lunatics, but instead by reasonably sane politicians who, like all politicians, seek only the continuation of their own power. Then, a few very good reasons to pursue nuclear arms come quickly to light:

1) Insurance against invasion

It is an unspoken rule amongst policy planners that “nuclear weapons states do not invade one another”, a fact most recently illustrated by the delicacy with which the United States has treated North Korea. Nuclear weapons are the greatest safeguard against regime change. Considering that Iran is still part of the “axis of evil”, and especially in light of the fact that the US currently occupies the countries directly to its east and west (Iraq and Afghanistan), there should be no surprise that Iran seeks some sort of insurance against a US invasion. Particularly when one considers what happened to Saddam – who, after all, did not posses nuclear weapons – the choice to acquire nukes should not be a difficult one.

2) Deterrence against Israel

Unlike Iran, who has had to enrich their uranium surreptitiously, Israel, by the good graces of the US, has been allowed to acquire nuclear weapons quite in the open. They now posses a stockpile of unknown quantity, nearly all aimed at Iran, and the American and Israeli media abound with aggressive articles that rather plainly state Israel’s intentions toward Iran.

3) Domestic Prestige

Similar to India in 1974 and Pakistan in 1998, a nuclear detonation is generally a splendid propaganda coup for a ruling establishment which finds itself losing its grip on popularity. The Ahmadinejad regime, by any reasonable assessment, has only a slippery grasp on its population, if the massive protests a few months ago are any indication. Add to the mix skyrocketing inflation, massive unemployment, and a general feeling of mismanagement, and it is not difficult to see why Iran’s leaders should wish to bolster their domestic standing with a nice show of power.

4) Energy

Most scoff at this reason as mere propaganda, but it is a fact that Iran, like everyone else, is seeking alternative forms of energy. But as this is likely the least of their motivations, I have placed it last.

Taken together, these reasons do not quite justify a nuclear Iran, but they surely help to see the situation from their point of view. If we are to seriously understand the stakes of this issue we cannot allow ourselves to be blinded by poor caricatures from our yellow press.

Ahmadinejad flouts his patron Ayatollah’s authority

This is somewhat strange, particularly in light of Ayatollah’s alleged illness. In any case, Ahmadinejad has backed down to the “conservative” protests – the disputed deputy is safely out of the picture. His crime was to suggest Iran’s friendliness to all nations, without specifically excluding Israel. Ayatollah wrote a strongly-worded letter demanding the deputy’s resignation, and after a week of hesitation, Ahmadinejad complied.

Despite eulogies by the likes of Roger Cohen that Iran’s population has largely pro-west leanings, an influential contingent of ultra-conservatives clearly has just asserted itself. Ahmadinejad finds himself in an unenviable position – assailed both from the right and left. The Iranian political spectrum appears to be splitting yet again. If the Ayatollah has grown displeased with the fellow whom he just installed by force, it likely suggests the formation of a third power center. On the reformist end, Moussavi and his supporters, on the ultra-nationalist, Islamic end, the Ayatollah and his committed followers, and Ahamadinejad, incredibly, in the center.

The Ayatollah evidently seeks to cut the power out from under Ahmadinejad, but this move probably signifies nothing more. Such “personnel shifts” were not uncommon in the Soviet Union, as Stalin jealously prevented his supporters from forming their own independent cadres. This sorry little episode is further evidence that Ahmadinejad is merely a puppet of the Ayatollah, and that the American Right directs their implacable ire at quite the wrong man.