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Iran Represents a Deathblow to US Global Hegemony - Adele Edisen - 14-04-2013
Iran Represents a Deathblow to US Global Hegemony
By Finian Cunningham
The present threat of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula is not really about North
Korea or the US-backed South Korean state.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34586.htm [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001CFk31ZTqW0kirRPBuD6m0FQI-BT36_9Cfx8ujFBk4Ksk8IaPErzycj3bYnpsIZ1ugz4xHrQLoh9XYLBJT19lIKu0003iHfmBCcasBtI_txC0Hoze_46sQw2dpHnYA5WJaleh1Vz0oz3Cz0GBsX_TTDYv2rn1HjMuTR4l53DKsQy5Pj4WkDr1uBQwFK2ZAYJRDx-E-X03E0xF5Y0fwnPx0m4sbSz6kJqGeXVp-zkjjYyRgdhkBgke9PLY2FzU9Sc774Q0jqGhPKkE1rhQuhy36Mw36iVUii8p-yra4IBbbxjaP43xJ09nfas2n7b0uQfk84QMJ0nQDchmImzP-d2DGw==]
Iran Represents a Deathblow to US Global Hegemony
By Finian Cunningham
April 12, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"PTV" - The United States of America has become a byword for war. No other nation state has started as many wars or conflicts in modern times than the USA - the United States of Armageddon.
Beneath the Western media façade of "unpredictable" and "aggressive" North Korea, the real source of conflict in the present round of war tensions on the Korean Peninsula is the US. Washington is presented as a restraining, defensive force. But, in reality, the dangerous nuclear stand-off has to be seen in the context of Washington's historical drive for war and hegemony in every corner of the world.
North Korea may present an immediate challenge to Washington's hegemonic ambitions. However, as we shall see, Iran presents a much greater and potentially fatal challenge to the American global empire.
It is documented record, thanks to writers and thinkers like William Blum and Noam Chomsky, that the US has been involved in more than 60 wars and many more proxy conflicts, subterfuges and coups over the nearly seven decades since the Second World War. No other nation on earth comes close to this American track record of belligerence and threat to world security. No other nation has so much blood on its hands.
Americans like to think of their country as first in the world for freedom, humanitarian principles, technology and economic prowess. The truth is more brutal and prosaic. The US is first in the world for war-mongering and raining death and destruction down on others.
If the US is not perpetrating war directly, as in the genocide of Vietnam, then it is waging violence through surrogates, such as past South American dictatorships and death squads or its Middle Eastern proxy military machine, Israel.
That bellicose tendency seems to have accelerated since the demise of the Soviet Union more than two decades ago. No sooner had the Soviet Union imploded than the US led the First Persian Gulf War on Iraq in 1991. That was then swiftly followed by a bloody intervention in Somalia under the deceptively charming title Operation Restore Hope.
Since then we have seen the US become embroiled in more and more wars - sometimes under the guise of "coalitions of the willing", the United Nations or NATO. A variety of pretexts have also been invoked: war on drugs, war on terror, Axis of Evil, responsibility to protect, the world's policeman, upholding global peace and security, preventing weapons of mass destruction. But always, these wars are Washington-led affairs. And always the pretexts are mere pretty window-dressing for Washington's brutish strategic interests.
Now it seems we have reached a phase of history where the world is witnessing a state of permanent war prosecuted by the US and its underlings: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq (again), Libya, Pakistan, Somalia (again), Mali and Syria, to mention a few. These theaters of criminal US military operations join a list of ongoing covert wars against Palestine, Cuba, Iran and North Korea.
Fortunately, a twist of fate brought about by the Bolivarian Revolution of the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has ensured that much of South America - the primary US so-called sphere of influence - remains off-limits to Washington's depredations, at least for now.
The question is: why has the US such an inordinate propensity for war? The answer is: power. The global capitalist economy mandates a fatal power struggle for the control of natural resources. To maintain its unique historic position of commanding capitalist profits and privilege, the US corporate elite - the executive of the world capitalist system - must have hegemony over the world's natural resources.
The cold logic of this propensity was articulated clearly by US state planner George F Kennan in 1948: "We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
In other words, Kennan was candidly admitting what US political leaders often dissimulate with fake rhetoric; that the US ruling elite has no interest in defending democracy, human rights or international law. The purpose is control of economic power, in accord with capitalist laws of motion.
Kennan, who was one of the main architects of US foreign policy in the post-Second World War era, also noted with candidness and prescience:
"Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy."
Thus we see how after the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union collapsed the US has been flailing to contrive a replacement "enemy" and pretext for its essential militarism. The 9/11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent "war on terror" has fulfilled this purpose to a degree, even though it is replete with contradictions that belie its fraudulence, such as the support given to Al Qaeda terrorist elements currently to overthrow the government of Syria.
The present threat of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula is not really about North Korea or the US-backed South Korean state. As in 1945, Korea was the site of the US flexing its military muscle towards its perceived main global rivals - Russia and China. As the SecondWorld War drew to a close, the advances made by Communist Russia and China in the Pacific against imperialist Japan were a cause for deep concern in Washington with its eyes on the post-war global carve-up.
That is why the US took the unprecedented step of dropping atomic bombs on Japan. It was the most far-reaching demonstration of raw power by the US to its rivals. Russian and Chinese advances on the Korean Peninsula against the Japanese, which were welcomed by the Korean population, were halted dead in their tracks by the twin nuclear holocausts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The partition of Korea in 1945 at the behest of Washington was also part of the post-war demarcation for global influence and staking out control of resources. The American-instigated Korean War (1950-53) and the subsequent decades of tensions between the North and South states afforded Washington a permanent military presence in the Pacific.
Rhetoric about "defending our allies" reiterated again this week by US defense secretary Chuck Hagel is but a cynical chimera for the real purpose and rationale for Washington's presence in Korea - strategic control of Russia and China for hegemony over natural resources, markets, transport, logistics, and ultimately capitalist profit.
Tragically, North and South Korea are still caught in the cross-hairs of Washington's geopolitical war with Russia and China. That is what makes the present tensions on the Peninsula so dangerous. The US could gamble that a devastating strike on North Korea is the best way at this historical juncture for it to send another brutal message to its global rivals. Unfortunately, North Korea's nuclear capability and truculent attitude - amplified by the Western mainstream media - could serve as a superficial political cover for Washington to again take the military option.
Iran, however, presents a greater and more problematic challenge to US global hegemony. The US in 2013 is a very different animal from what it was in 1945. Now it resembles more a lumbering giant. Gone is its former economic prowess and its arteries are sclerotic with its
internal social decay and malaise. Crucially, too, the lumbering American giant has quandered any moral strength it may have had in the eyes of the world. Its veil of morality and democratic principle may have appeared credible in 1945, but that cover has been torn asunder by the countless wars and nefarious intrigues over the ensuing decades to reveal a pathological warmonger.
The American military power is still, of course, a highly dangerous force. But it is now more like a bulging muscle hanging on an otherwise emaciated corpse. Iran presents this lumbering, dying power with a fatal challenge. For a start, Iran does not have nuclear weapons or ambitions and it has repeatedly stated this, thereby gaining much-reciprocated good will from the international community, including the public of North America and Europe. The US or its surrogates cannot therefore credibly justify a military strike on Iran, as it might do against North Korea, without risking a tsunami of political backlash.
Secondly, Iran exerts a controlling influence over the vital drug that keeps the American economic system alive - the world's supply of oil and gas. Any war with Iran, if the US were so foolish to embark on it, would result in a deathblow to the waning American and global economy.
A third reason why Iran presents a mortal challenge to US global hegemony is that the Islamic Republic is a formidable military power. Its 80 million-strong people are committed to anti-imperialism and any strike from the US or its allies would result in a region-wide war that would pull down the very pillars of Western geopolitical architecture, including the collapse of the Israeli state and the overthrow of the House of Saud and the other the Persian Gulf oil
dictatorships.
US planners know this and that is why they will not dare to confront Iran head-on. But that leaves the US empire with a fatal dilemma. Its congenital belligerence arising from in its capitalist DNA, puts the US ruling elite on a locked-in stalemate with Iran. The longer that stalemate persists, the more the US global power will drain from its corpse. The American empire, as many others have before, could therefore founder on the rocks of the ancient Persian empire.
However, the story will not end there. The attainment of world peace, justice and sustainability does not only necessitate the collapse of American hegemony. We need to overthrow the underlying capitalist economic system that gives rise to such destructive hegemonic powers. Iran represents a deathblow to the American empire, but the people of the world will need to build on the ruins.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime.
Adele
Iran Represents a Deathblow to US Global Hegemony - Adele Edisen - 20-04-2013
Is Anybody Listening?
U.S. Intel Chief Says Iran Isn't Building Nukes.
By Nima Shirazi
In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Director of National
Intelligence reaffirmed what the U.S. intelligence community has been saying for
years: Iran has no nuclear weapons program, is not building a nuclear weapon and
has not even made a decision to do so. (Emphasis mine. - AE)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34672.htm [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001LyZ7Ja14A7XeFZdnUtJ2SPtx9WoamoYV4bP4IMIXnogFPoluuxq0EQfe5JepoOoJCCI_sla7eRbvseI7XjHNnzAyIpb6aQlGmjCRHGQvnNaNPdg1eKZOkNupl33sAOynPL8O0pPl8cnFxOOh2Njqk54ioqsn63Zb]
Is Anybody Listening?
U.S. Intel Chief Says Iran Isn't Building Nukes.
By Nima Shirazi
April 19, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"WAIA" - In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday March 12, 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reaffirmed what the U.S. intelligence community has been saying for years: Iran has no nuclear weapons program, is not building a nuclear weapon and has not even made a decision to do so.
The annual "Worldwide Threat Assessment," which compiles the collective conclusions of all American intelligence agencies, has long held that Iran maintains defensive capabilities and has a military doctrine of deterrence and retaliation, but is not an aggressive state actor and has no intention of beginning a conflict, let alone triggering a nuclear apocalypse.
While the U.S. intelligence community assumes that Iran already has the technical capability to produce nuclear weapons, "should a decision be made to do so," Clapper's report states (as it has for years now), "We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons."
Were this decision ever to be made, Iran wouldn't even be able to secretly start building a nuclear bomb. "[W]e assess Iran could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of WGU [weapons-grade uranium] before this activity is discovered," Clapper told Congress.
Even Clapper, who is no stranger to alarmism, acknowledges that "Iran prefers to avoid direct confrontation with the United States" and would only act defensively "in response to perceived offenses." Iran's "decision making is guided by a cost-benefit approach" based on considerations of "security, prestige and influence, as well as the international political and security environment," Clapper said, thereby dismissing allegations that the Islamic Republic is an irrational martyr state. Speaking at a national security conference in Herzliya on Thursday, Israel's own military intelligence chief concurred with Clapper's assessment. While sure to continue advancing its nuclear program in the coming year, he said, Iran had not actually decided to build a bomb.
Such findings are wholly consistent with past assessments.
In April 2010, Defense Intelligence Agency director Ronald Burgess told the Senate Committee on Armed Services, "Iran's military strategy is designed to defend against external threats, particularly from the United States and Israel" and "to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities." The following year, he explained that "Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict or launch a preemptive attack," and reiterated this conclusion in early 2012.
With these findings in mind assessed and reaffirmed as they are year after year it is alarming indeed that journalists, pundits, establishment think tank analysts, and a wide array of government officials continue to parrot the claim that Iran is "the world's most dangerous state" and "one of the gravest threats to international security."
Such hysteria and fear-mongering, as always, is simply not borne out by the facts.
UPDATE:
April 18, 2013 - Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee today and reiterated the same assessment regarding Iran as was delivered in March 2013.
The exact same statements - verbatim - were included in Clapper's unclassified report, including the assessment that "Iran is developing nuclear capabilities to enhance its security, prestige, and regional influence and give it the ability to develop nuclear weapons, should a decision be made to do so. We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons."
Of course, as Clapper notes, Iran's ability to potentially manufacture the components is inherent to its advanced nuclear infrastructure and is not an indication of an active nuclear weapons program, which all U.S. intelligence agencies agree Iran does not have.
As such, Clapper told the Senate Committee, "Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons. This makes the central issue its political will to do so."
In his testimony, Clapper stated that, were the decision to weaponize its nuclear energy program to be made by Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran could theoretically reach a "breakout" point within "months, not years." His report repeats the assessment, though, that "[d]espite this progress, we assess Iran could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of WGU before this activity is discovered."
Again, undermining the bogus claims that Iran is an irrational and reckless actor, Clapper maintained the judgment that "Iran's nuclear decisionmaking is guided by a cost-benefit approach," balancing its own domestic interests with "the international political and security environment." Iran also has a defensive - not aggressive - military posture, one based on "its strategy to deter - and if necessary retaliate against - forces in the region, including US forces" were an attack on Iran to occur.
Adele
Iran Represents a Deathblow to US Global Hegemony - Adele Edisen - 20-04-2013
I hope the word of the U.S. Director of Intelligence, James Clapper, will put the matter of Iran's development of nuclear weapons to rest.
Adele
Iran Represents a Deathblow to US Global Hegemony - David Guyatt - 20-04-2013
In political jargon, it's what's called an "inconvenient truth" - and therefore will be ignored. Count on it.
Iran Represents a Deathblow to US Global Hegemony - Jan Klimkowski - 20-04-2013
David Guyatt Wrote:In political jargon, it's what's called an "inconvenient truth" - and therefore will be ignored. Count on it.
Or as with Cheney & co, the warmongers will simply set up their own intelligence apparatus which produces "analysis" which supports the case for war and dismisses any intelligence which destroys the case for war.
In Britain, this is known as producing a DODGY DOSSIER.
:mexican:
Iran Represents a Deathblow to US Global Hegemony - Adele Edisen - 24-04-2013
Wed, April 24, 2013 6:06:06 AMTony Cartalucci: Who is Behind "Al Qaeda in Iran"?
From: Global Research E-Newsletter <newsletter@globalresearch.ca>
Who is Behind "Al Qaeda in Iran"?
By Tony Cartalucci
Global Research, April 23, 2013
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-is-behind-al-qaeda-in-iran/5332593
As the FBI reels from what now appears to be revelations it was directly involved in the Boston Marathon bombings, a deluge of FBI "success" stories have been "serendipitously" splashed across Western headlines. Among them was an allegedly "foiled" terror attack in Canada, reported to be the work of terrorists supported by "Al-Qaeda operatives in Iran." The Globe and Mail, in its report, "Canada joins U.S. in alleging al-Qaeda has operatives based in Iran," states:
"To many, it came as a surprise that the RCMP is alleging that two terror suspects arrested in Canada on Monday were supported by al-Qaeda operatives in Iran.
The Sunni-based al-Qaeda and Shia Iran belong to different branches of Islam that have been at odds historically. But in recent years U.S. officials have formally alleged that Iran has allowed al-Qaeda members to operate out of its territory."
Both at face value and upon deeper examination, this assertion is utterly absurd, divorced from reality, and indicative of the absolute contempt within which the Western establishment holds the global public. In reality, the West, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel in particular, have propped up and perpetuated Al Qaeda for the very purpose of either undermining or overthrowing the governments of Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Algeria, Libya, Russia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and beyond.
Regarding Iran in particular, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker piece titled, "The Redirection: Is the Administration's new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" would state:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
In a follow up, Hersh in his 2008 New Yorker piece titled, "Preparing the Battlefield: The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran," spelled out a damning indictment of US involvement in bolstering, arming, and funding terror organizations, not linked to, but described as actually being Al Qaeda.
Of American support for Al Qaeda the report states (emphasis added):
The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. "The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda," Baer told me. "These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelieversin this case, it's Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we're once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties." Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.
The report would continue by stating (emphasis added):
One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People's Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. "This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists," Nasr told me. "They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture." The Jundallah took responsibility for the bombing of a busload of Revolutionary Guard soldiers in February, 2007. At least eleven Guard members were killed. According to Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support.
The manifestation of this insidious conspiracy can be seen playing out across Syria in which US-backed terrorists openly operating under the flag of Al Qaeda are locked in a catastrophic sectarian bloodbath with the Syrian people and the Syrian state's closest ally, Iran. The conflict in Syria exposes that the machinations revealed back in 2007-2008 by Hersh, are still being carried out in earnest today.
Clearly, US-Canadian claims that Iran is somehow involved in harboring Al Qaeda within its borders, when it has been the West for years propping them up specifically to overthrow the Iranian government, are utterly absurd. In reality, while the West uses Al Qaeda's presence both within Iran and along it peripheries to undermine and ultimately overthrow the Iranian government, it in turn uses these very terror organizations to induce paralyzing fear across Western populations in order to consolidate and expand power at home.
Additional Reading: For more information on just how much support the US has provided Al Qaeda terrorists in Baluchistan versus both Pakistan and Iran, please see, "US Attempting to Trigger Color Revolution in Pakistan." For more information on the US' delisting, arming and training of the terror organization, Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK or MKO) versus Iran, please see, "US to Delist & Arm American-Killing Terror Cult."
Copyright © 2013 Global Research
GLOBAL RESEARCH | PO Box 55019 | 11 Notre-Dame Ouest | Montreal | QC | H2Y 4A7 | Canada
Adele
Iran Represents a Deathblow to US Global Hegemony - Adele Edisen - 24-04-2013
Quote:April 19, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"WAIA" - In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday March 12, 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reaffirmed what the U.S. intelligence community has been saying for years: Iran has no nuclear weapons program, is not building a nuclear weapon and has not even made a decision to do so.
This is the DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, for Pete's sake. How many intelligence agencies does he supervise? Certainly the CIA is one of his agencies - you know, the one that knows EVERYTHING. So James Clapper must be able to know even more than the CIA, wouldn't one think?
From Wikipedia:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[
Quote:The United States Intelligence Community (IC) is a cooperative federation of 16 separate United States government agencies that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities considered necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and national security of the United States. Member organizations of the IC include intelligence agencies, military intelligence, and civilian intelligence and analysis offices within federal executive departments. The IC is led by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who reports to the President of the United States. (Bold emphasis mine - AE)
Among their varied responsibilities, the members of the Community collect and produce foreign and domestic intelligence, contribute to military planning, and perform espionage. The IC was established by Executive Order 12333, signed on December 4, 1981, by President Ronald Reagan.[1]
The Washington Post has reported that there are 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in 10,000 locations in the United States that are working on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence, and that the intelligence community as a whole includes 854,000 people who hold top-secret clearances.[2] According to a 2008 study by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, private contractors make up 29% of the workforce in the US intelligence community and cost the equivalent of 49% of their personnel budgets.[3]
Adele