The Bush administration is very focused these days on Iran's nuclear program. This focus has only sharpened in the aftermath of the International Atomic Energy Agency's recent report that Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of a UN Security Council demand.
In a recent visit along the Pak-Afghan border, I found growing evidence that the battle hardened Islamic militants had regrouped with a vengeance. It should have come as no surprise: last year the Taliban insurgency had set a new record of over 4,000 people killed. Although the Northwest Frontier Province has traditionally been more conservative than the rest of the Pakistan, I discovered that Islamic militancy had grown almost reflexively in proportion to U.S. bombardment in the region.
In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that "Washington will launch a military strike on Iran before April 2007, say sources;" and "The attack will be launched from the sea and Patriot missiles will guard all oil-producing countries in the region, they add."
Democratic Party politicians now control the U.S. Congress. Yet the
In the January 16 New Yorker magazine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the Pentagon has begun updating its plans for an invasion of Iran. Hersh reported that, "Strategists at the headquarters of the US Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military’s war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran."
Ostensibly, the Pentagon is preparing an Iraq-style “pre-emptive” attack on Iran in order to stop Tehran from building a nuclear bomb. But in the November 27 New Yorker, Hersh reported that a highly classified assessment by the CIA had “found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency”.As with Iraq’s alleged, but non-existent, weapons of mass destruction, Washington’s claims about a secret Iranian nuclear bomb program are simply a cover for the US rulers real goal of restoring a pro-US regime in oil- and gas-rich Iran.
It's all too convenient for the BBC website to describe the ongoing bloodshed between Hamas and Fatah supporters in the Gaza Strip as "inter-factional rivalry", and it's equally fitting for the Washington Post to narrate the same unfortunate events - which have left many Palestinians dead and wounded - as if they are entirely detached from their adjoining regional and international milieus.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019