The seemingly endless negotiations between the US, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran over Iran’s nuclear program, due to end last week, have been extended until the middle of next year. Israel is not happy with these negotiations and the fact that they have been extended.
What Israel and its supporters in the US would like to see is the US going to war with Iran and thus add it to the list of failed states in that region that we have been so successful in creating, leaving hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, not to mention the vast number of homeless and refugees who try to escape from US bombings and the clashes between myriad militant groups that have arrived to fill the void. In the US this process is called “spreading freedom and democracy”.
Failing war, the Israel lobby is unhappy at the prospect of any deal other than the total capitulation of Iran. This is unlikely to happen if the talks are successful and so it should not be a surprise when Philip Weiss writes that AIPAC, the leading member of the Israel lobby, seeks to scuttle the talks. The way that AIPAC hopes to achieve that is by urging its many allies in the Congress to impose yet more sanctions on Iran, knowing that it will drive Iran away from the negotiating table.
In the middle of this, we have president Obama announcing that Ashton Carter will be his nominee to replace Chuck Hagel as defense secretary. Carter’s nomination has been enthusiastically received by leading members of both parties, the ones who we are told cannot agree on anything. Glenn Greenwald says that this love-fest reveals once again that the US is run by a single War Party, because Carter is someone who seems to be yet another one of Washington’s endless supply of warmongers.
The other name floated for the post was Michelle Flournoy. Who is she? She seems to be yet one more warmonger, who apparently wants to wage war as defense secretary under the future administration of Hillary Clinton. As Greenwald summarizes:
Yet again we confront the most extreme myth that Washington loves to tell itself: that there is no bipartisanship, that the two parties agree on virtually nothing of significance and are perpetually unwilling and unable to agree on anything, that the Republicans vindictively obstruct everything President Obama wants. On so many vital issues, that is the opposite of reality. Or, as Don Rumsfeld put it, “Ash Carter is an excellent nomination by the President to be Secretary of Defense.”
The Democratic and Republican parties each may have cycles of winning and losing elections but the War-Business-Intelligence Agencies Party always wins.
The whole thing is incredibly disappointing. The US, which engineered the NPT (and continues to violate it!) as a means of shoving nuclear monopoly down non-nuclear powers’ throat, isn’t even satisfied with its own terms and has to violate Iran’s self-determination by insisting that what they’re allowed to do under the treaty isn’t allowed, for them, any more.
A bit of review for those who haven’t looked closely at the NPT: what it says is “if you promise not to try to develop nukes, we promise we won’t use ours in a first strike against you.” No, really. That’s what it says. It’s horrible nuclear blackmail of exactly the sort it claims to be oriented toward preventing. Meanwhile, the bit about the US and USSR, the two nuclear powers at the time, committing to reduce their stockpiles to zero … we’ve rather obviously ignored that.
“Spreading freedom and democracy” by bombing the shit out of people, indeed.
And now Libya, which was “freed” is a pile of dog-scraps being fought over by CIA-trained and sponsored rogues. Egypt, which managed to get rid of US puppet Mubarak is now ruled by CIA-trained and sponsored Sisi. Iraq … Afghanistan … This is disgusting.
Marcus you forget that when the Shah was in power in Iran the US was helping them with the building of nuclear reactors under the atoms for peace programme
How did Marcus “forget” that, and how is it relevant to what he said?