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June
9, 2003
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June
9, 2003
Bush's New War Threat
Is
Iran the Next Target?
By LEE SUSTAR
Washington's sabre-rattling toward Iran is part
of the U.S. drive not just to dominate the Persian Gulf, but
to prevent the emergence of any rival at a global level. The
U.S. government claims that Iran supports terrorism and is developing
nuclear weapons. But this is a cover for Washington's main aim--disrupting
Iran's growing economic and political ties with Western Europe,
Russia, China and India.
That's why Russian President Vladimir
Putin criticized Iran's nuclear program during George W. Bush's
visit last week. Washington twisted Putin's arm--and promised
that Russian oil companies will get a piece of the action in
reconstructing Iraq. In fact, under its reformist President Mohammed
Khatami, Iran has repeatedly sought accommodation with Washington
by curbing support for groups that the U.S. views as "terrorist."
At the same time, Khatami has tried to
open the state-dominated Iranian economy to the world market.
A major obstacle to this has been the U.S. Congress' Iran-Libya
Sanctions Act of 1996, which put a $20 million limit on any U.S.
oil company's dealings with Iran. The law forced the U.S. company
Conoco to cancel a big Iranian contract.
Meanwhile, a French oil company, now
known as TotalElfFina, teamed up with Malaysia's Petronas company
for a $2 billion gas pipeline deal. Other European oil companies
have defied U.S. sanctions to develop Iranian oilfields in exchange
for cash payments on the proceeds.
The Clinton administration bowed to demands
from the U.S. oil industry--including Halliburton, then run by
CEO Dick Cheney--and granted waivers to the sanctions. Today,
more than 30 U.S. companies or their subsidiaries operate in
Iran. Nevertheless, Congress voted to renew the sanctions on
Iran in 2001.
Washington pressured U.S. oil companies
into building a pipeline from the oil-and-gas rich inland Caspian
Sea through Turkey to the port of Ceyhan--rather than through
Iran, which would have been the cheapest and most logical route.
For the U.S., the pipeline has the added benefit of avoiding
Russian soil, while still pulling the former USSR republics in
Central Asia into the Western orbit.
Iran tried to appease Washington by providing
assistance in the U.S. war on Afghanistan--but ended up on the
"axis of evil" list anyway. Now, U.S. troops in Afghanistan
and Iraq effectively surround Iran. And with Washington in control
of Iraq's oil, U.S. officials believe that they can more effectively
isolate Iran economically as well.
Iran has tried to avoid confrontation
by offering to hand over suspected al-Qaeda members. And on a
recent trip to Lebanon, Iranian President Khatami privately urged
leaders of the Shiite Hezbollah party to show restraint, according
to press reports. Nevertheless, Washington's squeeze has compelled
Iran to step up its economic and military relationships.
Iran has made a series of oil-swap agreements
with Russia, in which Russian oil is used to supply the needs
of northern Iran, while an equivalent amount of Iranian oil is
exported through the Persian Gulf in the south. A Chinese company
helped Iran build a domestic pipeline to further such efforts.
These arrangements give Russia and Iran
a leg up on the Ceyhan pipeline, which won't be completed until
2005 at the earliest. "Not only will the [swap deals] help
the Russians expand their share of international oil markets
significantly, they will enable Iran to turn itself into a major
player in Caspian oil exports," analyst Hooman Peimani wrote
on the Asian Times Web site in February.
The oil swap deal followed an economic
cooperation agreement signed by Russia and Iran in March 2001.
A year later, Russia, India and Iran signed the North-South Corridor
Agreement to integrate their land, sea and air transportation
networks that can provide a lower-cost alternative to the Suez
Canal.
Iran also recently agreed to construct
a $3.2 billion undersea gas pipeline to India, to be built by
Gazprom, the huge Russian gas monopoly. And Iran and India also
signed a military agreement that gives Indian armed forces access
to Iranian territory and facilities during any war between India
and Pakistan. In return, the Indian military will provide training
and technical assistance to Iranian forces.
Such regional economic and political
alliances could someday constitute a "strategic competitor"
to Washington--something the Bush Doctrine, spelled out in last
year's National Security Strategy document, is designed to stop.
Washington's drive toward world domination, not Tehran's supposed
threats, is the real reason for Bush's campaign against Iran.
Crucial pivot point
in international politics
AS THE biggest and most populous country
on the Persian Gulf, a key land bridge between Asia and Europe,
and the world's fourth-largest producer of oil, Iran is a strategic
pivot point in international politics. That's why Washington
engineered a bloody coup in 1953 that installed a repressive
pro-U.S. monarchy led by Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran.
The coup followed the nationalization
of the British-dominated Anglo-Iranian Oil Company by nationalist
Prime Minister Mohammed Mosadeq. The U.S. dispatched Gen. Norman
Schwarzkopf Sr.--the father of the 1991 Gulf War commander--to
meet the Shah and plot a military coup, financed and orchestrated
by the CIA.
Details of the U.S. role in this "regime
change" came to light in December 2000, when the New York
Times published the CIA's official history of its intervention.
According to this document, U.S. officials decided that the "operation
must, if possible, be made to appear legal or quasi-legal instead
of an outright coup; that public opinion must be fanned to fever
pitch against Mossadeq in the period just preceding the execution
of the overthrow operation"; and that "immediate precautions
must be taken by the new government to meet a strong reaction
by the Tudeh [Communist] Party."
After the coup, the Shah converted the
country from a constitutional monarchy into a dictatorship under
control of his Pahlavi family and their cronies. The U.S. saw
Iran, which bordered the old USSR, as a key ally in the Cold
War and provided the Shah with the latest military weaponry.
Meanwhile, the Shah's secret police, the SAVAK, were notorious
worldwide for their savage repression and torture of oppositionists.
Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979
that brought the Shiite Islamist government to power, the U.S.
has tried to contain Iran's influence. This included backing
Saddam Hussein's invasion, which triggered the horrific eight-year
Iran-Iraq war.
In the mid-1980s, however, the U.S. secretly
provided Iran with weapons in exchange for the release of U.S.
hostages held in Lebanon--and used the money to finance U.S.-backed
counterrevolutionary forces in Nicaragua. Now, with their conquest
of Iraq, Washington's hawks have concluded that the time is right
once more for a more aggressive policy against Iran.
Iran at the crossroads
THE U.S. threats against Iran come as
a political battle between reformists and conservatives in that
country is coming to a head. Since his election as president
in 1997, Mohammed Khatami has sought to carry out a series of
political reforms to allow greater freedom of expression--as
well as an economic program of privatizing state-owned companies
and encouraging Western investment.
Both efforts are threatening the hard-liners
in Iran's Shiite clergy, who claim their legitimacy to rule from
the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's leadership of the 1979
revolution. In reality, Khomeini established himself as a leader
only by putting himself at the head of--and then repressing--a
revolutionary upsurge by workers and crushing the left. Since
his death in 1989, competing factions have clashed more and more
openly.
Despite his landslide re-election in
2001, Khatami's efforts at reforms have been repeatedly blocked
by councils of clergy that constitute a parallel--and more powerful--government.
Iran's economic impasse has only raised the stakes.
Though still growing, the economy doesn't
produce enough jobs to absorb the 800,000 who enter the workforce
each year. The depth of the crisis explains why Khatami has hesitated
to follow his free-market plan to cut subsidies to the poor--for
fear of sparking a revolt from below. Although independent unions
are illegal, strikes over low pay and poor working conditions
are commonplace.
Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamanei, who succeeded
Khomeini as the country's supreme leader, backs the right on
most decisive questions. But he has had to concede political
and social reforms in the face of the mounting reform movement
from below. Sometimes, the clashes have spilled over into big
street protests, such as mass student demonstrations last November
after a reformist intellectual who criticized the clergy was
given a death sentence.
A counterdemonstration of 10,000 people
led by the basij--the goon squad of the religious conservatives--forced
Khatami into a retreat. Bitterness over Khatami's failure to
deliver reforms has led to widespread apathy. Just 12 percent
bothered to vote in local elections in the capital city of Tehran
in February.
Khatami's reforms are bound to fail because
his popular political initiatives are undercut by an economic
program that requires sacrifice by the working class. Washington
ultimately hopes to use this crisis to restore the exiled Iranian
right to power. But the legacy of U.S. support for the Shah means
that Washington won't be able to repeat its fast military victory
over Iraq in neighboring Iran.
The hawks will press for a war anyway--no
matter how horrific the cost. We have to oppose their drive to
a new slaughter.
Lee Sustar
writes for the Socialist
Worker. He can be reached at: lsustar@ameritech.net
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
The Terrible Truth
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species
Joanne
Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers
Steven
Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything
Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s
M.
Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery
Amelia
Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost
Shelton
Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation
Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea
Ben
Tripp
A Fish Story
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Where is the Outrage?
Robin
Philpot
Congo Distortions
Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix
Laura
Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende
David Lindorff
The Last Byline
Adam
Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Reiss, Guthrie, Albert and Hamod
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