What should I say to people who think the Iranian government is undemocratic and a danger to the region and world?
First of all, what is the nature of YOUR government and what is IT doing in the region and around the world? Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, indefinite detention and torture, thousands of civilians in Pakistan and elsewhere dead in the undeclared drone wars... the whole "war on terror" has been a horror for the people of the Middle East and beyond. In the context of the history of United States in the twentieth century the past ten years is simply an accelerated and aggressive form of the role the US has played for decades: Iraq alone suffered through two invasions, a decade of sanctions following the crippling of its infrastructure in the ‘90s (which lead to the death of 4,000 children every month due to preventable disease), and then something like a million deaths during the completely unjust war based on Bush's lies most recently. Meanwhile, Iran saw its prime minister removed through a CIA-backed coup in the 1950s and the installation of an extremely repressive autocratic regime headed by the Shah up until its revolution in 1979.
What country in the Middle East refuses to confirm or deny that it has a nuclear weapons program and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
Answer: Israel, Pakistan and India have not signed the treaty. Israel does not publicly admit it has nuclear weapons, although the fact that it does is common knowledge. Iran has signed the treaty and does not have a nuclear weapons program.
Which country’s prime minister has been attempting to persuade members of his cabinet to make a pre-emptive military strike against a neighboring country?
According to the UN Charter and Nuremberg Tribunal, what is the gravest war crime of all?
Answer: Attacking a country which hasn't attacked you. This is called a war of aggression, which "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Which is the one country on the planet which has actually used nuclear weapons against a civilian population?
Answer: the United States, which bombed the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagaski during WWII, killing between150,000 - 246,000 people within just the first 4 months, half within the first 24 hours.
The City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia, home of Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and the University of Virginia, passed on Tuesday evening, January 17, 2012, a resolution believed to be a first in the country, opposing the launching of a war on Iran, as well as calling for an end to current ground and drone wars engaged in by the United States and urging Congress and the President of the United States to significantly reduce military spending. Below is the text of the resolution, followed by an account of how it came to be. As other towns and cities have been inquiring about how they can do the same, this may prove helpful.
When Iranian director Asghar Farhadi received the Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Film Sunday night, he said:
When I was coming up on the stage, I was thinking what should I say here. Should I say something about my mother, father, my kind wife, my daughters, my dear friends, my great and lovely crew. But now I just prefer to say something about my people. I think they are a truly peace-loving people. Thank you very much.
The film, "A Separation" is about, what? The life of one married couple coming apart; the choices people make to stay or go; the fractures between men and women; classes; secular thinkers and fundamentalists? It may be all of that. Yet, somehow the film got past the mullahs and censors, and Farhadi was in the U.S. to make such a simple and eloquent statement.
In the aftermath of more than a decade of U.S.-orchestrated sanctions against Iraq, an economic blockade that set the stage for the U.S. invasion in 2003, a 60 Minutes reporter asked U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright this question:
“We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
Albright replied, “We think the price is worth it.”
* * * * *
In 1990, a U.S.-sponsored and enforced UN resolution imposed financial and commercial sanctions against Iraq. The sanctions banned most foreign trade with Iraq, with supposed exceptions for food and medicine. The sanctions were branded an “alternative to war” and stayed in effect until the U.S. invasion overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The push to attack Iran has been on for so long that entire categories of arguments for it (such as that the Iranians are fueling the Iraqi resistance) have come and gone. At DontAttackIran.org we've been collecting the arguments for and against attacking Iran for years. We've campaigned against an attack, but never been able to claim a success, because decisions not to launch wars are never announced, because those pushing for wars never give up, and because those believing what their government tells them think the Pentagon never campaigns for wars but is forced into them defensively on short notice by attacks from evildoers.
While Iran has not attacked any other country in centuries, the United States has not done so well by Iran. Remember (or, like most U.S. citizens, learn for the first time): the United States overthrew Iran's democracy in 1953 and installed a dictator. Then the United States aided Iraq in the 1980s in attacking Iran, providing Iraq with some of the weapons (including chemical weapons) that were used on Iranians and that would be used in 2002-2003 (when they no longer existed) as an excuse for attacking Iraq.
What people began to regain in 2011 -- or discover for the first time -- most importantly, is their power and their voice to make change.
Let's work together to make 2012 a year of visible resistance against the continuing - and new - crimes of this government.
In 2007, World Can’t Wait led protests against what seemed then a likely U.S. attack on Iran, accompanied by threats from the Bush Regime to send “bunker buster” missiles deeply into Iran’s territory. War could have happened then.
The danger of a U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is escalating rapidly. The U.S. and its allies are ramping up their all-around assault on Iran, including new crippling sanctions, and openly threatening to attack. Ground is being laid daily in the headlines and statements by politicians of every stripe in mainstream U.S. politics calling for aggression against Iran—all justified by unsubstantiated assertions that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.
Whether or not Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons technology (and there is no proof they are), this U.S. imperialist narrative and framework is an outrageous effort to turn reality upside down—the reality of which of the clashing oppressive forces in the region is the dominant threatening oppressor and bully.
The U.S., along with Israel, France and Britain, are ratcheting up a multi-pronged offensive against Iran. A U.S. drone of the type used to collect detailed information to prepare military attacks recently crashed in Iran, and numerous news reports are speculating on the likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran, justified as a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear program.
The U.S. and its allies portray Iran as a dangerous, aggressive, and lawless rogue state intent on obtaining nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic of Iran regime, which brutally oppresses women and the masses of people within its borders, has aspirations to be a regional power. But the question people must ask is: Who is the real aggressor in the Middle East?
Examine the facts: For over 50 years, since they became the dominant power in the Middle East, the U.S. imperialists have employed enormous violence to maintain their stranglehold on this region—where 60% of the world's oil reserves are located, and where three continents intersect, making it a strategic-military linchpin.
A diplomatic, economic and military noose is being steadily tightened around the Islamic Republic of Iran.
On the diplomatic front, the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is about to release its latest report on Iran's nuclear program, a program Iran insists is solely designed to produce electricity and not atomic or nuclear weapons, as is claimed by the United States and other Western powers.
Threats of U.S.-Israeli aggression against Iran—perhaps military strikes—have heightened in recent weeks.
On November 8, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an imperialist-controlled international body monitoring nuclear activities, issued a new report on Iran, claiming that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.”
The Washington Post editorialized that the report “ought to end serious debate about whether Tehran’s program is for peaceful purposes.” (“Running out of time to stop Iran’s nuclear program,” November 9, 2011) In response, the Islamic Republic of Iran vowed to continue its nuclear program, which it claims is strictly for generating nuclear power, not to build nuclear weapons.
Provocative rhetoric followed release of the IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program, despite baseless allegations in it.
In October 2009, the Agency leaked a document titled "Possible Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program" to the New York Times. At issue was circumventing then IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei. Allegations in it were spurious. As a result, he wouldn't touch it.
We are at an historic moment when decisions are being made in the United States and Israel on whether and when to attack Iran.
These will be decisions by politicians and individual commanders and air, missile and drone crewmembers charged with the responsibility of raining down munitions in a strike that will likely kill hundreds if not thousands of Iranian people and potentially spread deadly nuclear contamination to millions in Iran and surrounding nations.
Beyond this, an attack on Iran will almost certainly bring retaliation that will result in even more human casualties and will disrupt global oil shipments, with severe human consequences around the world.
An attack against Iran by the United States and Israel will violate morality, international and domestic law and the interests of humanity. Additionally, both Iran and the United States are parties to the Kellogg-Briand Pact which forbids the use of war.
There are those of us signing this appeal who have been members of the United States and other armed forces and understand very well the difficulty of refusing to follow an order to attack. At the same time, each of us as the responsibility to preserve human life and nature in the face of inhuman and illegal orders, a responsibility defined by the Nuremberg Conventions.
We urge all of you who may be called upon to attack Iran from the air, and indeed all military personnel who may be engaged in any kind of attack on Iran, to refuse to do so.
WASHINGTON, Nov 30, 2010 (IPS) - A diplomatic cable from last February released by Wikileaks provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists on the Iranian ballistic missile programme refuted the U.S. suggestion that Iran has missiles that could target European capitals or intends to develop such a capability.
In fact, the Russians challenged the very existence of the mystery missile the U.S. claims Iran acquired from North Korea.
But readers of the two leading U.S. newspapers never learned those key facts about the document.
At least 21 people, including members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, were killed and 100 wounded in suicide attack at a Shi'ite mosque in the southeast Iranian city of Zahedan on Thursday, Iranian media reported.
Every now and again there is some good accomplished in world affairs. That was certainly the case when Brazil and Turkey succeeded in bringing about a plan to stop, at least temporarily, the American/Israeli plot to demonize and ultimately to make the case for war against Iran.
Most of the world looked on in horror at the carefully planned campaign of propaganda meant to justify a future massacre of untold thousands of people. The United States and Israel never passed up opportunities to lie and ratchet up the case for committing another crime against humanity. The brazenness of the falsehoods was simply breath taking.
On Friday, September 25, President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain interrupted the G-20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh with a “dramatic revelation” to the world: Iran was building a new, secret underground plant to process nuclear fuel.
In fact, there was no revelation—four days earlier Iran, for its own reasons, had disclosed the plant’s existence to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Nonetheless, Obama, French President Sarkozy and Britain’s Prime Minister Brown claimed it was yet another example of Iran lying about and covering up the true nature and scope of its nuclear program.
“We brought you to where you are today, and we're going to take you out by being on the streets.”
Four things stand out about the 7/31/09 report below. One, the resolute mood among the Iranian people, embodied in the last lines of this report: “One mother told a soldier who asked her to go back home ‘I'm not going anywhere. Don't you know that we brought you guys into power by doing just this: by being out on the streets for nights on end. We brought you to where you are today, and we're going to take you out by being on the streets. I'm not going anywhere.’" This resolution is also reflected in what this eyewitness report describes as “a very palpable lack of fear among people.” This lack of fear comes in the face of not only the street repression but also the reports coming out about the torture and murder of people who have been held from previous street demonstrations. The courage and responsibility being displayed by the Iranian people are an inspiration and the kind of traits that are so sorely needed here in the U.S.
In an interview today on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulus,” Vice President Joe Biden said it was up to the Israeli government to decide if Iran constituted an existential threat and that the nation was “entitled” to launch a military strike against the nation if they wanted to.
Biden said the United States would make no effort to dissuade the Israeli government from launching an attack on Iran, but was deliberately evasive on the question of whether the US would provide Israel with access to Iraqi airspace for the strike, saying he didn’t want to “speculate.”
Israel has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran over the past several years, and the right-wing coalition government elected earlier this year won largely on a platform of taking an even more hawkish position toward Iran than previous administrations had.
By Gareth Porter, 
Written by .bmp)
