IAEA chief warns of "crazies" seeking Iran war

01 Jun 2007 11:33:08 GMT

LONDON, June 1 (Reuters) - The United Nations nuclear watchdog chief warned on Friday against the "new crazies" advocating military action to halt Iran's nuclear programme and said he did not want to see another war like that in Iraq.

"I wake every morning and see 100 Iraqis, innocent civilians, are dying," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Mohamed ElBaradei said in an interview for BBC Radio.

"I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran'," he said in a documentary, excerpts from which were published on the BBC's Web site in advance.

Tehran has ignored repeated warnings and resolutions sponsored by world powers in the United Nations Security Council demanding that it cease uranium enrichment.

(Again, it appears that both the US and Israel coerced states into supporting that resolution, and this matter is currently under investigation. The Resolution should be held until the matter can be finalized, and a new vote taken.)

It was ElBaradei's strongest warning yet against the use of force. He has urged Western powers to consider allowing Iran limited enrichment he believes would pose no bomb proliferation risk and avert a feared slide into conflict.

The powers have rejected his proposal.

(He's also challenged them to provide any evidence to support their claims, but they also rejected this request, as this is just the excuse, not the reason, for their long-planned, illegal Act of Aggression to force Regime Change.)

Iran says it is pursuing a nuclear programme to provide electricity. The West believes it is trying to build a nuclear bomb and is gearing up to draft a third round of U.N. sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

(Actually, "the West" does not believe this, nor have Israel or the US provided any evidence to support this allegation.)

Enrichment is a process of refining uranium for power plants, or if taken to a very high degree, atom bombs. A report by ElBaradei's IAEA last week said Iran was expanding a campaign to install 3,000 enrichment centrifuges by mid-summer, laying a basis for "industrial-scale" fuel production.

(But the report also contradicted the claims of those Neo-Fascists using this as an axcuse to again dupe the world into allowing them to start another war.)

In the BBC interview ElBaradei said a nuclear-armed Iran would be terrible but added the jury was still out as to whether the country even wanted atomic weapons.

He said one could not "bomb knowledge". Asked who the "new crazies" were he replied: "Those who have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force."

ElBaradei angered the United States, Britain and France by calling for a face-saving compromise that would cap Iranian enrichment activity at its current modest levels.

(All of those states are currently ruled by Extremists who want war.)

Diplomats said those three countries, as well as Japan, sent envoys to stress to ElBaradei that the U. N. Security Council resolution urging an immediate halt to Iran's nuclear activities was law, adopted unanimously, and should enjoy his support.

(But Iran is well within its rights guaranteed by the NPT (The US is not), and this resolution was obtained through coercion, so that statement is somewhat false.)

In Germany earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice indirectly chided ElBaradei by saying "the IAEA is not an agency that is negotiating with the Iranians. That is being done under a Security Council resolution by six states".

(In other words, 'we don't need to listen to you, as we're going to do whatever we damn well please. Or have you been asleep the past six years?' Tyrants talk like this, not rational administrations who wish to avoid disaster.)

 http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/06/un-chief-warns-of-crazies-seeking-iran.html


Leading US Reps, Livni Discuss Iran

Two top members of the U.S. House of Representatives discussed efforts to isolate Iran with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) ended a joint visit to Israel on Thursday. The meeting with Livni "focused on efforts to enforce economic sanctions against Iran for violating U.N. Security Council resolutions concerning its nuclear program," a statement from Ros-Lehtinen's office said.

(The conduct of both the US and Israel, in coercing states to support that resolution, is currently under international investigation. Meanwhile, Israel remains in violation of more UN resolutions and Int'l Laws than any other state on earth, yet is the number one recipient of US aid and arms.)

The two also met with (Extremist) Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the opposition Likud Party, and Shimon Peres, the deputy prime minister. Other topics discussed included arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip and (alleged) backing for terrorist groups by Iran and Syria. Wexler and Ros-Lehtinen also joined a trade delegation led by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican.

 http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/102142.html

Kristol and Kagan: ‘Put Everything’ Behind Escalation So We Can Bomb Iran and Syria

Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and fellow neoconservative Frederick Kagan have consistently been wrong in their predictions about Iraq. Last year, Kristol claimed an escalation would “improve our chances of winning.” Kagan proclaimed at the end of April, “We are turning a corner in Iraq.” But May was the deadliest month this year for U.S. soldiers.

This week, Kristol and Kagan renewed their calls for a defense of the status quo in Iraq. Writing an op-ed in the Weekly Standard, Kristol and Kagan call for unbridled support of the failing escalation:

This is no time to hedge or hesitate. Now is the time to put everything behind making the president’s strategy–which looks to be a winning strategy–succeed.

Recycling the talking point that debate over the war “undermines the efforts of our commanders in the field,” they respond to reports suggesting increased conservative dissatisfaction by calling on Bush to authoritatively squash all dissenting opinion on Iraq:

Congressional battles calling into doubt our commitment to winning in Iraq have been the major threat to progress since the president began pursuing the right strategy in January. The president, supported by congressional Republicans, has beaten back that threat. Now he needs to deal with his own administration, which has not made up its collective mind to support the president’s strategy wholeheartedly. Mixed messages from Bush’s advisers and cabinet undermine the efforts of our commanders in the field.

Calling the State Department’s recent talks with Iran and Syria “fantasy diplomatic solutions,” Kristol and Kagan instead advocate that “[d]iplomatic engagement by itself is a trap,” suggesting, as they both have before, that America should only deal militarily with Iraq’s neighbors. Such a policy would likely accelerate nuclear development in Iran and has been swiftly rejected by top U.S. military commanders.

Kristol and Kagan aim for a single objective: more war. As Glenn Greenwald noted, “What they [Kristol and Kagan] seek — by their own acknowledgment — is a conflict with Iran and Syria, and they want to stay in Iraq because that is how that goal can be achieved.”

 http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/29/kristol-kagan-iraq/

A Neocon War-Planning Vacation to the Bahamas!
 http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=21

Iran spam

A shockingly awful public relations campaign is underway for yet another war.

Kevin Clarke

We get all kinds of mail here at U.S. Catholic: scripture interpretation pasted together from magazine headlines with biblical verses twisted in a manner King James could never have anticipated, bitter screeds from subscription-canceling conservatives, ranting monologues from conditionally renewing liberals, and lengthy appeals from our non-Catholic Christian brethren worried over our eternal damnation.

We can also count on our share of press releases. Most come from agents representing new authors or seeking to sell the latest incarnation of the commodified Jesus. Many seek some editorial inches to promote worthy advocacy or direct-action campaigns.

And then there are those efforts whose audacity or inappropriateness leaves a fella shaking his head in disbelief. A recent series of slick dispatches from the public relations front of the war on terror falls into this mail pile. Typically illustrated by an 8?-by-11 glossy of a mushroom cloud rising from an atomic blast (small irony department: if I’m not mistaken, the photo actually captures a detonation over the Nevada desert during America’s wild and crazy what-me-worry-about-nuclear-fallout days), the scary memos from the Israel Project’s copywriting crew breathlessly depict the various threats represented by a “nuclear Iran,” patiently explaining why that radioactive outcome is “dangerous for everyone.”

These regular mailings from the Israel Project to “opinion agents” such as yours truly are, in effect, a public relations campaign for war. The monthly missives I receive from this one pro-Israel lobby are a small part of a broader effort to “secure the information stream” and prep Americans for the next exotic stop in the war on terror: sunny Iran. Now to the average shmoe, even contemplating another war while the overtaxed U.S. military machine seems bogged down in Iraq and losing ground in Afghanistan might seem laughably disconnected from reality.

But see, average schmoe, you lack the long-term vision and patience of the folks at the Israel Project and their fellow travelers at, say, the New American Century Project or the vice president’s office. This proposed Iranian bloodletting was penciled in years ago by the war-mongering proponents of the Pax Americana. Now it’s time to hard-schedule the main event.

Iraq was supposed to be the demo-sideshow to the real fight to alter the political reality on the ground of the Middle East, an effort that “logically” ends not in Jerusalem or Baghdad but in Tehran. The fact that the build-up stages to this “inevitable” confrontation—taking out Saddam Hussein, removing the Taliban from power, and neutralizing Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza—have not exactly gone according to script has not deterred these determined folks. Now like bourbon-addled, nicotine-fingered Vegas high-rollers on a bad run, these guys are asking America to double-down on the great Islamic Enlightenment project. After all, we’ve invested too much in sacrificed souls and taxpayer treasure to bail out now from this increasingly barbaric clash of civilizations. Right?

Let me light a lantern in a bell tower for my fellow Americans. You must awake. There are PR armies of the night with shiny media kits and Dick-Cheneyfied “intelligence” reports quietly at work right now, building momentum for a strike on Iran and a vast broadening of this too costly—and let’s just say it—too crazy war on terror.

A U.S. attack on Iran may include “mini-nuke” weapons and could begin a cascade of unplanned and increasingly unpleasant outcomes, including an actual nuclear war. That is a lot to risk for a campaign aimed at setting back by a handful of years Iran’s nuclear program, which its leaders likely see as a counterbalance to Israel’s nuclear threat and American bellicosity.

Americans have to step up today to demand that Congress not repeat the cowardly abdication of constitutional responsibility we witnessed before the Iraq debacle began. They must make clear to the warmongers in Washington that an Iran adventure—morally dubious, strategically short-sighted, and almost certainly geopolitically disastrous—cannot be sold to the American people, even if you’ve got the best PR money can buy on your side.

Kevin Clarke is senior editor at U.S. Catholic and online content manager at Claretian Publications. This article appeared in the June 2007 (Volume 72, Number 6; page 38) issue of U.S. Catholic.

 http://uscatholic.claretians.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12368&news_iv_ctrl=0&abbr=usc_