Wednesday, July 15, 2009
168 victims of U.S. foreign policy?
As with the relationship between global warming and intense hurricanes, one event does not "prove" anything. But it is at least reasonably likely that today's air crash in Iran, which killed 168 people, was a direct product of the sanctions placed on Iran by the U.S. and its allies, sanctions ostensibly aimed at stopping Iran's alleged (and completely unproven) nuclear weapons program, but in reality aimed at weakening a country which insists on maintaining its independence from imperialism (and, ultimately, regaining effective control over that country's resources).
Iranian airlines, including state-run ones, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered, experts say. U.S. sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the Soviet Union's fall.
