CASMII's fact sheet about the Iran-US Standoff

we occasionally see bits and pieces of these scattered about our own media, usually in the blogosphere, but rarely in traditional media outlets...

(note: the 20 items listed below are excerpts... to read the 20 in their entirety, go here... they are also available in a downloadable PDF format...)

1. There is no evidence of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran . The US and its allies pressure Iran to prove that it is not hiding a nuclear weapons programme. This demand is logically impossible to satisfy and serves to make diplomacy fail in order to force regime change.
2. Iran 's need for nuclear power generation is real. Even when Iran 's population was one-third of what it is today, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, negotiating on behalf of President Gerald Ford, persuaded the former Shah that Iran needed over twenty nuclear reactors.
3. The "crisis" over Iran 's nuclear programme lacks the urgency claimed by Washington . Weapons grade uranium must be enriched at least to 85%. A 2005 CIA report determined that it could take Iran 10 years to achieve this level of enrichment. Many independent nuclear experts have stated that Iran would face formidable technical obstacles if it tried to enrich uranium beyond the 3.5% purity required for electricity generation.
4. Iran has met its obligations under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran voluntarily accepted and enforced safeguards stricter than IAEA's Additional Protocol until February 2006, when Iran 's nuclear file was reported, under the pressure from the US , to the Security Council. (The US , by contrast, has neither signed nor implemented the Additional Protocol, and Israel has refused to sign the NPT.)
5. Iran has given unprecedented concessions on its nuclear programme.
6. Enrichment of uranium for a civilian nuclear programme is Iran 's inalienable right. Every member of the NPT has the right to enrich uranium for a civilian nuclear programme and is entitled to full technical assistance.
7. The Western alliance has not tried true diplomacy and relies instead on threats.
8. The UN resolutions against Iran , in contrast to the treatment of the US allies, South Korea , India , Pakistan , and Israel , smack of double standards. For example, in the year 2000, South Korea enriched 200 milligrams of uranium to near-weapons grade (up to 77%), but was not referred to the UN Security Council.
9. Iran has not threatened Israel or attacked another country. The track records of the US , Israel , the UK and France are very different. These so called “democracies” have a bloody history of invading other countries. Iran 's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has declared repeatedly that Iran will not attack or threaten any country. He has also issued a fatwa against the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons and banned nuclear weapons as sacrilegious.
10. The US “democratization” programme for Iran is a hoax. Although violations of human rights and democratic freedoms do occur too often in Iran , the country has the most pluralistic system in a region dominated by undemocratic client states of the US . It is sheer hypocrisy for the US, which turns a blind eye to the gross human rights abuses by its allies, such as Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Libya, and Egypt, to misrepresent its agenda in Iran as a “democratization” programme.
11. There are no legal bases for Iran 's referral to the UN Security Council. Since there is no evidence that Iran is even contemplating to weaponize its nuclear programme, no grounds exist for this sidelining of the IAEA.
12. Dr ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, has said that more sanctions are counterproductive. Economic sanctions on Iran will harm the people of Iran , as they were devastating to Iraqis, resulting in the death of at least 500,000 children. Sanctions would not however bring the Islamic Republic to its knees. Instead, any kind of sanctions, including the so-called "targeted" or "smart" sanctions, are viewed by the Iranian people as the West's punishment for Iran 's scientific progress (uranium enrichment for reactor fuel).
13. Sanctions are not better than war; they can be exploited as a diplomatic veneer and a provocative prelude to military attack, as they were in Iraq .
14. A US attack on Iran is imminent. The end of George Bush's presidency in 2009 could be a serious set back for the NeoCons' hegemonic dreams to control the energy resources in the region. He is unlikely to leave office bearing the legacy of failures in Afghanistan and Iraq and particularly leaving Iran a stronger player in the region.
15. Foreign state interference in Iran violates the UN charter. According to Seymour Hersch, the US is running covert operations in Iran to foment unrest and ethnic conflict for the purpose of regime change.
16. Reports of nuclear attack scenarios against Iran can serve to raise the public's tolerance for an act of aggression with conventional military means. People of conscience and sanity must not only condemn even contemplation of a nuclear attack, but also denounce any conventional attack.
17. Bombing cannot end Iran 's nuclear programme. Since Iran already has the expertise to enrich uranium up to the 3.5% grade for a fuel cycle, no degree of bombing will halt Iran 's civilian nuclear programme.
18. An attack on Iran will unite Iranians against the US and its allies. A great majority of the public in Iran support the country's right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.
19. A nuclear attack on Iran would fuel a new nuclear arms race and ruin the NPT. Any military intervention against Iran will lead to a regional catastrophe and expanded terrorism.
20. The cause of democracy in Iran will suffer gravely if the country is attacked. President Bush's "axis of evil" rhetoric severely undermined the reformist movement in Iran at a time when the country's president promoted Dialogue Among Civilizations.

about casmii...

Mission Statement

CASMII is an independent campaign organisation with the purpose of opposing sanctions, foreign state interference and military intervention in Iran.

Statement of Purpose

The on-going demonization of Iran as part of the "axis of evil" first initiated by George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Speech, together with the more recent, growing threats of sanctions and military action by the US and Israel against Iran, all continue to seriously escalate international tension.

They are likely to lead to a catastrophe even more horrifying than the present disaster in Iraq, threatening international peace and security. The future of Iran, and its political system and leadership, must be determined solely by the collective will of the Iranian people themselves and not through foreign state interference or intervention.

Increasing international tensions and conflict are destructive to the causes of peace, justice and democracy. We appeal to people of all faiths as well as to people with a secular outlook and those of all political and ideological persuasions, to join us in building an effective international campaign for peace and dialogue, and against sanctions, foreign state interference, destabilization and military intervention in Iran.

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Ecuador and Venezuela want OUT but North Korea wants IN

once again, i gotta confess... my cynicism says that bringing north korea into The Club is precisely what the u.s. wants, despite its official utterances to the contrary...

South Korea has announced it will back North Korea's bid to join the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The Korea Times reported on a news briefing in Seoul, in which five lawmakers who had visited Pyongyang said North Korea is considering membership in the World Bank, based in Washington.

[...]

[T]he United States and other developed countries have had a reluctant attitude toward North Korea's entry into international organizations...

why would the u.s. forfeit the opportunity to grab north korea by its financial cojones and squeeze until it sings the star-spangled banner...? let's hope that buenos aires, caracas and quito don't fill in dear leader on THEIR experiences...

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As long as we're on the subject of Condi

Condoleezza Rice...........Ferragamo shoe

she's back in europe, lying her ass off...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday dismissed as "ludicrous" Russian concerns that Washington's plans to deploy anti-missile defenses in Europe would endanger Moscow's nuclear arsenal.

A flurry of high-level talks in recent weeks has failed to soften Russia's public opposition to the U.S. plan to install radar scanners in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland.

Washington says the deployment is aimed at protecting Europe and North America from a growing threat of missile strike by North Korea, Iran or others in the Middle East. Moscow says those countries do not pose an immediate threat, and claims the U.S. plan aims to target Russia's strategic missile arsenal.

understandably, putin's pissed...

Putin ... warned that Moscow could halt compliance with the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, a landmark 1990 agreement between NATO and former Warsaw Pact countries.

"I propose we declare a moratorium on fulfillment by Russia of the CFE treaty," Putin said.

The Russian leader complained that Western powers have failed to ratify the agreement. However, the threat appeared to be linked to growing tensions over security, especially the US military's plan to deploy anti-missile defences in eastern Europe.

let's just imagine that russia wanted to put missiles in cuba... i know that's "ludicrous" and would never, ever happen, but let's just suppose for a moment that it did... what do you think would be the u.s. reaction...

The "Cuban Missile Crisis" was a confrontation during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States in Cuba. The missiles were ostensibly placed to protect Cuba from further planned attacks by the United States after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, and were rationalized by the Soviets as equivalent to the U.S. placing deployable nuclear warheads in the United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, and most significantly, Turkey

The crisis began on October 14, 1962 when U.S. reconnaissance imagery revealing Soviet nuclear missile installations on the island were shown to U.S. President John F. Kennedy and ended fourteen days later on October 28, 1962, when Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev announced that the installations would be dismantled. The Crisis is often regarded as the moment when the Cold War came closest to escalating into a nuclear war. Russians refer to the event as the "Caribbean Crisis," while Cubans refer to it as the "October Crisis."

oops... i had an emily litella moment... never mind...

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What if Ethiopia wanted to buy arms from Iran rather than North Korea?

W.T.F...?

Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country’s nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.

The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.

and so, what are we supposed to do when we read this...? say, oh, ok... makes perfectly good sense to me... never mind that "axis of evil" crap that's been shoved down our throats for years... i mean the bush administration has to have a little flexibility, now doesn't it...?

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"Reverse course" on THESE, George, and then we'll talk

the wapo, in traditionally head-in-the-sandup-the-butt fashion, is all flushed with excitement over bush's willingness to "change course..."

Bush Shows New Willingness to Reverse Course

just look at their examples...

• fired Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
  (and installed an equally pandering toady with a better sense for p.r. AFTER the generals threatened to revolt)

• authorized direct talks with North Korea
  (AFTER giving them plenty of time to expand their nuclear arsenal)

• sent more troops to Iraq
  (DESPITE a clear message from the november elections and the vast majority of the american people that they want an end to the war)

• agreed to discuss the contours of a Palestinian state in Middle East peace negotiations
  (AFTER refusing to recognize the palestinian government and starving the palestinian people)

• proposed a tax increase for millions of Americans
  (BUT is still calling for tax cuts to become permanent while CONTINUING to line the pockets of his super-rich cronies)

now, let's quick skip over to the nyt and see what a REAL course change looks like...

• Restore Habeas Corpus

• Stop Illegal Spying

• Ban Torture, Really

• Close the C.I.A. Prisons

• Account for ‘Ghost Prisoners’

• Ban Extraordinary Rendition

• Tighten the Definition of Combatant

• Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively

• Ban Tainted Evidence

• Ban Secret Evidence

• Better Define ‘Classified’ Evidence

• Respect the Right to Counsel

oh, and by the way...

• [H]alt the federal government’s race to classify documents to avoid public scrutiny

• [R]everse the grievous harm this administration has done to the Freedom of Information Act

• [C]urtail F.B.I. spying on nonviolent antiwar groups and revisit parts of the Patriot Act that allow this practice

• [A]pologize to a Canadian citizen and a German citizen, both innocent, who were kidnapped and tortured by American agents

• [C]lose the Guantánamo camp

now, THAT'S a list... when i see ANY of those things start to happen, i will take heart... not before...

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Threats, arrogance, and bluster wither in the cold light of day

macho, testosterone-fueled foreign policy is, finally, taking some hard knocks, and, in the process, further eroding u.s. credibility…

American intelligence officials are publicly softening their position, admitting to doubts about how much progress the uranium enrichment program has actually made. The result has been new questions about the Bush administration’s decision to confront North Korea in 2002.
“The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently,” a senior administration official said this week.
The disclosure underscores broader questions about the ability of intelligence agencies to discern the precise status of foreign weapons programs.

the entire strategic foundation of darth and the neocons is washing away like a sandcastle at high tide… when you characterize a country as part of an “axis of evil,” you’ve essentially painted yourself into a corner… it seems fairly hypocritical to engage with a country on which you’ve pasted that label, and, then, when you try and extricate yourself from that predicament, your defenders have to make ridiculous statements like this…

“The question isn’t whether the axis of evil is dead; it’s alive as it was yesterday,” said Daniel P. Serwer, a vice president at the United States Institute of Peace and a former diplomat who served as executive director of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

but, no matter how you slice it, you still have to come to grips with the truth…

“The administration appears to have made a very costly decision that has resulted in a fourfold increase in the nuclear weapons of North Korea,” Senator Reed said in an interview on Wednesday.

heckuva job, darth… heckuva job, neocons…

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Dick’s still hard but Condi’s gone soft

while dick continues to wolf down ideological viagra, what’s happened to our favorite, ferragamo-wearing dominatrix…?



the nyt asks…

Has the Bush administration gone soft on its foes?

…said Daniel P. Serwer, a vice president at the United States Institute of Peace and a former diplomat who served as executive director of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group… said,. “[I]t’s absolutely clear to me that you have to talk to who you have to talk to, in order to get things done.”

careful, condi… dick ain’t a pretty sight when he’s pissed off… more interesting to me, however, is who’s twisting condi’s arm…? she may have academic smarts, but in the 6-plus years she’s been sucking up to george (see previous post), she hasn’t exactly demonstrated much of a capacity for either intelligent or forceful action… could it be…?

At a dinner and lecture on Tuesday night at the Library of Congress, it looked like a reunion of the pro-engagement crowd. Seated at the front was former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, along with the new deputy secretary of state, John D. Negroponte; also in attendance was Robert L. Gallucci, the former chief United States negotiator during the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1994.
It was a veritable bevy of advocates of realpolitik, headlined by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who told the audience, “America must be prepared to talk to our enemies.”

a-HA…! why, it’s that sly old fox, james baker, again… funny how he just keeps turning up… it looks like poppy is doing everything he can possibly do to save george’s sorry ass from total and absolute disgrace… i wouldn’t be at all surprised either if it wasn’t baker who maneuvered behind the scenes to get dick out of town… it was probably easier to stage-manage some of this stuff while darth was ensconced in his “high-tech” trailer, jetting around the middle east…

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Flexibility...? In the Bush administration...?

a headline i didn't ever expect to see...

U.S. Flexibility Credited in Nuclear Deal With N. Korea

The six-nation deal to shut down North Korea's nuclear facility, four months after Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test, was reached yesterday largely because President Bush was willing to give U.S. negotiators new flexibility to reach an agreement, U.S. officials and Asian diplomats said yesterday.

but, no surprise, the hard-ass neocons think bush wussed out, and the dems reflexively oppose it...

[T]he agreement came under attack yesterday, with conservatives labeling it a betrayal and Democrats charging that Bush allowed North Korea to become a nuclear-weapon state without gaining much improvement over a Clinton-era deal that collapsed during Bush's first term.

no surprise either that condi, barely treading water after being increasingly (and accurately, imho) labeled as worthless, wants to grab the credit...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a prime architect of the accord, said it is just the beginning of a long process. "This is not the end of the story," she said, calling it the result of "patient, creative and tough diplomacy."

if you believe steve clemons - and i do - it's this guy that did the yeoman's work...

I have written about Asst. Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Christopher Hill before and surmised that if he was given some running room to construct a deal with North Korea, he could walk the situation back from the brink.

[...]

[S]omehow Hill has been able to successfully sideline and silence naysayers in Cheney's wing of the national security establishment and keep them from undermining his work.

but, steve concludes with this sober caveat...

One hopes today that Chris Hill has not succeeded in securing a positive arrangement in North Korea in some sort of quid pro quo that State will acquiesce to Cheney's desire for military action against Iran.

it's about friggin' time that "patient, creative, and tough diplomacy," supposedly the first and best tool of honest and sincere governments, was given a shot, and, even better, that it carried the day... why, then, i would like to know, is it not being given a chance with iran, syria, and palestine...?

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