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West continues to threaten Iran and world peace

By: 
Paolo Bassi

December 20, 2013

Despite the recent nuclear deal, Western imperialism continues to threaten Iran. Already a group of Democrats and Republicans have drafted legislation for new sanctions—showing the goal of the initial sanctions was not diplomacy but confrontation.
 
In 2010, the US and European Union, and the UN, instigated severe economic sanctions against Iran. These sanctions, supported by Canada, have played havoc with the Iranian currency and pushed up food and medical costs. The West regards Iran as too dangerous to be trusted with a nuclear program even if only for energy. Iran has consistently denied any ambition to develop nuclear weapons—and while nuclear energy is not a green alternative it is hypocritical to condemn Iran for developing it when far greater threats to world peace maintain their own.
 
In recent years hardly a month has passed without Barack Obama and the French and British Governments–all major nuclear powers and permanent members of the UN “Security Council”—issuing imperial threats to Iran.  Israel, an undeclared member of the nuclear club, never fails to urge on the US. The Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has made barely-veiled military threats of his own should the US show any signs of an understanding with Tehran. One look at American and Israeli history should tell Iran to be in no doubt that military action is very possible and for the sake of its people Iran must be careful.  
 
The agreement reached between Iran and the US, France, Britain, Germany China and Russia on November 23, 2013 is but a six month moratorium on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing specific sanctions. The contradictions and dangers of isolating Iran remain. Iran will still demand nuclear energy as is its sovereign right. Israel has already stated it is not bound by any agreement and reserves for itself–in complete violation of international law—the self-granted option of military action against Iran. The US could unleash Israel to bomb Iran, just as it did against Syria recently.
 
India Pakistan and Israel
The obsession with Iran contrasts sharply with America’s silent support for nuclear armed Pakistan, India and Israel. Washington sees India, despite historic ties to Russia, as a “safe” nuclear power and part of a larger geo-political plan to contain China—and provides India with nuclear technology. The US also controls rival nuclear power Pakistan—an American client-state ruled by the military, with resources for the bomb alongside mass poverty, which the US repeatedly attacks through Obama’s drone attacks.
 
In urging the US to take a hard line approach to Iran, Israeli's Netanyahu proclaimed that the world’s most dangerous state must not get hold of the world’s most dangerous weapons. He is right but the question is which country deserves that title. To see who poses a greater great to world peace, Israel and the US or Iran, we need ask only a few questions: how many other countries has each invaded and what kind of weapons do they possess?
 
The US has invaded dozens of countries to install right-wing puppet governments or topple those on the left who dared to oppose the Washington consensus—including Iran in 1953. To maintain control of the Middle East, the US arms Arab dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, and apartheid Israel. Since 1948, Israel has crowding several million Palestinians into enclosed, controlled areas which it repeatedly attacks—including the use of the chemical weapon white phosphorus. Israel has also attacked its neighbours Syria and Lebanon. When an Israeli scientist, Mordechai Vanunu, went public in 1986 about Israel’s nuclear weapons, the Israeli government kidnapped and imprisoned him for the next 18 years.         
 
Preventing nuclear proliferation
Iran has not invaded another country in centuries, has no nuclear weapons and has conventional weapons that are no match for the US or Israel. Iran is far from a model democracy but neither is it irrational. Iran is fully aware of what would happen should it ever threaten to use nuclear weapons.
 
Far from preventing nuclear proliferation, the threat of Western intervention actually causes it. North Korea has shown that the U.S. will not attack a state with a powerful army let alone a nuclear arsenal. Would the U.S. have attacked a nuclear-armed Iraq? Military violence by the western powers, in particular the US, is the very thing that will drive states like Iran to seek nuclear weapons. 
 
To make the world safe from nuclear weapons we need to stop Western imperialism and eliminate the stockpiles of the most dangerous countries, those who are constantly threatening Iran.

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