by Debra Sweet 

 I know I am not the only one to experience déjà vu over the Obama administration's assessment of threats by Iran to the US. James Clapper, Obama's top intelligence officer stated as fact yesterday, according to the New York Times, that:

“some Iranian officials — probably including supreme leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

Did you think "yellowcake uranium"?  "weapons of mass destruction?" "Irrefutable evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the attack on 9-11?"  All these were the Bush regime's lies justifying an aggressive war that killed one million, displaced 4.5 million, and destroyed Iraq, leaving it on the verge of civil war.

Who is going to write the threat assessment towards the people of Iran, now surrounded by U.S. bases? How would we assess the threat of US covert operations already going on inside the country; or of surveillance drones constantly flying over a sovereign country? 

I think Tom Engelhart challenges us to think very deeply with his parody about our one-way imperial planet, Iranian Aircraft Carriers in the Gulf of Mexico:

(Tehran, FNA) The Fars News Agency has confirmed with the Republican Guard’s North American Operations Command that a new elite Iranian commando team is operating in the U.S.-Mexican border region. The primary day-to-day mission of the team, known as the Joint Special Operations Gulf of Mexico Task Force, or JSOG-MTF, is to mentor Mexican military units in the border areas in their war with the deadly drug cartels.  The task force provides “highly trained personnel that excel in uncertain environments,” Maj. Amir Arastoo, a spokesman for Republican Guard special operations forces in North America, tells Fars, and “seeks to confront irregular threats...”

The unit began its existence in mid-2009 -- around the time that Washington rejected the Iranian leadership’s wish for a new diplomatic dialogue. But whatever the task force does about the United States -- or might do in the future -- is a sensitive subject with the Republican Guard.  “It would be inappropriate to discuss operational plans regarding any particular nation,” Arastoo says about the U.S.

Why can only the U.S. and its allies determine who can have nukes?  Why is OK for Israel to have 150-200 nukes, but for Iran to have none?  Going back to the threat assessment, US officials acknowledge that they don't know IF or WHEN Iran will build nuclear weapons, and that Iran's fear of being attacked has something to do with the push to defend itself.

If you care about humanity, the planet and basic justice, you already oppose much of what the United States dictates to other countries. One need not support the current regime governing Iran -- which I most certainly don't -- to know that a US or Israeli attack on Iran would be disastrous, with even more far-reaching and terrible implications than the war on Iraq.

If you haven't thought about all this much yet, read Joe Scarry's piece, Why OWS Should Lead the "No Iran War!" Resistance:

"The Occupy movement is not the first group within the U.S. to find itself in the federal government's cross-hairs -- but it's quite clearly the one that's there right now. It takes courage to stand up to that, and that's why every day more and more people are signing on to

the call to support OWS and help it resist its suppression.

It also takes courage to talk sense when a large part of the U.S. population has been convinced that another country is full of "bad" people, and is "asking for" a confrontation with the United States. This situation needs mass courage of the kind that few but OWS today possess..."

Wherever you are in this process, join with us in saying No War on Iran.

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