Interview: Moazzam Begg: Operation end your freedomUKWatch.net - 18 Jul 2008The government won the House of Commons vote to extend detention without trial to 42 days. What do you think about this attack on civil liberties? It’s important to remember that the government didn’t want 42 days – they wanted 90 days and they’ve settled for less than half of that. What’s really bizarre for me is that I was at the protest close to Downing Street when George Bush visited and I actually caught a glimpse of him. In 1996 the IRA fired a home-made mortar very close to Downing Street. Despite all of that and the whole of the period of the Troubles in the 1970s, detention without trial – other than internment, which I think was terrible – never went beyond three days as far as the law was concerned. That it’s now 42 is unbelievable. The government do have the power – regardless of whatever it wants on pre-trial detention – to detain people without charge or trial, and they’ve done that in the case of several people held in Belmarsh prison who have been detained for seven to eight years plus. One lawyer has said it’s tantamount to torture because of the conditions under which people are kept, often without light or contact with people. The United Nations convention against torture defines it as being both physical and psychological. It’s not just about fingernails being pulled out or being waterboarded or hooded. The psychological effects of being detained without trial are very real. They destroy not only the individual – they destroy their family; they destroy the individual’s ability to reintegrate back into society, to get a job. I know many individuals who have never been charged with anything and yet they can’t be cleared to do any of the jobs they were trained to do to begin with. It’s a bizarre concept because the government is always harping on about how Muslims need to integrate. How have you been treated by the government and media since your release from Guantanamo? The government hasn’t treated me in any particular way, other than not allowing me to leave the country without express permission – a condition for my release and the release of others at the same time. Other than that the government hasn’t really put any stops on me at all and hasn’t caused me any problems. I have even spoken inside the House of Commons many times. The public has been fine. I spend most of my time speaking up and down the country to thousands of people and I get a tremendous response from the average person. I get very little, if any, hostility from people at all. As far as the media is concerned, it varies. Most of the time they call on me to comment on one thing or another, but what I often have to say is that it’s sad that we’re walking into a situation nearing that of a police state. Samina Malik, the “lyrical terrorist”, has recently won the appeal against her charges. There was a big furore when she was first convicted and very little coverage now that she has won the appeal. I’ve met people, from the heads of the BBC to ITN, and spoken to them about these specific issues – the sensationalist style of reporting on issues surrounding Muslims – and they’ve often said that they have to get there before the Sky News helicopter. There doesn’t seem to be an onus on good quality reporting. It seems to be more about what fits the pattern. So when a former member of the British National Party was arrested for possessing a huge haul of chemicals which could be used for explosives in Pendle last year, they felt it wasn’t newsworthy in the same way that it would have been had he been a Muslim. It is sad, but it’s the reality. Sensational reporting will take place when there’s an arrest but there will be very little if that person is released or found not guilty. The media decides to take upon itself to become the mouthpiece of government policy. What has been the impact of all this on young Muslims today? Has it got to the stage where people don’t know what’s legal and what isn’t? I don’t think it’s just Muslims actually. I think most people are confused as to what they can and can’t do. How does somebody avoid the sort of prosecution cases we’ve seen against the “lyrical terrorist” or people who’ve downloaded things from the internet? People don’t really know what the parameters of the law are any more. I remember discussing this with some former IRA prisoners of war who were released as part of the Good Friday Agreement, and one of the things they said was that at least in their time they were convicted of things that they did, or were planning to do. Today people are being convicted literally for thoughts; for looking at things, for having something on a computer or having a copy of the Al Qaida manual downloaded from a US government website. It’s ludicrous. What was your aim when you started writing your book in Guantanamo? I wanted people to learn from it. In a sense the book was about my experience with the US and of the US. I’d never been there before it came to me. But it was for US soldiers and also British soldiers who are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also for the British public, both Muslim and non-Muslim. For the Muslims it was to give strength and hope, and for the non-Muslims to give a glimpse of a world parallel to them but that perhaps they don’t know very well. We’re not so different; we all want the same things. We want security; we want happiness. We love; we get angry; we get upset. That was my intention, to make people understand. Not necessarily to empathise or sympathise – not everyone is going to be my friend just because they think I’ve been tortured or abused. I want to look beyond that and look at the society we’re in. It’s not just about tolerance – we can tolerate anything – it’s about acceptance. If they can accept difference, then that’s the Britain that I thought we were heading towards and wanted. Are you surprised at the support you have when you give talks? The support is tremendous. It’s so difficult to quantify. It’s massive, and it’s continuous. Last night I was speaking in Cambridge and a lady came up to me at the end and said, “I’ve never been at political meetings, I’ve never been involved in these sorts of things, but just listening to you has made me want to be involved more than I ever was and I am going to make it a point upon myself to learn about things before I ever make judgements.” Some people may have some fixed views, but once they face them they’ll find that they’ve been mistaken. I’m trying to break stereotypes, to explain to people that we are not, and I am not, representative of what they may have assumed. The US still claims that it does not use inhumane treatment at Guantanamo. How does this sit with your own experiences? We have a detention site in Cuba where there is no freedom, and outside the walls and the cages you have written on the plaques “Honour bound to defend freedom”. They called it “Operation: Enduring Freedom”, but freedom isn’t something that you endure. Freedom is a right for every creature on this planet, from the point that it’s born to the point that it leaves its life. The things that you have to endure are torture; cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment; being beaten, punched and spat at; humiliation; pain without charge or trial; being falsely imprisoned; being held away from your family. They should call these things “Operation: End Your Freedom”. It would be nearer the truth. Guantanamo has become untenable. Even Colin Powell, one of the architects of the “war on terror”, has waded in. He wasn’t one of those further on the right, but he was certainly there. He called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. It has become chic to call for its closure – everybody’s doing it. But Guantanamo is the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath is much more sinister and causes much more damage – the secret detention sites where the majority of the people held in the “war on terror” are. After going through some of those secret detention sites, I was looking forward to going to Guantanamo. What impact have organisations like Liberty and Reprieve made in highlighting the conditions of prisoners and people who’ve suffered rendition? I think they have made an impact – there’s no doubt about that. Clive Stafford Smith, of Reprieve, was the first person I met in Guantanamo. There is also my own organisation, Cage Prisoners, which consists of prisoners. The organisations are very good but they speak on our behalf and they need to hear what we – the prisoners, the people who went through and continue to go through the process – have to say about what happened. One thing that has surprised people is your level of sympathy with the Guantanamo prison guards. The important thing to remember is that they are individuals, and I dealt with them and judge them according to my experiences with them. There are some good, some bad and some in between. People are complex characters. Many of the soldiers treated me and other detainees in a decent way. It’s important not to let any personal experience of torture or witnessing murder cloud my judgement of the others who were appalled that it was taking place, are appalled now, and have apologised for their wrong – even though they didn’t take part in the torture. I think it’s important to recognise that many of these people have now become outspoken against the “war on terror” and their own government, which requires a level of courage and bravery which should be commended. But as far as the system they were part of then, yes, it is one that destroys lives and continues to do so. If the argument is that this has happened as a result of the 11 September 2001 attacks, well, it happened seven years ago. The deaths in the US stopped on 11 September. Deaths have not stopped in Afghanistan and Iraq from the day they were invaded. You cannot justify the deaths of untold numbers – millions perhaps. But who knows? who cares? who counts? – because of the tragic deaths on 11 September. I spoke to one of the Guantanamo guards, and suggested organising a speaking tour. He said he was happy to do it. I’m concerned for his safety more than anything else – particularly on his return to the US having spoken on a platform with a former Guantanamo detainee. After all, his president did designate us as “the worst of the worst, most dangerous men on the planet”. But if he’s able to do so then I will be too. You wrote about how you heard about the Stop the War demonstrations in Britain when you were in Guantanamo. What effect did that have on you personally and on British society today? The Stop the War movement has become a buffer between people who may want to carry out acts of violence on innocent Westerners, and the government itself that does carry out acts of violence against people in the Middle East. I had a conversation with the only self-described member of Al Qaida I’ve met, in Guantanamo. He said that people in the West are not innocent because they vote in their leaders and therefore must share part of the blame. I explained that most people vote on domestic issues like the health service and roads. I said that you’ll probably find a great number of them don’t support the war, but when you strike you don’t discriminate. Then he started thinking about it a little bit. The Stop the War movement is a buffer which helps prevent terrorism in a way that the government would never conceive; when they see people demonstrating against the war it helps to pacify some of the radical elements who would otherwise have said, “They’re all the same – go and bomb the whole lot of them.” After your experiences many might have opted for a quiet life, to recover and rebuild your family life and everything else. What inspires you to keep fighting? On the day I returned from Guantanamo I was welcomed back to the country in a cell especially prepared for me in Paddington Green police station. Shortly after that I met the solicitor Gareth Peirce – the first really friendly face I’d met in all these years. She couldn’t be there for me for the next day as she had to go the House of Lords for a historic decision was going to be passed about the detention of terror suspects who had been held for three years. That’s the same amount of time I had been held in Guantanamo, but in this country. I realised what sort of situation I returned to. I couldn’t just sit around. People I knew were being held in Guantanamo and secret detention sites, and I was a witness in history to what had taken place. To remain silent would be doing a great disservice to myself and people being held, especially in the wake of the 7 July bombings, the racist Islamophobia that has resulted, and foreign policy. It’s been important for me to speak out. It has given me a great sense of strength and moral support to see that there are a great number of people in this country who haven’t given in to the ludicrous attitude of the government and some forms of the media, and have stood bravely challenging both of them. As long as that remains in this country, I’m very pleased to be part of it.
The crisis fuels discontentUKWatch.net - 18 Jul 2008Where did it all go wrong for Gordon Brown? Was it his failure to call a general election last October? Was it the attempt to impose a pay freeze? Was it the vote in parliament to extend detention without trial to 42 days? Just one year into Brown’s premiership a recent Gallup poll showed Labour’s popularity at its lowest ebb of support since Gallup first asked people to declare their voting intention in 1943. The government is in a crisis that appears out of control and the central issue that is derailing Brown is the economic crisis. This crisis is not confined to the boardrooms of big companies and the financial markets. This is a crisis that affects every single household in Britain. Rocketing price increases have become the topic of conversation on every bus, in every workplace and college. When basic foods go up by 12 or 14 percent everyone but the very rich feels it. One Daily Mirror front page stated: “Cost of living up 11.6 percent… Mirror index shock increase: food up 15 percent; transport up 16 percent; utilities up 13 percent.” The housing market, which once fuelled the boom, is now helping to precipitate the crisis. Repossessions have doubled in the last year, house prices are falling but at the same time people’s mortgage payments are actually rising as fixed payment deals expire and interest rates rise. The Guardian financial pages reported that there has been a 60 percent fall in people buying new build houses in the last year. Rising fuel, food and transport prices are causing misery for millions. But how has the government got into this mess? Only a few years ago Brown was boasting that his economic policies had got rid of the boom and slump cycle. This is not an economic crisis confined to Britain: it is a world economic crisis creating instability across the globe. Capitalist crisis links the teaching assistant in Bradford who can’t pay her gas bill with the woman who joins food riots in Senegal. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation states that the world’s poorest countries could see their annual food import basket cost four times as much as it did in 2000. According to the World Bank, food riots have already hit more than 30 countries in the past year. There have been major strikes and protests across the world, including South Korea, Egypt, Spain and France. Last year right wing ideologue Nicolas Sarkozy won the French presidential election. He was being hailed as the new Margaret Thatcher, but one year later his plans to break the French unions and privatise industries lie in tatters as strikes and protests have shaken his government. The rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland is further evidence of increasing resistance to the political establishment and its neoliberal priorities. This crisis and the resistance to it are not only creating a crisis of political legitimacy for mainstream parties but also creating the conditions in which many people begin to question the very nature of capitalism. It is important to understand that Britain is not immune to this process. The struggle may not be as bitter and deep as some countries, but nonetheless it is growing and creating massive problems for the government. Many media pundits are already warning of a “summer of discontent”. The detonator for this panic was the victory of tanker drivers employed indirectly by Shell. This small group of workers organised a militant strike that forced the bosses to concede a 14 percent pay rise over two years. The strike showed the willingness of private sector workers both to join the pay revolt and to give solidarity, even if it meant breaking the law. This victory is also being used as a benchmark for other workers. In fact, the Financial Times expressed the growing concern of bosses that so many inflation busting deals are part of two and three year deals linked to the Retail Price Index, which a year or two ago employers clearly believed was a safe bet to stay low. But it reported that four out of five deals over 4 percent were not linked to the RPI and so have been won by unions. “Mr Darling and John Hutton, the business secretary, argued last week that the Shell settlement was a one-off. But other recent deals include Drax Power, which in April agreed a 7 percent pay rise for 600 workers [plus a 1,500 lump sum], forming the second year of a two year deal. Babcock Engineering recently agreed a 7.6 per cent increase with 500 workers. Barclays has implemented a 5 per cent pay increase for 55,000 workers at the bank, as the first leg of a three year RPI-linked deal”. This wage fight is continuing to escalate. As Socialist Review went to press half a million local government workers in Unison voted to strike over their pay. The action planned for July has the potential to intensify the wage fight, and unlike previous strikes this involves a Labour affiliated union. This will take place alongside action by other unions. The PCS civil service workers’ union passed a motion that is likely to lead to a national ballot over pay and other issues in September. The NUT teachers’ union conference backed a ballot for further strikes as a follow up to the stunningly successful multi-union strikes on 24 April, which drew new layers of militant workers into the movement. Pay cuts The CWU postal conference supported a strike ballot over pensions, mail centre closures and defence of the post office network – and the leadership responded positively to calls for a mass demonstration at the Labour Party conference. The fury over pay cuts – and the fact that those cuts are driven centrally by Gordon Brown – combines with a wider disillusion with Labour to produce an unprecedented questioning of the unions’ links with the party. At almost every conference the issue of whether (or at least to what extent) to continue supporting Labour was raised openly. The firefighters’ FBU union broke from Labour in 2004 after the government had behaved so aggressively against the union during its national strike. At last year’s conference some delegates called for renewed affiliation to Labour. This time there were only a handful of votes against the decision to remain separate from the party. The GMB union voted overwhelmingly to remove funding from up to 35 Labour MPs who had not measured up to a union assessment of their “value for money”. GMB leader Paul Kenny dryly remarked, “We’ve examined the records of MPs both at local level and national level and many are doing a fantastic job, but there are a number who seem at times to be embarrassed by their relationship with the union. We don’t want to embarrass them by giving them union money.” Kenny also told the conference, “We are going to consider our affiliation levels to ensure they represent the realistic level of support within the union for the party.” At the CWU, motions to disaffiliate from Labour or to democratise the political fund were defeated heavily. But this was largely because the leadership had supported an emergency motion which said that unless the government had sharply changed its policies towards privatisation and the running of Royal Mail by March 2009 “then the CWU membership will be balloted on whether they believe the union should fund the Labour Party at the next general election”. Speaker after speaker (including several Labour members) spoke to underline that this was the party’s “last chance”. Setting this deadline defeated those who wanted an immediate change in the relationship with Labour. But it is now a ticking time bomb that could explode and cause serious damage to the party. Even at Unison, where the leadership worked hard to prevent a discussion about Labour, the issue was forced on to the agenda. Towards the end of the conference the delegates have a chance to vote for motions they think should be shunted up the order paper. This year every region of the union decided that the priority was a motion on having a review of the union’s political fund and support for Labour. In the event it was defeated, but only very narrowly. Earlier, Unison general secretary Dave Prentis had to declare that the pay deal in the NHS (which the union leadership had pushed) would have to be renegotiated if inflation continues to rise. He warned Brown, “It’s time for the government to raise our people up, or our people will bring Gordon down.” The background to the conferences is a collapse in support for Labour among its core supporters and a widening sense of opposition to the system – challenging neoliberalism is now common currency among trade unionists. For example, the NUT and UCU conferences both agreed to campaign against military recruitment in schools and colleges, and the question of how best to build opposition to the fascist BNP was discussed at every conference. The bitterness about Labour was underlined by an opinion poll commissioned by Unison just before its conference which showed Labour’s traditional supporters deserting the party in their droves. Almost half of those who have regularly voted Labour at past elections now say they are less likely to vote Labour than they were in 2005. In addition, 51 percent of the general public say they are less likely to vote Labour than they were at the last general election compared to 4 percent who say they are more likely. Who could have believed that the man who replaced Tony Blair would have managed to drive Labour support down so far and so quickly, by his handling of the economic crisis? Bank of England governor Mervyn King made it clear that things are only going to get worse when he said, “Rising fuel, gas, electricity and food prices mean that average real take-home pay will stagnate this year. It will not be an easy time, and I know that some families will find it particularly difficult.” A new study by accountants Grant Thornton reported that official figures show that income inequality under Labour so far is already higher on average than it was under Thatcher. One thing is certain. As with any economic crisis in history the government and bosses want workers to pay the price. This has sometimes been successful in the past. Attacks on conditions and financial hardship in times of crisis can have the effect of subduing class struggle. But such attacks can also lead to people questioning the system and fighting back. Such periods of instability polarise society, as we are seeing now. But polarisation does not necessarily mean that people move to the left. The election results for the BNP and the rise in anti-immigration sentiments are proof of this, and a warning. Polarisation is exactly what the word means – a move away from the centre of politics. The government is on the rocks. Millions of workers want to see a serious battle to defend living standards, to take action for affordable housing, to halt the spread of privatisation and to defend secure jobs. What socialists do and how they react to events will make a difference. The left has already played a major role in shaping the pay revolt as it has developed. The anger felt by ordinary members in unions like the PCS, NUT and UCU found expression in the lead given from the unions’ leading bodies. This in turn has increased the pressure on Labour affiliated unions like Unison to move. The left has won an argument over the idea of joint action and turned it into a reality. Socialists have to continue to place themselves at the centre of the moves for action and unity across the unions. That means pushing for joint action where we can and supporting initiatives like Public Services Not Private Profit, Organising for Fighting Unions and the National Shop Stewards Network that attempt to build unity between trade unionists nationally and in the localities. The left also needs to be able to raise a political as well as an industrial response to the crisis. We need to popularise a set of demands that activists from different political backgrounds, or none, can rally round. And we have to continue to raise the urgent need for political alternatives to New Labour, no matter how difficult they are to construct. This year’s union conferences with the increasing attacks by New Labour make this project more important than ever.
Condi’s coup: how the neo-cons lost the argument over IranCampaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) - 18 Jul 2008Summary: Mottaki—RiceMr Bush’s decision to send the number three in the State Department, William Burns, to attend talks with Iran in Geneva at the weekend caused howls of outrage that were heard all the way from the State Department’s sanctuary of Foggy Bottom to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. A parallel initiative to reopen the interest’s section of the American embassy in Tehran, which would be the first return of a diplomatic presence on Iranian territory since 1979, has also received a cool response from neo-conservatives. source: The Independentread more
Israel’s Amber LightUKWatch.net - 18 Jul 2008ISRAELI STRIKE ON IRAN NOT IMMEDIATE: BUSH TRIES DIPLOMACY HALF-HEARTEDLY
JNV Anti-War Briefing 115 (17 July 2008) BUSH SENDS DIPLOMAT TO MEET IRANIANS On 16 July, US President George W. Bush stunned observers by agreeing to send a high-level US diplomat to Geneva to meet Iranian negotiators face-to-face as part of the EU-led talks to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis. As the Independent pointed out, State Dept. spokesperson Sean McCormack had said just the month before that the US would boycott such meetings unless ‘Iran suddenly has a change of tune’. (17 July, p.23; http://tinyurl.com/633cn3) In the event, it was the US that ‘changed its tune’. Analyst Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation said: ‘I think it’s clear that Bush has pushed Cheney back twice now’ (referring to the recent decision to remove North Korea from the US ‘terrorist’ list). (FT, 17 July, p.5; http://tinyurl.com/6jwgmj) The Bush U-turn on Iraq had two features. First, he dropped the demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment before being allowed face-to-face meetings on the subject (US officials have met Iranian diplomats, but only to discuss security in Iraq). Secondly, he accepted the EU ‘freeze-for-freeze’ proposal, whereby the West holds off on further sanctions for a set period while Iran holds off on escalating uranium enrichment. ‘Previously, Washington had stated that if Iran continued enriching uranium, the international pressure would only increase.’ (Telegraph, 17 July, p.15; http://tinyurl.com/5emnvj) The Bush diplomatic opening is very limited, however. William Burns, the third most senior State Department official, an undersecretary of state, is indeed being sent to Geneva to sit in the same room as Iranian negotiators, but his role is officially to do no more than reiterate the US line – on this one occasion. THE OTHER PROPOSALS The coverage of these recent developments has conformed to the Chomsky-Herman propaganda model of the mass media, demonstrating once again the key role of media self-censorship in maintaining what they call ‘brainwashing under freedom’. In the current reporting, the starting point of discussion is invariably the EU-led proposals put to Iran on 14 June, and the question is whether Tehran will accept this framework for negotiations. What is almost totally absent is any awareness that Iran had made its own highly significant proposals on 13 May this year. One rare recognition of this simple reality came in an important commentary by Sir John Thomson. Thomson, a former UK Permanent Representative at the UN, was told by Iranian Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, in early July that EU negotiator Javier Solana ‘had assured him the Iranian package could be part of the agenda for substantive negotiations between Iran and the 5-plus-1’ (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany). (Independent on Sunday, 13 July, p.56; http://tinyurl.com/59jth3) So the negotiations are proceeding because Iran’s negotiating proposals (which have been almost entirely erased from history by the Western media) have been admitted to the negotiating chamber. RED LINES Ali-Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister who advises Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, on foreign affairs, made a critical point on 1 July. Apart from saying it was ‘expedient’ for Iran to resume nuclear negotiations on the 5-plus-1 offer, Velayati said: ‘They say Iran should not make an atomic bomb and we say Iran needs nuclear energy. These two principles are your and our red lines which should be the basis for negotiations and [can be] agreed on’. (FT, 2 July; http://tinyurl.com/5ejuqk) But how can these two ‘red lines’ both be agreed as a basis for negotiation? By going back to Iran’s 13 May proposal for uranium enrichment to continue on Iranian soil?but under international control. On the basis of his discussions with Foreign Minister Mottaki, Thomson believes that Iran is ‘ready to make some compromise agreements (as yet unspecified) on Middle Eastern issues that worry the west’. And on the nuclear issue ‘it is ready to compromise to the extent of putting its enrichment-related facilities under the control of an international consortium?including, for example, France, Germany and the UK?which would then operate a modern, commercially oriented business producing nuclear fuel in Iran for sale globally. This is not what the 5-plus-1 are asking for, but in my view it is the best that is obtainable, and so long as it remains in force it precludes Iran from making a nuclear weapon.’ (IOS, 13 July, as above. See also http://mit.edu/stgs/irancrisis.html.) WHAT OF THE ISRAELI THREATS? So while Ayatollah Khamanei gives the ‘green light’ for negotiations on the basis of rather vague 5-plus-1 proposals, President Bush is reported to have given the ‘amber light’ for an Israeli airstrike on Iran. Despite this, an Israeli strike looks unlikely, for the next few months at least. The Sunday Times reported: ‘ “Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.’ This is not a formality: ‘Nor is it certain that Bush’s amber light would ever turn to green without irrefutable evidence of lethal Iranian hostility. Tehran’s test launches of medium-range ballistic missiles last week were seen in Washington as provocative and poorly judged, but both the Pentagon and the CIA concluded that they did not represent an immediate threat of attack against Israeli or US targets. “It’s really all down to the Israelis,” the Pentagon official added. “This administration will not attack Iran. This has already been decided. But the president is really preoccupied with the nuclear threat against Israel and I know he doesn’t believe that anything but force will deter Iran.” The official added that Israel had not so far presented Bush with a convincing military proposal. “If there is no solid plan, the amber will never turn to green,” he said.’ (Sunday Times, 13 July; http://tinyurl.com/6gppuc) Retired US Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, concluded from the Israeli aerial exercises in June that ‘Israel does not have the capability to effectively attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.’ Interviewed by Robert Naiman of the Huffington Post website, Gardiner pointed to a 2006 MIT paper by Whitney Raas and Austin Long, assessing Israeli military planners’ think ing. Raas and Long believe Israel would want to attack the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, the uranium conversion facility at Esfahan and the heavy water plant at Arak?with a combined total of 36 aircraft. (With supporting aircraft, this would match up with the reports of a 100-aircraft exercise in June.) ‘An Israeli strike would not be much of a strike,’ Gardiner says. The US would probably think in terms of about 10 times more aim points for a similar strike, he observes. (Robert Naiman, ‘Is Israel Really Preparing to Attack Iran? Col. Gardiner Says No’, 20 June; http://tinyurl.com/4r5y43) On this analysis, an Israeli strike could not destroy even the three best-known Iranian nuclear facilities, never mind facilities which might be hidden. The strike could not meet the minimum required by the US, which would want the assault to ‘set back the Iranians by at least five years for an attack to be considered a success’, according to the Pentagon source consulted by the Sunday Times. It appears, therefore, that there will never be a ‘solid’ Israeli plan to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, and so, if it acts rationally, the White House will never green light such an attack. OBAMA MANIA The danger, of course, is that the White House will not act rationally, particularly if it sees the Bush ‘legacy’ being lost to an incoming Obama administration. Hence, perhaps, the startling decision to mimic the Democratic presidential candidate in his popular decision to offer unconditional talks with official enemies. In Nov. 2007, before the publication of the NIE that Iran had no nuclear weapons programme, a poll found 73% of people in the US favouring nonviolent options in dealing with Iran; 45% opposed violence even if diplomacy and sanctions failed (only 46% favoured force in those circumstances). http://tinyurl.com/5no6ox
Keep watch on the hawksCampaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) - 18 Jul 2008Summary: US policy on Iran seems to be softening, but the world must stay vigilant to avert the threat of war. The resolution in Congress for what amounts to a naval blockade of Iran is, in effect, an act of war. The EU and the international community should call for the military option to be ruled out, and for the US to drop its precondition and enter into direct, comprehensive negotiations with Iran. source: The Guardianread more
