Friday, March 15, 2013
Liberals on Iran
On Huffington Post today, Jamal Abdi, the Policy Director of the National Iranian American Council, whom I gather is a liberal, takes the Senate and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Israel) to task for their war-mongering statements on Iran. He correctly takes Schumer to task for his blatant lies claiming that Iran "continues to enrich uranium into weapons-grade nuclear materials and that "experts say that the type of fuel that they produce is sufficient to arm a nuclear warhead."
But then he writes: "The overwhelming consensus of these basic facts notwithstanding, there are, of course, real concerns about Iran's nuclear intentions." To which we have to say yet again - bulls**t. There no reason to have any "real concerns" about Iran's nuclear intentions because they don't have any, and even if they did, it wouldn't be a concern.
To the first point, Iran's Supreme Religious Leader Khamenei has for seven years declared a fatwa against nuclear weapons, a point that the Iranians chose to re-emphasize recently (and which was promptly forgotten by the Western media). Considering the role that religion plays in the country, that would seem to be enough, especially since the same people who continually warn us about "Iran's nuclear intentions" are the same ones who speak about "Iranian religious fanatics." Furthermore Iran's civilian leaders like Ahmadinejad have also repeatedly made very clear statements regarding their absolute intention not to have nuclear weapons. In spite of all this, we continue to hear "Iran hasn't made a decision yet." Yes, they have, they have decided not to have nuclear weapons.
And to the second point, even if they did decide to have nuclear weapons, which would be their absolute right if they withdrew from the NPT, only an insane person (or one intent on destroying Iran) would think that it would be for anything other than defensive/deterrent purposes. Whether the target was Israel with its 100 nukes or the US with 1000s, Iran would be committing national suicide were it to use nuclear weapons to attack another country. This is, of course, the real reason why the U.S. and Israel are so hell-bent on making sure Iran does not have nuclear weapons - because it would place a severe obstacle in their plan to attack Iran.
Abdi compounds his errors with his next sentence: "Which is exactly why the Obama Administration is pursuing verifiable caps on Iran's enrichment through negotiations." No, the Obama Administration is not trying to affect Iran's actions through "negotiations." It is doing so through economic warfare designed to inflict pain and suffering on the Iranian people. Any "negotiations" which are taking place (and actually there are none) consist of the U.S. waiting for Iran to capitulate to that warfare.
