[Note: Shara Esbenshade is a junior at Uni High and a frequent contributor to the Gargoyle. Kumars Salehi, a first-generation Iranian-American, is also a junior at Uni High. An earlier version of this commentary first appeared as part of a larger article in the April 2007 issue of the Public i, the monthly newspaper of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center.]

KUMARS SALEHI & SHARA ESBENSHADE
Gargoyle contributors
Posted Saturday, April 21, 2007
Opinions

THE BACKGROUND

THE UNITED STATES has a history of interfering with Iran's development. In 1953, the United States collaborated with Britain to overthrow democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, and put Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi back into power. His rule quickly became a dictatorship.

After the Iranian seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979, the United States froze $12 billion in Iranian assets, which have still not been released. In 1995 President Bill Clinton, under pressure from Congress and the pro-Israel lobby, imposed a total embargo on trade between Iran and U.S. companies.

The following year Congress passed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which imposed sanctions on Iran's trade with non-U.S. companies as well. Although the European Union denounced the legislation and declared it void, it blocked some needed investment for Iran.

ON THE BRINK

Today, the U.S. government claims to be concerned about Iran's alleged efforts to make nuclear weapons. President George W. Bush named Iran a threat to the U.S. during his “Axis of Evil” speech in January 2002. The Bush administration's official position is that a nuclear-armed Iran is not acceptable.

Western intelligence agencies say that Iran's nuclear program has serious technical problems right now and, if it gets no outside help, is at least a couple years away from being able to develop actual nuclear warheads.

In the aftermath of Israel's bombing of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, the Iranian program has moved to underground, more dispersed, and harder-to-find sites.

This means that the U.S. military would have to use mini-nukes to actually reach Iran's nuclear development sites, if it were to attack.

When asked about how he plans to deal with Iran, President Bush has repeatedly stated that all options are on the table, including those nuclear options. In 2005, the U.S. revised its Doctrine For Joint Nuclear Operations to include preemptive use on states with no nuclear weapons.

The administration has denied that the U.S. is currently preparing for war with Iran, but a look at the facts suggests we are on the brink of one.

THE SILENT WAR

Journalist Seymour Hersh has reported in his ongoing coverage for The New Yorker that the administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran since the summer of 2004, and has been flying unmanned armed vehicles into Iran from Iraq since 2003, a couple of which have crashed in Iran.

According to Hersh, these incursions have reportedly found hardly any new information, and the Iranian government has formally denounced them as illegal.

Meanwhile, the U.S. could launch covert missions into Iran using U.S. troops.

In 2005, Hersh reported that president Bush “signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia,” which, Hersh explained, would allow these operations to be run without the legal restrictions that are imposed on the CIA.

Recently, ABC News reported that the United States has been waging a “secret war with Iran.”

The U.S. has been advising and encouraging the Pakistani militant group Jundullah, a force of several hundred that has been leading guerilla raids into Iran, with the goal of destabilizing the country.

They have captured and executed a dozen Iranians already, attacking military and intelligence officers. The U.S. government says the U.S. provides no direct funding to the group, because that would require Congressional oversight, but has maintained close ties with its leader, former Taliban fighter Abd el Malik Regi, since 2005.

War with Iran could happen without any public declaration of it from the American government.

As Joseph Cirincione, director of nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said, “a military strike would be disastrous for the United States. It would rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular regime, inflame anti-American anger around the Muslim world, and jeopardize the already fragile U.S. position in Iraq.”

Additionally, Cirincione commented, “[An attack] would accelerate, not delay, the Iranian nuclear program. Hard-liners in Tehran would be proven right in their claim that the only thing that can deter the United States is a nuclear bomb. Iranian leaders could respond with a crash nuclear program that could produce a bomb in a few years.”

It is not hard to see why “Bush ‘n' Friends” are having a relatively easy time passing conquest off as self-defense and liberation.

THE REALITY IN IRAN

The U.S. media portrayal of Iran is as a totalitarian theocracy bereft of free speech, equal rights, and opportunity — and most of all, bereft of the ability to change. Our government wants us to think that Iran does not deserve the right to determine its own destiny; the Bush administration's goal is to coax us into believing that the only way that we can be safe and Iran can have freedom is if we invade, nuke some “key places,” and smudge some collateral damage statistics.

What one does not hear, of course, is that Iran is not synonymous with its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In truth, suggesting the invasion of Iran due to the words and actions of this fellow is startlingly comparable to espousing an outside takeover of the U.S. due to our own president's lunacy.

Iran, like our United States, is a country made up of people, not policies. The Iranian people have been, and still are, making great strides in the areas of free speech and equal rights, areas which Americans have become increasingly comfortable with losing in recent years.

Women are gaining power and prominence in both social and political arenas, and the gradual movement toward a better Iran persists despite the presidency of Ahmadinejad, who is to former president Mohammad Khatami as Bush is to, well, Clinton (or Carter, if we can be so bold).

If our government tries to speed up this gradual movement with an invasion, or a nuclear or conventional attack, it will only incite a rage and hostility toward America that will unite the dissenters with the oppressors in an effort to keep the real villains out of their homeland.

The war in Iraq completely failed, and even that ended in the Iraqis fighting mainly each other. There will be no civil war in Iran, only fear, then anger, then hate, then suffering and bloodshed that will take the lives of not only innumerable Iranians but also those of the baby boys and girls of the Archetypal Poor Working-Class Family.

All of these lives are equally valuable, but guess which loss will be a greater motivation for Americans to speak out?

Thanks to the dehumanization of people of Middle Eastern origin in the American media, the beautiful, rich, cultured nation of Iran can be turned into a war zone, and, just like Iraq, no one will care until it's too late.

Iran is growing, and will continue to grow. If we stunt its growth with our bombs, we will turn a hopeful, promising nation into exactly what Bush wants it to be: a radicalized, volatile, dangerous state, ready for the taking.

YOU CAN TAKE ACTION

For the anti-war community out there, it is time we stopped denying the possibility of war with Iran and realize it is already beginning.

While we sit and complain about the government's reluctance to provide a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, a deceitful debacle of even more monstrous proportions is beginning, right before our eyes.

In an article about a year ago, Hersh reported the words of a White House
military planner: “People think Bush has been focussed on Saddam Hussein
since 9/11, but, in my view, if you had to name one nation that was his
focus all the way along, it was Iran.”

Americans cannot afford another war financially or politically. The Middle East cannot afford more destruction. A war with Iran would be more than an expansion of the War on Terror we are already waging in Iraq; it could draw in other world powers like Russia and make nuclear war a possibility.

Recently, Iran released the 15 British sailors and marines it had captured, and we all sighed a little with relief that no larger conflict arose.

But, we must now consider how to oppose a war with Iran that is not even made public, for that seems to be a very real path for the Bush administration.

We urge those who oppose the current war with Iraq, or those who have misgivings about the use of military force in general, to act against the coming war with Iran.

Phone your representatives and tell them to support HR 770 to prevent an attack on Iran without congressional authorization. This bill would prohibit the use of funds for a covert action against Iran. The toll-free number for the Capitol switchboard is 1-866-340-9281. Come out to AWARE's anti-war protests at One Main in downtown Champaign from 2 to 4 p.m. the first Saturday of every month.

AWARE is currently working on a “Postcards For Peace” campaign. Write your representatives to tell them your thoughts and/or concerns about the possibility of an attack on Iran.

We have prestamped, preaddressed postcards (to Sens. Barack Obama and Richard Durbin, and Rep. Tim Johnson) that are blank on the back — you write your own words, which is much more moving, but it will only take as much time and effort as you want it to because it is a small postcard.

Find Shara Esbenshade in the hallways or e-mail her at esbenshd@uni.uiuc.edu for postcards or more information. Activism Club will do postcard-writing at lunch on Monday, April 23.

AWARE is prepared to call for demonstrations of public outrage in the event of an attack on Iran, without explicit congressional consent. The initial demonstration will be called for 5:30 p.m. on the day of the attack at the County Courthouse in Urbana.

Most importantly, keep yourself informed. As a former high-level intelligence official told Seymour Hersh: “It's not if we're going to do anything against Iran. [The White House and the Pentagon are] doing it.”

RELATED

— Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, March 5, 2007: The Redirection

— Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, Nov. 27, 2006: The Next Act

— Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, July 10, 2006: Last Stand

— Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, April 17, 2006: The Iran Plans

— Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2005: The Coming Wars