The End of Iraq (1)

By Peter W. Galbraith

Iraq's deadliest terrorist attack killed no one.

The Askariya shrine, one of the holiest Shia sites in Iraq, was severely damaged by a large explosion in Samarra in February 22, 2006, 60 miles (95km) north of Baghdad.

In the early morning hours of February 22, 2006, armed men stormed the Askariya shrine in Samarra, sixty miles north of Baghdad. They handcuffed the four guards, and left them in a side room. Working for several hours, the men placed several hundred pounds of explosives at strategic points under the shrine's golden dome. At 6:55 A.M., they detonated the explosives, probably with a cell phone. The dome collapsed and a shrine dating back to the ninth century was in ruins.
For centuries, Iraq's Shiites brought a saddled horse to the Askariya shrine. The horse waited for th return of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the twelfth and last Imam who went into hiding in 878 in a cave under the shrine. Still a child when last seen, th Imam communicated with his followers through an intermediary for seventy years before contact ceased. Shiites believe he is still alive. His return will usher in an era of justice to be followed by the Judgment Day. The powerful Caliph of Baghdad, the spiritual head of th rival Sunni

The Askariya shrine before explosion in 22, February 2006.

branch of Islam, had ordered the Mahdi's grandfather, the tenth Imam Ali al-Hadi, brought to Saamara in a kind of house arrest. The Shiites believe that he had Hadi poisoned in 868 and that he ordered Hadi's son, the eleventh Imam Hasan al-Askari, killed six years later. The faithful hid the twelfth Imam to spare him the same fate.
Iraq's Shiite majority see the men who destroyed the Askariya shrine as successors to the Caliph's assassins, and with good reason. Almost certainly, the shrine was destroyed by al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi offshoot of the organization that brought down New York's World Trade Center. Al-Qaeda seeks to restore the Sunni Caliphate and considers adherents to the Shiite branch of Islam as apostates deserving of death.
...
In the weeks that followed the Samarra bombing, 184 Sunni mosques were destroyed or vandalized. Sectarian violence killed more than one thousand Sunnis and Shiites.
...
Baghdad's mixed neighborhoods became armed camps.
The End of Iraq, page 1-2.

To be continued...
Pictures, maps and titles in this article are not from the book "The End of Iraq".

Palestine Peace Not Apartheid (1)

By Jimmy Carter

The Bible says that when the fist blood was shed among His children, God asked Cain, the slayer, "Where is Abel thy brother?" And he said, "I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?" And the Lord said, "What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed ..." (Genesis4:9-11). The blood of Abraham, God's father of the chosen, still flows in the veins of Arab, Jew, and Christian, and too much of it has been spilled in grasping for the inheritance of the revered patriarch in the Middle East. The spilled blood in the Holy Land still cries out to God--an anguished cry for peace.
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, page 19.

To be continued...

Iran's nuclear path - A justified mistake (part 3)

By Zam Armatay, 24 January, 2007

In the first part of this article I pointed out that the policy of continuing the current nuclear program by the Iranian government might be justified considering the geopolitical situation of Iran, while in the second part of the article I argued that it is not the right strategy concerning the national security of Iran. In this part of the article we'll have a look at the economy of the nuclear energy in general and the economic consequences of persuading the nuclear program for Iran.

The economics of nuclear energy

About 16% of the world's electricity supply comes from nuclear power, and global energy consumption is growing rapidly. The International Energy Agency projects a doubling of world electricity demand by 2030, creating the need for some 4,700 GWe of new generating capacity in the next quarter century. Hence it is conceivable that the demand for generating electricity by nuclear plants will increase in the future.
However the economics of nuclear power is highly controversial, and there is no universal agreed cost-benefit analysis of the nuclear power, simply because there are so many factors affecting the costs of constructing and operating nuclear power plants. For instance the building of new commercial nuclear power plants has ceased for years now in the U.S. and most of Western Europe, while as of 2006 new nuclear power plants are under construction in several Asian countries, as well as in Argentina, Russia, Finland, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Romania.
It is important to distinguish the key elements in the cost structure of a nuclear power plant and compare these with the costs of other modes of electricity generation. National and local circumstances and conditions are nevertheless crucial in these evaluations. Both the magnitude and the timing of costs are variable for different technologies and are very location-dependent.
With significant costs and revenues occurring at different times in the operating lives of all modes of electricity generation, a discount rate has to be chosen to bring (“levelize”) these to a common basis, in order to allow economic comparisons. This discount rate is sometimes set by a public authority as a target rate of return on capital, but in a liberalized market is effectively the rate of return required on the project by financial markets – in other words, the cost of capital (a weighted average of the interest rate on any loan capital and the required return on equity). The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is the price needed to cover both the operating and annualized capital costs of the plant and is used as a marker for economic viability.
There are several important determinants of the cost of electricity generated by a nuclear power plant. Some of these are intuitively clear whilst others are less obvious. The usual rule-of-thumb for nuclear power is that about two thirds of the generation cost is accounted for by fixed costs, that is, costs that will be incurred whether or not the plant is operated and the rest by running costs. The main fixed costs are the cost of paying interest on the loans and repaying the capital, but the decommissioning cost is also included. The main running cost is the cost of operation, maintenance and repair rather than fuel. However, as is shown below, there is a huge degree of variance in the assumptions made for these parameters from forecast to forecast, so the broad split should just be seen as indicative.
Recent studies show that capital costs including accrued interest account for around 60% of the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of a new nuclear plant. Fuel costs for new nuclear plants (including spent fuel management) account for only around 20% of the LCOE and is very competitive comparing to other fuels like gas and oil. Operations and maintenance (O&M) costs are very variable for nuclear plants, depending on factors such as plant size and age but on average account for 20% of the LCOE.
However, the assumption of low running costs was proved wrong in the late 1980s when a small number of US nuclear power plants were retired because the cost of operating them (excluding repaying the fixed costs) was found to be greater than cost of building and operating a replacement gas-fired plant.
It is also worth noting that British Energy, which was essentially given its eight nuclear power plants when it was created in 1996, came close to bankruptcy in 2002 because income from operation of the plants barely covered operating costs. This was in part due to high fuel costs, especially the cost of reprocessing spent fuel. Thus the operating cost may exceed substantially the generally agreed estimate of 20% of LCOE.
The importance of these very different cost schedules rises with the rate of interest levied. When interest rates are high, projects with high initial capital costs, such as nuclear, are disadvantaged in financial appraisals. Once capital-intensive power plants are completed, the capital costs and accrued interest must be recovered through a long operating life with fuel and O&M costs well below the prevailing electricity price. This has been the general experience with nuclear plants.

The economics of Iranian nuclear energy

As discussed above the overall cost of nuclear power plants depends in a great deal on national and local circumstances. Unfortunately there is yet no public cost-benefit analysis of the development of the various nuclear power plants in Iran.
In general the following costs may be considered:

1. The cost of constructing and operating nuclear power plants in general:
   
   • Construction costs (estimated around 60% of the overall cost)
   • Financing costs (depends on the interest rate and the relative cost of the capital. This is included in the construction cost, though may exceed substantially the estimated cost)
   • Operating costs (estimated around 20% of the overall cost, but may well exceed that)
   • Waste and decommissioning costs (relatively low)
2. The cost of nuclear fuel (estimated around 20% of the overall cost)
3. security costs including insurance and liability.

Considering the specific circumstances in Iran the above costs are a lot higher comparing to other countries such as Japan, China, Finland and so on. The construction of the underground nuclear sites constitute a lot higher cost than usually estimated for nuclear sites. Since the development of the nuclear sites are financed by the state, there is no credible evaluation of the financing

Booshehr nuclear plant

costs, but the delaying of the nuclear projects in Iran raises the financial costs substantially. For instance the 1000 megawatts nuclear powered electricity plant which is under construction in the city port of Booshehr on the Persian Gulf with the help of Russia should have been finished at a price tag of $600 million, has now costed Iran more than $800 millions and it is not certain that it would start working by this year, as promised by Russian companies.

The nuclear fuel is very cheap comparing to oil, gas and coal. However while the price of yellow cake, the ore for making uranium in the international market in 2006 is $40 per kilogram, experts have estimated that the cost of producing the same amount in Iran is at least double, partly because of the quality of uranium ore in Iran. This is one of the reasons why experts mean that the uranium enrichment program is not economically justifiable.

To the above costs we have to include the cost of security precautions against foreign attacks. Iran recently purchased 29 Tor-M1 missile systems for $1.4 bln (€1.06 bln) from Russia. The overall cost of securing the sites exceed far from that, and this is neither the first nor the last of the military contracts due to securing the nuclear program. Besides, the aggressive persuasion of uranium enrichment program has casted Iran in an arm race that will bring higher and higher costs. Of other costs one may include:

1. The economic costs of the sanctions posed by the UN Security Council resolution 1696 by 31. August 2006.
   
2. The effective cost of the uncertainty that the political isolation of Iran brings to the economy.

Clearly the aggressive persuasion of uranium enrichment is the main obstacle to reach an agreement with the West on the Iranian nuclear program. What is important to note here is that Iran may very well have a peaceful nuclear program, without the need to have a nuclear full fuel cycle capability. The uranium enrichment program due to obtaining the full fuel cycle capability is hardly justified from an economic point of view, particularly when considering the low nonvolatile cost of nuclear fuel in the international market. In fact the economic incentives proposed by EU-3 countries backed by US have been very generous from an economic point of view. The main incentives are:

1. To assist Iran with nuclear technology including "purchasing nuclear reactors". "provide a substantive package of research and development co-operation, including possible provision of light water research reactors, notably in the fields of radioisotope production, basic research and nuclear applications in medicine and agriculture."
2. "International guarantees of fuel supply", "access to the international economy, markets and capital, through practical support for full integration into international structures, including the WTO, and to create the framework for increased direct investment in Iran and trade with Iran."
3. Cooperation on various areas of economic development like "Energy Partnership", "Telecommunications Infrastructure", "High Technology Co-operation" and "Agriculture".

Although one may argue that it is advantageous in the long term for Iran to follow the strategic path of acquiring nuclear energy, it is quite disastrous regarding the current economic situation.

Current economic situation in Iran


The World Bank’s 2003 report about Iran noted, “Despite the growth in the 1990s, GDP per capita in 2000 is still 30 percent below what it was in the mid 1970s, compared with a near doubling for the rest of the world.” Iranians are galled to find that their country has slipped badly behind the Arabs on the south side of the Persian Gulf.
When Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, the stock market plummeted, capital flight increased and real state market collapsed. To the rescue of Ahmadinjead and his new conservative government, oil and gas exports shot up from $23 billion in 2002-03 to $63.18 billion in 2006, driven entirely by higher prices. The oil exports have swelled government coffers allowing an explosion of off-budget spending that has sent economic growth shooting up to an average of 6.2 percent in 2006 (discounting for inflation) from 2002-03. Foreign exchange reserves have shot up to about $60 billion, more than twice the size of all foreign debt. While reported unemployment fell to an eight-year low of 10.3 percent last year, job creation remains insufficient to absorb the 700,000 young people entering the job market each year. The IMF forecasts that even if oil prices remain at their present high level, unemployment will steadily increase in years to come.

Ahmadinezhad’s policy is based on producing everything at home and creating barriers to trade. He has no use for globalization. His government has been discouraging foreign investors, for instance, refusing to allow Renault to use the billion-dollar facility it built in Iran to build an inexpensive car for the Asian market. The recent Iranian boom has been based almost entirely on profligate government spending which cannot last forever. Despite the flood of oil money, government policies are such that the IMF warns the budget will fall back into deficit again within two years even if oil prices remain sky-high.
The Iranian government relies on oil revenue to fund 75 percent of its expenditures, according to Karafarin Bank. Perhaps the most damaging for the Iranian economy is the energy subsidies, which are estimated by the Iranian government at $13 billion a year. The low gasoline price results in a massive loss of government revenue; just the cost of distributing the fuel after it leaves the refinery gate is more than what the customer pays. This, put together with the fact that more than 40% of the 350,000 barrels of gasoline sold daily is imported from abroad, shows the lack of any sound energy plans in the country. Few steps would help the Iranian economy more than forcing a reduction in gasoline consumption. Technocrats have long urged that the Iranian government ration gasoline, with only a limited amount sold at the controlled price and the rest at a market price. The IMF and World Bank have spent years documenting in great detail the pernicious economic and health impact of the excessive gasoline consumption. The IMF 2005 Article IV Consultation has strong language about the negative impact of the energy subsidies, which is also a major theme in the World Bank report Converting Oil Wealth to Development.

The latest objection to Ahmadinezhad's economic policy comes from fifty Iranian economists, who published an open letter to the president in June 2006, warning about the direction of the Iranian economy. Ahmadinejad's government "has been adopting an expansive monetary policy against the state macro policies... This, combined with political instability, international threats, and decreasing interest rates can wake up the sleeping inflation beast." (Officials put the inflation at between 12 to 15 per cent, but economists say it is closer to 25-30 per cent). The letter described the effects as being evident in "deteriorating foreign and domestic investment... escape of human and financial sources from the country and the consequent falling rate of economic growth."

Farshad Momeni, a prominent Iranian economist, warned that Ahmadinezhad’s economic policy follows that of Mohammad Reza Shah in the 1970s. During that time, the price of oil rose sharply and despite expert opinion, Shah personally interfered and injected the oil income into the national economy in order to accelerate the movement toward “the great civilization.”
Momeni warns that using the current oil income without wise economic planning will have terrible consequences and that a decline in oil prices would be disastrous for the national economy. After all, that was the experience after both the 1973-74 and 1980-81 price increases: within four years, the oil market got soft.

Iranian business community is nervous that international pressure on the economy could have a major impact on business confidence. “The [Tehran] stock market has shown to be hypersensitive to political issues (such as the course of the nuclear enrichment negotiations), as well as domestic economic policy uncertainties, ” writes the state-owned Karafarin Bank in its Survey of the Iranian Economy for October-December 2005.
In 2005, the stock market index fell 26 percent. At the same time, the banking system was hit by a crisis from dishonored promissory notes, primarily by big firms unable to pay their debts.

A March 2006 IMF report on Iran says "[T]he possibility of a prolonged period of 'wait and see' on the part of the private sector could adversely affect the economic outlook." Foreign direct investment, which was $500 million in 2004, has also since dropped significantly because of political uncertainties, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

The two largest Swiss banks (UBS and Credit Swiss) and a large British bank (HSBC) decided recently that Iran was not an attractive place to do business, so they stopped taking new business. The impact that this is having was well described by the state-owned Karafarin Bank in its Survey of the Iranian Economy for October-December 2005:
“Most probably, the fear of imposition of sanctions by the UN against Iran, in connection with the nuclear enrichment issue, has reduced the reliability of Iranian banks as international trading partners. In other words, despite [an] important balance of payments surplus, Iranian banks have been facing difficulties dealing with their otherwise cooperative correspondents. This may prove to be for the banks and the country as a whole, one of the most important obstacles to hurdle in the months to come.”

Conclusion

Mr. Sa’id Leylaz, a leading economist, said recently that “the future of the nation has never been so dark, both politically and economically”. Well, I cannot agree more. And this is simply because the Iranian government are continuing the nuclear program at a very high price and at a very high risk to the country's security.

It is arguable that Iran may need nuclear energy in future, considering that Iran has the second largest gas reserves and fourth largest oil reserves in the world. The current economic situation does not justify such huge investments on the nuclear program either economically or politically, at the expense of much more urgent needs of the country like creating jobs, controlling the inflation, health, education, political stability, securing foreign investments, investment and redevelopment of the oil and gas industry and so on.

The option of stopping the nuclear program completely may not be very attractive now because of the huge investments that already have been made, but it is not too late to stop the uranium enrichment program. With that, Iranians obtain too little at a too high price.
What Iran needs at the moment is first of all political stability both inside the country and in the region in order to avoid a catastrophic confrontation with US and Israel, normalizing the relationship with the neighboring Arab countries and the European countries, and to create a suitable environment for investment, avoiding capital flight and attracting national and foreign investments.

"Wiped off the Map" - The Rumor of the Century

By Arash Norouzi, January 20-2007

Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran's President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, "Israel must be wiped off the map". Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made, as this article will prove.

BACKGROUND:

On Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran, newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at a program, reportedly attended by thousands, titled "The World Without Zionism". Large posters surrounding him displayed this title prominently in English, obviously for the benefit of the international press. Below the poster's title was a slick graphic depicting an hour glass containing planet Earth at its top. Two small round orbs representing the United States and Israel are shown falling through the hour glass' narrow neck and crashing to the bottom.
Before we get to the infamous remark, it's important to note that the "quote" in question was itself a quote— they are the words of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution. Although he quoted Khomeini to affirm his own position on Zionism, the actual words belong to Khomeini and not Ahmadinejad. Thus, Ahmadinejad has essentially been credited (or blamed) for a quote that is not only unoriginal, but represents a viewpoint already in place well before he ever took office.

THE ACTUAL QUOTE:

So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in farsi: "Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."
That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "Regime", pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).
So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh", is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's President threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", despite never having uttered the words "map", "wipe out" or even "Israel".

THE PROOF:

The full quote translated directly to English:
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".
Word by word translation:
Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).
Here is the full transcript of the speech in farsi, archived on Ahmadinejad's web site www.president.ir/farsi/ahmadinejad/speeches/1384/aban-84/840804sahyonizm.htm

THE SPEECH AND CONTEXT:

While the false "wiped off the map" extract has been repeated infinitely without verification, Ahmadinejad's actual speech itself has been almost entirely ignored. Given the importance placed on the "map" comment, it would be sensible to present his words in their full context to get a fuller understanding of his position. In fact, by looking at the entire speech, there is a clear, logical trajectory leading up to his call for a "world without Zionism". One may disagree with his reasoning, but critical appraisals are infeasible without first knowing what that reasoning is.
In his speech, Ahmadinejad declares that Zionism is the West's apparatus of political oppression against Muslims. He says the "Zionist regime" was imposed on the Islamic world as a strategic bridgehead to ensure domination of the region and its assets. Palestine, he insists, is the frontline of the Islamic world's struggle with American hegemony, and its fate will have repercussions for the entire Middle East.
Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America's powerful grip on the region via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:
(1) The Shah of Iran- the U.S. installed monarch
(2) The Soviet Union
(3) Iran's former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini's own words foretelling that individual regime's demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini's unfulfilled wish: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise". This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war.

THE ORIGIN:

One may wonder: where did this false interpretation originate? Who is responsible for the translation that has sparked such worldwide controversy? The answer is surprising.
The inflammatory "wiped off the map" quote was first disseminated not by Iran's enemies, but by Iran itself. The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official propaganda arm, used this phrasing in the English version of some of their news releases covering the World Without Zionism conference. International media including the BBC, Al Jazeera, Time magazine and countless others picked up the IRNA quote and made headlines out of it without verifying its accuracy, and rarely referring to the source. Iran's Foreign Minister soon attempted to clarify the statement, but the quote had a life of its own. Though the IRNA wording was inaccurate and misleading, the media assumed it was true, and besides, it made great copy.
Amid heated wrangling over Iran's nuclear program, and months of continuous, unfounded accusations against Iran in an attempt to rally support for preemptive strikes against the country, the imperialists had just been handed the perfect raison d'être to invade. To the war hawks, it was a gift from the skies.
It should be noted that in other references to the conference, the IRNA's translation changed. For instance, "map" was replaced with "earth". In some articles it was "The Qods occupier regime should be eliminated from the surface of earth", or the similar "The Qods occupying regime must be eliminated from the surface of earth". The inconsistency of the IRNA's translation should be evidence enough of the unreliability of the source, particularly when transcribing their news from Farsi into the English language.
....
Read the entire article here.

Nuclear strike on Iran

Facts about Israel's nuclear arsenal:

• In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu an Israeli civil servant who worked in the state-owned nuclear industry, in a meeting with Sunday Times reporters in London revealed the Israel's top secret of having gained control of a growing stockpile of nuclear warheads.
• Some weeks later after revealing the Israelis top secret, Vanunu was abducted by Israeli's espionage in Rome and was brought back to Israel. Before a secret tribunal, Vanunu was tried and sentenced for eighteen years in prison with eleven of those years in solitary confinement. Since his release, Mr. Vanunu has been prohibited from travel abroad and been arrested four times.
• Experts rank Israel third or fourth behind only the USA, Russia and possibly France in holding the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
• Israel refuses to become a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
• Israel’s Shavit rocket has been used to launch satellites into orbit, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported that the Shavit could be converted to an ICBM with a range of 7,000 miles allowing an Israeli nuclear strike anywhere in the Middle East as well as eastern and western Europe and Central Asia.
• Additionally, Israel now has a fleet of Dolphin class submarines armed with cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Military experts have been reporting the presence of Israel’s Dolphin class submarines in the Persian Gulf for the past two years ostensibly to support US naval operations in case Iran attempts to close the Straits of Hormuz.
• According to The Sunday Times, there has been a slight re-calibration of the plans for the war against Iran. Rather than a direct American nuclear strike against Iran’s hard targets, Israel has been given the assignment of launching a coordinated cluster of nuclear strikes aimed at targets that are the nuclear installations in the Iranian cities: Natanz, Isfahan and Arak.

Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran, The Sunday Times, January 07, 2007

Iran: Pieces are in place for escalation, by Colonel Sam Gardiner, January 16, 2007

Dear Mr. President: Send Even MORE Troops

Dear Mr. President: Send Even MORE Troops (and you go, too!) ...from Michael Moore
Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
Dear Mr. President Thanks for your address to the nation. It's good to know you still want to talk to us after how we behaved in November.
Listen, can I be frank? Sending in 20,000 more troops just ain't gonna do the job. That will only bring the troop level back up to what it was last year. And we were losing the war last year! We've already had over a million troops serve some time in Iraq since 2003. Another few thousand is simply not enough to find those weapons of mass destruction! Er, I mean... bringing those responsible for 9/11 to justice! Um, scratch that. Try this -- BRING DEMOCRACY TO THE MIDDLE EAST! YES!!!
You've got to show some courage, dude! You've got to win this one! C'mon, you got Saddam! You hung 'im high! I loved watching the video of that -- just like the old wild west! The bad guy wore black! The hangmen were as crazy as the hangee! Lynch mobs rule!!!

...
We promise to write. Go get 'em W!
Yours,
Michael Moore

Read the entire letter here.

Iran's nuclear path - A justified mistake (part 2)

By Zam Armatay, 7 January 2007

As I pointed out in the first part of this article the Iranians nuclear program can from the Iranians point of view be justified considering the geopolitical situation of Iran. But the relevant question for Iranians is whether it is the right path for the country with respect to the country's national security and it's economic growth now and in future.

Background

According to Shahram Chubin:
"Origins of Iran’s nuclear program can be traced back to the bloody eight-year Iran-Iraq war that Saddam launched against the infant Islamic Republic in 1980, but the principal motive for developing nuclear technology is two fold:
1. Domestic legitimation of the regime and exploiting nationalist sentiments.
2. Obtaining a Shiite hegemony in the region. The nuclear bomb will be the strongest instrument for Iran to realize its international ambitions, ranging from normalization of relations with the West to asserting Iranian hegemony in the Middle East."
Currently there are two blocks in the Iranian leadership with two substantially different ideas about the development and obtaining nuclear capability:

1. Those who are totally committed to develop nuclear weapons and insist to become a nuclear power in the region. They seek the fundamental ideas of the revolution and believe that Iran has a substantial role to play internationally. They seek to obtain a kind of Shiite hegemony in the region which is a very adventurous and dangerous ambition considering the vast different players and interests in the region. The most notable personalities in this block are the Iranian president Ahmadinejad, the chief of the Iranians Security Council Ali Larijani and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

2. Those who see the uranium enrichment program and the development of the nuclear facilities not as ways and means to obtain nuclear weapon capability, but as a way to reach a more favourable position in their bargaining with the West in order to defend the Iranian national interests both economically and with respect to the security. This block are more nationally oriented in their approach and has a more rational view towards securing the survival of the Islamic regime in the long term. The prominent persons in this block are the former president Khatami, the former president and the member of Iranian Assembly of Experts Akbar Hashemi Rafsenjani and the Larijani's predecessor Rohani.

From 2002 to 2005 Iran was partly suspending their uranium enrichment and was negotiating with EU-3 because of prospects of Americans success in Iraq and pulling out their troops, and was afraid of being the next in turn. They felt weak and vulnerable. From the end of 2005 they have been more aggressive in their approach to the negotiations and in their speeding up the uranium enrichment. In January 2006 they stopped the negotiations with EU-3 and began speeding up the uranium enrichment. This major shift in the Iranian policy was a result of different factors:

1. It became more and more apparent that US was really bogged down in Iraq.
2. The public opinion in US has turned substantially against war in Iraq and is not prepared for yet another confrontation in the Middle East.
3. Increase in oil prices, which has been both an incitement for Iranians to proceed more aggressively with the uranium enrichment and a discouragement for other players specially China and the Europeans not to push as hard as USA wanted them to.
4. The other international players specially Russians and Chinese are not with US on the issue of Iranian's nuclear program and the Europeans have not been determined enough.
   

There is no doubt that Ahamaidnejad has been very successful in his persuasion for nuclear capability so far. He and his fellows have made the nuclear development a national project in order to gain public support.

The problem is that there is not and never has been any public debate in Iran over the cons and pros of the project, which makes it very difficult for Iranian people to acquire a rational view over the subject. The official Islamic Republic News Agency highlighted a January 2006 poll in which 85 percent of Iranians supported resuming the nuclear program. But that same poll found support dropped to 74 percent in case of referral to the UN Security Council, 64 percent in event of economic sanctions, and 56 percent if there were military action against Iran. In other words, the public support for a nuclear program drops as the cost of maintaining the program rises.

National Security

Today there is only a few who do not agree with the fact that the Iranian regime has stepped into a very dangerous path by aggressively continuing their enrichment activities. The national security of Iran is tightly bound to the stability in the region. Thus no Iranian government can bring security to Iran either military or politically by increasing the tensions with it's neighbours and starting an arm race in the region. A nuclear armed Iran has the following consequences:

1. It changes the balance in the region and intimidate the Sunni regimes in the Gulf. This will certainly provoke the Gulf regimes to increase their military capabilities. In a regional arm race the Iranian will end up as the looser, since Arab monarchies and Turkey compared to Iran are both richer and have better ties with the world’s principal arms suppliers.

2. Local crisis like war in Lebanon can easily lead to a miscalculation by Israel and Iran and lead to use of nuclear exchange.

3. It will put a lot of pressure on other countries in the region to develop nuclear weapon, which may not be of immediate concern, but definitely is a destabilizing and dangerous situation in the long term.

4. Isolates Iran in the region which will have a big impact on the country's economy. To the question "Why Iran would not be going this road (becoming a nuclear power)"? Larijani's predecessor Rohani in spring 2005 responded: "We have managed to normalize our relations with the Arab countries in years under Khatami and the dumbest we can do is to build a nuclear weapon to frighten them." Propaganda or not, it is true that it will isolate Iran in the region both economically and politically.

5. Sooner or later the Israelis (if not Americans) would have to respond to the Iran's increasing nuclear thread. As Ehud Olmert the prime minister of Israel told Condoleeza Rice in her previous visit to Israel that Iranians don't realize how far they (Israel) would go to prevent them from obtaining nuclear capability. There have been many other statements coming from different people both in the Israeli government and the parliament recently saying that Israel should attack Iran before it gets too late. No wonder that Iranians have been in such a hurry to purchase 29 Tor-M1 missile systems for $1.4 bln (€1.06 bln). As stated by the ITAR-TASS news agency, the air defence systems are being stationed around Iran's civilian nuclear sites. Americans resisted strongly to the contract and imposed sanctions against Russian jet maker Sukhoi and arms exporter Rosoboronexport. According to a report in The Sunday Times 7 January 2007, two Israeli air force squadrons are training to use nuclear "bunker busting" bombs to demolish Iran's heavily guarded enrichment programme.

Adding to all this, one must have into consideration the nature of the Iranian regime, which is disconnected from the world, highly irrational when it comes to the Israeli issue, and actively seek a sort of Shia hegemony in the region.

The next part of this article will look at the economic aspects of the nuclear energy for Iran.

Iran's nuclear path - A justified mistake (part 3)

Washington's secrets buried with Saddam

Why Saddam wasn't tried for his war crimes against Iran?

From the article "He takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him" by Robert Fisk, published 31 December 2006 in "The Independent" (online)

....
One frosty day in 1987, not far from Cologne, I met the German arms dealer who initiated those first direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad - at America's request.
"Mr Fisk... at the very beginning of the war, in September of 1980, I was invited to go to the Pentagon," he said. "There I was handed the very latest US satellite photographs of the Iranian front lines. You could see everything on the pictures. There were the Iranian gun emplacements in Abadan and behind Khorramshahr, the lines of trenches on the eastern side of the Karun river, the tank revetments - thousands of them - all the way up the Iranian side of the border towards Kurdistan. No army could want more than this. And I travelled with these maps from Washington by air to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt on Iraqi Airways straight to Baghdad. The Iraqis were very, very grateful!"

....
Iran's official history of the eight-year war with Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons against it on 13 January 1981. AP's correspondent in Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. "We started counting - we walked miles and miles in this fucking desert, just counting," he said. "We got to 700 and got muddled and had to start counting again ... The Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination - the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies ... the mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs. That's why they spat blood."
At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US. Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right. The lengthy negotiations which led to America's complicity in this atrocity remain secret - Donald Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan's point-men at this period - although Saddam undoubtedly knew every detail. But a largely unreported document, "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War", stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies had sent government-approved shipments of biological agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax, andEscherichia coli (E. coli). That Senate report concluded that: "The United States provided the Government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems programs, including ... chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment."

Nor was the Pentagon unaware of the extent of Iraqi use of chemical weapons. In 1988, for example, Saddam gave his personal permission for Lt-Col Rick Francona, a US defence intelligence officer - one of 60 American officers who were secretly providing members of the Iraqi general staff with detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning and bomb damage assessments - to visit the Fao peninsula after Iraqi forces had recaptured the town from the Iranians.

...
We still don't know - and with Saddam's execution we will probably never know - the extent of US credits to Iraq, which began in 1982. The initial tranche, the sum of which was spent on the purchase of American weapons from Jordan and Kuwait, came to $300m. By 1987, Saddam was being promised $1bn in credit. By 1990, just before Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, annual trade between Iraq and the US had grown to $3.5bn a year. Pressed by Saddam's foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, to continue US credits, James Baker then Secretary of State ... pushed for new guarantees worth $1bn from the US.

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In 1989, Britain, which had been giving its own covert military assistance to Saddam guaranteed £250m to Iraq shortly after the arrest of Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft in Baghdad. Bazoft, who had been investigating an explosion at a factory at Hilla which was using the very chemical components sent by the US, was later hanged. Within a month of Bazoft's arrest William Waldegrave, then a Foreign Office minister, said: "I doubt if there is any future market of such a scale anywhere where the UK is potentially so well-placed if we play our diplomatic hand correctly... A few more Bazofts or another bout of internal oppression would make it more difficult."
Even more repulsive were the remarks of the then Deputy Prime Minister, Geoffrey Howe, on relaxing controls on British arms sales to Iraq. He kept this secret, he wrote, because "it would look very cynical if, so soon after expressing outrage about the treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more flexible approach to arms sales".

Read the entire article here.