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Image via Wikipedia U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II
Neo-Colonialism, Subversion in Africa and Global Conflict
All conflicts in post-colonial African wars as well as internal unrest have the same common elements. The involvement of foreign nations, the instrumentalization of local elements, and the goal to control resources, economy, and geopolitically as well as strategically significant locations. Western Medias narrative of French, British, and US-American involvement in Africa is commonly manufacturing popular consent by eliciting a fabled advocacy for stability, human rights, and democracy for African countries; nothing could be farther from the truth. Stability, human rights and democracy are but the pretext for aggressive neo-colonial subversion, invasion, long-term military presence and control.
Conventional Thinking
- discredited ideas come back into fashion when there is no good reason to resurrect them
- Effects of the U.S. 'Embargo' against Cuba
- U.S. has 45 year history of torture
- Office of Foreign Assets Control
Image via WikipediaIndia and Pakistan : Partition Lessons
- Peace of Westphalia
- Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
- Global Paradigms
- Foreign Policy
- Fabius Maximus
- Nuclear Nion-Proliferation Treaty
- Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix
- Iran: Some Dots You May Want To Connect
- Mysterious 'chip' is CIA's latest weapon against al-Qaida targets hiding in Pakistan's tribal belt
- O$ama Who ?
- Craig Murray on the reasons for the war in Afghanistan
Image via WikipediaForeign Policy Blogs
- PNAC - Overview
- Blood Money Project
- Afghanistan : Millions facing food shortages,possible starvation in forgotten emergency
- Why do these guys think they can rule the world ?
- Blood Money
- U.S. Financial Aid To Israel
- Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
Brief BioReality check: Iran is not a nuclear threat
Iran - Selective Outrage - Phony Menace
- Tactics of Terror, Declaring Enemies
- Miscellaney and Iran
- Everyone is Your Enemy
- Oldephartte on Iraq
- Browsing Extermination Campaigns
- Hit 'Em When They're Down
- US _ Russia Disarmament Negotiation - related data
- Channeling Commentary
- Trade, Currency, Atrocityd Memory Lane
- 27 April BlogViews
- Memorial Day Weekend
- little indian's historical notes
- Rape of Women as an Instrument of War
- Mission in Afghanistan,etc.
- Persian Empire
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- The propaganda war against Iran
- Farm Suicides Turn Children Into Farmers
- Analysis of the Feb 2010 IAEA report on Iran
- Punditry at TPM Cafe - Iran,Israel and Nukes
- U.S. Nuclear Weapons Guidance
- War and Iran ? - Craig Murray
- Ecological Concerns
- Iran!
- “Hold Me Back!”
- 2004 Obama Was For Hitting Iran, Pakistan
- Fox “news” continues CBS, ABC, CNN propaganda to attack Iran: this is today’s CIA Operation Mockingbird
- New Legislation Would Squeeze Iran and Gasoline Suppliers Vitol, Glencore, Trafigura, Total, Reliance Industries, and BP
Ensuring Iran is desperate for nuclear power
Iran’s Nuclear Crisis and the Way Out
Important historical notes on Iran’s nuclear program before the Islamic Revolution in 1979
1. The United States laid the foundation of a nuclear Iran through an agreement called “Atoms for Peace” in 1960s. In 1967, research reactor of Tehran was built by the Americans using American equipments.(1) Washington proposed that Iran should built 23 nuclear power plants by 2000. Iran accepted the offer and an agreement was signed between the two countries.(2)
2. Germany signed a contract with Iran in 1975 for two power plant units in Bushehr with total capacity of 2,300 MW, which should have been finished by 1981.
3. A joint venture company called Sofidif was established by Iran (40 percent) and France (60 percent) in 1975 to enrich uranium. Iran also purchased 10 percent of stocks of a French uranium enrichment company called Eurodif. In return, Iran paid one billion dollars in 1975 and 185 million dollars in 1977 to France as price of the aforesaid stocks.
4. In 1976, Gerald Ford, the then US President, signed a directive according to which Iran was supposed to have a complete nuclear cycle. The Ford strategy paper said: “Introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals.”(3)
5. In a report in 1974, CIA clearly stated that: "If [the Shah] were alive in the mid-1980s [...] and if other countries [particularly India] had proceeded with weapons development we have no doubt that Iran would have followed suit."(4)
6.Iran also signed a contract with South Africa according to which the latter was committed to provide Iran’s needed enriched uranium.(5)
The above facts constitute just part of the contractual background of Iran’s nuclear program in the 1960s and 1970s, and are necessary for any analysis of the current situation.
Although Germany had been paid about DM 8 billion which was about the total value of its contract with Iran in 1979 and had built 90 percent of a 1,196-MW nuclear power plant and the second plant was 50-percent complete, it refused to finish the project.
2. Iran had already purchased 60 tons of UF6 for Bushehr power plant from Europe. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the shipment was blocked in Europe and was not delivered to Iran.(6)
3. According to contracts signed with Iran, the United States had been committed to provide nuclear fuel for the 5-MW research reactor in Tehran. After the revolution in 1979, Washington did not deliver the fuel.(7) Following the revolution, Iran paid the price of Tehran reactor’s fuel to the United States, but the latter neither delivered the fuel, nor refunded the money.(8)
4. The French also violated all contracts they had signed with Tehran.
Due to pressures from the United States, other countries like China and Argentina did not fulfill obligations they had accepted through contracts signed with Tehran after 1979 and stopped cooperating with Iran.
I served as Iran’s ambassador to Germany from 1990 to 1997 and during that period, I did my best to convince Germans to fulfill their obligations for completing Bushehr power plant. However, they told me quite unofficially and in private that due to pressures from the United States, Germany was not able to fulfill its commitments toward Bushehr.
6. In 1980, the then Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, launched his military invasion of Iran. To everybody’s surprise, Western states including Europe and the United States gave their backing to the invader providing him with full military, financial, political and propaganda support while, on the contrary, imposing tough sanctions on Iran as the victim of invasion. During Saddam’s invasion of Iran, the Iraqi army used chemical bombs against Iranian citizens and Western countries, which had provided Iraq with technology and chemical materials to make the bombs, remained totally silent toward use of chemical weapons against civilians in violation of all international regulations and conventions. This was the first use of weapons of mass destruction after the Second World War.
- International Ranking of Iran
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Note sources of analysis - Barack Obama's radical review on nuclear weapons reverses Bush policies
Crucial loopholes - Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran
- US plan for air strikes on Iran 'backed by Brown'
- World: Middle East UN official blasts Iraq sanctions
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LIBYA, THE UNITED STATES, AND IRAN: JUST WHO IS “MEDDLING”?
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
This week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Obama Administration officials complained publicly that Iran was “meddling” and “interfering” in events in the Middle East which are threatening the downfall of one U.S. ally after another. But the Obama Administration’s response to the latest flashpoint—Libya—has been to exhort the Libyan people overthrow its government, declare that Qaddafi “must go”, and engage in an embarrassing, intra-administration but thoroughly public debate about U.S. military intervention in Libya.
Can no one in Washington really understand that Iran’s narrative of resistance to injustice, foreign occupation, and Western hegemony has more appeal to Middle Eastern publics than the prospect of yet another U.S. military attack on Muslim country?
The Obama Administration’s handling of the ongoing conflict in Libya is an unfinished case study in how not to conduct “great power” foreign policy. No less than President Obama himself said publicly that Muammar al-Qaddafi has lost his legitimacy to lead, and that it is time for him to go. But the Obama Administration has no ready means to bring about that outcome, should Qaddafi not be moved by the persuasive power of Obama’s words.
Last week, Secretary Clinton stopped just short of calling for the imposition of a “no fly” zone over Libya. After it dawned on people in the Administration that other permanent members of the Security Council might not be prepared to back such a proposal—Russia’s Foreign Minister and China’s UN ambassador have both publicly dismissed the idea—State Department officials floated a scenario with various media outlets that the United States could recognize a “provisional government” in Libya, composed of various figures opposed to Qaddafi, which would then request the United States to impose a no fly zone. But it seems very hard to say just who could constitute a provisional Libyan government with sufficient credibility and presumed legitimacy to play this role.- Libyan rebels: McCain's babes
Angry Arab News Service
Empire Burlesque Chris Floyd
Lobelog Foreign Policy ( IPS )
Tom Dispatch Tom Engelhardt
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