Threatening Iran
08.29.07 - 09:50am
It strikes me that something missing from the debate over Iran is any consciousness of the fact that the Iranian state and people may feel that they are the ones being threatened.
Yesterday, George Bush “ramped up the war of words between the US and Iran” accusing Tehran of “threatening to place the Middle East under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust” and saying that he had authorised US military commanders in Iraq to “confront Tehran’s murderous activities”. Every time an American politician discusses the Middle East they talk of the threat from Iran. Yet in the same breath they invariably make actual threats against that nation.
In actual fact, while refusing to roll over, as Britain invariably does, Iran has publicly been remarkably conciliatory towards the US. At one point it even voluntarily suspended its legal uranium enrichment as part of a deal with the EU, a deal which subsequently fell apart because the EU could not deliver on its promise to extract a commitment from America not to attack, a sequence of events which has subsequently mysteriously disappeared from history.
Iran has not attacked anyone in the last 250 years. It has been attacked: by Iraq under the then US-backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, according to the Washington Post, the CIA gave Iraq intelligence that Iraq used to “calibrate” its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops.
The fact that the coalition invasion of its immediate neighbour, and a gigantic naval presence in the area, may now give Iran grounds for feeling threatened, does not figure much in mainstream debate on the “war of words” between US and Iran. In fact the war of words itself seems to be rather one sided, with the fighting talk emanating mainly from one party.
I do not know whether Iran is developing nuclear weapons but I do have the rather quaint, old-fashioned notion that such an accusation might require some evidence and that you need a damn good reason before you start threatening another country with attack.
Yesterday’s events actually bear the hallmarks of being a staged propaganda exercise aimed squarely at US public opinion. Bush lambasts Iran; hours later American troops arrest seven Iranians in Baghdad and drag them out of their hotel cuffed and blindfolded in front of television cameras.
By the time it was revealed that the men were part of a delegation from the Iranian energy ministry, in Baghdad at the invitation of the Iraqi government for contract talks, the pictures had been flashed across every television channel in the US and Europe. All the men were later released without charge.
It could all be a coincidence, but then I am not sure the Sheraton Hotel is a likely hotbed of Iranian terrorism.
Furthermore, one might feel there is more justification for Iranian people to be in Iraq than occupying soldiers from the superpower half way across the world.
For reference purposes, here is an interesting fact sheet on the US-Iran issue.
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