TURNING THE HEAT UP ON IRAN – AGAIN

Last week I wrote how Iran has been put back on the front burner after having been left to simmer on the back of the stove while the Western right-wing mainstream media dealt with all the other distractions in the Middle East like revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, etc., and, of course, the crisis over Palestinian statehood and Fatah’s reconciliation with Hamas.

At the end of that post I wrote how we should expect the heat on Iran to be turned up even higher over Iran’s nuclear program as the threat of a Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence creeps closer and the Palestinian leaders, both Fatah and Hamas, head to the UN (Fatah literally, Hamas spiritually. I doubt the US will allow any Hamas representative into the country). It seems, however, that I’m not alone in the view that Iran’s undenied pursuit of nuclear energy has been abused by Israel, the US and their allies for political purposes to both demonise Iran in the eyes of Western public opinion and also to alienate Iran from its regional neighbours; Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker (subscription only at this time) also questions the veracity of the claims made about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program. Hersh claims simply, as I have for years, that, despite all of the claims the Israelis, the West and their allies make about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program, there is not one single piece of hard evidence whatsoever that is able to support any of these claims.

Now, I don’t have anywhere near the kind of following on my humble blog that Seymour Hersh has at The New Yorker so I don’t expect a massive reaction to my words from the right-wing Zionists and their supporters in the West. But because Seymour Hersh wields a lot more influence that I’m ever likely to, reaction to his words from the Zionists and their neoconservative supporters particularly, is assured. And, sure enough, they couldn’t help themselves. Hersh’s article is barely hot of the press and already there are a couple of articles in the right-wing press screaming desperately that Hersh is wrong and that there is ‘considerable evidence’ of Iran seeking ‘nukes’ though neither article actually points the reader to where that considerable body of evidence is to be seen.

Jonathan Tobin, writing in the neocon comic Commentary says that Iran’s leader “Sayyed Ali Khamenei has claimed no interest in nuclear weapons”, but “the Iranians have made their pursuit of nukes a major source of national pride”. But what Tobin deceitfully neglects to mention is that the ‘major source of national pride’ is not the pursuit of nuclear weapons, as Tobin disingenuously attempts to imply, but rather the pursuit of nuclear energy for the purposes of generating electrical power; a pursuit the Iranians are proud of and have never denied undertaking.

Tobin also arrogantly suggests that Hersh should be presenting “real evidence of Iranian innocence”; but why should he? Is not the US a nation that purports to hold values based on a system of justice where the onus is upon the accuser to provide evidence of guilt rather than the accused needing to provide evidence of their innocence?

There’s also a fearmongering editorial in The Washington Times today. It runs on basically the same lines as Tobin’s piece in Commentary but adds that Iran is not just an existential threat to Israel but also “an existential threat to countries in the Middle East”. Clearly, the editors of The Washington Times is relying on the naivety and ignorance of their audience who, perhaps, are unaware of the fact that Iran has not invaded any nation nor declared war on any other nation and has absolutely no reason to go to war with any nation unless, of course, it is in self defence. The fact is; it is not that Iran is an ‘existential threat’ to Israel or, indeed, anyone else in the region, but that Israel and their Western allies are an existential threat to Iran as Israel seeks to confront Iran in order to then eliminate their other enemies closer to home, Hamas and Hezbollah who Israel and the US regard as Iran’s ‘proxies’, who stand in the way of Israeli territorial ambitions of creating a Greater Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people and the people of south Lebanon.

Despite Israel, the US and their allies continual bleating about Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’, there is still not one skerrick of hard evidence that Iran has any such program.

Israel on the other hand…