GUESTWORK | Sheldon Richman
A growing group of individuals and organizations has designated Saturday, Feb. 4, as a “National Day of Action” aimed at preventing a war against Iran. The manifesto is simple: “No War, No Sanctions, No Intervention, No Assassinations.”
Nothing is more urgent than stopping the march to war now underway. Economic warfare has begun already. Sanctions and embargoes are belligerent acts under international law; such policies goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941. The U.S. State Department recently reassured Israeli leaders, who along with their American lobby are in a bigger hurry for war than President Obama is, that the sanctions will devastate the Iranian economy – more precisely, the Iranian people.
U.S. officials also say that Iran’s economy will be throttled by the crippling of that country’s central bank. Sanctions authorized by Obama in late December aim to stop the rest of the world from doing business with the bank, which would amount to isolating the Iranian people from world commerce. If successful, this would create indescribable misery for average Iranians. Rulers always find a way to get by.
Meanwhile, Iranian scientists are being assassinated, and various Iranian facilities are mysteriously exploding. This is surely the work of the CIA or the Israeli Mossad or both of them in conjunction with Iranian groups with histories of violent activity. The covert war is on.
The national day of action, with events planned in many cities, is intended to bring all of this to the attention of a complacent American people. Americans are said to be war-weary after an eight-year occupation of Iraq and a decade-long and continuing war in Afghanistan, a quagmire if there ever was one. You’d think a war-weary people would be demanding no war against Iran, but Americans seem not to be paying attention.
George W. Bush famously botched the old saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” The American people were fooled once by unsubstantiated claims about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, and his readiness to use them on short notice. There were no such weapons, of course – as many informed authorities said before the U.S. invasion – but those who want to bomb Iran appear to believe that this method of spreading war fever among Americans will work again.
Hence the incessant propaganda about Iran’s nuclear-weapons program – for which there is zero evidence. America’s dozen-and-ahalf intelligence agencies have twice reported that Iran scrapped its initial program more than eight years ago. The International Atomic Energy Agency regularly inspects the country and certifies that its uranium has not been enriched to weapons-grade. What Iran has done is consistent with developing nuclear medicine and electrical power.
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