The United States and its imperialist allies continue to call for greater U.N. sanctions against Iran. In the meantime, the U.S. has shown its willingness to sanction Iran alone and issue numerous bellicose threats.
Responding to accusations that it is pursuing nuclear weapons, Iran has always declared, and presented evidence,
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On Oct. 18, Bush stepped up the anti-Iran fear-mongering. At a news conference, he said, “If you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”
The outrageous World War III claim surprised even the normally compliant bourgeois media. Even if Iran did possess nuclear weapons, why would that bring about world war? The Iranian government immediately denounced Bush’s World War III remark as warlike and disingenuous.
But this is only half the story. Bush asserted that merely “having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon”—not physical evidence of such a weapon—would initiate world war.
This is not accidental language. The Bush administration knows that the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly reported that it found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.
But the White House is committed to the demonization campaign to undermine the Iranian government’s influence in the Middle East, and ultimately replace it with a more compliant regime.
Since there’s no physical evidence of to sustain this campaign, Bush has resorted to calling Iran’s bomb-making knowledge a threat to national security. Of course, very little evidence is required to “prove” that a country has such knowledge. In fact, one could claim that any country that can enrich uranium has the knowledge to generate nuclear weapons.
Bush’s remarks came shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a summit of Caspian Sea countries in Tehran where he held talks with Iranian leaders. During his visit, Putin backed Iran’s right to nuclear energy and said that there was no evidence to support nuclear weapons claims.
Congressional Democrats used the opportunity to further pose as an anti-war party. Sen. Barbara Boxer accused Bush of dialing up “the fear factor instead of reaching to bring this world together, to work together, to make sure that we can avoid World War III or any other war, for that matter, and end the war we’re in that we can’t get out of.”
The fact of the matter is that Democrats and Republicans generally agree on Iran while emphasizing different strategies. Leaders of both parties advocate sanctions to pressure Tehran and refuse to rule out the use of military force.
In September 2007, most Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, joined Senate Republicans to approve a resolution urging the State Department to label Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. But the Revolutionary Guard is just one division of Iran’s official military. Labeling the Iranian military a terrorist organization is a useful rhetorical tool that the Bush administration and corporate media can use in its war drive. And it is a tool that the Democrats willingly gave to Bush.
On Oct. 25, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced sanctions specifically targeting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and financial institutions.
Last December, the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment. These sanctions were intensified in March after Tehran stepped up the enrichment program. Iran regards the U.N. resolutions as violations of international law, and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty which guarantees the right to develop nuclear energy.
Iran has continued working with the IAEA in making its nuclear facilities open to inspections. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has said: “Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA is a logical and correct path and will continue. We are determined to meet our country’s need for nuclear energy.”
The Bush administration’s policy toward Iran is really a decades-old bipartisan policy of trying to return the country and its resources to the dominion of U.S. capital. Resistance to empire and war, both in the Middle East and here in the United States, is the only force that can halt this war drive.
