WAR WITH IRAN ON HORIZON

Heightened Rhetoric, Provocative Acts Show Neocons Want Iran War at Any Cost

By Michael Collins Piper

Even as the United States gets mired ever deeper in the bloody and explosive cauldron that has become Iraq, the very forces who were the primary movers behind America’s entry into that disaster are now reinvigorating their push to achieve another longtime goal: the destruction of Iran.

At the same time, there are some sensible voices of restraint—and perhaps unexpected ones at that—urging that the calls for war be rejected in favor of diplomacy.

Although—in the January issue of Vanity Fair, published by Zionist billionaire S.I. Newhouse, a leading financial backer of the Anti-Defamation League and other Israeli lobby front groups—a host of eminent neo-conservative pro-Israel stalwarts went out of their way to deny their culpability in instigating the war against Iraq, which everyone knows they did indeed do, these same elements are now gearing up to promote U.S. military action against Iran.

Their rhetoric of denial regarding their bellicose demands for a U.S. attack on Iraq echoes the same kind of noisy deception coming out of Israel from a host of Israeli academics, military strategists and others who are now attacking George W. Bush for the Iraq war, even though it was Israel and its neo-conservative allies inside the Bush administration that were most adamant about the need to not only attack Iraq but also bring down Saddam Hussein.

This is a final goal that even the current president’s own father, George H.W. Bush, decided not to pursue in the American attack on Iraq in the first Persian Gulf war of 1991.

Now, in the midst of denying their responsibility for the Iraqi quagmire, the neo-conservatives are openly preparing their propaganda campaign to induce American blood and treasure being deployed against Iran—not only to stop Iran’s alleged progress toward nuclear weapons but, as in Iraq, to destroy that nation’s current government.

In the November/December 2006 issue of Foreign Policy magazine, the small-circulation but highly influential publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a leading New World Order “think tank,” wellknown neo-conservative publicist Joshua Muravchik is calling for his fellow “neo-cons” to “admit their mistakes . . . and start making the case for bombing Iran.”

Muravchik—who operates out of the American Enterprise Institute (which includes top neo-conservative mastermind Richard Perle among its chief tacticians)—says that “Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb
Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office.” He goes on to say to his fellow war-mongers: “We need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes.”

There’s no question about it: the neo-conservatives are determined to destroy Iran, just as they destroyed Iraq. It’s been one of their longtime geopolitical goals and they refuse to permit public dissatisfaction with what’s happened in Iraq to deter them from accomplishing what they intend.

In the meantime, no less than Bruce Laingen, the former charge de affaires for the U.S. Embassy in Iran—who was among the Americans who were held hostage (from 1979 until January 1981) following the Islamic revolution in Iran—is publicly calling for the Bush administration to put aside its inflammatory language and seek direct discussions with Iran.

In a letter to the editor of The New York Times, published on Jan. 13, Laingen wrote:

The United States and Iran must talk. Not with the mutually negative public rhetoric that for the 27 years since the 1979 hostage crisis has eroded the trust needed for any diplomatic exchange; not indirectly, as we do now on the nuclear issue through our Security Council and European Union colleagues; but frontally and frankly as responsible powers with shared interests in a critically important part of the world.

The absence of dialogue has made no sense on any count—strategic, human, historic, political, cultural. It has complicated our relationships with every other country in the region. We alone among the powers have chosen to signal in this way our reservations about Iran’s conduct in the world arena.

Geography alone compels Iran’s participation in helping deal with both Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention long-term regional security understandings in the Persian Gulf region. A host of other issues compel dialogue, including Iran’s obligations vis-à-vis the former hostages.

Talking won’t be easy. Formal diplomatic relations are a long way off. But we lose nothing now by joining directly with our allies and friends in direct soundings of Iran’s intentions.

The fact that Laingen—who certainly knows quite a bit about Iran and its people and who obviously might have an axe to grind with the Iranian government—is saying such things (so contradictory to the views of the warmongering neo-conservatives) is something that Americans need to know about. But Laingen’s sensible concerns have been sidelined by the mass media in America that prefers to help stoke up American fears of Iran, saying that the Islamic republic is somehow a threat to the United States (and, of course, Israel).

Whether the American people will be hornswoggled again and tricked into supporting another senseless war remains to be seen. But peace-minded people who want to preserve their country would do best to listen to what Laingen—and not the neo-conservatives—has to say.

(Issue #6, February 5, 2007)