QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
From ABC’s “Good Morning America:”
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacked Israel). In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”
Sen. Hillary Clinton
April 22, 2008
SENSE AND NONSENSE - BRINKSMANSHIP & PROVOCATION
From the editor: There is an important difference between talking tough and being tough. There is also a considerable difference between someone who feels they must constantly prove they are tough and someone who makes tough decisions when circumstances call for such a decision. Playing the “brinkmanship” game both by Iran and the United States is an extremely dangerous game to play because it is only one small miscalculation or misjudgment away from a full-scale war in the Middle East that might truly escalate into World War III.
Following is a list of events that are far more significant than the Barach Obama/Rev. Wright controversy; far more significant than the Democratic Primary race for the nomination; far more significant than any of the “pap” that now passes for news on the 24-hour news cycle. The following list of events points directly toward preparation for the use of air and naval forces to attack Iran and expand the war zone in the Middle East by the U.S. Pentagon and the Bush Administration (still being run by Cheney). I’ve tried to list the events in the order in which they have occurred.
June 7, 1981 -- Israel bombs Osirak nuclear reactor in Baghdad establishing a de facto policy of preemptively and unilaterally striking any facility that it deemed to be capable of producing a nuclear weapon. Two weeks after the Osirak attack, Israel admitted it had the capability of developing its own nuclear weapons.
Sept. 6, 2007 -- Israel’s 69th Squadron of fighter/bombers secretly bombs suspected nuclear reactor in eastern Syria approximately 50 miles from Iraq border. Even though there was a “blackout” of the mission in the Israeli press, the first story about the preemptive strike appears in the Sept. 16, 2007 issue of The Sunday Times of London. The Washington Post reports on the mission in its Sept. 21, 2007 edition and discloses that Israel shared intelligence with President Bush during the summer of 2007 that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria. The New York Times reports on the mission in its October 14, 2007 edition and reports that “Many details remain unclear, most notably how much progress the Syrians had made in construction before the Israelis struck, the role of any assistance provided by North Korea, and whether the Syrians could make a plausible case that the reactor was intended to produce electricity.”
December 3, 2007 -- A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) discloses that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. The NIE prepared by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence states, “We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.” (“High Confidence” indicates that the NIE judgments are based on high quality information. It is the highest category of confidence expressed in an NIE)
January, 2008 -- Five Iranian patrol boats sped toward a U.S. warship and dropped small, boxlike objects in the water. President Bush called it “a provocative act.” The objects turned out to pose no threat to the USS Port Royal or two other U.S. vessels accompanying it.
Mar. 24, 2008 -- The Washington Post reports that recent comments by President Bush and Vice President Cheney suggested “continuing White House unhappiness at the conclusions of last December’s national intelligence estimate on Iran’s nuclear program. Bush told U.S.-funded Radio Farda, which broadcasts into Iran in Farsi, that Iranian leaders have ‘declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people,’ a statement that went well beyond the findings of the NIE.”
April, 2008 -- Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “thumbs his nose” at the U.N. Security Council by visiting the country’s nuclear facility at Natanz to inspect a new upgraded centrifuge, the IR-2, capable of enriching uranium faster than an earlier model bought from Pakistan. Official pictures released by Iran show the country’s defense minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar also touring the facility. That picture was used as evidence by the U.S. that Iran’s nuclear program was not limited to peaceful purposes.
Apr. 21, 2008 -- In a speech at West Point, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Iran “is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.”
Apr. 24, 2008 -- The C.I.A. releases what it calls “evidence” to support allegations that North Korea had helped Syria build a nuclear reactor with the caveat that the C.I.A. had “low” confidence that Syria was developing the reactor to produce nuclear weapons. The admission raises questions about the quality of the intelligence and the timing of the Israeli decision to attack the facility.
Apr. 25, 2008 -- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei criticizes Israel for bombing an alleged Syrian nuclear facility and chastised the U.S. for withholding information on the site. His office releases the following statement: “The Director General deplores the fact that this information was not provided to the Agency in a timely manner in keeping with the Agency’s responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to enable it to verify its veracity and establish the facts.” Questions that remain unanswered include: Where was Damascus going to get the fissile fuel for the alleged reactor? Where was the plutonium separator or reprocessing facility for spent fuel? Where is the evidence for a weaponization program? Why did the US and Israel bypass the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog?
Apr. 25, 2008 -- Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action” against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq. He said a conflict with Iran would be “extremely stressing” but not impossible for U.S. forces. Admiral Mullen later tries to soften this rhetoric by claiming that such planning is business as usual.
Apr. 26, 2008 -- In a copyrighted New York Times story, reporters Mark Mazzetti, Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker write, “The administration’s focus on Iran has raised alarms among the war’s staunchest critics, who accuse the White House of overstating the threat and laying the groundwork for military action against Iran. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California who has called for opening talks with Iran, said that while she believed that there was evidence that Iran was aiding Shiite militias, she worried about the tenor of the administration’s latest warnings. ‘This is not a new thing,’ she said of Iran’s involvement. ‘Why all of a sudden do the sabers start to rattle?’”
Apr. 29, 2008 -- President Bush said the CIA’s disclosure of what senior American officials called evidence of a nearly completed nuclear reactor in Syria was intended to warn North Korea and Iran about the dangers of spreading nuclear weapons. Mr. Bush said, “We have an interest in sending a message to Iran and the world for that matter about just how destabilizing a nuclear proliferation would be in the Middle East.”
Apr. 30, 2008 -- Defense Secretary Gates says the deployment of a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf could serve as a ‘reminder’ to Iran of American resolve to defend its interests in the region.
May 1, 2008 -- Julian Borger, diplomatic editor for The Guardian newspaper in London reports that Vincent Cannistraro, former senior CIA official, said the conflicting signals coming from Washington reflected longstanding divisions in the Bush administration that have not been resolved by the publication of a National Intelligence Estimate in 2007 that Iran’s nuclear weapons program had been dormant since 2003. The NIE has been privately disowned by President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, who still leads the remaining hawks in the administration. “Cheney believes this administration has to take military action against Iran before it leaves office. Gates echoes the rhetoric publicly but he doesn’t support Cheney’s position,” Cannistraro said.
The purpose of this list of events is not to predict that the U.S. or Israel will or will not use air and naval forces to attack facilities and personnel within Iran. It is simply to document the reality that we are as close to an unimaginable war as we were during the Cuban missile crisis in October, 1962. I witnessed that event up close and personal as an Air Force public information officer in the Tactical Air Command assigned to George AFB, California. Our fighters were deployed to Florida during that crisis. The major difference is that Bush and Cheney now have their itchy fingers on the trigger rather than the calm hand of President John F. Kennedy. And to make matters worse, Iranian President Ahmadinejad is intent on making sure the guns are loaded. The U.S. and the Middle East is in desperate need of a cool-headed leader who can replace dangerous posturing and foolishness with rational thought and a willingness to sit down at the table with the “enemy.”
By Maynard Chapman
Editor, The Compass Newsletter
POLLS AND PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
From Fred Bender of Santa Fe: A 2007 poll conducted by Zogby International for The Arab American Insitute (AAI) and Americans for Peace Now (APN) on the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war included the following results:
Almost all Jewish Americans (98%) and Arab Americans (88%) believe that Israelis have a right to live in a secure and independent state of their own. Similarly 90% Jewish Americans and 96% Arab Americans believe that Palestinians have a right to live in a secure and independent state of their own.
There was strong support for a negotiated two-state solution which resolves final status issues of Jerusalem, refugees, and borders in both communities with 87% of Jewish Americans and 94% of Arab Americans pledging support.
Ninety-six percent of Jewish Americans and 91 percent of Arab Americans believe that trying to achieve peace, security, and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians is important to U.S. Strategic interests.
Two-thirds of Jewish Americans and Arab Americans would be more likely to support a presidential candidate who takes an active role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Four-fifths of Jewish Americans and Arab Americans believe that President Bush’s handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict is not effective. Fifty-three percent of Jewish Americans and 56% of Arab American said that Bush is “not at all” effective in response to rating his handling of the Arab/Israeli conflict.
Approximately three in four Jewish Americans and Arab Americans think that the U.S. should engage diplomatically with Iran.
(Note: Fred also urges readers of The Compass newsletter to connect with a new pro-peace, pro-Israel political movement called “J Street” dedicated to a new direction for American foreign policy in the Middle East. Their website is www.jstreet.org)
Following are excerpts from an article by Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street and JStreetPAC.
“For the sake of Israel, the United States and the world, it is time for American political discourse to re-engage with reality. Voices of reason need to reclaim what it means to be pro-Israel and to establish in American political discourse that Israel’s core security interest is to achieve a negotiated two-state solution and to define once and for all permanent, internationally recognized borders.”
“In our name, PACs and other political associations have embraced the most radically right-wing figures on the American political scene from Rick Santorum and Trent Lott to Tom DeLay and George Bush -- all in the guise of being ‘pro-Israel.’”
“It is time for the broad, sensible mainstream of pro-Israel American Jews and their allies to challenge those on the extreme right who claim to speak for all American Jews in the national debate about Israel and the Middle East -- and who, through the use of fear and intimidation, have cut off reasonable debate on the topic.”
The Compass Society Newsletter
Maynard Chapman, Editor
Copyright © 2008, The Compass Society
