Iran, Geopolitics and the Bomb

Ref: #17 by rahulmal on January 22, 2006 11:39am PT

{Iran is doomed!} Yeah, right!

Ref:#25 by Kulharee on January 22, 2006 5:22pm PT

{I like Persian pussies.} Thank God, you have some class. Persian pussies are a whole lot classier than those smelly and ugly looking Indian pussies, eh!

Ref:#33 by rsridhar on January 22, 2006 8:22pm PT

{Let us look at this logically. } And what you would know about logic? Have you solved a sudoku puzzle yet?

{There is a lot of hypocrisy here. } Yes, and that is what India has perfected.

{Iran is no friend of India.} Tell that to your leaders, why don`t you?

{A denuked and humbled Iran would be better for world peace.} Iran does not want nuclear technology to gain world`s respect and credibilty. It already has one. And what would you know?

#38 Ajeya writes

<<< Myanmar (Burma) - Muslims vs. the rest of the Buddhist population.

Malayasia - Muslims are the majority, so only Indian Hindus are discriminated against.

Indonesia - Bombings in Hindu majority Bali. Christians killed on a routine basis.

Australia - Australian tourists targeted in S.Asia. The Australian Govt. is on the hit list of Al Quaeda.

All of the Middle East, North Africa, Central Africa - Muslims vs. Christians and Jews.


France - Riots by Muslim immigrants.

Germany - Local population vs Muslim immigrants from the Middle East.

Belgium, Holland, Sweden - Local population (once the most liberal and generous) now anti-Muslim after Theo Van Gogh was butchered.

England - Train bombings.

USA - 9/11.
>>>>>

We should pay attention to such writings because this is how illiterates write. No facts just claims or sensationalized cases. The SUM total of what he mentions, the sum total all over the world does not come to be a small fraction of the 19000 people that are murdered every year in America according to the FBI, and ``MUSLIM`` is NO FACTOR in those murders. The fully one third of young African American males involved with the US criminal justice system, that by itself far surpasses any discrimination against minorities in Muslim lands, given the sheer proportion of the population.

Now, will he provide documentation of his claims or merely reproduce rhetoric like and I quote ``Germany - Local population vs Muslim immigrants from the Middle East`` what the hell do these quotes prove? Take another one ``Australian tourists targeted in S.Asia``- what is he writing for the National Enquirer now? He might as well write ``Aliens predict End of World in June 2006``. Or take this one, ``Malayasia - Muslims are the majority, so only Indian Hindus are discriminated against.``- what discrimination and where is your data and how does it compare to the discrimination against African Americans in USA or against Native Americans or against Muslims in France? Give me the facts not nonsense.

#5 by kaptain

[@harimau..
being a Muslim and having a bomb is not a threat..shun this notion implanted from the West that the Muslims are terrorists. If this would have been a case, no patch on earth would have been without being engaged in petty battles.]


This was a gimme...


India - Any PETTY battles with Islamists? Anybody?

Pakistan - ANy Islamic bombings in Churches? Minorities oppressed?

China - Chinese Muslims of Western China vs. the rest of the Chinese population.

A little bit of background:

``Islam flourished during the Ming dynasty (1271-1368), when all religions were tolerated and missionaries from Central Asia entered the country to engage in da`wah. Soon Nanjing, the Ming dynasty’s first capital, became famous as a major center of Islamic learning. The Islamic scholar Wang Daiyu wrote the influential Zhengjiao Zhenquan (Righteous Commentary on True Religion) and several other treatises in that city.

The Chinese Muslims’ peaceful existence dramatically changed during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), however, when they increasingly asserted their demand for independence.``

It is the same story everywhere - tolerance is interpreted as weakness.


Myanmar (Burma) - Muslims vs. the rest of the Buddhist population.

Malayasia - Muslims are the majority, so only Indian Hindus are discriminated against.

Indonesia - Bombings in Hindu majority Bali. Christians killed on a routine basis.

Australia - Australian tourists targeted in S.Asia. The Australian Govt. is on the hit list of Al Quaeda.

All of the Middle East, North Africa, Central Africa - Muslims vs. Christians and Jews.


France - Riots by Muslim immigrants.

Germany - Local population vs Muslim immigrants from the Middle East.

Belgium, Holland, Sweden - Local population (once the most liberal and generous) now anti-Muslim after Theo Van Gogh was butchered.

England - Train bombings.

USA - 9/11.

Korea which is more amenable to christianity, Iran is fast becoming a threat to Israel, the right hand of the christian USA.

Religion, once again, takes precedence in US foreign policy, over common sense.

Instead of power politics Muslim nations should start playing cricket as this Indian rate of scoring will put bowlers to sleeping. Cricket is good game and Pakistan can spread popularity in Muslim World. Do not make nuclear bombs but play cricket. The match is 100% draw useless game and useless pitch.

re: Israel`s response
While long range missiles of Iran can reach Israel, Israel gets ready to take on a
nuclear Iran
Sridhar

The new emerging ``Iran threat`` (just like the earlier ``Saddam threat``) that the US elite are touting now, and their corporate media is hyping in its usual fashion, is mere steam (hot air). In Iraq and Afghanistan the US helped Iran`s agendas in the region and now Iran is paying back the US by the idiotic rhetoric of its president Mr. Ahmadenijad. To me it seems like a classic, ``you scratch my back I scratch yours`` scenario. The US gets to keep a perpetual threat in that region alive now that Iraq has turned sour, while Iran gets to feed off of the US doing its bidding and sending that bank robber Ahmad Chalaby to visit with the Iranian elite time and again. Something smells awful in this ``love/hate`` relationship between Iran and the US.

To find out what the US elite are upto at the current time, I often visit their main thinktank, Project for the New American Century. Many of its founders are now the leading Neo-Cons in this administration. A while back this thinktank put out an article on Iran and I wrote a rebuttal of it back in September of `05. It is reproduced below. Sorry for taking the extra space, I`m reproducing it here instead of submitting it because experience tells me it will be censored by the editors.



The Incoherence of the Incoherent
The Neo Cons and their ``Project for the new American Century``

Tuesday 13th September 2005, by Muhammed Asadi


The Neo-Conservative movement wants Iran to emerge rapidly as the new military threat facing the U.S. in order to advance their ``Project for the new American Century.`` Being worried by the ``time-delay`` the Washington Post gives Iran in acquiring nuclear weapons (not before 2015 will Iran have them according to the report), Gary Schmitt of the ``Project`` states that because US intelligence, by its own admission, knows very little about nuclear weapons development in Iran, their conclusions on the ``time delay`` might be wrong. Iran (according to Schmitt’s personal intelligence) could have a weapon before that time. How he arrives at that implied conclusion and how his intelligence capabilities are worthy of greater trust than national intelligence estimates, were not stated in this ``memo``, which was written to the highest opinion leaders in the US. He reminds the ``opinion leaders`` in the article that just as national intelligence estimates were wrong on Saddam Hussein’s WMDs before the first Gulf War (they underestimated the threat according to him) and the current Iraq war (they overestimated it this time, according to him), they might well be underestimating Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities.

What is alarming about these incoherent conclusions coming from the Neo-Conservatives, more so than their blunt hypocrisy (note that this is coming from the same camp whose friends in the establishment were pressuring the intelligence community to practically cook the WMD ``intelligence`` on Iraq ), is the fact that such incoherence is what dictates the foreign policy of the U.S. power elite, and justifies the hundreds of billions given to the military industries, while millions of Americans go without adequate food (37 million) and health care (47 to 82 million during any given year). Little wonder that such ``leadership`` has resulted in a world where over 40,000 die everyday due to preventable causes, and the ecological conditions to sustain life itself are being destroyed by a mad grab for profits. This is the kind of ``leadership`` that the ``project`` seeks to advance.

Why is a time delay in Iran’s alleged acquisition of nuclear weapons causing problems for Gary Schmitt, William Kristol and the rest of the neo-conservatives that run this organization and practically this country? Not being satisfied with the mess and human misery they have created in Iraq, and not concerned at all with the half a million people displaced by hurricane Katrina (their Project for the ``American`` century site does not even make a casual mention of it), Kristol’s gang wants a new ``military threat`` to emerge, in the area they are most interested in, the Israeli neighborhood. They feel the necessity of a new threat at this time because the public is getting weary of their widely advertised ``Iraq threat``, that is being recognized as nonsense by the previously duped masses (as poll numbers reveal). At the same time their banal ``war on terror`` terminology is starting to cause problems for a leadership that rushed into implementing this ideologically inspired ``project``. Busy inventing new threats, the Neo-conservatives have found a comfortable home among Democrats and Republicans alike, in the ``organized irresponsibility`` (as C. Wright Mills put it) that describes the American political establishment. The consequences of that ``organized irresponsibility`` are what the displaced in New Orleans are confronting today.

Gary Schmitt informs us in his concluding paragraph: ``There are numerous practical problems we would confront in carrying out that decision (to attack Iran militarily), even if that were in theory the right one to make. But it does mean that we have no reason to relax, nor can we postpone difficult decisions indefinitely.``

Unconcerned about the carnage and human misery their ``right decision`` caused in Iraq, Schmitt concludes that war (with Iran) in the not too distant future, might still be ``the right decision to make``. PNAC’s sister ``patriotic`` organization, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) mirrors these concerns about keeping the flame of perpetual war burning (Report #514) when it says ``Hurricane Katrina is an unmitigated disaster for the people of the Gulf Coast. It shouldn’t turn out to be a look into the future for the rest of us.``

As we read Schmitt’s advocacy of a new war even though such a war might have ``practical problems`` according to him, we are reminded of these prophetic words from the 1950s, by C. Wright. Mills, from his book, The Causes of World War Three (1958):

``The expectation of war solves many problems of the ``crackpot realists``; it also confronts them with many new problems. Yet these, the problems of war, often seem easier (for them) to handle.(compared) to political policies that are distasteful to many politicians...The terms of their long term solutions, under conditions of peace, are hard for the capitalist elite to face.`` (page, 87)

What is distasteful to these Neo-Conservative ``crackpot realists`` is peace in the Middle East, and the resulting effect that might have on regional development in the Arab world. In their uneasy alliance with corporations, whose leadership positions they normally hold when they are not posing as politicians, the Neo-Cons have found a dual fulfillment of purpose. The terms of the ``long term solution`` to the ``Palestinian problem`` are what they do not want to face. If that can be avoided, any ``practical problems`` that a new war might bring are easier for them to handle. The civilians who get killed in the thousands and the US soldiers (chosen by the way from the lower socioeconomic classes) that become casualties of war are of no consequence to them. These are all ``practical problems`` that they feel they can handle. In all such alliances to further power and wealth, human suffering and misery become at best, background noise justified by moral symbols, over used excuses, media distractions, and stage management.

re: this article
This article builds up a weak defense for a nuclear Iran.
Let us look at this logically.
Iran has surplus gas as the energy source. So, clearly it is not building nuclear facilities for an alternate source of energy. That would be a stupid thing to do.
It is building (or trying to build) a nuclear arsenal in the belief that it would somehow give Iran the kind of political mileage that North Korea has. After all, N.Korea was able to thumb its nose at the West and get away with it mainly because nobody wanted a nuclear conflargration with a crackpot dictator ruling that country.
That is the simple logic that dictates the quest for nuclear weaponry in Iran.
There is then the civilizational angle.
Iranians are peeved (or, shall i say, pissed off) that a vastly inferior race (and Sunnis to boot) that Pakis are have yet managed to become nuclear and get away with it. If Pakis can, why can`t we? That is how the argument goes.
Then there is the civilizational arrogance. Darius was given a sound thrashing by Alexander and his great city of Persepolis was burnt down beyond recognition by the latter and yet the present day Iranians think of themselves as children of Darius the great. There is little resemblance. Present day Iran is a sham democracy with mullocracy at the top. Women have very little rights. I have posted many articles to prove my point in another forum. Yet, Iranians would like us believe it is a great civilization, inheritors of legacy of Darius the great. There is a lot of hypocrisy here.
Iran is no friend of India. Like Pakistan, Iran too is an ideological state. It changes its tunes to suit its ideology.
A denuked and humbled Iran would be better for world peace.
Sridhar

#27 by Urstruly on January 22, 2006 5:46pm PT



The issue is that Americans are itching to bomb some Iranian towns like they did Bajore Agency in Pakistan


Maulana urstruly...the US has bombed Pakiland 3 times before this bombing..and that`s just since may 2005

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10966809/site/newsweek/

Despite the ethics—and public relations—issues, U.S. officials involved with the hunt for bin Laden and Zawahiri said they`re quite sure that the benefits of the Predator campaign outweigh the costs. According to two former officials, several groups of missile-armed Predators—some of which are equipped with laser-guided gravity bombs—are based in the region. And a Pakistani official privy to intelligence says the January Predator strike was the fourth inside Pakistan`s borders since May 2005 (two more than have been reported previously). Beginning earlier this month, the military and CIA have also begun to use the first production models of the Global Hawk unmanned recon aircraft, which can survey distances of more than 100 miles from 65,000 feet and direct the lower-flying Predator to precise targets.

The difference is that there are no Ayatollahs in the US narrowing down the lists of possible contenders for president to the nearest 1.

nasah #29

`` the question the US Iranians are asking -- from where did the native Irannians find this stupid illiterate ignorant foot-in-mouth idiot -- Ahmednejad for the presidency of a country like Iran at this critical juncture......who did not deserve to be even the mayor of Tehran in the first place.......how he became the President ....

.....but then again you come to think of it -- couldn`t be a worthier nemesis of an equally ignorant man from Texas ......and how he became the president of a country like the Jeffersonian United States...... ``

that was hilarious

the question the US Iranians are asking -- from where did the native Irannians find this stupid illiterate ignorant foot-in-mouth idiot -- Ahmednejad for the presidency of a country like Iran at this critical juncture......who did not deserve to be even the mayor of Tehran in the first place.......how he became the President ....

.....but then again you come to think of it -- couldn`t be a worthier nemesis of an equally ignorant man from Texas ......and how he became the president of a country like the Jeffersonian United States......

Well said, unfortunately well meaning folks like you need to acquaint or re-acquaint yourselves with a concept called ``realpolitik`` coined by Bismarck of WW I era. Means that the West assert its will because it can, yes I know, tis hypocrisy!!

Unless Ahmadinijad tones down his crap and Mullahs make nice with the West, bad stuff is about to commence.

Alternatively, make nice, continue to make nice, keep buliding nukes, make damn sure to keep playing China and Europe against each other, neutralize the US. Because the we have no stomach left for figthing a land war, much less an appetaite for $5.00 a gallon gas!!

Abdul Arif

I have a feeling that Iran has already achieved its targets minus an actual detonation. I think the current pressure is to force Iran to declare itself officially so that a calculated strategy wrt Iraq could be detrmined viz a viz Iran. The issue is that Americans are itching to bomb some Iranian towns like they did Bajore Agency in Pakistan and killed innocent women and children - but unlike Pakistan which is ruled by neutered faujis and 450K transvestites, Iran is a proud nation and probably the only nation so far in the third world who have not only successfully uprooted colonial powers and also the social class that is usually the custodian of western interests in such countries. So Americans and its European neocolonial allies want to assess where Iran stands wrt its defense. If this is true then Ahmadinijad is a cunning fox, probably more cunning than late Hafiz ul Asad.