| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
The War On Iran Is Already Underway?
|
by Kourosh Ziabari
|
|
 |
|
|
Global Research, August 11, 2012
|
|
Economic sanctions, psychological warfare, media propaganda, threats and assassinations; what other sort of evidence one may need to believe that the United States, Israel and their European allies have already started their much liked war against Iran and that this unjustifiable war is taking its toll on the innocent, ordinary Iranian citizens?
They say that they have a problem with Iran’s nuclear program; that Iran’s nuclear activities aren’t transparent; that they fear Iran may one day develop nuclear weapons; that Iran may some day drop atomic bombs on Israel and that Iran poses a threat to global peace and security.
But this is not really the case. Perhaps the American journalist and radio host, Mark Glenn, has described the truth in the most comprehensible and sound way: “if Iran had no nuclear program, these countries would make the claim that Iran is financing international terrorism through the export and sale of Pistachio nuts. What is at issue here is that Iran refuses to be a slave to the 2-headed beast of Israeli, western financial and political interests.”
Washington’s animosity toward Tehran is nothing new or unprecedented, nor is it related to Iran’s nuclear program. Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 dethroned the U.S.-backed monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the U.S. politicians began to carry a chip on their shoulder and started disposing of Iran with hostility and enmity.
With the victory of Iran’s popular revolution led by the charismatic leader Imam Khomeini who strongly opposed the American imperialism and militarism, the sanctions against Iran began to take effect. Under President Carter, the U.S. imposed a set of sanctions on Iran’s oil sector and then blocked USD 12 billion of Iranian government’s assets in Washington. After the deadly 1983 Beirut barracks bombing in which 241 American marines were killed, the U.S. government renewed its sanctions, this time with the order of Ronald Reagan. Reagan administration declared Iran a sponsor of international terrorism and called on the World Bank to stop giving loans to Iran. The deadly attack on the U.S. peacekeeping forces in Beirut for which the White House blamed Iran turned out to be an Israeli false flag operation, as revealed by the former Mossad executive Victor Ostrovsky in a famous 1990 book titled ” By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer.”
The Clinton administration toughened the sanctions and in 1996, the Israel-dominated Congress unanimously passed the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) which penalized the foreign companies and firms which invested in Iran’s oil sector. On September 30, 2006 the act was renamed to Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) as it was no longer applied to Libya. George W. Bush administration was similarly antagonistic toward Iran and his administration adopted several rounds of sanctions against Iran’s oil, gas, insurance, agriculture and aviation industries. He also signed into law the Iran Freedom and Support Act on September 30, 2006 which allocated USD 10 million to anti-Iranian terrorist groups.
Barack Obama who came to power with the flaunting and pompous promise of change was no better than his predecessors. Instead of taking up détente and reconciliation with Iran so as to find a sustainable solution to end the nuclear standoff, he assumed an aggressive position, intensified the sanctions, banned transactions with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and even created hurdles for Iran to receive the payments for its oil exports.
Existing sanctions on Iran’s oil industry had been expanded “by making sanctionable the purchase or acquisition of Iranian petrochemical products”, Obama said in a statement.
Measures would be taken against firms that have dealings with the National Iranian Oil Company and the Naftiran Inter-trade Company or that help Iran buy U.S. dollars or precious metals, he added.
But the sanctions are not the only means the U.S., Israel and the EU have resorted to in order to bring Iran to its knees and undermine its position as a regional superpower.
