02/23/12 Baltimore, Maryland – “The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons,” declared Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, yesterday.
“The Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”
Heh.
“No one buys Iran’s claim that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes,” declared CNN’s Erin Burnett last week, speaking authoritatively on behalf of the pundit class in the U.S.
Sigh. We’ve seen this movie before.
“The debate surrounding the invasion of Iraq,” we wrote in the first edition of Empire of Debt, “was an imperial debate — about means and methods, not about right and wrong or national interest.”
“No one from either major political party bothered to suggest that the United States had no business nosing around in other peoples’ business.”
“Both parties recognized that Iraq was not a matter of national interest — it was a matter of imperial interest. No sparrow falls anywhere in the world without triggering a monitoring device in the Pentagon.”
This time, at least, there’s a variation on the theme.
In 2003, you heard nary a word about whether Iraq really had weapons of mass destruction… or whether an invasion might turn out to be something other than a sprint to victory.
This time around — while you wouldn’t know it by listening to knuckleheads like Burnett — there’s considerable skepticism even among the imperial classes about whether Iran aims to produce a nuclear weapon… or whether a military attack on Iran would work out well.
“Tehran has not made a decision to proceed with developing a nuclear weapon,” said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to Congress a week ago today, trying to stifle the first question. A National Intelligence Estimate issued by the Obama administration last year affirmed a similar report issued by the Bush administration in 2007: Iran stopped pursuit of a nuclear weapon in 2003.
Darn it.
As for the second question, “Both the American and Israeli governments,” writes Peter Beinart at The Daily Beast, “boast military and intelligence agencies charged with answering [the question of whether military attack would be wise]. With striking consistency, the people who run, or ran, those agencies are warning — loudly — against an attack.”
What’s wrong with these people?
Mr. Beinart was among a cadre of “liberal hawks” who gave the Iraq war a good name nine years ago. Now he’s turned into a wuss. Among the warnings he cites:
- Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress last week, “the agency assesses Iran is unlikely to initiate or provoke a conflict”
- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper — who oversees 16 U.S. intelligence agencies — estimates a U.S or Israeli attack would set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a year or two
- Further, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey says a U.S. or Israeli attack would “guarantee that which we are trying to prevent: an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.”
“I’ve never seen a more lopsided debate among the experts paid to make these judgments,” Beinart goes on. “Yet it barely matters. So far, the Iran debate has been a rout, with the Republican presidential candidates loudly declaring their openness to war and President Obama unwilling to even echo the skepticism of his own security chiefs.”
“War is no longer made by simply analysed economic forces if it ever was,” Ernest Hemingway wrote in an essay entitled “Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter,” published by Esquire in 1935.
“War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule.”
As such, Congress is moving quickly. A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill last week that:
“…rejects any United States policy that would rely on efforts to contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran; and urges the president to reaffirm the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear weapons capability and oppose any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.”
Leave aside the fact the bill leaves the definition of nuclear weapons “capability” murky. The point is that if Iran crosses this new red line, it compels the United States to go to war.
“Imagine,” writes M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, “if President Kennedy had been told by the Congress back in 1962 that if the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba, he would have no choice but to attack the USSR. If it had, I wouldn’t be here writing this column today, and you wouldn’t be reading it.”
Right now, this is nonbinding legislation. But it has the support of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Often, AIPAC-backed congressional initiatives start as nonbinding language (in a resolution or a letter), and then show up in binding legislation,” says Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now.
“Once members of Congress have already signed on to a policy in nonbinding form, it is much harder for them to oppose it when it shows up later in a bill that, if passed, will have the full force of law.”
Addison Wiggin
for The Daily Reckoning
Addison Wiggin
Addison Wiggin is the executive publisher of Agora Financial, LLC, a fiercely independent economic forecasting and financial research firm. He’s the creator and editorial director of Agora Financial’s daily 5 Min. Forecast and editorial director of The Daily Reckoning. Wiggin is the founder of Agora Entertainment, executive producer and co-writer of I.O.U.S.A., which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, the 2009 Critics Choice Award for Best Documentary Feature, and was also shortlisted for a 2009 Academy Award. He is the author of the companion book of the film I.O.U.S.A.and his second edition of The Demise of the Dollar… and Why it’s Even Better for Your Investments was just fully revised and updated. Wiggin is a three-time New York Times best-selling author whose work has been recognized by The New York Times Magazine, The Economist, Worth, The New York Times, The Washington Post as well as major network news programs. He also co-authored international bestsellers Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt with Bill Bonner.
The Daily Reckoning is your premier source for making sense of the news Washington and Wall Street generate. Each business day, The Daily Reckoning calls on its stable of world-class writers and thinkers to show you how to get ahead.
Start your 100% FREE subscription to The Daily Reckoning today and you’ll get a free research report, “How to Survive the Fall of Social Security.” Simply enter your email address below to get your free report and join over 495,000 worldwide Daily Reckoning subscribers!
We Respect Your Privacy and We will
Never Share or Sell Your Email Address
If you go to the NTI website they refrence with old news articles (including news articles from the Iranian state news agency that are on internet archives) with the Iranian government over multiple decades saying they have a nuclear weapons program. It also details hirings of people for their nuclear program that worked on nuclear weapons for other countries. It also has refrences from various government officals of various countries who have said (in private) the Iranians admitted they are building the bomb
This is not to say they are doing it actively NOW. But to say there is no evidence their plan isn’t anything but peaceful given their decades of openly seeking a nuclear weapon doesn’t tell the whole story
Iran faces a delicate issue. On the one hand it wants to show the world all it’s got and put it at ease, while on the other hand it fears that such show ‘n tell will give its enemies a roadmap to bomb it.
Saddam Hussein faced a similar dilemma ten years ago. Though he wanted the world to know he had nothing to hide, he also wanted to bluff his archenemy Iran into believing Iraq still had WMD.
Bluffing did not go well for Saddam, and it might not go well for Ahmadinejad.
But since the price tag for ridding Saddam proved high, maybe we ought to reflect what we are asking of Iran now. On the eve of a threatened attack, we are asking it to take us to the depths of its arsenal and show us all it’s got.
Such great expectations are a sign we have been talking to our friends too long and are in need of a broader perspective. Exactly when was the last time we asked Pakistan, India, China or Russia to show us their arsenal?
“But those countries are not advocating the destruction of Israel.”
True, but Israel is not a thorn on their side either.
Surely, however, we can see beyond the hyperboles and figure out their underlying purpose. Or have we forgotten that not all Iranians are thrilled with Ahmadinejad?
He sure hasn’t forgotten.
Nor has he forgotten that that his countrymen hate Israel even more. So he tells them that Israel will be wiped from the face of the earth. Expectantly, this nonsense unites them against a common enemy. It is even a diversion from the misery and isolation brought on by his theocratic regime.
Quite clever work by Ahmadinejad — and not a rial spent or a bullet fired.
So why are we letting the crazy talk about destroying Israel get us all worked-up — to the point of turning the world topsy-turvy again.
Can we not see the desperate attempts of an unpopular regime simply trying to hold on?
Top 10 Reasons to Attack Iran Now:
10) Interest rates are at all time low, best time to finance a new war.
9) The US military needs to keep our youth gainfully employed, since we outsourced our jobs to China.
8)Iran has blocked the sale of Persian rugs as a result Chinese counterfeits have flooded the markets.
7) The USA must find a safe place to dispose of 100,000 old DU shells since Iraq has stored all they could.
6) Japan has proved that nuclear energy is totally unsafe, so we cannot allow another Fukushima!
5) We must not postpone the inevitable since the road to hell is short.
4) The Iranians did 911 it wasn’t Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, or 19 Saudis!
3) Israel is in dire need of Iranian missiles to help it clear the West Bank and Gaza for development.
2) The Almighty Yahweh ordained it He’s tired of playing second fiddle to Allah.
1) If we wait till November and Ron Paul wins he won’t let us.
Regularly check out your current pc’s whole technique. I enjoy to operate tests overnight given that they slow your pc and could acquire some time. Only when section of your personal machine system definitely seems to be afflicted, it is possible to check out the suspect element merely. Should you be by using a free system, check that this removes the actual malware it has discovered. Many of these no cost applications will discover the actual risks nevertheless ask you to purchase the put in buy for it to take out the issue. I believe these particular plans should be removed as well as exchanged through applications that have entire features.