Seattle’s Richard Silverstein held a conference on Iran sanctions. It produced an unusually reasoned editorial, this from the Seattle Times, in which Prof. Ian Lustick, who is Jewish and has been writing about Middle East issues for many years was quoted as saying the sanctions are in defense of Israel and former AIPAC Iran desk staffer Keith Weissman, suggesting that they hurt US businesses more than Iran:
The sanctions on Iran are mainly in defense of Israel. Lustick argued, “There is no strategic military threat to Israel” in Iran getting the bomb. If Iran is really trying to build a nuclear bomb—and Lustick said, “I assume they are”—it is not to drop on Israel, which has its own bombs and would drop them on Iran. Iran wants the bomb as a deterrent, which is the same reason Israel has…..
Weissman argued that sanctions “hurt American business more than they hurt Iran. And they don’t stop what you intend to stop. They might make you feel good if you’re in Congress.”
Lustick said he didn’t think Israel would attack Iran. If they did, he said, “it’s going to put the final nail in the coffin of the idea that Israel will ever be accepted in the region. And that means Zionism will fail.”
“They’re trying to get the United States to do it,” he said.
Ron Paul in the House:
December 15, 2009 — “I rise in strongest opposition to this new round of sanctions on Iran, which is another significant step toward a US war on that country. I find it shocking that legislation this serious and consequential is brought up in such a cavalier manner. Suspending the normal rules of the House to pass legislation is a process generally reserved for “non-controversial” business such as the naming of post offices. Are we to believe that this House takes matters of war and peace as lightly as naming post offices?
This legislation seeks to bar from doing business in the United States any foreign entity that sells refined petroleum to Iran or otherwise enhances Iran’s ability to import refined petroleum such as financing, brokering, underwriting, or providing ships for such. Such sanctions also apply to any entity that provides goods or services that enhance Iran’s ability to maintain or expand its domestic production of refined petroleum. This casts the sanctions net worldwide, with enormous international economic implications.
Recently, the Financial Times reported that, “[i]n recent months, Chinese companies have greatly expanded their presence in Iran’s oil sector. In the coming months, Sinopec, the state-owned Chinese oil company, is scheduled to complete the expansion of the Tabriz and Shazand refineries — adding 3.3 million gallons of gasoline per day.”
Are we to conclude, with this in mind, that China or its major state-owned corporations will be forbidden by this legislation from doing business with the United States? What of our other trading partners who currently do business in Iran’s petroleum sector or insure those who do so? Has anyone seen an estimate of how this sanctions act will affect the US economy if it is actually enforced?”
Kucinich said the sanctions will only hurt the Iranian on the Street, who will be paying a lot more for gas (not the regime in power), and the sanctions will force Obama towards war with Iran at a time when he needs all the flexibility possible to resolve relations with Iran.
link to afterdowningstreet.org
There is no reasoning with the mob of rabid AIPACniks in Congress.
OT:
Already there is a huge outcry in Britain over the mere thought of changing UK laws or reneging on treaty obligations simply to protect Israeli officials involved in the serial breach of international law. In their deluded fantasy the Israelis claim that the judicial order in London will seriously impair bi-lateral relations between London and Tel Aviv, jeopardise the Middle East peace process and undermine Britain’s image in the region.
The UK is not a banana republic
***
There are no civil marriages or divorces, and there are almost no secular funerals. The Law of Return and the definition of who is a Jew – the most fundamental and significant of Israeli precepts – are based on halakha, even without our religious justice minister.
Gideon Levy / Let’s face the facts, Israel is a semi-theocracy
***
An Israeli lawyer and left-wing activist who worked as a linguist for the FBI has pleaded guilty to leaking classified documents to a blogger who posted the information online.
Israeli pleads guilty to leaking classified U.S. documents
CPM: I guess this poor guy doesn’t have AIPAC covering his back. I wonder why?
Politico goes on to report that Leibowitz, the grandson of famous Israeli Torah scholar, philosopher and leftist, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, supports a one-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which most Israelis reject because it would eliminate a Jewish demographic majority. He has also encouraged efforts to get U.S. institutions to divest in Israeli bonds.
CPM: Ah, that explains it.
As Harry Shearer would call it, “News from Outside the Bubble.”
AN ADDITION TO COLIN MURRAY’S (EXCELLENT) THREE ARTICLES:
“No-Fault Espionage”, By Phil(l)ip Giraldi, 12/17/09
(excerpt)…So what has happened to Nozette, who, according to the court papers, “had regular, frequent access to classified information and documents related to the US national defense”? Well, as in the case of Ben-Ami Kadish, he seems to have disappeared. The media has dropped the story and Nozette did not appear again in court on November 10th as scheduled. He may have been consigned to that limbo where those who spy for Israel seem to wind up prior to being released. The Federal District Court for the District of Columbia’s website is giving nothing away. Nozette’s name does not appear anywhere and if one calls the court clerk and requests information on his status, the call will not be returned.
The point is that if Congress and the Justice Department think that when Americans are caught spying for Israel it is constitutionally protected activity, like free speech, perhaps they should say so publicly. A two-tier system relating to national security issues and rule of law is just not in the US national interest, no matter how one twists the facts. If you spy for Israel the consequences should be the same as if you spy for China or Cuba – arrest, conviction, and hard jail time. No exceptions, no excuses…
ENTIRE ATRICLE – link to original.antiwar.com
It’s possible that the concern is less about directly being hit by a nuke but specifically the deterrent power Iran would have. An umbrella of protection for resistance groups.
Actually? It’s about depriving the rest of the Middle East of their technological progress and energy independence. Notice how not only is Iran’s nuclear energy progress being attacked, but also its capacity to import refined petroleum products?
Pair this up with the Zionist choir of how Israel is SO very much more technologically advanced than its neighbors and you start to understand the Israeli strategy — keep the Arabs on the trailing edge of the technology curve. Even if it requires, every now and then, Israeli F-16s flying over their neighbors and dropping various quantities of bombs.
It’s what the Dahiya Doctrine is really about — it’s got nothing to do with military threats to Israel but economic competition.
Yes, and generally about making sure Iran has no hegemony in its area–Iran has not attacked anyone in well over two centuries; it wants nukes as a deterrent from being attacked, which it has experienced; further, look at how many countries have nukes
in its general vicinity. You can bet it noticed that the USA has never attacked N Korea too.
There is an element of military concern behind Israeli desire for inhibited development in Muslim states. Economically developed states can support advanced military force structure capable of distant projection, i.e. the capacity to retaliate against Israeli attack against themselves or their allies. Even if a civil democracy welcomed by the West assumed power in Tehran tomorrow, Zionists would still be wanting sanctions. What if a nuclear-armed Iran, accepted as a nuclear nation in much the same way that India currently is, with a modern air force gave security guarantees to a newly created Palestinian state, preventing its neutered puppetization, or worse, to Syria and Lebanon which both have land under IDF occupation that Israel has no intention of returning voluntarily? Zionist reasons for wanting American attacks on Iran will change as often as the myriad excuses the Bush administration proffered for why we attacked Iraq.
“Why did we invade Iraq? We did it to protect the world from the WMD! There were no WMD. Err, then it was for democracy?! Then why were you against free and open democratic elections, until forced into them by Ayatollah Al-Sistani? Why are you asking these questions? Why do you hate America?”
Potential increased military capability from unleashed economic growth was a major reason behind the neocon-driven invasion of Iraq. Support for sanctions was falling. Consider the bad PR that resulted from that wicked witch Madeleine Albright’s support for the murder of half of a million Iraqi children she didn’t deny during her infamous Barbara Walters interview.
I think that the neocon game plan was (A) attempt to install a (stable) pro-Israel puppet regime, or failing that forlorn hope (B) dismember and smash the country so that it would be unlikely to develop a rump state capable of fielding an advanced military in the future. Remember when everyone was scratching their heads at the incomprehensible decision to dismantle the Iraqi army when it was desperately needed to provide post-Hussein order and to prevent hundreds of thousands of newly fired officers and soldiers from joining the resistance? American soldiers paid in blood, yet again, for another Israelocentric and anti-American decision by neocon political operatives.
Israel’s attitude, like the US’s, is hegemonic and supremacist in its approach. “Muslims can’t be trusted, so we must beat them back into the Stone Ages.” This really has become the newest round of Crusades, hasn’t it?
You know, Chaos, if you were a Muslim, you would be labeled as an extremist itching for a “War of Civilizations” with the West for using the “C-word.”
Of course, when a Westerner like, say, George W. Bush, drinks some truth serum and lets slip that this is a crusade, then thats okay.
It is unfortunate that the debate has been stifled to this degree….
Right, but the reason I’m making a point of saying it, as a Christian (and a Catholic, no less) is I know that my ethnic and religious affiliation gives me some gravitas and shields me from the absurd criticisms that Muslims suffer when they call it like they see it, too.
Frankly, it’s like how a Jewish person can criticize Israel and the Lobby and not suffer any (credible) attachments of the anti-Semite label.
I’ve got no illusions at this point — America has become a bastion of extremist Christianity, and our wars in the Middle East were holy wars wrapped in a thin layer of forged intel just to pacify the moderates and the secular among us long enough to make it “impossible to withdraw.” We have a far, far worse problem with our fanatics (Erik Prince, Rick Warren, Senators Imhof and Brownback, to name a few) than any place in the Middle East outside of possibly Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan — and the common denominator in that equation is still US.
If there is a war of civilizations, then it’s a war of American extremism being wrought upon the rest of the globe. And after years of Nigerian yellow cake, “Plamegate,” Abu Gharib, Gitmo, Bagram, Fallujah, Gaza, “preemptive defense,” Downing Street memo, John Yoo’s torture defense, Alberto Gonzalez’s selective memory, Donald Rumsfeld’s “unknown uknowns,” and now even Obama’s Predator drones and Peace Prize endorsed military surges? I’m done mincing words.
The Teaching Company produces a lecture series presented by Palestinian-American Dr. Salim Yaqub on US-Middle East history from 1914 to 2001 link to teach12.com
Yaqub makes the case that the former Ottoman states were eager to form independent, democratic nations.
Truman’s endorsement of the Israeli state and the subsequent de-Arabification of the State Department in favor of a pro-Israeli contingent, tossed sand in those gears.
Israel has been stressing the region for many years; far from “bringing democracy,” the US joined Israel in the project of denying nationhood to the Islamic states.
at least part of the deal Doug Feith and his Jerusalem law partner made with Chalabi involved oil pipelines from Kurdish Iraq to Eilat,
link to dir.salon.com
to replace the lucrative arrangement Israel had had with Iran, until 1979 .
It’s reasonable to assume Israel has not abandoned its quest for that oil revenue — doesn’t Witty remind us about Israeli prosperity?
Kayhan Barzegar thoroughly examines Iran’s strategic thinking, including Iran’s concern that Israel is active in the Kurdish region
link to twq.com
Israel is believed to have a plan for redrawing the Middle East as part of the “peripheral doctrine,” that is, divide-and-conquer; with the added incentive of oil.
link to oilempire.us
It wasn’t oil revenue, it was oil supply. Israel would have paid (some lowball amount) to the Chalabi govt.
The problem with deterrence is the ‘NOW’ moment when you have the opportunity to press the button or not.
If you press it against another nuclear power, you risk almost complete certainty of retaliatory annihilation.
Iran knows this, so its nuclear bomb programme, if it has one, boils down to the same essential dilemma. But, then, it’s better to have that dilemma than nothing at all, so I’m sure they’ve thought this through.
The Berman sanctions bill is petty and crazy, like so much else that comes out of the DC whorehouse.. Halliburton will find ways around it, to earn Dick Cheney even more blood money.
The US/Israel symbiosis has now become very obvious. I used to think it was mad ‘conspiracy theory’, but I don’t any more.
That’s the degrading part, isn’t? Remember all of the “oil for food scandal” and how Europe was made out to look like weasels because their business turned a profit in it, and how the neocons shrieked about how this was reason to pull out of UN operations? Of course the media downplayed the fact that American companies turned profits out of it too. The neocons had their dirty little fingers in both sides of the pie.
from an NPR report by Peter Kenyon on Dec 16 2009 link to npr.org
The necessary role Iran plays in US foreign policy is as an incentive to increase weapons sellers’ profits.
A similar sanctions bill that was approved in committee has yet to be scheduled for a floor vote by Sen. Harry Reid who is not so openly in AIPAC’s employ as is House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and the White House and State Department will do everything they can to keep Reid from doing so since passage of the legislation would create major problems in dealing with its European allies as well as China, Russia,Turkey and India, all of which have major contracts with Iran. Despite being aware of this Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh, and Arizona Republican John Kyl, both with a long track record as AIPAC lickspittles, have said they are determined to push the senate bill forward at the beginning of the new year. It will be a fight that will bear watching and to win it Obama may have to cut some kind of deal with Netanyahu to get the lobby off his back.
My prediction? Reid and Obama will fold (when have they not?), the US will pass sanctions against Iran and the rest of the world is going to turn to us, say “WTF?” and finally figure out that we’re really more of a pain in the ass than we are a boon as an ally.
This is how China becomes a superpower, incidentally. The rest of the world looks at us acting bat-crap crazy, looks at China and says, “Meh. You own most of that at this point anyway. How about we just deal with you?”
Just think of at all that debt to China as payment for Taiwan.
I don’t China is going to be so magnaminous as to call it even.
Obama’s already ‘cut a deal with Netanyahu’. We’ll ignore your illegal settlements if you give us…..???
Quote: “Sen. Harry Reid who is not so openly in AIPAC’s employ as is House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer”. You mean Reid keeps his AIPAC money in his back pocket ?
We’ll ignore your illegal settlements and give you money too.
We’ll fund your illegal settlements and you’ll give us the finger, too.