Archives: Articles

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei may control the nuclear programme, but he lacks a critical mass of Iranians.

Hong Kong – The supreme war-or-peace question regarding the Iran psychodrama has got to be: What game is Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei really playing?

Sharp wits among the lively Iranian global diaspora maintain that the Supreme Leader is the perfect US/Israel asset – as he incarnates Iran as “the enemy” (although in most cases in a much less strident way than Ahmadinejad).

In parallel, the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat in Tehran also needs “the enemy” – as in “the Great Satan” and assorted Zionists – to justify its monopoly of power.

The ultimate loser, voices of the diaspora sustain, is true Iranian democracy – as in the foundation for the country’s ability to resist empire. Especially now, after the immensely dodgy 2009 presidential election and the repression of the Green movement. Even former supporters swear the Islamic Republic is now neither a “republic” – nor “Islamic”.

For their part, another current of informed Iranian – and Western – critics of empire swear that the belligerent Likud-majority government of Israel is in fact the perfect Iranian asset. After all, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and former Moldova bouncer turned Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s non-stop warmongering tends to rally Iranians of all persuasions – always proudly nationalistic – behind the flag.

The absolute majority of Iranians knows and feels they are targeted by a heavily weaponised foreign power – US/Israel. The leadership in Tehran has been wily enough to instrumentalise this foreign threat, and at the same time further smash the Green movement.

Your bombs are no good here

Parliamentary elections in Iran are only a few days away, on March 3. These are the first elections after the 2009 drama. In The Ayatollahs’ Democracy: An Iranian Challenge (Penguin Books), Hooman Majd makes a very strong case to detail how the election was “stolen”. And that’s the heart of the matter; millions of Iranians don’t believe in their Islamic democracy anymore.

Gholam Reza Moghaddam, a cleric, and the head of the Majles (parliament) commission that is conducting an extremely delicate move in the middle of an economic crisis – to end government subsidies on basic food items and energy – recently admitted that the Ahmadinejad government is, by all practical purposes, bribing the population “to encourage them to vote in the Majles elections”.

Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi – a senior military adviser to Khamenei and, crucially, former chief of the 125,000-strong Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – asked Iranians to “take the elections seriously, and, by voting in maximum numbers, create another epic event”. The Supreme Leader himself believes – or hopes – turnout at the “epic event” will be around 60 per cent.

“We believe that using nuclear weapons is haram and prohibited, and that it is everybody’s duty to make efforts to protect humanity against this great disaster.”

– Ayatollah Khamenei

They may be in for a rude shock. Word in Iran is that the election appeal at universities is close to zero. No wonder, Green movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has been under house arrest for a full year. According to Kaleme, a website close to Mousavi and his wife, Dr Zahra Rahnavard, a few days ago they were allowed to speak only briefly, by phone, with their three daughters.

So far, Khamenei’s attention seems to have been concentrated more on external pressure than the internal dynamic. Once again, last Wednesday, he went public to renew his vow that nuclear weapons are anti-Islamic. His words should – but they won’t – be carefully scrutinised in the West:

We believe that using nuclear weapons is haram and prohibited, and that it is everybody’s duty to make efforts to protect humanity against this great disaster. We believe that besides nuclear weapons, other types of weapons of mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons also pose a serious threat to humanity. The Iranian nation, which is itself a victim of chemical weapons, feels more than any other nation the danger that is caused by the production and stockpiling of such weapons and is prepared to make use of all its facilities to counter such threats.

To see the Supreme Leader’s “nuclear” views, US and Israeli warmongers could do worse than to consult his website. Of course, they won’t.

What’s certain is that Khamenei seems to be digging in for the long haul. Retired Major General Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary-general of the Expediency Council, said it in so many words. Western sanctions will go on for at least another five years, and are much tougher than those imposed during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Rezai also said that, for 16 years, when Rafsanjani and then Khatami served as presidents, Iran tried to reach some sort of deal with the US, but “because the gap [between the two] was too deep, a compromise was not possible … We allowed them to inspect Natanz, we reduced the number of centrifuges, we suspended the Isfahan [uranium conversion facility], and our president [Khatami] began the ‘dialogue among civilisations’. But Bush declared that Iran, Iraq and North Korea constituted the ‘axis of evil’ and began a confrontation with us.” (Here’s the original text, in Farsi.)

A former spokesman for the Iranian nuclear negotiation team, Ambassador Hossein Mousavian, brought this confrontational mood up to date – to the IAEA team visit to Iran last October, led by Deputy Director General Herman Nackaerts – the same Nackaerts who was back in Iran last week.

According to Mousavian, “during the visit, Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, offered a blank cheque to the IAEA, granting full transparency, openness to inspections and co-operation with the IAEA. He also informed Nackaerts of Iran’s receptiveness to putting the country’s nuclear programme under ‘full IAEA supervision’, including implementing the Additional Protocol for five years, provided that sanctions against Iran were lifted”.

Washington’s reaction was predictable: instead of diplomacy, more belligerence. The next steps are well-known; the Fast-and-Furious plot trying to frame Tehran for the assassination attempt on the Saudi ambassador to the US; the pressure to divert the IAEA’s November 2011 report on Iran by adding a spin on a “possible” military angle to the nuclear programme; the oil embargo; the sponsoring of a UN resolution against Iran on terrorism; and the list goes on.

A new report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), based in Brussels, virtually endorses Iran’s approach as outlined by Mousavian. The result would be the recognition of Iran’s right to enrich uranium up to five per cent, and the lifting of existing sanctions – in stages.

The report recommends the US and the EU follow Turkey’s diplomatic way of dealing with Iran. Instead of sanctions, sabotage and non-stop threats of war, the report stresses that “economic pressure is at best futile, at worse counter-productive”, and that Tehran “ought to be presented with a realistic proposal”. This is exactly what the BRICS group of emerging powers, plus Turkey, has been advocating all along.

Show me the path of the Imam

In all matters external and internal, in Iran the buck stops with Khamenei – and not with end-of-mandate Ahmadinejad. If the Supreme Leader seems to have his pulse firmly on the nuclear dossier, home matters are infinitely more complicated. Khamenei may take comfort that, outside the big cities, he remains quite popular – as government loans in rural areas remain generous, at least while the new Western sanctions have yet to bite.

But high-ranking clerics in Qom are now openly calling for legal mechanisms to oversee – and criticise – him; his response – hardly a secret in Tehran – was to order all their offices and homes to be bugged.

Khamenei has vehemently rejected any sort of oversight by the Council of Experts – the Iranian body that appoints the Supreme Leader, monitors his performance, and can even topple him.

According to Seyyed Abbas Nabavi, the head of the Organisation for Islamic Civilisation and Development, Khamenei told the experts: “I do not accept the assembly can say that the Supreme Leader is still qualified, but then question why such and such official was directed in a certain direction, or why I allowed a certain official [to do certain things].” (Here’s the original text, in Farsi.)

In 2011, I heard from exiled Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf that, “we actually started the Arab Spring, in 2009, with the Green movement in the streets”. Following the outbursts of outrage after the election result – when for the first time Iranians openly called for the downfall of the Supreme Leader – revolt steadily marches on, with urban, highly educated professionals deriding Khamenei as stubborn, jealous and vindictive, and holding a monster grudge against those millions who never swallowed his endorsement of Ahmadinejad in 2009 (he always calls them “seditionists”).

For instance, even the daughter of a well-known ayatollah has gone public, saying that Khamenei “holds a grudge in his heart” against Rafsanjani and former presidential candidates Mousavi and Karoubi “because of the Imam’s [Khomeini’s] love and support for them – and also because, in comparison to these three, in particular Hashemi [Rafsanjani] and Mousavi, he is clearly a second-rate individual”.

Khamenei is now being widely blamed for anything from Iran’s falling production capacity to mounting inflation and widespread corruption.

And that leads us to another key question: What about the IRGC’s support for the Supreme Leader?

“The cream of the IRGC is engaged in a sort of economic war against the bazaaris – the traditionally very conservative Persian merchants.”

The Iranian diaspora largely considers this support to be pure propaganda. Yet the fact is that the IRGC is not only an army, but a monster conglomerate with myriad military-industrial, economic and financial interests. Top managers – and the array of enterprises they control – are bound to the ethos of antagonising the West, the same West from whose sanctions they handsomely profit. So, for them, the status quo is nice and dandy – even with the everyday possibility of a miscalculation, or a false-flag operation, leading to war.

At the same time, the IRGC may count on the key strategic/political support of BRICS members – Russia and China – and is certain that the country will be able to dribble the embargo and keep selling oil mostly to Asian clients (currently 62 per cent of exports, and rising).

But what’s really juicy, in terms of Iran’s internal dynamic, is the fact that the cream of the IRGC is engaged in a sort of economic war against the bazaaris – the traditionally very conservative Persian merchants.

It’s crucial to remember that these bazaaris financed the so-called “Path of the Imam” Islamic Revolution. They were – and remain – radically anti-colonialist (especially as practiced by the Brits and then the US); but this does not mean they are anti-Western (something that most in the West still don’t understand).

Once again, as top Iranian analysts have been ceaselessly pointing out, one must remember that the Islamic Revolution’s original motto was “Neither East nor West”; what mattered was a sort of curiously Buddhist “middle of the road” – exactly that “Path of the Imam” which would guarantee Islamic Iran as a sovereign, non-aligned country.

And guess who was part of this original “Path of the Imam” coalition of the willing? Exactly: Khamenei (and Ahmadinejad) foes Mousavi, Khatami, Karoubi and Rafsanjani, not to mention a moderate faction of the IRGC, graphically symbolised by former IRGC commander and former presidential candidate, Mohsen Rezai.

So what the “Path of the Imam” coalition is essentially saying is that Khamenei is a traitor of the principles of the revolution; they accuse him of trying to become a sort of Shia Caliph – an absolute ruler. This message is increasingly getting public resonance among millions of Iranians who believe in certainly an “Islamic”, but most of all a “true” “Republic”.

And that leads us to the Supreme Leader’s supreme fear, that a coalition of purists – including influential Qom clerics and powerful IRGC commanders or former commanders, with widespread urban support – may eventually rise up, get rid of him, and finally implement their dream of a true Islamic Republic. Only this is certain: The one thing they won’t get rid of is Iran’s civilian nuclear programme.

By Pepe Escobar

26 February 2012

@ Al Jazeera

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is named Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

China-bashing was surely one reason why Mitt Romney was able to scrape a cliffhanger victory in Ohio last week and thus retain his frontrunner status. It is a line to which he will probably resort again and again. Just as deindustrialised Ohio will once more prove a pivotal swing state in the US election, so China will feature increasingly as a bone of contention in the build-up to November. “China steals our designs and our patents and our knowhow,” Mr Romney told Ohioans. “They have walked all over him [Barack Obama]. If I am president that is going to end.”

Conventional wisdom tells us that China-bashing always occurs in even-numbered years and recedes during odd ones – US elections always being even. With an electorate that prematurely believes China is already the largest economy in the world, American politicians reflect that anguish on the hustings. When it comes to governing, however, they quickly grasp that it makes little sense to provoke trade war with the country’s largest creditor. “This year will be no different,” goes the refrain both from US pundits and foreign observers. “Elections are America’s way of letting off steam.”

Such complacency is fortified by the mood on the stock market, which is more concerned about a potential Chinese slowdown and by the improving US labour market, which is now steadily adding more than 200,000 jobs a month. The optimists also point to manufacturing, where almost half a million US jobs have come back in the past 18 months. Meanwhile, China continues to allow the renminbi to appreciate – it has risen by roughly 20 per cent against the dollar in the past four years. Whatever voters tell pollsters about China, the underlying trends are good, they say. No need to take Mr Romney or Mr Obama at face value.

There are three problems with this argument. First, it cannot see beyond its nose. Everything about a presidential election is geared towards the short-term mood of the voters. If the economy is going in the right direction, presidents get re-elected. Perhaps because of the minefield-strewn condition of the Republican party, the bien pensants are more euphoric about the economic data than is merited (partly because the trends improve Mr Obama’s re-election chances). Yet this remains a tepid recovery. At the current rate it will take another four years to return to 5 per cent unemployment.

The recent upswing offers a methadone rush that has blinded people to the more fundamental trends the other way. One of these is the rapidly growing US trade deficit with China, which jumped by more than a tenth to nearly $300bn last year. So too are US median weekly earnings, which have fallen by 3 per cent since 2009. Almost 6m manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2001 – 2.3m since Mr Obama took office. Of the few that have trickled back, many pay at less than half the old rate. Last month General Electric advertised 400 new jobs in Kentucky at $13.50 an hour. It received 6,000 applications in 50 minutes before its server shut down.

Second, in spite of all the chatter about reshoring, US competitiveness continues to slide. When Mr Obama came to office, the US had a $60bn deficit in advanced manufacturing goods, which is where the most valuable innovation takes place. Last year that rose to $99bn – an increase of almost two-thirds. Again, in contrast to the conventional patina, which notes China’s growing wage inflation and reassures itself that jobs will return to the US, wages in China represent only a fraction of the cost of investing there. Intel recently opened a plant in China. Jeff Immelt, GE’s chief executive who doubles up as chairman of Mr Obama’s jobs and competitiveness council, recently set up a joint venture between GE’s avionics division and a Chinese state company.

China’s secret – and that of many other countries – is that it offers huge tax breaks to lure high value-added investors. The US is never likely to match China’s largesse, or even to try. Even the modest measures Mr Obama recently proposed have been criticised by friendly economists. Christina Romer, a former senior economic adviser to Mr Obama, said that consumers “value haircuts as much as hair dryers”. She did not add that hair dryers are imported, while haircuts remain unexportable.

Finally, this time the politics feel different. Usually the Democrat bashes China on trade while the Republican holds back. But in 2012 it is the Republican who has taken the lead. Mr Obama will have to parry as the election gets under way. Mr Romney has promised to brand China a currency manipulator “on my first day in office”. He would not easily be able to wriggle out of this. Mr Obama will do well to avoid matching it.

What is missing is a realistic prospect that either will be able to tackle the problems that actually do sap US competitiveness (as opposed to worrying about the exchange rate, which is a red herring). Mr Obama, who has a clutch of solutions, some of them good, says “we can’t wait” to a Congress that is resolutely blocking measures that would help spruce up the US as a better place to make advanced products. The concern is that America will be waiting long after November for the politics to change. In that respect the fear is that 2013 will resemble the odd years that preceded it.

By Edward Luce

11 March 2012

@ Financial Times

The military commands in both the US and Britain have sought increased funding and stepped up deployments of arms and personnel to the Persian Gulf in preparation for an anticipated war against Iran.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon, acting on the request of the Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the region, has requested the re-allocation of some $100 million in military spending to ratchet up war preparations.

The Journal cast these preparations as defensive measures aimed at countering an Iranian threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which some 20 percent of the world’s exported oil flows. Iran’s threat came in response to trade sanctions and embargoes imposed by the US and Western Europe that amount to a blockade, an act of war, as well as open Israeli threats to bomb the country.

“The US military has notified Congress of plans to preposition new mine-detection and clearing equipment and expand surveillance capabilities in and around the strait, according to defense officials briefed on the requests,” the Journal reports. “The military also wants to quickly modify weapons systems on ships so they could be used against Iranian fast-attack boats, as well as shore-launched cruise missiles, the defense officials said.”

Under the Pentagon’s plans, US warships would be equipped with anti-tank weapons, rapid-fire machine guns and light weapons for use against the Iranian navy’s small speedboats. They would be backed by increased numbers of unmanned drones.

The Journal adds that “US special-operations teams stationed in the United Arab Emirates would take part in any military action in the strait should Iran attempt to close it.”

The US has already doubled the number of aircraft carrier battle groups it has stationed in the Persian Gulf area, deploying both the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Carl Vinson. It also has substantial numbers of warplanes operating out of the Arabian Peninsula and tens of thousands of troops near Iran’s borders in Afghanistan and Kuwait.

The new war preparations, the Journal states, show “the extent to which war planners are taking tangible steps to prepare for a possible conflict with Iran, even as top White House and defense leaders try to tamp down talk of war and emphasize other options.”

The report in the Journal indicates that the Pentagon wants the military buildup in the Gulf in place by autumn, when Pentagon planners anticipate that Israel will launch an unprovoked military strike on Iran.

High-level discussions on Iran between Washington and the Israeli state are scheduled over the next several days, with Defense Minister Ehud Barak having left Israel Monday for two days of talks with US officials, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set to hold talks with Obama on March 5.

The newspaper noted that the latest move to fund an anticipated war with Iran follows the Pentagon’s request in January for $82 million “to improve its largest conventional bunker-buster bomb, the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The bomb, officials said, was designed to take out bunkers like those used by Iran to protect its most sensitive nuclear development work.”

There are indications that a heated debate continues over whether to supply Israel with these 30,000-pound weapons, which are substantially more powerful than the 5,000-pound Guided Bomb Unit 28 (GBU-28) bunker busters that the Obama administration transferred to the Zionist state last year.

David Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, summed up the growing drumbeat within sections of the US ruling establishment Sunday as follows: “Arm the Syrian rebels! And, while we’re at it, give the Israelis the tools they need — bunker-busters, refueling aircraft — so that if they decide to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, they’ll get it right the first time.”

Acknowledging that Washington’s aims in Syria have everything to do with weakening Iran in preparation for “regime change” there as well, Sanger continued: “The argument commonly heard inside and outside the White House these days is that if the Assad government cracks, Iran’s ability to funnel weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas will be badly damaged — and its influence will wither accordingly. Similarly, if Iran’s effort to walk up to the edge of a nuclear weapons capability can be set back with a few well-placed GBU-31 bunker-busters, the country’s hopes of challenging Israel and Saudi Arabia to be the region’s biggest power will be deferred.”

In other words, behind all of the hyped warnings about Iran’s imminent acquiring of nuclear weapons, the reality is that US imperialism and its allies are engaged in a campaign of economic, political and military aggression against Iran, whose aim is to prevent the country from emerging as a regional power capable of challenging Washington’s hegemony over the energy-rich regions of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.

The nuclear issue has been used as the pretext for preparing a new war in the region, just as the claims about “weapons of mass destruction” were employed in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Just as in Iraq a decade ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s nuclear inspection regime serves as a cat’s paw in preparing imperialist aggression. As in Iraq, the IAEA, manipulated by US, Israeli and Western European intelligence agencies, is demanding that Iran do the impossible: prove a negative, that it is not engaged in the development of nuclear weapons. And, similar to its operations against Baghdad, the IAEA is provoking Tehran by demanding that it submit to diktats that are in no way required of signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Thus, the IAEA issued a report last Friday, stressing that a small amount of uranium metal was missing from a nuclear research site—far less than would be needed for building a bomb—and that Iran has increased its enrichment of uranium, not to the grade necessary for weapons, but rather for nuclear power plant fuel, perfectly legal under the treaty.

It also charged that a team it sent to Iran was denied permission to visit the Parchin military complex, located about 18 miles southeast of Tehran. The US has repeatedly incited the IAEA to demand inspections of the site, which is a non-nuclear facility and not subject to the agency’s oversight. Between 2004 and 2006 Iran allowed inspectors into the sensitive facility after Washington charged that a bunker there was being used to test explosive triggers for nuclear bombs. The inspections found nothing of the kind.

Iranian officials, who have insisted that the country’s nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, said that the IAEA team sent to Tehran was there to negotiate a “framework” for continued collaboration between the agency and Tehran and that it was not composed of nuclear inspectors and had no right to request entry to the Parchin facility.

Both Israel and the US seized upon the report as the pretext for escalating pressure against Iran. Netanyahu issued a statement saying that it “provides more proof that Israel’s estimations are accurate, Iran is continuing with its nuclear program unchecked.” Israel itself has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or accept any IAEA oversight of its nuclear facilities, which have produced an estimated 400 nuclear weapons.

“Iran’s actions demonstrate why Iran has failed to convince the international community that its nuclear program is peaceful,” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. Unless Iran submitted to US and Western European pressure, “its isolation from the international community will only continue to grow,” he added.

Meanwhile, under the jingoistic headline “Britain’s battle plan for war with Iran”, Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Sun cited unnamed British “defense chiefs” as saying “it is a matter of WHEN not IF war breaks out—with 18 to 24 months the likely timescale.”

In preparation for an attack on Iran, the paper reported, Britain will “fly an infantry battalion to the United Arab Emirates, our strong ally in the region.”

The Sun added. “Under the war plan, a second sub armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles would be deployed. The RAF would send Typhoon and Tornado Jets to reinforce helicopter and transport plane crews already stationed in Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and the UAE.”

The paper quoted a senior Whitehall official as saying: “MoD [Ministry of Defense] planners went into overdrive at the start of the year. Conflict is seen as inevitable as long as the regime pursue their nuclear ambitions.”

By Bill Van Auken

28 February 2012

@ WSWS.org

US President Barack Obama pledged Sunday to deliver “non-lethal” supplies to Western-backed anti-government insurgents in Syria. The announcement came as Kofi Annan, due to head a United Nations mission to Damascus, was in Moscow for talks with the Russian government on the crisis in Syria.

Obama’s announcement was made following talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the eve of the nuclear security conference taking place Monday and Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea. Turkey has played host to Syrian opposition forces, including the main opposition bloc, the Syrian National Council (SNC), and its military wing, the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The US president stated that he and Erdogan agreed that foreign assistance to these armed opposition groups would aid the transition to a “legitimate government.”

The SNC and the FSA have been promoted in the West as the official representatives of opposition to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, the leaderships of these organizations have little popular backing inside Syria, where there are a large number of disparate and fractious armed groups, including Sunni Islamist fighters.

Backed by the Western powers and the Arab monarchies, especially Washington’s allies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, these opposition forces have failed to win broad support across Syria, especially in the capital, Damascus, and the main economic hub, Aleppo. Rather, the opposition militants resort to terrorist methods and sectarian violence has allowed Assad to present himself as the defender of stability and the rights of non-Sunni minority groups.

Following Obama’s announcement, White House spokesman Ben Rhodes indicated that “strategic communication” equipment would be provided by the US to opposition forces. “It is important to the opposition as they’re formulating their vision of an inclusive and democratic Syria to have the ability to communicate,” Rhodes told reporters traveling with Obama.

The clear purpose of this type of “non-lethal” materiel is to allow the Syrian opposition to more effectively coordinate its attacks on government forces and institutions. High-tech communications equipment will also enable insurgents operating inside Syria to receive orders from their headquarters in neighboring Turkey and Jordan.

In the event of an international military intervention against Syria, such communication devices will provide the link between fighters on the ground and the warplanes and missiles of foreign armed forces. This would allow a replay of the tactics used during the NATO-led war against Libya last year, when local fighters called in Western air strikes to incinerate the Gaddafi regime’s army.

Obama’s announcement largely undercuts the mission of former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to Syria before it has started. Annan, who has already held talks with the Assad government on behalf of the UN, is due to leave for Syria this week with a team of international observers to study and report on the conflict.

The stated aims of Annan’s mission—brokering a ceasefire, increasing access to humanitarian aid, and initiating a political dialogue between the government and opposition groups—have been rendered next to impossible by Obama’s declaration that the US is openly backing the opposition.

Other concessions called for in Annan’s plan include a “daily two-hour humanitarian pause” to fighting, the release of prisoners held by both sides, and the removal of restrictions on movement and reporting for foreign journalists inside Syria.

Announcing his mission at a press conference March 16 at the UN office in Geneva, Switzerland, Annan warned against an escalation of the conflict in Syria. “The region is extremely concerned about developments in Syria,” he said. “Their concern goes beyond Syria itself because the crisis can have a serious impact for the whole region if it is not handled effectively.”

Backed by the UN Security Council, Annan’s mission was presented as a compromise measure between the major powers, which are deeply divided over Syria. The United States and its allies in Europe and the Arab League have stoked up the conflict in Syria with the aim of removing President Assad and his Ba’athist regime, as part of a campaign to isolate and weaken Iran, Syria’s principal ally in the region.

This push for regime-change against Syria has been opposed by Russia and China, who view the US-led charge to refashion the energy-rich Middle East as a direct threat to their interests. Russia, in particular, has close economic and security ties to Syria, including billions of dollars in trade and arms deals. The Syrian port of Tartus is home to Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean, and Moscow has deployed several warships to the Syrian coast.

The Russian government had presented Annan’s mission as a diplomatic coup for its position. Speaking in Berlin last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that he was “very glad” that the Security Council had backed Annan’s assignment to Syria, adding that it was a sign that the Western powers and the Arab League had “abandoned ultimatums, abandoned threats and have abandoned attempts to address the problem by making unilateral demands.”

Russia has increased pressure on the Syrian regime to come to a compromise with elements of the opposition, with Lavrov telling the Russian parliament last week that Assad had been too slow to implement reforms. In addition, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov recently announced that talks would be held in Moscow with Syrian oppositionists, including the National Coordination Committee, the second largest opposition bloc in Syria.

The US and its allies viewed the mission by Kofi Annan as a means to get Russia and China to back a non-binding Security Council resolution calling for Assad’s forces to withdraw from centers of fighting while monitoring takes place, a measure that Washington hopes will provide breathing room for the divided and beleaguered opposition militants.

Assured of the support of Washington and its allies in Europe and the Middle East, the SNC and FSA show no signs of acceding to Annan’s proposed negotiations. An SNC spokesman refused to endorse the Annan mission, claiming that it would “offer the regime the opportunity to push ahead with its repression.” Rather, the insurgency has taken an increasingly bloody form, with opposition elements employing terrorist methods such as suicide bombings of government buildings, the kidnapping and torture of people associated with the Assad regime, and the assassination of state officials.

The US and its client regimes in the Arab League have a record of sponsoring bogus diplomatic missions to Syria. A previous observer delegation under the authority of the Arab League was shut down in January, after only a few weeks in Syria, when its monitors reported that the Assad regime was facing a well-armed insurrection and that opposition claims of casualties inflicted by government forces were grossly exaggerated. Despite the reduction in the death toll during the Arab League’s presence in Syrian cities, Saudi Arabia and Qatar demanded that the mission be closed down while the Gulf sheikdoms ramped up their support for the anti-Assad forces.

The US government’s promise of so-called “non-lethal” aid throws a lifeline to the armed opposition forces in Syria. Anti-Assad militants in Homs, one of the main centers of opposition to the Syrian regime, were routed by government troops this month, though pockets of armed resistance remain.

By Niall Green

26 March 2012

@ WSWS.org

The political reverberations continue to grow from last Sunday’s US massacre of 16 Afghan civilians, the majority of them children, in Kandahar province. Thursday saw the Taliban breaking off talks with Washington and President Hamid Karzai demanding that US-NATO forces withdraw to their main bases. Together, these actions threaten to leave key elements of the Obama administration’s Afghanistan strategy in tatters.

Popular anger over the killings spilled into the streets again Thursday, with thousands marching in the city of Qalat in Zabul province, near Kandahar, where the massacre took place. The demonstrators carried white flags and chanted slogans against the US-led occupation and demanding that the US soldier accused of slaughtering the Afghan civilians be brought before an Afghan court for trial.

Even larger demonstrations are anticipated Friday, a day that has traditionally seen Afghans stage mass protests after leaving mosques after prayers on the Muslim holy day.

The Pentagon has already quietly spirited the 38-year-old staff sergeant, who is said to have confessed to the killings, out of the country. Military sources said that he had been taken to Kuwait, on the pretext that Afghanistan lacks appropriate pre-trial detention facilities. Military officials have refused until now to release publicly the name of the accused killer.

Under a status of forces agreement dictated by Washington to the regime in Kabul, US troops are given “a status equivalent to that accorded to the administrative and technical staff” of the US Embassy under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and are deemed immune from any prosecution under Afghan law. Washington is not about to waive this agreement and allow the massacre’s perpetrator to be tried anywhere outside of a US military court.

It is widely expected that the staff sergeant, an 11-year Army veteran and sniper with three tours in Iraq, will face a court martial at his home base, Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. A civilian lawyer from Seattle, Washington, John Henry Browne, revealed Thursday that he had been asked by the alleged killer to represent him in court. The staff sergeant will also have a military lawyer.

The defense of this US military immunity in the Kandahar massacre case has provoked popular anger in Afghanistan. Afghan legislators Thursday called upon Karzai’s US-backed government to refuse to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Washington unless the sergeant is tried in Afghanistan.

“It was the demand of the families of the martyrs of this incident, the people of Kandahar and the people of Afghanistan to try him publicly in Afghanistan,” said Mohammad Naeem Lalai Hamidzai, a Kandahar legislator who is a member of the parliamentary commission charged with investigating the massacre.

This threat to abort the strategic partnership negotiations, which have been going on for a year now, was joined Thursday by a statement from President Karzai calling for the pullback of all US and NATO forces from Afghan villages and into major base facilities. The demand, which followed immediately upon talks between Karzai and US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, was said to be aimed at halting the escalation in Afghan civilian casualties that has accompanied the US military “surge” initiated by the Obama administration in December 2009.

The US occupation operates as a law unto itself and feels in no way bound by the demands of Karzai, who is its puppet.

A key issue in the negotiations over the strategic partnership agreement is Karzai’s demand that the US military halt special forces night raids, which have caused a disproportionate share of civilian casualties and are seen as a humiliation by Afghans forced to endure the breaking down of their doors and the manhandling of their families in the middle of the night. While continuing to talk, the US military has ignored Karzai’s demand, insisting that the night raids are critical to its strategy of hunting down and killing suspected members of the armed resistance.

Significantly, the sergeant accused in the killings was attached to one of the special forces units engaged in “village stabilization operations,” seen by the US military as critical to Washington’s strategy for drawing down US forces. Its key task is the organization of units of the “Afghan Local Police,” a new category of armed forces created in 2010, essentially village-level militias, often under the direction of local strongmen. These militias are supposed to hold areas cleared of resistance by the US offensive. Human rights groups have charged these armed groups with death squad murders, torture and various forms of criminality.

Acceding to Karzai’s latest demand would effectively spell a halt not only to this project, but to all US combat operations in Afghanistan, just as the Pentagon brass is gearing up for a new military offensive in the eastern part of the country, along the Pakistan border.

Karzai himself is in no hurry to see the US and NATO military presence draw to a close. He and his corrupt coterie know that his regime would never survive without the armed protection and funding provided by the US and the other imperialist powers. At the same time, however, he fears that the anger of the Afghanistan people over US war crimes will produce a groundswell of support for the resistance that will also lead to his downfall.

The Obama administration’s so-called “endgame” had been to bleed the armed resistance to US occupation into submission by means of the surge, which brought the US troops deployment in Afghanistan to over 100,000. On that basis, Washington is prepared to draw down occupation forces while working to secure some sort of peace deal, or even a power-sharing agreement, with the Taliban. This would be coupled with a long-term security pact with Kabul that would secure permanent bases in Afghanistan for the US military and the indefinite deployment of thousands of US troops in the guise of “advisers” and “trainers.”

While the administration has pledged to reduce troop levels to 68,000 by September 2012, it has provided no further deadlines for withdrawals between then and the end of 2014, when all “combat forces” are supposed to be out of Afghanistan. The US military high command has opposed setting further reductions, and, as Obama said this week, he is committed to keeping a “robust” force in the country.

Now preliminary talks with the Taliban have apparently broken down, with the Islamist movement issuing a statement saying that “the shaky, erratic and vague standpoint of the Americans” rendered the talks pointless.

The Taliban had set up an office in Qatar and held preliminary meetings with US representatives beginning last January. Talks reportedly centered on a proposed prisoner exchange, which would have traded an American soldier captured in 2009 for Taliban members held at US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Apparently, Washington attempted to impose conditions upon the talks, such as including in the negotiations representatives of the Karzai regime, which the Taliban considers illegitimate.

While there was no mention in the Taliban statement of the massacre in Kandahar, it may well see it as creating more favorable conditions for resisting the occupation.

The Obama administration and the Pentagon have insisted that last Sunday’s massacre was an aberration that, as Obama put it recently, “does not represent our military”. This war crime is seen in Afghanistan, however, as precisely representative of a decade of killings of civilians and other systematic abuses that are the inevitable product of colonial-style occupation.

It comes after a long string of highly-publicized outrages, including the recent trial of a US Army “kill team” that murdered Afghan civilians and cut off body parts for trophies, the video last January of US Marines urinating on the corpses of slain Afghans and last month’s burning of copies of the Koran at a garbage dump, which triggered nationwide riots that killed at least 30, including six American soldiers.

In another event that calls into serious question the Pentagon’s unfailingly positive view of US progress in Afghanistan, the US military was compelled to acknowledge that it had significantly underestimated the seriousness of an incident that took place Wednesday, when a man drove a truck onto the runway at the Camp Bastion airport in Helmand, just as the plane bringing Defense Secretary Panetta was arriving there.

It has since emerged that the individual driving the truck, which had been stolen from an Afghan soldier, was an Afghan interpreter working for the US-led occupation. He died on Thursday from severe burns suffered when he apparently tried to ignite the vehicle. Pentagon officials admitted Thursday that the interpreter was trying to run down a group of US Marines assigned to meet the aircraft.

The incident underscored both the lack of security in an area supposedly secured by the US surge, as well as the continuing proliferation of so-called green-on-blue violence, the term used by the US military to describe attacks against it by Afghan security forces that are supposedly its allies.

By Bill Van Auken

16 March 2012

@ WSWS.org

The US and Western Europe are in a recession threatening to become a depression as bad as that of the 1930s. Therefore we look to Keynesian policies as the cure, namely stimulate consumption and investment—that is, stimulate growth of the economy. It seemed to work in the past, so why not now? Should not ecological economics and steady-state ideas give way to Keynesian growth economics in view of the present crisis?

Certainly not! Why? Because we no longer live in the empty world of the 1930s — we live in a full world. Furthermore, in the 1930s the goal was full employment and growth was the means to it. Nowadays growth itself has become the goal and the means to it are off-shoring of jobs, automation, mergers, union busting, importing cheap labor, and other employment-cutting policies. The former goal of full employment has been sacrificed to the modern ideology of “growth in share holder value.”

Growth has filled the world with us and our products. I was born in 1938, and in my lifetime world population has tripled. That is unprecedented. But even more unprecedented is the growth in populations of artifacts — “our stuff” — cars, houses, livestock, refrigerators, TVs, cell phones, ships, airplanes, etc. These populations of things have vastly more than tripled. The matter-energy embodied in these living and nonliving populations was extracted from the ecosystem. The matter-energy required to maintain and replace these stocks also comes from the ecosystem. The populations or stocks of all these things have in common that they are what physicists call “dissipative structures” — i.e., their natural tendency, thanks to the entropy law, is to fall apart, to die, to dissipate. The dissipated matter-energy returns to the ecosystem as waste, to be reabsorbed by natural cycles or accumulated as pollution. All these dissipative structures exist in the midst of an entropic throughput of matter-energy that both depletes and pollutes the finite ecosphere of which the economy is a wholly contained subsystem. When the subsystem outgrows the regenerative capacity of the parent system then further growth becomes biophysically impossible.

But long before growth becomes impossible it becomes uneconomic — it begins to cost more than it is worth at the margin. We refer to growth in the economy as “economic growth,” — even after such growth has become uneconomic in the more basic sense of increasing illth faster than wealth. That is where we are now, but we are unable to recognize it.

Why this inability? Partly because our national accounting system, GDP, only measures “economic activity,” not true income, much less welfare. Rather than separate costs from benefits and compare them at the margin we just add up all final goods and services, including anti-bads (without subtracting the bads that made the anti-bad necessary). Also depletion of natural capital and natural services are counted as income, as are financial transactions that are nothing but bets on debts, and then further bets on those bets.

Also since no one wants to buy illth, it has no market price and is often ignored. But illth is a joint product with wealth and is everywhere: nuclear wastes, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, gyres of plastic trash in the oceans, the ozone hole, biodiversity loss, climate change from excess carbon in the atmosphere, depleted mines, eroded topsoil, dry wells, exhausting and dangerous labor, exploding debt, etc. Standard economists claim that the solution to poverty is more growth — without ever asking if growth still makes us richer, as it did back when the world was empty and the goal was full employment, rather than growth itself. Or has growth begun to make us poorer in a world that is now too full of us, and all our products, counted or not in GDP?

Does growth now increase illth faster than wealth? This is a threatening question, because if growth has become uneconomic then the solution to poverty becomes sharing now, not growth in the future. Sharing is frequently referred to as “class warfare.” But it is really the alternative to the class warfare that will result from the current uneconomic growth in which the dwindling benefits are privatized to the elite, while the exploding costs are socialized to the poor, the future, and to other species.

Finally, I eagerly submit that even if we limit quantitative physical throughput (growth) it should still be possible to experience qualitative improvement (development) thanks to technological advance and to ethical improvement of our priorities. I think therefore we should urge policies to limit the quantitative growth of throughput, thereby raising resource prices, in order to increase resource efficiency, to force the path of progress from growth to development, from bigger to better, and to stop the present folly of continuing uneconomic growth. A policy of quantitative limits on throughput (cap-auction-trade) will also block the erosion of initial resource savings resulting from efficiency improvements (the rebound effect or Jevons paradox). In addition the auction will raise much revenue and make it possible to tax value added (labor and capital) less because in effect we will have shifted the tax base to resource throughput. Value added is a good, so stop taxing it. Depletion and pollution, the two ends of the throughput, are bads, so tax them. If you are a technological optimist please have the courage of your convictions and join us in advocating policies that give incentive to the resource-saving technologies that you believe are within easy reach. You may be right — I hope you are. Let’s find out. If you turn out to be wrong, there is really no downside, because it was still necessary to limit throughput to avoid uneconomic growth.

By Herman Daly

5 March 2012

@ The Daly News

Herman Daly is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. He was Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank, where he helped to develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. He is closely associated with theories of a Steady state economy. He is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the NCSE Lifetime Achievement Award

In a worrying sign for the powers that be in the west the Somali national resistance under the umbrella of Al Shabab has made its first major breakthrough in the northern region of Somalia by bringing into its folds the Islamic Resistance in Puntland. With Al Shabab this past year having unified all the major resistance movement in central and southern Somalia and with talks ongoing between Al Shabab and the reunification movement in the very most northern region of Somaliland it should come as no surprise that the only real news coming out of the World Conference on Somalia recently convened in London would be the announcement of another military “surge” in Somalia, this time of over 50% to almost 20,000 “peacekeepers”.

Like it says in the West Point manuals, when you start losing ( i.e. the insurgents are getting stronger) “send in the Cavalry” as in double your troop strength, which is what has happened this past year with the UN/AU “peacekeepers” in Mogadishu going from 8,000 to almost 20,000. And this doesn’t count the hundreds of tanks and heavy artillery as well as the dozens of helicopter gun ships flying over head protection this “surge” includes.

With lightly armed Al Shabab, ie rifles, machine guns and rocket propelled grenades having to give ground and hit and run the insurgency has entered the strategic stalemate stage with neither side being able to defeat the other.

The problem for the west is that Al Shabab continues to unite more and more Somalis and expand its base of operations. Once it can mount serious attacks in all areas of the former nation of Somalia at once watch out AU, watch out UN, watch out Ethiopia and especially watch out USA next door in AFRICOM’s major new base in Djibouti.

The Somali people have long been a fiercely independent lot and will never accept a foreign occupation be it 20,000 UN/AU troops or 50,000 Ethiopian troops before that.

Al Shabab has spent the last year ending all of the fighting between the various central and southern resistance fighters, with even the “moderates” in the former Union of Islamic Courts (UIC)/Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS) removing their white scholars scarfs and replacing them with Al Shabab red.

Now with Al Shabab’s breakthrough in the northern Puntland region it seems the resistance to the western backed military occupation based in Mogadishu has become an even more serious problem for the west and its vassals at the UN/AU, and more “surge” is the order of the day.

“Quagmire”? Kenya has certainly learned it the hard way, invading southern Somali for the first time in Kenyan history last October. All the braggadocio of the Kenyan Army has gone up in smoke as the attempt to capture the Al Shabab lifeline port of Kismayo has been an utter failure.

Today the several thousand Kenyan troops occupying southern Somalia are stuck in the mud, unable to advance and with a daily increase in small scale attacks on their supply lines, finding it hard to stay where they are.

Damn those Al Shabab!, and Damn all those ungrateful Somalis! has become the west’s not so silent lament, no matter the bluff and bluster spewed by Hillary Clinton in London with her regional mafioso chief Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia at her side.

The western “War on Terror” can surge in Somalia to 100,000 AU troops, the lesson never learned is you cannot defeat an entire people. With Al Shabab slowly but steadily spreading its wings south to north across Somalia no cries of “freedom and democracy” can hide the fact that “peacekeepers” and their puppets will one day have to make their escape from Somalia and then what is the west going to do with an Islamic government in power right smack in the middle of the Horn of Africa?

By Thomas C. Mountain

10 March 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com

The world of journalism and that of the broader reading public suffered a major loss last week with the death of Anthony Shadid in Syria. Shadid one of the most daring, and daringly honest, journalists in the world succumbed to an asthma attack at the age of 43 last Thursday while on assignment for the New York Times. Before he died he sent this story [“Exile Over, Tunisian Sets Task: Building a Democracy”] which appeared in the NYT 2-18-2012 two days after his death. It is important to discuss and evaluate the story as it reveals the complexity of modern political Islam and upends many current false and bigoted notions being spread in the US and Europe.

The story revolves around the return to Tunis of Said Ferjani, a self educated Islamic politician, who lived in the U.K. for 22 years and is a member of the Ennanah Party — an Islamic political party that won the recent elections in Tunisia after the overthrow of the dictatorial former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

Ferjani sees the task of his party as building a society both democratic and Islamic. “This is our test,” he said. The test, of course, is to see if it is truly possible to create a modern democratic society, even a bourgeois democracy, based on Islamic rather than than secular foundations. Shadid pointed out that the Islamists of Ferjani’s generation (and the Ennanah Party ) are the spiritual descendants of the movements spawned under the aegis of the Muslim Brotherhood- a society founded in 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banne who was inspired both by European fascist movements and the desire to impose Sharia law.

Many Arab secularists and political liberals doubt that so-called “moderate” political Islam, such as is represented by the Ennanah Party, can, given its roots in fascism and Sharia, actually lead the way to a real representative democracy. We shall see, in the course of this article, if their fears are warranted or not.

“I can tell you one thing,” Ferjani is quoted as saying, “we now have a golden opportunity. And in this golden opportunity, I’m not interested in control. I’m interested delivering the best charismatic system, a charismatic democratic system. This is my dream.” It is strange for a Sunni to be using the term “charismatic” as this is a term usually associated with the Shia tradition and a “charismatic” and mystical element that can be found in leaders; it is also associated with fascist ideology.

As a young teenager Ferjani came under the influence his school teacher, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, who went on to become a political activist and the founder of the Ennahda Party. The questions that were discussed by Ghannouchi centered around the theme of Muslim backwardness. Ferjani remembers his teacher asking “What makes us backwards? Is it our destiny to be so?”

At this time these questions were being answered by the Muslim Brotherhood founded by Hassan al-Banna whose ideas had spread beyond Egypt to other Arab countries including Tunisia. Banna was a pan-Arabist and anti-imperialist who build the Brotherhood he founded in 1928 from a small group to a large international organization of 500,000 members. He was assassinated in 1949 at the age of 42 because he opposed violence and denounced terrorism as a way for Muslims to fight imperialism and to further democratic rights.

After Banna’s death Sayyid Qutb rose to prominence in the leadership of the Brotherhood. Originally a man with secular values that did not conflict with Islam he became a radical jihadist in theory after a sojourn in the US (1948-50 he was turned off by the “immodesty” of the women and he hated jazz) and rejecting the secular government in Egypt that resulted from the overthrow of the monarchy (which he approved) by Nasser, who later executed him as a terrorist– although he had only advocated it not engaged in it personally.

Qutb’s faction of the Brotherhood advocates offensive jihad, violence, and eventual world conquest by militant Islam and the universal imposition of Sharia law. World conquest has never worked out for the those who advocate it and Qutb’s version of radical Islam, which was very influential in the ideology of bin Ladin and al-Queda, is a minority viewpoint within the Sunni branch of Islam where it originated (although past and current US policy in the Middle East is making it more popular day by day.)

Despite its rejection by the majority of Muslims it is almost the only version of Islam that the American public is exposed to from the preachings of right wing fundamentalists calling themselves “Christians”, the screechings of talking lunkheads on Fox TV, to the frothy mixture of political opportunism and misinformation bandied about by Rick Santorum and other Republican presidential wannabes.

Over in Tunisia, Ghannouchi and his followers did not adopt Qutb’s extremism and instead argued for an Islam compatible with pluralism and democratic values (a move away from fascism). This did not stop their falling victims to political oppression and in some cases imprisonment, torture and exile. In the late 1980s Ferjani found himself in jail, tortured, and finally forced to flee into exile in London.

London in the 1990s was a hot bed of Islamic thought. Ghannouchi followed Ferjani and there were Muslim exiles from all the Arab countries and of all stripes and Islamic positions. There was also exposure to Western values and ideas. Here was no Chinese wall between western and eastern ideals. Ferjani told Shadid that while all the different exiles were mixing it up they did not all agree. “We know each other. But knowing is one thing, doing things together in every sense— as many may think— is another. In politics, its not that we all agree.” The moral here, I think, is that any attempt to paint political Islam with broad strokes as some kind of monolithic movement threatening the West at every turn, is a gross error.

The NYT report makes an important point, often overlooked by other Western media and especially by conservatives in the US– including the Republican party leaders whose grip on reality is questionable to say the least. The idea of a unified and radically violent political Islam grew out of three sources in the 90s and early 2000s. These were the revolt in Egypt by radical islamists, the the civil war in Algeria, and the rise of Bin Laden. And, the Times points out, Bin Laden’s distorted “Manichaean” world view was the mirror image of “the most vitriolic statements of the Bush administration.”

To place al-Queda and the Bush administration on the same level of ideological putrescence took a lot of courage. This should tell us what is at stake in the 2012 elections. The Republican Party is the standard bearer of Bush’s ideological putrescence and lack of understanding of the world as it really is. For this crypto-fascistic party to take control of the US would be a disaster for the American people and the world taking us down the road to more wars and inviting the growth of radical anti-Western sentiments at the expense of more moderate outlooks. It would be especially disastrous to working people here and abroad whose class interests would be sacrificed for the illusory well being of what has come to be called the 1%.

This article also makes the case for a real moderate Islamic political trend such as the one now heading the governing alliance in Tunisia and led by Ghannouchi who favors democracy and maintains that majority rule is not anti-Islamic as the radicals claim. He also wants more participation by women in the political process and in the Parliament– a very different position from what we see in Saudi Arabia and the Taliban (although the King in S.A. has recently allowed women to participate in municipal elections; but no car driving). “Frankly,” Ferjani told the NYT, “the guy who brought democracy into the Islamic movement is Ghannouchi.” As for resorting to violence, Ghannouchi has publicly said that “Rulers benefit from violence more than their opponents do.”

Ghannouchi, and many others, have evolved away from the rigid stances of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood itself has undergone changes and while many of its positions such as the subordination and separate education of women, since their natures are unlike those of men (this is a little analogous to the Southern Baptist position on women but the Baptists allow for co-education), are unacceptable to progressives, and it now says it is against violence and supports political democracy. However, the Brotherhood is an international muti-tendency organization and still has many militant radical fundamentalists within some of its chapters.

The Brotherhood’s old motto, still in use, “hearing and obeying” is increasing being rejected by the new generation of Islamists. “That’s over,” Tariq Ramadan said (best remembered by Americans as the Islamic scholar barred from visiting the US by the second Bush administration and thus prevented from teaching at that hot bed of radical Islamic thinking Notre Dame University). “The new generation is saying if it’s going to be this, then we’re leaving. You have a new understanding and a new energy.” Ramadan pointed out that this has a lot to do with the contact of the Islamic exiles with Western thought and ideals. The ideology of Islamists is “not just coming from the Middle East anymore. It’s coming from North African countries and from the West. These are new visions and there are new ways of understanding. Now they are bringing these thoughts back to the Middle East.” Ferjani, for example, who left Tunisia an anti-Leftist, returned from London a believer in the economic theories of Karl Marx and a critic of capitalism; views not usually associated with Islamic politics. “Exile,” he remarked, “changed me a lot, profoundly.”

Well, we shall see what the results of the Constituent Assembly are with respect to writing a new constitution for Tunisia. The October election won by Ennahna allows this party to have a major influence now in running the country and in composing the constitution. It is actually ruling in a coalition with two other parties, a center left secular party and a “populist” party set up by a wealthy businessman with alleged ties to the ousted president Ben Ali. Of the 217 people elected three are members of the Tunisian Communist Workers Party so Marxism will be represented in a small way at least. If a real democratic constitution is drawn up it should put to rest the anti-Islamic hysteria in Europe and the US. Time will tell.

By Thomas Riggins

Thomas Riggins is the associate editor of Political Affairs and also writes for the People’s World– both online.

2012 has brought a flood of war talk and aggressive preparations for war on Iran . Indeed, war looms more ominously week by week.

The U.S. , Israel , and the European Union have intensified their economic, political, and diplomatic assault on Iran . They claim it’s needed to force Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment program, which they say is actually aimed at giving Iran the ability to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says its program is peaceful and is simply for generating nuclear power.

Sanctions have been imposed aimed at crippling its economy and devastating the lives of millions of Iranians. Several Iranian scientists have been assassinated in the streets of Tehran . U.S. drones illegally fly over Iran , violating its airspace. U.S. carrier strike task forces have twice this year sailed within a few miles of Iran ‘s coast, carrying missiles and dozens of war planes which analysts call “larger and more capable than the entire air force of many American allies.” Every day some provocative new claim is uttered by some politician or pundit in the U.S. or Israel claims that Iran is a grave and immediate nuclear threat or is hatching world-wide terror plots. In these ways, the U.S. and its allies are already waging forms of warfare on Iran .

Meanwhile, they’re openly discussing waging a military war. Foreign Affairs —the premier U.S. imperialist policy journal—has published at least two essays calling for military action: “Time to Attack Iran : Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option” (January/February 2012) and “Why Obama Should Take Out Iran’s Nuclear Program” ( November 9, 2011 ). On January 25, The New York Times Magazine published a lengthy piece, “Will Israel Attack Iran ?”, laying out the Israeli case for war. Its author, Ronen Bergman, concluded: “After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012.” The Washington Post reported Defense Secretary “Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June.” (“Is Israel preparing to attack Iran ?” David Ignatius, February 2, 2012 )

Throughout, there have been reports of extremely tense debates within the U.S. ruling class and between the Obama administration and the Israeli government about how to deal with Iran , with one high-level delegation after another shuttling between Washington , DC and Israel ‘s capital Tel Aviv. On Sunday, March 4, President Obama meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who will reportedly push him to issue an ultimatum to Iran —either halt your nuclear enrichment program entirely or face attack. All this is taking place against the backdrop of ongoing upheaval in the Middle East , in particular in Syria , where Western military intervention is being intensely discussed.

Faced with a campaign to destabilize, crush, or overthrow its rule, the Islamic Republic of Iran has responded with counter-moves of its own. Iran ‘s military has staged exercises and missile tests, and Iranian generals have stated it would be easy for them to close the Straits of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows. Other Iranian military officials warn that Iran could strike first if it felt an attack was imminent. Iran ‘s leader Ayatollah Khamenei has declared Iran will refuse to bow to U.S. pressure to end its nuclear program and will strike back against any attacks.

This U.S.-Israel initiated dynamic of threat and counter-threat, move and counter-move has created an escalating trajectory of confrontation and very possibly war in the not distant future.

A Narrative Built on Lies, Half-Truths, Innuendo, and Distortions

A narrative is being created—with each spin of the news cycle—that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. The New York Times routinely reports that “Western politicians believe Iran is building a nuclear weapons capability,” or that ” Iran ‘s nuclear program has a military objective.” In his interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer broadcast during the Super Bowl, President Obama stated: ” Iran has to stand down on its nuclear weapons program.” He then threatened, “Until they do, I think Israel rightly is going to be very concerned, and we are as well.”

This narrative is built on lies, half-truths, innuendos, and distortions. In reality, top Western politicians know there’s no proof that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, and that there is no definitive evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. The 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), representing a consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, stated: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” This estimate continues to be upheld as valid, a basic fact that is hardly ever even mentioned in U.S. media coverage or official statements. Nor was this disproved by the oft-cited November 2011 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Officially, Obama and his cabinet also state—at least for the moment—that Iran doesn’t have a bomb and hasn’t decided to pursue one. But nonetheless, the dominant public perception is that Iran is doing something illegal and probably working on a nuclear weapon.

So this fabricated “certainty” that Iran is building nuclear weapons then becomes grist for even wilder threats and fear-mongering. After Israel claimed that Iran was developing missiles with a 6,000-mile range, capable of hitting the U.S. (without a shred of proof and in contradiction to everything known about Iranian capabilities), Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich warned voters in Ohio : “You think about an Iranian nuclear weapon. You think about the dangers, to Cleveland , or to Columbus , or to Cincinnati , or to New York .” Gingrich said, “Remember what it felt like on 9/11 when 3,100 Americans were killed. Now imagine an attack where you add two zeros. And it’s 300,000 dead. Maybe a half-million wounded. This is a real danger.” (“Gingrich Warns of Iranian Nuclear Attack,” New York Times , February 8, 2012 )

The specter of Iranian terror attacks has also been added to this nuclear nightmare stew. On January 31, national intelligence director James Clapper testified to Congress that “Some Iranian officials—probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States .” Recent bomb attacks on Israeli embassies in Georgia , India , and Thailand were blamed on Iran . The day after the explosions in Georgia and India , an opinion piece by the head of the New York Police Department’s intelligence analysis unit in the Wall Street Journal argued that “As the West’s conflict with Iran over its nuclear program heats up, New York City —with its large Jewish population—becomes an increasingly attractive target.” (“The Iranian Threat to New York City ,” Mitchell D. Silber, February 14, 2012 )

No evidence has been produced for these charges. Meanwhile, there is evidence of Israeli and perhaps U.S. involvement in the January 11 assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist (the fifth targeted, the fourth killed in the last several years). An Obama official told NBC News that Israel was supplying the reactionary Iranian group M.E.K. with money, training, and weapons in order to carry out these assassinations.

Background to War Threats: The Clashing Interests of Two Historically Outmoded Forces

Weaving together these distortions, half-truths, speculations, and outright lies paints a picture of Iran as a reckless violator of its legal agreements and international law, a rogue state preventing a peaceful resolution of differences, instead escalating the conflict by refusing to agree to the reasonable demands of the U.S. and its allies.

Most fundamentally, this narrative is designed to obscure the actual nature of the regimes that are clashing—the U.S. and Israel versus Iran—what interests they’re fighting for and what the clash is really all about, as well as what’s driving the dynamic of confrontation and possibly war. Put another way, if Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, and the U.S. and Israel know this, why are they threatening war?

In a nutshell, the U.S. , Britain , and France represent the most militarily, politically, and economically dominant coalition of predatory capitalist-imperialist powers on earth, which together possess thousands of nuclear weapons. Israel is their heavily armed surrogate and enforcer in the Middle East with an estimated 75-200 nukes. Iran , on the other hand, is a much less powerful Third World capitalist state without nuclear weapons. The U.S. can project power thousands of miles from its shores and has nearly 800 military bases around the world; Iran ‘s Navy rarely ventures beyond the Persian Gulf/Arabian Sea area and has no foreign military bases. The U.S. spends 100 times as much on its military as Iran , and has over 2,000 deployed nuclear weapons. Its population is over three times as large as Iran ‘s; its economy is nearly 18 times larger and much more technologically advanced than Iran ‘s.

At bottom, this is a battle by the U.S. and its allies to maintain their dominance over the Middle East and the world. This need is rooted in the core functioning and power of their entire system, which is based on the global exploitation of labor, control and access to key resources and markets, and the military-political control of vast swaths of the globe. Controlling the Middle East has been a key part of the entire structure of U.S. global dominance for the past 60-plus years because together with Central Asia it contains roughly 80 percent of the world’s proven energy reserves. Control of this energy spigot is a key lever on the entire global economy—and on all the other powers that depend on oil and natural gas—from allies in Europe and Japan to rivals Russia and China . The region is a crossroads for global trade and a critical military-strategic pivot.

In short, the U.S. , Israel , Britain , and France are battling for empire and hegemony—not for justice, liberation, or a nuclear-free world.

Why the Islamic Republic Is a Problem for the Empire

Why is Iran such a problem for them? The Islamic Republic of Iran is a reactionary theocracy that may or may not be seeking the ability to build a nuclear weapon—nuclear weapons are extremely dangerous in anyone’s hands!

However, it is definitely not seeking to break out of the framework of or fundamentally challenge the system of global capitalism-imperialism. It is attempting to maintain its hold on power in Iran , expand its influence in the Middle East , and develop relationships with a range of world powers such as Russia , China , Pakistan , and India . Iran is a relatively strong and coherent state with enormous oil wealth. It has strengthened Islamist trends across the region that are clashing with the U.S. It poses a military, political, and ideological challenge and in some ways is an alternative to the whole structure of U.S. control of the Middle East —from the settler-colonial state of Israel to the U.S.-backed network of torturers, tyrants, and potentates from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States —on which U.S. control rests.

Add to this the fact that Iran has historically been a huge “prize” for rival empires. It sits on the world’s second largest reserve of natural gas and third largest oil reserve at a time of growing energy competition. It’s located at the crossroads of two key energy routes—the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea —and two key regions— Central Asia and the Middle East .

Shortly after the Islamic Republic took power in 1979 with the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah (who was a key ally in the region), the U.S. broke and never restored diplomatic relations and has never recognized the Islamic regime, but instead sought to contain, undermine, even overthrow it. In the 1980s the U.S. did this by instigating the eight-year-long bloodbath known as the Iran-Iraq War. During the 1990s, the U.S. attempted to strangle Iran through sanctions and “containment.” As soon as the so-called war on terror was launched in 2001, Iran was named part of the “axis of evil” and slated for regime change via escalating sanctions, covert actions, and threats of war.

What the U.S.-Israeli Nuclear Position Reveals About Their Actual Motives

The U.S.-Israeli position on Iran ‘s nuclear program only makes sense within this context. This crisis has brought more fully into public view U.S.-Israeli insistence that Iran not even or ever have nuclear capacity. The word “capacity” is often used in the media as if it means having a nuclear weapon. But what the U.S. and Israel mean by nuclear “capacity” or “capability” is actually the technological ability to enrich uranium, even for nuclear power plants and for medical purposes, despite the fact that they are given that right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The answer is because even the possibility that Iran could build a bomb, even if it never did, could change the regional balance of power including the military balance of power—and that’s the core issue driving this clash. ” Iran could be seeking to enhance its influence in the region by creating what some analysts call ‘strategic ambiguity,'” The New York Times acknowledge in a February 24 analysis. “Rather than building a bomb now, Iran may want to increase its power by sowing doubt among other nations about its nuclear ambitions.” (” U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb,” James Risen and Mark Mazzetti)

So the fear is NOT that Iran will simply build a bomb and wipe Israel off the map. The imperialists’ fear is that Iran’s influence in the region—which has already broadened in certain ways due to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, spiking oil prices, the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, and the rise of new powers globally—will grow further if it is perceived as militarily stronger and less vulnerable to U.S. and/or Israeli attack. This could erode the U.S. grip on the region, including its ability with Israel to attack anyone, anytime, anywhere—including Iran itself.

Nuclear weapons in anyone’s hands are a terrible thing. But the U.S. and Israel are not threatening Iran to eliminate nuclear weapons—they’re threatening Iran to maintain their monopoly of nuclear weapons and military dominance of the region.

This is why negotiations have failed and why the U.S. refused Iran’s 2003 offer to negotiate all outstanding issues in return for recognizing the IRI and its interests in the region, and calling off the dogs of pressure, intervention, and bullying. The U.S. negotiating position to date has been akin to the godfather attempting to force a smaller rival to accept an offer “they can’t refuse”: that Iran essentially forfeit its right to enrich uranium.

To this point, Iran’s clerical rulers have felt this is not an offer they can accept given the fissures in the Iranian ruling class as well as the mass hatred of their oppressive rule (particularly after the uprising following the June 2009 elections). To do so in their view would amount to a public capitulation which could undercut their strength and legitimacy while not ending U.S. hostility, thus threatening to unravel their rule.

The U.S. refusal so far to make any major agreement with the Islamic Republic has also been shaped by the U.S. refusal to do anything which could strengthen the Iranian regime—because its strategic objective all along has been bringing down the regime.

Why Is the Confrontation Accelerating Now?

This confrontation between the “red line” interests of Israel and the U.S. on one side and the Islamic Republic of Iran on the other have also accelerated in the past year because of the profound changes that have shaken the region. This is a key reason the current rise in tensions is much, much more serious than periods of increased U.S.-Iranian tensions in recent decades.

The two key regional developments are first, the U.S. failures—in many senses defeats—in Iraq and Afghanistan , and second, the Arab upheaval. The first has meant that the U.S. has failed in creating reliable bases in the region from which to solidify its dominance, project its power, and, as a part of this, strangle Iran ; instead, Iran has been strengthened by these U.S. failures. The second has meant that the region’s political terrain is shifting rapidly, and in unpredictable ways—with the potential to seriously shake U.S. influence and control and increase Iran’s influence. Iran ‘s insistence on continuing its nuclear program, and the failure of previous U.S.-led efforts to topple or shake the regime, are intensifying these concerns.

Right now Syria , a close ally of Iran , is the focal point. Thousands of Syrians have risen up against the hated Assad regime, which has killed over 6,000 Syrians in attempting to put down the opposition, which is a mixed bag of various political forces. The U.S. and other powers are now attempting to take advantage and take control of this revolt to take down the Assad regime in order to strengthen their position in the region and to weaken Iran .

Efraim Halevel, former director of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad, writes in The New York Times : “The public debate in America and Israel these days is focused obsessively on whether to attack Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons ambitions; hardly any attention is being paid to how events in Syria could result in a strategic debacle for the Iranian government. Iran ‘s foothold in Syria enables the mullahs in Tehran to pursue their reckless and violent regional policies—and its presence there must be ended.” (” Iran ‘s Achilles’ Heel,” February 7, 2012 )

British author and journalist Patrick Seale called the battle over Syria “a struggle between the United States , on the one hand, and its allies, and its opponents like Russia and China … for regional dominance, who is to be top dog…. [T]his as a concerted attack, assault, on not only Syria , but Iran , as well. You see, Iran , Syria and their ally Hezbollah in Lebanon , that trio, a sort of Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis, has in recent years been the main obstacle to American and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East . And the attempt now is to bring that axis down…. Now, [ U.S. ] ally, Israel , has also suffered recently, in recent years. It tried to crush Hezbollah in 2006, when it went into Lebanon . It tried to crush Hamas in Gaza when it invaded Gaza in 2008, ’09. It feels that the combination of Iran , Syria and Hezbollah has made a dent in its military supremacy in the region. It’s seeking to restore its overall dominance. Now, both these powers, United States and Israel , its ally, believe, I think, that overthrowing the regimes in Tehran and Damascus will allow them to restore their supremacy and come back on top. So that’s what we’re witnessing. It’s a struggle for regional supremacy, regional dominance….” (“A Struggle for Regional Supremacy: Syria Conflict Escalates as World Powers Debate Assad’s Future,” Democracy Now!, February 7, 2012 )

Rising Tensions and a Dangerous Trajectory

War is not a foregone conclusion, and there are indications that the Obama administration is resisting Israel ‘s demand for an immediate ultimatum to Iran . (See “Is Israel Driving the Threat of War?”). Nor is the point that any of the parties simply want war. But the current moves by the U.S. and Israel are ominously similar to the moves by the U.S. leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq .

Iran ‘s continued pursuit of nuclear enrichment impacts and intensifies U.S.-Israeli concerns about its regional influence (including because of the possibility that Iran ‘s nuclear facilities could become more difficult to destroy). For Iran , the threats against it, as well as the dangers the regional upheaval pose for it, increases its perceived need not to back down on the nuclear issue.

So tensions are rising, and the U.S. , Israel , and Iran remain on a collision course, which is very difficult for any to back away from. And there are powerful forces within the ruling class demanding the U.S. not back away. Last week, 12 senators warned Obama in a letter not to engage in negotiations with Tehran unless and until it halted its enrichment program first, and a recent resolution submitted in the Senate demanded the U.S. not accept any policy of “containing” a nuclear Iran, or even allow it to enrich uranium on its own soil. It was in effect, a road map for war. One of its sponsors, Senator Joe Lieberman, stated it was intended “to say clearly and resolutely to Iran : You have only two choices—peacefully negotiate to end your nuclear program or expect a military strike to end that program.”

Martin Indyk, hardline imperialist strategist and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel , writes that events are “spinning out of control.” “As the Obama administration ramps up the sanctions pressure on Iran to accept meaningful curbs on its nuclear program, it is following a strategy of coercive diplomacy that has a fundamental design flaw. Consequently, President Obama is in danger of achieving the opposite of his intention: Iran may well decide that rather than negotiate a compromise, its best choice is actually to cross the nuclear weapons threshold, with fateful consequences for all.” Indyk concludes, “Sadly, the dynamics of the current situation appear to make conflict inevitable. We are now engaged in a three-way game of chicken in which for Khamenei, Netanyahu and even Obama, physical or political survival makes blinking more dangerous than confrontation….” (” Iran Spinning Out of Control,” New York Times , February 29, 2012 )

Nothing Good Can Come from U.S. or Israeli Aggression Against Iran —No War! No Sanctions! No Assassinations! No Intervention!

Iran is capable of exporting terror and it is not impossible that it is pursuing nukes. But there is no evidence of either. And whether or not Iran is working to develop the ability to make a nuclear weapon, this does not justify any U.S. or Israeli military action, which would be a towering crime as well as an illegal and illegitimate war of aggression—a war crime—under the Nuremberg Principles of 1950.

It bears repeating and emphasis: The U.S. and Israel aren’t attacking Iran’s nuclear program to end nuclear weapons; they’re doing it to preserve their regional monopoly on the freedom to threaten the people with these weapons of mass destruction (and whenever U.S. rulers say that “all options are on the table,” that’s exactly what they’re doing). It’s the U.S. and Israel —not Iran —who are the main sources of violence in the Middle East.

The U.S. condemns Iran for being a repressive theocracy. It is a repressive theocracy, but the U.S. isn’t assaulting Iran to liberate Iranians. Look at Iraq , Afghanistan , Libya . All had repressive regimes. Then the U.S. invaded—and made things WORSE by causing enormous death and destruction, imposing new forms of oppression, and fueling religious fundamentalism!

Just what is it the U.S. and Israel are really defending and seeking to preserve? They’re working to preserve U.S. domination over this whole region in service of a global empire of exploitation imposed and maintained by massive violence. And if there’s a debate among them, it’s over how to best pursue that reactionary and criminal aim.

The rulers of the U.S. and Israel realize any attack on Iran could have unpredictable consequences. But they are committed, as they repeatedly state, to keep “all options on the table” when it comes to preserving their global dominance.

By Larry Everest

6 March 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Larry Everest is a correspondent for Revolution newspaper (revcom.us), where this article first appeared, and author of Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda (Common Courage, 2004). He can be reached via www.larryeverest.org

The latest atrocities in Afghanistan are just par for the course

The American atrocities in Afghanistan roll on like a drumbeat from hell. With every affront to the human and national dignity of the Afghan people, the corporate media feign shock and quickly conclude that a few bad apples are responsible for U.S. crimes, that it’s all a mistake and misunderstanding, rather than the logical result of a larger crime: America’s attempt to dominate the world by force. But even so, with the highest paid and best trained military in the world – a force equipped with the weapons and communications gear to exercise the highest standards of control known to any military in history – one would think that commanders could keep their troops from making videos of urinating on dead men, or burning holy books, or letting loose homicidal maniacs on helpless villagers.

These three latest atrocities have brought the U.S. occupation the point of crisis – hopefully, a terminal one. But the whole war has been one atrocity after another, from the very beginning, when the high-tech superpower demonstrated the uncanny ability to track down and incinerate whole Afghan wedding parties – not just once, but repeatedly. Quite clearly, to the Americans, these people have never been more than ants on the ground, to be exterminated at will.

The Afghans, including those on the U.S. payroll, repeatedly use the word “disrespect” to describe American behavior. But honest people back here in the belly of the beast know that the more accurate term is racism. The United States cannot help but be a serial abuser of the rights of the people it occupies, especially those who are thought of as non-white, because it is a thoroughly racist nation. A superpower military allows them to act out this characteristic with impunity.

American racism allows its citizens to imagine that they are doing the people of Pakistan a favor, by sending drones to deal death without warning from the skies. The U.S. calls Pakistan an ally, when polls consistently show that its people harbor more hatred and fear of the U.S. than any other people in the world. The Pakistanis know the U.S. long propped up their military dictators, and then threatened to blow the country to Kingdom Come after 9/ll, if the U.S. military wasn’t given free rein. They know they are viewed collectively as less than human by the powers in Washington – and, if they don’t call it racism, we should, because we know our fellow Americans very well.

The U.S. lost any hope of leaving a residual military force in Iraq when it showed the utterly racist disrespect of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison, the savage leveling of Fallujah, the massacres in Haditha and so many other places well known to Iraqis, if not the American public, and the slaughter of 17 civilians stuck at a traffic circle in Nisour Square, Baghdad. What people would agree to allow such armed savages to remain in their country if given a choice?

The United States was conceived as an empire built on the labor of Blacks and the land of dead natives, an ever-expanding sphere of exploitation and plunder – energized by an abiding and general racism that is, itself, the main obstacle to establishing a lasting American anti-war movement. But, despite the peace movement’s weaknesses, the people of a world under siege by the Americans will in due time kick them out – because to live under barbarian racists is not a human option.

By Glen Ford

Back Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.