Tainted Saints

“Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, reopened today after a long break for the summer and the Jewish holidays. In line with protocol, Israel’s president opened the winter session and Shimon Peres had this to say on the linkage between reaching peace with the Palestinians and addressing the Iran issue:

In my opinion, if we move forwards with peace and make peace with the Palestinians, and if we start negotiations with Syria and Lebanon, we will remove the main pretext for the Iranian madness – against us and against the other residents of this region. (President Peres, October 12th in the Israeli Knesset).

Now Mr. Peres is in reality not exactly the dove he is portrayed to be (he authorized many of the settlements, he supported Israel’s recent wars with Lebanon and Gaza, and he never really earned his own Nobel peace prize), but this was nonetheless an interesting acknowledgment of the linkage from Israel’s head of state – and it seems to directly contradict the messaging coming from Israel’s ambassador to Washington D.C., Michael Oren…”

“The US believes this is not the time to impose more sanctions against Iran as part of its push to get the country to end its nuclear programme.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, emphasised co-operation with Moscow on the atomic issue in statements on Tuesday after talks with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.”

Juan Cole proposes something called “nuclear latency,” which “would allow the production of an atomic bomb on short notice if an extreme danger to national autonomy reared its ugly head.” And the reason for the new facility at Qom is because the existing facility at Natanz is “too easily bombed or struck with missiles.”

Are we seeing the terrible irony here? The U.S. and Israel have been rattling sabres at Iran for several years now — recall that during the 2008 primaries, Hillary Clinton threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran if they attacked Israel. Because of this near-constant barrage of threats, Iran rightly fears that their nuclear facility may be bombed, so they rushed to build a new one in a more remote area of the country. They also know that both the U.S. and Israel have nuclear weapons, and have been openly stating that they would be willing to use them on Iran.

Since Iran’s Supreme Leader has been clear that “no Islamic state may possess or use atomic weapons because they willy nilly kill masses of innocent civilians when used, which is contrary to the Islamic law of war (which forbids killing innocent non-combatants)”, why are we really so obsessed with Iran? Richard Heinberg spelled out the reasons quite nicely in his excellent 2005 piece in Energy Bulletin entitled Onward to Iran. We have no control over them, whatsoever, since we have no bases there, and Iran is the second-largest exporter of oil in the world. You do the math…

So in 1969, Richard Nixon and Golda Meir made an agreement to not acknowledge Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons. Ever since, we have upheld the myth that Israel is utterly defenseless, surrounded on all land-locked sides by big, bad Arabs. Except the reality is, Israel has nuclear weapons, and none of their neighbors do. Ya think that might cause a little tension between Israel and Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and…Iran (who is not technically a neighbor, but is definitely within missile range)?

I like this quote from Netanyahu the best:

“Netanyahu spoke of his confidence that  Obama’s recent remarks on a world free of nuclear weapons would not apply to Israel.

“It was utterly clear from the context of the speech that he was speaking about North Korea and Iran,” the Israeli leader said.”

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others…

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/10/2009103125440407949.html#

Take special note of the quote from The Washington Times  about Obama’s renewal of the 40-year agreement that “has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections…”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/02/iran/index.html

Doing so would ensure the uranium could only be used for nuclear power, not weapons. Iran has, however, refused to halt uranium enrichment, altogether, since it’s still an essential component of nuclear power..

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/76369.html

Including:

• Iran has not launched an aggressive war in modern history;
• Iran’s annual military budget is less than Sweden, Greece, and Singapore’s;
• Ahmadinejad did not threaten to “wipe Israel off the map”.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/01/cole/

‘Member when the MSM ”discovered” that there weren’t really WMD in Iraq, and, therefore, we invaded a sovereign nation based on a complete lie? Just insert Iran for Iraq, nuclear weapons for WMD, and Obama for Bush…

(Roberts is a conservative, who was Assistant Secretary for the Treasury under Ronald Reagan.  So don’t say I never acknowledge pundits from the Right…)

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09302009.html

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/30/iran/index.html

Further evidence that her whiplash shift to the left was more opportunism than reality…

And Glenn Greenwald demonstrates yet again that he’s one of the few pundits who actually knows what the hell he’s talking about.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/29/iran/index.html