Locked in an Orwellian
centrifuge By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
PALO ALTO, California - Israel's president
Shimon Peres spoke ahead of US president Barack
Obama on Sunday, and assured the crowd at the
annual gathering of largest pro-Israel lobby group
that US and Israel are on lockstep on Iran and
"there is no space between us."
This was
completely verified by Obama's speech, boasting of
his "unprecedented commitment" to Israel's
security, his determination to prevent a
nuclear-armed Iran and to continue with US's
military and security assistance to Israel, which
has increased under his presidency, despite the
mounting US budgetary difficulties and Israel's
robust economy.
Obama admission that "Iran
does not yet have a nuclear weapon," was frank yet
lame compared to recent statements by high-ranking
US officials that there is no evidence that Iran
is pursuing
nuclear weapons - and is
why the US intelligence estimate of December 2007
that Iran's nuclear program has been peaceful
since early 2003, still stands.
There is,
of course, something amiss about a Western
government making the Iran nuclear issue into "the
center and front" of its foreign policy, to
paraphrase the New York Times' coverage of Obama's
speech before the AIPAC (American-Israeli
Political Action Committee), and subjecting a
Middle Eastern country to the painful teeth of
"crippling sanctions" and, yet, at the same time
admitting that the target country is not
proliferating nuclear bombs after all. For sure,
this ought to make George Orwell spin in his
grave, reminding us of the 'text of our time' that
is frozen in the vortex of an Orwellian nightmare,
where the hegemonic powers manufacture
psuedo-rationalizations for their imperial
intentions.
Other than an obligatory
reference to the "Palestinian issue" and the need
for "an independent Palestinian state," which is
all but eradicated from the US's map of action,
Obama's speech lacked the minutest hint of any US
initiative to re-start the Middle East peace
process. As the New York Times rightly put it,
Obama has "largely" retreated from his earlier
pressure on Israel, but a more appropriate word
would have been "totally" and "completely,"
reflected in the absence of any US criticism of
the relentless Israeli expansion of Jewish
settlements in the West Bank, contrary to the
various UN resolutions.
In an Orwellian
universe where "might speaks rights", the silences
on abuses of rights are simply the other side of
the coin, bespeaking of a travesty of justice and
the numbing effects of a well-orchestrated
campaign of deflection that hypes the bogus Iran
nuclear threat and simultaneously buries under the
rug the actual, and on-going, threat to regional
and global peace caused by Israel's oppression of
Palestinian people.
"When Israel was
isolated in the aftermath of the flotilla
incident, we supported them," Obama sounded
proudly, referring to Israel's cold-blooded murder
of peace activists on board the humanitarian
convoy of aid ships for Gaza in May, 2010, which
drew international condemnation, as well as UN
Security Council condemnation against Israeli acts
that "caused the loss of lives." Clearly, US's
policy has titled so heavily in Israel's direction
that Washington no longer cares about the adverse
impact among the world's 1.6 billion Muslims
(compared to 14 million Jews), many of whom hold a
negative image of US because of its unbalanced
pro-Israel stance and its pattern of attacking
Muslim nations.
Incredibly, despite
initiating an all-out economic warfare against
Iran, Obama in his speech cautioned that "there is
too much loose talk of war," confidently telling
his powerful audience that the "crippling
sanctions" on Iran are working and have brought
Iran's economy "to a halt in 2011." Not so,
according to the International Monetary Fund, Iran
had a GDP growth rate of 3.5% in 2011, which drew
praise for economic policies that have been
successful in "reducing inequities, improving
living standards and supporting domestic demand."
Despite the Western sanctions, Iran's economy in
2012 is projected to have a growth rate of 2.5%.
Nor was Obama entirely accurate when speaking of
his success in bringing both Russia and China on
board the Iran sanctions. Both these powers have
rejected further UN sanctions and are on record
against the unilateral US and European Union
sanctions on Iran.
Bogus debates In
making the categorical statement that he was not
for "containment" of a nuclear Iran, but rather
the "prevention" of Iran's acquiring a nuclear
bomb, Obama on the surface made a heroic gesture
to appease his Jewish supporters, but in reality
he simply added to the growing inventory of
nauseating US policy debates focused on
"containment" or "deterrence."
The problem
with this debate and its horde of mouthpieces
dishing out sophisticated discourses armed with
cold-war jargons is that it operates in the vacuum
of any hard evidence that Iran is engaged in
proliferation activity. Even the inspectors of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who have
visited Iran frequently, have admitted that they
have "no evidence" that Iran is working on
building a bomb.
With respect to the IAEA
officials' recent trip to Iran last month, this
author has been informed by sources close to the
Iranian nuclear negotiation team that Iran offered
them the opportunity to inspect the "suspected
site" at Marivan, mentioned in IAEA's November
2011 report for suspected "high explosive" tests,
and yet after consulting with the IAEA
Director-General Yukiya Amano in Vienna, the IAEA
team declined the invitation and told their hosts
that their boss has ordered them to return to
Vienna without any delay.
This is rather
curious. If the IAEA is truly impartial and
interested in resolving the outstanding concerns
about Iran and its nuclear "intentions," then why
would it miss a golden opportunity to put to rest
one of its stated concerns? This does not make any
sense, except of course through the prism of
US-Israeli pressure politics that manipulates the
atomic agency in order to keep the flame of "Iran
nuclear threat" irrespective of the potential
damages to the agency's credibility.
In a
non-Orwellian world, the "free" Western media
would be demanding explanation from Amano as to
the truthfulness of Tehran's allegation and the
reasons why the IAEA declined Iran's offer. But,
in today's world featuring an unhealthy
reification of the Western media by the wheels of
pro-Israel interest groups, aptly exposed in the
book The Jewish Lobby, what matters most is to
secure "Israel's interests" even if those
interests clash with the world's interest for
truth and peaceful relations among nations. Sadly,
the space between Obama and Orwell has grown by a
wide margin.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is
the author of After Khomeini: New Directions
in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For
his Wikipedia entry, click
here. He is author of Reading In Iran
Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge
Publishing , October 23, 2008) and Looking for
Rights at Harvard. His latest book is UN
Management Reform: Selected Articles and
Interviews on United Nations CreateSpace
(November 12, 2011).
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