1. I have been criticising America’s blockade of Iran.
2. America’s action is said to be due to Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.
3. Israel has 200 nuclear warheads and obviously poses a greater threat to Iran than Iran’s threat against its neighbours.
4. Am I being unnecessarily critical of the United States?
Below is part of an article by Brian A Burchill of Global Research E-Newsletter, Canada which seems to validate my stand. For the full article please see “>here
IRAN: THE TERRORISM TRUMP CARD
By Brian A. Burchill
Global Research, April 3, 2012
The UK’s Guardian recently interviewed “current and former U.S. and European officials with access to intelligence on Iran,” and concluded that the United States, its European allies, and even Israel, agree that Tehran is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.
Twice in recent weeks, CBC News anchor Peter Mansbridge has closely questioned two leaders who hold a different view.
In a January 18th interview, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told Mansbridge that he thinks that “the evidence is…overwhelming” and that it “is just beyond dispute at this point” that Iran’s purpose is to develop nuclear weapons. When pressed about Iran’s insistence that it has no intention to build nuclear weapons, Harper said “I think there is absolutely no doubt they are lying”.
Harper’s claims are all-too-reminiscent of US Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February, 2003, statement at the UN that, with “facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence”.
There was no doubt in his mind that Saddam Hussein was working to obtain key components to produce nuclear weapons.
That intelligence has since been exposed as lies. In fact, the Iraqi chemical engineer who perpetrated the false intelligence, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, confessed his lies on British television April 3rd.
Also troubling is that Harper cited the International Atomic Energy Commission, but in the March 22nd Guardian, the agency’s former director-general, Hans Blix, raised concerns about its recent credibility. The IAEC has been charged with over-reliance on unverified intelligence, and pro-Western bias, since the 2009 arrival of its new chief, Yukiya Amano.
More recently, Harper’s conclusion was thrown into question during a CBC News One on One interview with US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, aired last weekend.
Panetta first stated that the best US intelligence has concluded that Iran has not made the decision to build a nuclear weapon. He went on to say that Iran is involved in providing non-nuclear weapons to terrorist-associated groups outside the country.
However, when Mansbridge queried whether containment was an effective policy (sealing off the country to prevent weapons exports to outsiders), Panetta then contradicted his own intelligence claim by saying the US was going to apply economic and diplomatic sanctions because “we cannot allow a country that supports terrorism to have a nuclear weapon.”
When pushed to justify the sanctions, Panetta played the debate-ending trump card – the supposed threat of Muslim terrorism – the card spawned by 9/11.
Thus ended the Panetta news segment – Mansbridge did not challenge whether hidden, ubiquitous, amorphous terrorism was a factor in the case of Iran.
Brian A. Burchill is Mechanical Engineer based in British Columbia
