By Joey Ayoub

The war drums are beating again.

Yesterday, The Telegraph ‘reported’ that Iran is “strenghtening ties with al-Qaeda”, according to “intelligence chiefs” (1) in yet another among hundreds of ‘reports’ of sudden discoveries of Iran’s secret ambitions. This is all too familiar for us Arabs. 10 years ago, Brian Whitaker wrote in The Guardian that “One of the oldest tricks in the run-up to a war is to spread terrifying stories of things that the enemy may be about to do. Government officials plant these tales, journalists water them and the public, for the most part, swallow them.” (2) This was, as we all know now, the method used to justify the murder of Iraqi civilians and the destruction of their nation by the Bush and Obama administrations. It was a pack of lies – weapons of Mass Destruction, ties with Al Qaeda etc. –  destined to occupy Iraq, steal its wealth and keep it under control, regardless of “civilian casualties” – in fact, General Tommy Franks, who directed the Iraq invasion, famously said that “we don’t do body counts”. The estimate of murdered individuals range between 100, 000 and 1, 000, 000, with American deaths being precise while Iraqi ones just approximations. Despite all of us knowing that now, we claim to put that behind us as if those that have suffered from this horrendous crime have been repaid, as if their shattered homes and annihilated families have been restored to normal. Nothing of that sort has been made. Instead, the US has built the largest embassy in the world at 440,000 meters square and employs 15, 000 persons, which clearly shows that they still claim to have a right to occupy Iraq. The countless Fallujas may never be formally acknowledged since the US holds the right to interfere, occupy and invade as being self-evident – historically, a common claim of all empires.

This is what’s happening today. We should all recognize the fact that there are special interests behind the ‘facts’ that we are given on a daily basis.

The Sunday Herald had reported in 2010 that “Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.” (3, 4) Note: Britain expelled the citizens of Diego Garcia in 1966 so that the US could build the massive base it uses for attacks in the Central Command area. Democracy Now recently reported that “publicly, the British portrayed the establishment of the marine park as a move to save the environment. But a U.S. diplomatic cable dated May 2009, disclosed by WikiLeaks, revealed that a British Foreign Office official had privately told the Americans that the decision to set up a marine protected area would “effectively end the islanders’ resettlement claims.” (5, Visit the Chagos Support Association’s website) – I’ll leave that for another post.

The American scholar and Middle East specialist Juan Cole also revealed on his blog that “the United States, which professes itself menaced by Iran, rather has Iran encircled by military bases”. “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” says Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London. “US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he said. “The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003,” accelerating under Obama. (6) “It is depressingly similar to the rhetoric we heard prior to the war in Iraq in 2003”, said Alan Mackinnon, chair of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. (7) The US has since encircled Iran with military bases – Remember that the US has bases in Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey and Oman, all surrounding Iran (8).

Surely, one cannot argue against Iran’s claim to anything Nuclear while defending the right of other nations to possess them? When Netanyahu talks of the “Iranian Threat”, the mainstream media conveniently forgets to mention that Israel already possesses illegal weapons of mass destruction. Under which right would anyone claim to a nuclear weapon? It’s interesting to note that the US has between 2,000 and 8,000 and has already used them twice in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki genocides. Russia has between 2,000 and 11,000, the UK between 100 and 200, Israel between 75 and 400, France around 300, China around 200, India around 100, Pakistan around 100 and North Korea supposedly less than 10 (9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17). We’re not really worried about Iran getting one – which, remember, it is still claiming not to be doing. The only argument one can make is for all countries to disable their nuclear weapons.

Iran’s Nuclear Program started in the 1950s as part of the Atoms for Peace program and was assisted by the US and Western European Governments until the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the last Iranian Monarch or Shah – an unacceptable act of independance from imperial control which Iran is still paying for today. In 1975 the New York Times praised Iran for its “alternative energy source, nuclear power”, calling it “mindful that even her 60-billion-barrel reserve of oil will some day run out”. The Shah had at the time insisted that the “purchases are for peaceful purposes” (18) but no one accepts Iranian leaders saying the exact same thing today, for obvious reasons: Iran is no longer in complete economic cooperation with the US which is, of course, unacceptable.

The mainstream media’s hysteria around Iran’s nuclear program couldn’t really  be about the potential Nuclear weapon itself since Iran would only be the 5th Nuclear Weapon State not recognized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, after Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan.  Israel is the only one in the world that hasn’t officially declared having them. It took former Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu’s courage to reveal the details of Israel’s nuclear program to the public in 1986, an act which has lead him to be kidnapped by Mossad agents in Italy on the 30th of September 1986. He has since spent 18 years in prison, 11 of which in solitary confinement, and is banned from leaving Israel (19). All sentences are clear violations of international human rights, keeping silent all those who reject the rule of brute force. But that wouldn’t cause any outrage because those who criticize Israel’s illegal policies are automatically attacked as Anti-Semites by the Dershowitz of the world. All of this does not qualify Israel as a “threat” to “stability”, because of the real meaning of the word stability. Israel’s daily abuse and murder of Palestinians living under occupations cannot be condemned by the US as Israel doesn’t pose a threat to US interests in the region. Same goes for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, among others. Bahrain’s brutal crackdown on protesters during the largest Arab Spring uprising in the Gulf couldn’t have been done without Saudi intervention and, by extension, US support and silence. The two nations even went further and have accused Iran of inciting violence, a claim which was directly rejected by Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, the Egyptian international United Nations war crimes expert (20). Not suprisingly, Bahrain’s King, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, never received a condemnation as did his Lybian counterpart, Muammar Gadhaffi. This should lead us to think that anything that doesn’t pose a threat to US interest in the region, and indeed in the world, would never be reported or given significant importance by the mainstream media unless an equally significant amount of protest is raised. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise if the US and Israel really do attack Iran in the near future, which would of course lead to retaliations and a catastrophic war. All we have to decide is whether our human civilization can afford another catastrophe. For now, it seems like our answer is yes as we are mostly “swallowing tales” and having our consent manufactured.