Juan Cole: The Black Psy-Ops Campaign against Iran
The Iranian regime is despicable in its lack of respect for basic human rights and in its regimentation of its citizens into a rigid theocracy. But it is no more of a threat to the United States than Burma or the Congo, both of which are just as oppressive. Iran has a very weak military and just isn't a serious threat to any other country. Its values are not US values. But if we are going to do things like send Marines into Iran to force Iranian women to wear bikinis at the beach, we are going to have a very busy century and Arlington Cemetery is going to run out of room.
The warmongers are undeterred.
Taylor Marsh has more on the bogus story from the National Post that Iran was about to make Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians wear identifying badges.
Marsh says that Iranian journalist Amir Taheri says he is standing by his column, which set off the furor, and that the law has been passed and is awaiting implementation. The laws passed by the Iranian parliament are available on the web and in Iranian newspapers, and certainly a law like this would have been written about and published. Could Mr. Taheri provide us please with a URL to the Persian text? If he does not, we have no reason ever again to believe anything he says.
Taheri's standards of reasoning and evidence have recently been slipping. In a recent article on Iraq, he gave as good news the stability of the Iraqi dinar. But in fact the dinar is artificially pegged to the dollar. Its"stability" is the same"stability" that the Egyptian guinea used to have in the 1960s and 1970s when the government just arbitrarily set its exchange rate. When you do that, you get some apparent stability, but you also create a black market and a preference in the country for other currencies. If the Iraqi dinar was allowed to float, it would not be worth very much.
So we have now a non-existent Iranian law and a non-existent Iraqi currency stability. Hmmm. How many more non-existents must we believe before breakfast?
Well, here is another. Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, is reported to have warned that 'Iran was"months rather than years away" from acquiring the capability to make nuclear weapons."Time is running out. . ." '
Months?
I am typing while rolling around on the floor laughing uncontrollably at this blatant falsehood and hypocrisy. The International Atomic Energy Agency just a little over a week ago said it can find no evidence that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program, as opposed to a civilian energy research program. Supreme Jurisprudent Khamenei gave a fatwa in which he forbade nuclear weapons, and the Iranian government denies that it is seeking a bomb. The US National Intelligence Estimate says that if Iran were trying hard to get a bomb and the international circumstances were favorable to all the needed imports, it would still take ten years. And, neither of those"ifs" is in evidence.
Moreover, it is Mr. Gillerman's government that introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East and that has actually threatened to use them. The Likud government menaced Baghdad with the Bomb in the run-up to the March 2003 War that they helped get up by supplying unreliable intelligence to Washington. It was their way of warning Saddam against trying to hit them with chemical warheads. But, would that have been a proportionate response. Iran doesn't have a bomb, has signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and hasn't invaded another country since the 19th century. Israel has hudnreds of bombs, had refused to sign the NPT, and has threatened first use of nukes.
This is just demagoguery and lying.
Mr. Gillerman is, however, occasionally capable of telling the truth. Reuters reports,
Bolton was put at the UN by Bush to get up a war against Iran, though for whom is not entirely clear. He is a notorious liar, who tried to peddle a ridiculous story about a supposed Cuban biological weapons program. He may well be the source of a flight of Judy Millerism that the Iranians had sent evil biologists to Havana to help with a supposed Cuban biological weapons program. Ooooooh. Those Marxist Ayatollah molecular biologist evil scientists are the absolute worst!
Imaginary laws. Imaginary bombs. Imaginary germs. Lies, lies intended to make a war.
If the Iranians were smart, they would dump that buffoon Ahmadinejad and get themselves a less inflammatory president. Ahmadinejad's antics are giving the warmongers in the West all kinds of pretexts to talk war on Tehran. They should take a lesson from what has been done to the Iraqis.
Read entire article at Informed Comment (blog)
The warmongers are undeterred.
Taylor Marsh has more on the bogus story from the National Post that Iran was about to make Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians wear identifying badges.
Marsh says that Iranian journalist Amir Taheri says he is standing by his column, which set off the furor, and that the law has been passed and is awaiting implementation. The laws passed by the Iranian parliament are available on the web and in Iranian newspapers, and certainly a law like this would have been written about and published. Could Mr. Taheri provide us please with a URL to the Persian text? If he does not, we have no reason ever again to believe anything he says.
Taheri's standards of reasoning and evidence have recently been slipping. In a recent article on Iraq, he gave as good news the stability of the Iraqi dinar. But in fact the dinar is artificially pegged to the dollar. Its"stability" is the same"stability" that the Egyptian guinea used to have in the 1960s and 1970s when the government just arbitrarily set its exchange rate. When you do that, you get some apparent stability, but you also create a black market and a preference in the country for other currencies. If the Iraqi dinar was allowed to float, it would not be worth very much.
So we have now a non-existent Iranian law and a non-existent Iraqi currency stability. Hmmm. How many more non-existents must we believe before breakfast?
Well, here is another. Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, is reported to have warned that 'Iran was"months rather than years away" from acquiring the capability to make nuclear weapons."Time is running out. . ." '
Months?
I am typing while rolling around on the floor laughing uncontrollably at this blatant falsehood and hypocrisy. The International Atomic Energy Agency just a little over a week ago said it can find no evidence that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program, as opposed to a civilian energy research program. Supreme Jurisprudent Khamenei gave a fatwa in which he forbade nuclear weapons, and the Iranian government denies that it is seeking a bomb. The US National Intelligence Estimate says that if Iran were trying hard to get a bomb and the international circumstances were favorable to all the needed imports, it would still take ten years. And, neither of those"ifs" is in evidence.
Moreover, it is Mr. Gillerman's government that introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East and that has actually threatened to use them. The Likud government menaced Baghdad with the Bomb in the run-up to the March 2003 War that they helped get up by supplying unreliable intelligence to Washington. It was their way of warning Saddam against trying to hit them with chemical warheads. But, would that have been a proportionate response. Iran doesn't have a bomb, has signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and hasn't invaded another country since the 19th century. Israel has hudnreds of bombs, had refused to sign the NPT, and has threatened first use of nukes.
This is just demagoguery and lying.
Mr. Gillerman is, however, occasionally capable of telling the truth. Reuters reports,
"Ambassador Dan Gillerman, addressing a New York meeting of B'nai B'rith International, a Jewish humanitarian organization, heaped praise on U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, jokingly describing him at one point as 'a secret member of Israel's own team at the United Nations.' Noting that just five diplomats worked in the busy Israeli UN Mission, he told the group:"Today the secret is out. We really are not just five diplomats. We are at least six including John Bolton."
Bolton was put at the UN by Bush to get up a war against Iran, though for whom is not entirely clear. He is a notorious liar, who tried to peddle a ridiculous story about a supposed Cuban biological weapons program. He may well be the source of a flight of Judy Millerism that the Iranians had sent evil biologists to Havana to help with a supposed Cuban biological weapons program. Ooooooh. Those Marxist Ayatollah molecular biologist evil scientists are the absolute worst!
Imaginary laws. Imaginary bombs. Imaginary germs. Lies, lies intended to make a war.
If the Iranians were smart, they would dump that buffoon Ahmadinejad and get themselves a less inflammatory president. Ahmadinejad's antics are giving the warmongers in the West all kinds of pretexts to talk war on Tehran. They should take a lesson from what has been done to the Iraqis.