Friday, December 19, 2008

See Chuck & the DVD POISON DUST/Gilles Anquetil | Let's Negotiate With Iran!



Join on December 19 for POISON DUST.  Plowshares activist Susan Crane will lead the discussion after the film is shown, and a recovering Chuck Michaels will be there as well.


Kagiso, Max


 The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee is hosting its latest FILM & SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS VIDEO SERIES.  The next film, POISON DUST [USA, 2006], will be shown Fri., Dec. 19 at AFSC, 4806 York Road [three blocks north of Cold Spring Lane].  Doors open at 7 PM, and the video starts at 7:30 PM.  There is no charge, and refreshments will be available.  Call 410-366-1637.

 Filmmaker Sue Harris tells the story of young soldiers who came home from Iraq suffering from exposure to depleted uranium.  One veteran's young daughter has a birth defect strikingly similar to those suffered by many Iraqi children. Also interviewed are former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, New York Daily News reporter Juan Gonzalez, noted physicist Michio Kaku, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Dr. Helen Caldicott and Major Doug Rokke- the former U.S. Army DU Project head.


t r u t h o u t | 12.19


Let's Negotiate With Iran!

Thursday 18 December 2008


by: Gilles Anquetil, Le Nouvel Observateur


    The former CIA chief for the Middle East has published a provocative essay in which - in order to avoid war - he exhorts the United States to stop demonizing Iran.


    From 1976 to 1997, Robert Baer was an agent for the CIA, including a stint as regional head for the Middle East. He is the author of "See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism" and "Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude." His most recent work is "The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower," which has just appeared in French.


    Le Nouvel Observateur: In the 19th century, the "Great Game" designated the rivalry between the British and Russian Empires, notably for control of Iran. Today, it's Iran that aspires to become a new empire. Do you believe it has already achieved that imperial role?


    Robert Baer: Not yet, but it inevitably will. Oil is crucial: we Americans are much more dependent on cheap oil than the French. Now Iran could very well take control of the Persian Gulf by closing the Strait of Ormuz, and could destroy Saudi oil installations within a few minutes, thanks to its missile batteries. It would thus very easily deprive the global market of 17 billion barrels of oil. It will not do that, but this threat constitutes a deterrent force that prevents the United States from invading or attacking the country. On top of that, 90 percent of the inhabitants of the Gulf are Shiite and are, at this time, very sensitive to Iran's influence. Let's be clear: the Arabs, whether Palestinians, Egyptians or Jordanians, have conducted a completely ineffectual battle against Israel. Only Shiite Hezbollah, supported by Iran, has been able to push back the Israelis. So the Arabs are forced to turn to Iran, which thus becomes an empire by proxy and which excels in that role. The Iranian people are intelligent, and their civilization is age-old. There is absolutely no doubt Iran is more open to modernity than the Arabs. It's a country that is strategically very patient and that calculates its moves for the long term, versus an American enemy incapable of planning its own actions more than a week ahead of time. I would summarize the situation this way: Iran is the most stable, the most influential, and the most powerful country in the Middle East and the United States will either have to fight against it for the next 30 years or achieve a coexistence agreement. Yes, we must negotiate with Iran without delay.


    From Lebanon to Gaza, from southern Iraq to Syria, Teheran only acts backstage. Is Iran a post-colonial empire?


    It's a hybrid empire, based simultaneously on ultramodern weaponry and a strategy of guerilla and asymmetrical warfare. Consequently, the Iranians avoided direct intervention in Beirut and dictating their conditions to the Shiites. They prefer to send agents to Hezbollah who speak perfect Arabic and melt into the population. Even in Basra, in Iraq today, no Iranian presence is palpable. And yet, Iran controls everything there. It's a system of encirclement. Iran has succeeded in convincing the Arabs that it alone fights colonialism. And, in fact, theirs is a post-colonial, rather than a colonial attitude. Iran's secret is that it grants its allies, including Hezbollah, power and respect. Its agents have trained Hassan Nasrallah not to receive orders, but to count on his own forces and to assert himself as an autonomous leader. And Nasrallah will never pull back from that approach. Certainly, in some respects, the Iranians, from the heights of their ancestral culture, despise Arabs, but they are careful never to express that contempt or to dictate behavior to the Arabs. This system of power delegation is based neither on money nor force, but on shared faith. This is the Iranian message: Iran alone is able to put an end to Western domination of the Middle East. So Iran represents, even if only by default, the only credible hope.


    How do you explain the United States' blindness with respect to Iran?


    It's a deliberate blindness, just like the one that led to the sub-prime crisis. It comes from an unfounded optimism such as presided over the invasion of Iraq which even The New York Times supported. That blindness is also the fruit of complete ignorance about Iranian civilization, which they reduce to the sole personality of Ahmadinejad. When my book came out in the United States, they took me for a fool! But I continue to think that we must allow consideration of Iran as a worthy interlocutor, unless we want to fight a 30-year war against it, which the United States can certainly not allow itself. We would have to mobilize a million men and spend every last dollar. And in the name of what, such a war? Democracy? Zionism? That would be pure folly. The Persian Gulf would go up in flames; the price of oil would reach $400 a barrel and the American economy would be under a new shock.


    But Iran has serious problems: galloping inflation, an economy 80 percent dependent on oil, a lack of industrial infrastructure, growing youth hostility towards the mullahs, a social crisis, endemic corruption, divisions within the conservative camp ... How can such a fragile country develop an imperial strategy?


    In spite of its weak points, it's a country able to mobilize a million men: soldiers in the regular army (a remarkably effective one), Guardians of the Revolution, and that doesn't count the outside Shiite militias that allow it to intervene by proxy. And many Iranians, including students hostile to the regime, approve their government's foreign policy. Even though they desire a Western-style liberalization, Iranians share an ancient and powerful nationalism. Moreover, they support a foreign policy based on protection of Shiites, whether they be in Iraq, Lebanon or the Gulf.


    You think the most dangerous country in the region at this time is Pakistan. You advocate negotiating with Iran, however, which you consider more stable, and even, to a certain extent, more trustworthy.


    Yes. In Pakistan, what interlocutor does one choose? There are whole provinces of the country that escape government control. Pakistan is not a homogeneous country; it's a mosaic as well as a powder keg. The inhabitants of Karachi and Lahore mutually despise each other, without even mentioning Baluchistan. Islamabad is a capital created from scratch and completely cut off from the rest of the population. The country risks exploding at any moment; there's nothing to bring it together. Saudi Arabia is also a country that is no less divided. If the price of oil were to fall to $10 a barrel, it would collapse before Iran, which would be able to adapt. Iran numbers over 70 million inhabitants, educated for the most part, and it possesses competitive technology. All we'd need from a strictly economic and realpolitik point of view for Iran to become an ideal ally is for Ahmadinejad to fall. I learned about a secret agreement concluded in 1986 by Pasqua and Marchiani with Iran for the liberation of the French hostages: it was a very cynical agreement, but, since then, Iran has never attacked French interests or citizens, directly or indirectly. Yes, Iran could be a trustworthy interlocutor.


    With his new team, will Obama be up to playing the Iranian card?


    Five secretaries of state have already let the opportunity go by. I believe Obama represents the best hope for change in this domain. But that will require a new awareness in Washington, where a politico-media lobby rages that constantly holds forth the same discourse. They keep brandishing the threat of the Iranian bomb, of a new Holocaust, with Ahmadinejad as the bogey man. They sum up everything by combining those three images, although Ahmadinejad represents only a minority fringe of the Guardians of the Revolution and is presently being challenged by Parliament. I don't believe in the Iranian bomb any more than I believe in Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction! It's always the same propaganda. The war in Iraq at least has the merit of making it understood that it's impossible - if only economically - to create a neocolonial empire. It led to a reduction in the United States' real power and prestige in the world. In this respect, the financial crisis can only influence my country's foreign policy in the right direction, since when the United States lives in the illusion of having unlimited money and power, that always leads to catastrophe.


    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.


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