Murdoch’s The Australian: Speaking UNtruth WITH Power
Pathetic and blatantly war-mongering, misleading Australian Editorial [with my comments bracketed in bold]:
‘A nuclear Iran is not an option’ | September 01, 2006
Unenforced deadlines make a mockery of the UN system [yes, and how many have Israel and the US wilfully ignored?]
SOMEHOW the approach of a deadline for one of the world’s most unhinged and apocalyptically minded dictators [and I thought that described Bush-Cheney well!] to put a halt to his program of enriching uranium to build nuclear weapons should seem more
dramatic.
And yet, as the clock ticks down on another ultimatum asking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to cease and desist with his nuclear ambitions, much of the world has already shrugged its shoulders with diminished expectations. Mr Ahmadinejad knows the UN can only do so much and that Russia and China are likely to insulate it from consequence in the Security Council chamber.
Iran also knows that the West needs it more than it needs the West and that slowing petroleum exports to provoke another late-1970s-style shock would be devastating to the world economy. Iran surely also remembers the UN Security Council’s performance in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq – when France, China and Russia obstructed [read: didn’t toe the US line to hasten an invasion and illegal/ immoral war] the enforcement of resolutions demanding Saddam Hussein open his country up to weapons inspectors. No wonder it sees its best strategy as playing for time while it develops its weapons program and wins plaudits for “standing up” to the Americans.
A non-nuclear Iran is destabilising enough, given its creation and backing of Hezbollah, which provoked the latest conflagration in the Middle East. [no, Israel is above criticism and culbability. Forget that its 1982 invasion created Hezbollah, which might be backed by Iranian but is a Lebanese organisation. Forget that Israel keeps thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners, many children, many without charge or trial. Foreget that Israel is a belligerent, racist supremacist colonial state, and so on …]
A nuclear-armed Iran capable of pitching atomic weapons around the region or beyond – or, just as likely, prepared to give them to proxies to move around the globe – would be unacceptable. [And Israel and the US, both governments in the hands of loonies, are fine to have nukes].
It would trigger an arms race between rival states in the region. Given the Ahmadinejad regime’s apocalyptic talk [US evangelicals in the upper echilons of the US government already do a good job of that] concerning Israel and the US, it is clear [it is no such thing] that any Iranian nuclear arsenal would be for offensive, rather than defensive, purposes. [Buffalo dung]
The growing feeling, especially in Europe, that the world should simply accept that sooner or later Iran will go nuclear and come to terms with that fact is dangerously misguided. The cascade of negative implications that would flow from such a move are too awful to contemplate. [Europe is so terrible wrongheaded, isn’t it? Let’s just rely on the good ol’ warmongering Dubya administration y’all, to protect us from these “awful” negative implications]
Were Iran to successfully develop atomic arms in defiance of the UN, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a host of other international statutes, it might very well be the last nail in the coffin of the UN system. [Again, amnesia: forget that Iran is a signatory to the NPT and Israel is NOT; forget that the two biggest threats to the efficacy of the UN system are not Iran or ‘Old Europe’ but the two biggest rogue states on the planet: the US and Israeli governments].
Though that body is far from perfect, in the absence of another system to mediate between governments it is all the world has. Worse, Tehran would be able to hold the region hostage to its hegemonic ambitions. [Sick joke: in psychology its called projection: accusing the ‘other’ of an unadmiited trait of yourself: US and Israeli hegemony holding US ALL hostage].
In the more immediate term, the threat is that Russia or China blocks sanctions against Iran. [Thank God for Russia and China as two counterweights to US and Israeli lunacy]. That those two countries are closely tied to Tehran on this matter was confirmed when Iran gave an ultimatum to a Japanese petroleum company this week, demanding it start developing a local oilfield or risk having it handed to the Russians or Chinese.
China and Russia must decide to be good global citizens [Sick joke II: apply that to the neocons in US/ Canada/ Aust/ UK first please before you hypocritically go around exhorting other states to be ‘good global citizens’] and put world peace above narrow economic interests by not vetoing sanctions against Ahmadinejad’s regime. [Ditto]
Failing this, a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program might be the West’s only option. [But of course, that’s what the neocons really want, after they go through those pesky diplomatic motions and a semblance of international dialogue, right?]
Such a strike would not necessarily inflame the “Muslim street”, [excuse me?] which was notably quiescent after the invasion of Iraq and after Israel’s recent retaliation against Hezbollah harassment. [Bollocks, the characterisation is way off and it isn’t just the Muslim street that has been appalled and disgusted by Israel’s US supported war crimes]
An emboldened nuclear Iran is no more in the interest of the Middle East’s Sunni Arabs than it is of Australia or the US. The process of international diplomacy must still be given more time. But the world cannot wait forever. Thwarting the mad [neocon US/ Israeli regimes] Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions by any means necessary should be a project that unites the world.
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