It’s pretty frightening. Our government is now offically dictating to Russia what it can and cannot propose to Iran to resolve the crisis over Iran’s plans to enrich uranium:
VIENNA, Austria (CNN) — A Russian proposal to allow Iran to enrich a small amount of uranium on its soil has been shot down by U.S. officials, diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency told CNN.
The proposal was floated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is in Washington and is scheduled to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House later Tuesday.
Remember we are talking about very small scale enrichment, a research project with a mere 16 centrifuges. You would need several thousand centrifuges all linked together in order to produce sufficient quantities of bomb grade uranium for a genuine weapons program. Iran is essentially still at the research stage, and it has many technological hurdles to overcome before it achieves the ability to truly produce atomic weapons. Yet, our diplomats are refusing to allow Russia to advance a proposal that would limit Iran to even this small level of enrichment. Why?
Cheney, speaking to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, also reaffirmed that the United States was keeping all options on the table in its determination to prevent Iran from developing nuclear arms.
“The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences,” Cheney said.
Cheney spoke as the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency governing board was meeting in Vienna to decide its next steps on Iran and as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks on the issue with U.S. leaders in Washington.
“For our part, the United States is keeping all options on the table. … We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” Cheney said.
Senior U.S. officials have repeatedly refused to rule out the use of force, saying “all options are on the table.”
Plain and simple, Bush, Cheney, Bolton and Rumsfeld want war.
There is no crisis which requires war. There is no imminent threat of Iran acquiring nukes which justifies what would be the greatest threat to world peace in our lifetime. The Russian proposal would have given Iran a face saving means to back away from this situation without damaging their national pride. The fact the Bush and Co. squelched the Russian plan before it could even get started tells you all you need to know about what they want.
I would venture to say that one has a greater chance of being shot by Dick Cheney than being the victim of weapons arising from any alleged Iranian development program.
If Iran backs down then where we roll the tanks in November to line up the voters? Good war against bad people who worship the wrong Messiah is needed to keep control of the House and Senate.
The Saudis are our yummy lovie buddies. The Palestinians are so weak not even Americans will take crushing them as important. The Syrians might really fight, and if they go down they will try to take Israel with them. That pretty much leaves Egypt and Iran. Iran is closer to our current concentration of military.
Unless Iran actually manages to get nuclear weapons, and thus be a threat, the tanks will roll on or about November 1.
I rather suspect that the Russians backed down immediately because they want us to go to war with Iran. Bear in mind that the Russians have their own oil, and of all the great powers are likely to be the least affected if the Straits of Hormuz are closed by fighting. They also don’t want us meddling in their back yard, and if they can’t get us to leave the easy way, they will be perfectly happy to have us break the remnants of our once formidable armed forces against Iran. They might even get to sell some arms in the meantime, and afterwards, it will be Russian companies making money helping the Iranians rebuild.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but if I were Vladimir Putin, I’d be positively drooling at the prospect of helping the Americans ease themselves off the world stage.
Bush wasn’t kidding when he said he was a war president.
They are not going to back down because of the elections. They are madmen. He’s going all the way with this.
From his POV he has to attack Iran because Israel demands it and because Iran has taken over Souther IRaq that’s why they want Jaafari out, he totally Iranian oriented.
You cannot save Iraq without attacking Iran. I think that is their thinking. It’s nuts of course.
They don’t want to “save” anything; not Iraq oranything else. They want war, and they want it to spread.
They are madmen, as you say; irrational predatory psychopaths who are impervious to reason on the issue of war.
Yes that’s right. They want to save Iraq from becoming influenced by Iran and out of the US orbit…or some such non-sense
Cheney and his neocons wanted Iran to interfere in Iraq in order to provide more of an excuse for the Bush regime to attack Iran.
The deep cover, behind the scenes neocons, with help from their Israeli cohorts, set it up to make it easy for Iran to play a major role in the Iraq mess. (This is not hard fact I can absolutely verify, but any close analysis of the policies and interactions between BushCo and various friends overseas supports the idea quite compellingly.)
I think that theyr’e ultimate goal is simply to destroy. And now they are using the excuse of democracy and freedom to cover for their need to be destructive. Look at the results of their actions and then make an inference as to their motives. Don’t pay attention to what they say. Just look at what they have done. What they have done benefits absolutely no one. It has simply been destructive. That is therefore, I reason…their intention.
This is an anaylsis that is perhaps too psychological for consumption, but I really do believe this utlimately in the final anaylsis is just about self destruction. I think the Neo-Cons happen to be a group of very disturbed, self destructive people who attach an ideology to their desire to destroy themselves and everyone else in order to allow them to cover up what they are doing not only to the public but to themselves.
Simply put. It’s just plain madness.
I don’t seeit as their “goal” to destroy or bedestructive so much as I see that the destructiveness they wreak is a central and necessary part of theprocess by which they do achieve the goal of dominating, altering and controlling theworld as they se it.
Virtually all megalomaniacs operate with this sort of inflexible, delusional pathology defining their actions.
I agree that, to the extent that the neocons ideology carries within itself the seeds of it’sown destruction, it can be said that the neocons operate on a self-destructive level, but the goal remains domination and control; the creation of a global empire run by predatory narcissists like themselves.
I think it’s broader than just Iraq. This is the only way these guys know how to “govern”. War, and the threat of war, balls to the wall, 24/7, don’t let up and allow the opposition to get a word or a breath or a question. They just keep outrunning the questions.
when the troops are in Iran for the GOP to have to confess that they were misled about Iran’s nuclear potential.
Besides just being war lovers, I think the neofascist regime is hoping its swaggering will undercut any preemptive strike by Israel, which would ignite the whole Middle East and beyond.
…clear and it’s ample. It’s a pretty good bet that they want nuclear weapons and have, in the past at least, worked toward obtaining or building the Bomb. The question is what Iran would do with nukes it they got them: Use them as a deterrent, use them as blackmail or use them on a suicide mission? Admadinejad may or may not be willing to carry out his public threats, but I’ll guess the typical mullah at the top in Iran is smarter than that.
Iran would have a long way to go before making its own nuke. It would be easier for it, or any other state, to get the materials for weapons through international arms dealers and other black market sources. Every nation has potential to get nuke weapons, given enough time.
The whipped up hysteria about Iran is not about a clear and present danger, so it’s about something else, just like Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs. Bush’s attempts to torpedo the Russian uranium deal is absolute proof that the weapons potential has nothing to do with this latest round of fear mongering.
Follow the money. For starters, it’s to defend Petro-dollar. If ‘nuclear weapons’ were the issue, Bush would never have made the deal with India on India’s terms in contravention of NPT. A deal not too pleasing to China or Pakistan. And a cave-in that effectively killed the NPT, non-proliferation treaty.
Bu$h and daddy war bucks Cheney are suiting up for war. In deeds and words. Today we have Cheney speaking at AIPAC, the pro Israel lobbying group warning Iran of dire consequences. And Rummy saying Iran is sending Revolutionary guards to Iraq. Off we go to complete the insane project.
Another Pandora’s box about to be opened. Wonder if they’ve weighed China, Pakistan and Russia in the mix this time?
Plus, even if Ahmadinejad is the unpredictable and violence-prone wack job he comes across as being, I think the Mullahs running Iran are, in the end, pragmatic enough to understand that were they to use a nuke against anyone for any reason it would bring down upon Iran a complete obliteration of the country.
I’m certain the Mullahs themselves would “take out” Ahmadinejad themselves if they thought he’d be able to launch such a nuclear attack.
I think this slightly overstates the position that Iranian officials and commentators express.
Whilst the government consistently states that it does not want to develop nuclear weapons, they’re not blind to the fact that mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle alters the strategic balance in its political conflict with the US, as it gives them a breakout option should their strategic situation deteriorate and, say, the US thinks about invasion or military action. There are far simpler ways of resolving the issue, which is essentially a political problem of on whose terms Iran is going to be fully reintegrated into the global economy – but the US is still unwilling to take the step of directly and formally negotiating with Iran.
Subcontracting diplomacy to the EU-3 is pointless – there is already substantial diplomatic, cultural and commercial traffic between the parties, and the biggest impediment to Iran in this respect is the extraterritorial aspects of ILSA – which the Europeans cannot negotiate, and security guarantees against US militarism, which the EU can also not negotiate.
It’s interesting that in an interview with Channel 4 news last night, Bolton stated that it was the “capacity” that was the issue for them, and not actualisation of that capacity per se, which is a little more nuanced than you might normally expect. Of course, the standard US position is that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons – but it’s stated as a belief rather than a verifiable fact ( largely because it isn’t ). If this gets to the UNSC then there are traps for the US too – as there is the potential for a reasonable deal that the rest of the Council and Iran might find acceptable that the US would not; I’m not sure what the Bush administration is calculating as its endgame, and whether it has thought about what it is prepared to give up for a resolution to the issue.
However, what is really interesting is that US policy is now verging on the schizophrenic. In the course of their broadcast from Teheran last night, Channel 4 News revealed that Khalilzad has been trying to get the Iranians to cooperate with the US over the situation in Iraq, and has been requesting Iranian assistance which would allow the US to draw down forces to the 60-70,000 level. This was, according to the correspondent, documented, and in his opinion, authentic ( it also dovetails with reports from late last year that Khalilzad had been authorised to ask Iran for assistance ). There are now two clear axes in US policy over Iran – the Rice/Khalilzad axis which will seek to do a deal versus the Rumsfeld/Cheney/Bolton axis that will seek to avert one; where Bush stands in this is unclear.
Bush is always unclear. Ever heard him speak extemporaneously? <snark>
That said, Rice in the end will cave.
I’m not so sure about that – I suspect that Bush is pretty unhappy with Dick’n’Don these days, and I don’t think he likes being unpopular. I suspect that the ground component of the US armed forces, which is currently bogged down in Iraq in a tactically vulnerable position vis a vis its logistics chain, might also have a voice in the matter. There’s also the whole non-oil sector of the US economy – big-time Republican donors too – that might consider the unpleasant economic consequences of another military venture as being a folly too far.
The point is, the Iranians can sit on the sidelines twiddling their thumbs with regards to requests for assistance, and every day they hold out the price that they can extract increases; they were helpful over Afghanistan as a sign of good faith – but they now need to see a positive return on that, plus some concrete quid pro quo inducements for them to use their “good offices” with the Shia religious parties and give old uncle Sam a hand.
Diverging imperatives going for a head-on collision always make for interesting viewing.
I don’t think they’ll invade. It will be an air assault, not a ground attack. The aftermath will be the same however. All hell breaking lose when Iran retaliates.
I putting this hear for posterity. There is no way that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bolton can get their war unless Iran carries out another 9/11. And if another 9/11 comes down in the next few months I am going to suspect foul play.
They just cannot carry out their policies without it. They have no support, even from Britain.
Naive.
And that would bother them?
Who is going to stop them?
Who?
You think they give a fuck about whether they have INTERNATIONAL support? They don’t even care whether they have national support.
Because they have the voting under control.
They don’t have to care what the voters think.
Because it’s the VOTES that matter, not the voters, and they KNOW damn well that they have the VOTES completely under lock and key.
The only thing that wil stop the neocons from spreading the war to Iran is if the lose the ability to blackmail congress into providing the money.
I’m sure there have been intense discussions at the highest levels of the neoconservative cabal as to whether facilitating another 9/11 type even would advance their cause or damage it further, but in the end, just as it was in the case of the Vietnam debacle, it will come down to whether they can make congress appropriate the money. And even a new 9/11 may not help them accomplish that.
Of course they want war! That’s been the central focus of the neocon plan since the beginning. Peace, security, democracy, stability; these have never been components of the Bush regime’s agenda. Everything the regime has done, every major international action, every major foreign policy step, has been geared toward insuring perpetual conflict.
The only reason more people don’t see the obviousness of this is because too many people simply don’t want to believe our “leaders” are capable of implementing such a terrible, murderous plan. Does anyone think monsters like Cheney or Rumsfeld or their minions care about the death and destruction of US soldiers, (let alone innocent Iraqis? Of course they don’t care. Their agenda for perpetual war trumps any such niceties of humanitarian concern.
It’s long past time we get over our denial, our wishful thinking. It’s long past time we stop chalking this whole debacle up to “incompetence” on the part of Bush regime officials.
It’s deliberate, all of it!
If Americans allow this to happen then they deserve the bankruptcy that will befall them. If Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Sudan,Jordan,UAE,Iraq and Lybia (to name a few) allow this they also deserve to be puppets of America because they are selfish and have a one tracked mind (money at all cost). The American administration wants negotiations to fail and that has been clear for quite some time now. Do not be fooled into thinking that it was a conincidence that Dick Cheney was speaking to AIPAC on the same day that the world would be going through last minute negotiations in an effort to stop the crisis. The rhetoric by both Cheney and Rumsfeld today was planned and premeditated and it’s a shame for the world that such people are in charge of a “super power”. Maybe the worst thing about this whole situation, America’s move toward overt (as oppose to its previous covert policies) wickedness is that many will find themselves cheering the terrorist. History may find those who we fear today as those who tried hardest to stop the elevation of tyranical dictators.
to give my opinion on Cheney. It definetly is with Bush, so I won’t say anything.
From The NY Times:
“Administration officials said Mr. Cheney, one of the strongest advocates of the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq, had more recently promoted a drive to bring Iranian scholars and students to America, blanket the country with radio and television broadcasts and support Iranian political dissidents.
“That $85 million State Department program is being overseen by Elizabeth Cheney, a principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, who is also the vice president’s daughter.”
Given Cheney’s contempt for all activities related to the Department of State, doesn’t this seem like an attempt to undermine diplomacy from within, and thus gear up for another invasion?