ABC News: A brief paragraph in the mountain of Wikileaks documents shed a sliver of light on what officials claim is a viscious and coldly efficient Iranian campaign of revenge on Iraqi air force pilots who bombed Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
The systematic elimination of Iraqi air force pilots by Iran was a little noticed vendetta amid the crossfire of ethnic fighting and urban combat that convulsed Iraq in the years after the U.S. invasion toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Iran used the chaos in the aftermath of the invasion to settle scores from the Iran-Iraq war, an eight-year slug fest from 1980 to 1988 in which an estimated 500,000 Iranians and Iraqis died. The war was largely a bloody standoff that resembled World War I at times with trench warfare, poison gas, human wave and bayonet attacks.
Iran, however, has taken a special vengeance on the pilots of the Iraqi air force and the lawlessness that followed the collapse of Saddam’s regime gave Iran its opportunity.
In addition to the 182 pilots who have been hunted down and killed by Iranian agents, the assassination campaign prompted another 800 Iraqi pilots to flee the country, according to statistics released by the Iraqi Defense Ministry.
Dan Cooper says:
In today’s Iran, security is paramount and much more important than civil rights.
If one understands the international politics and the world order, one can easily comprehend that Iran is in a very volatile and dangerous situation.
There are so many CIA and Mossad backed groups active in Iran as we speak,
There are powerful governments behind these groups.
“Dividing Iranian peopleâ€, “de-stabilizing its governmentâ€, “regime change†and
establishment of a puppet government sympathetic to Israel and USA are their ultimate objective.
During the election Ahmadinejad gave freedom, people were expressing themselves freely in the streets of Tehran, there were televised presidential debates, such events were unprecedented in Iran’s political history.
We all witnessed how the oppositions misused this freedom and manipulated the electoral process with help and assistance of the entire western media.
The crackdown was absolutely necessary because the security of the entire country was at stake.
If the Iranian government gives too much freedom, these vulchers will pounce again as soon as they smell freedom.
It is laughable when our government with its own atrocious human’s right record uses the notion of human rights to demonize the Islamic republic.
Iran’s human right is not perfect but comparatively speaking is one of the best in the Middle East, However
Even if Iran had one of the best secular democracies in the world but refused to recognise the criminal Zionist regime in Israel, the USA would have crippled it exactly the same way as it is trying to cripple the Islamic Republic nowâ€.
Remember what the USA and the Britain did to Iran’s only democracy back in 1953, they destroyed Mosadegh’s democratically elected government.
Eric A. Brill
There is no small amount of irony emanating from Columbia University lately.
The Columbia School of Journalism, in a public letter to President Obama, strongly opposed any effort to prosecute Julian Assange. Another Columbia school, however — the School of International and Public Affairs — recently circulated a “word to the wise†to its students: if you harbor hopes of working for the State Department some day (as many of its students do), make sure you do not mention a Wikileaks cable in anything you write; we have been told that those at the State Department who review employment applications intend to check for such indiscretions.
Shortly thereafter, the State Department reportedly circulated a short note indicating that that would indeed be good advice for job-seekers to follow.
So which will have more effect — the courageous stand for First Amendment rights presented by the Columbia School of Journalism, or the cowering capitulation by Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs?
David Makovsky and Robert Satloff guided a delegation of WINEP Trustees who are also New York City bankers and venture capitalists, on an economic investment oriented trip to Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Ramallah several weeks ago. In their report on the trip (which C-Span termed a “diplomatic effortâ€), Makovsky & Satloff emphasized that the leaders of each state demanded to know, “What is the US administration doing? What are they thinking? We need to know; the Obama administration is not providing guidance and leadership . . .â€
Makovsky reported that the group’s Egyptian interlocuter was especially critical of US leadership. “The US lost the Shah, lost Iran; if the US does not get its act together, it will lose Egypt.â€
____
In his comments before the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Stuart Levey reported on the success of his tactic of strangling Iran economically by blackmailing the banks and corporations of other nations that might seek to do business with Iran. “We give them the choice,†said Levey, †‘Do business with the United States, with the largest economy in the world, or do business with Iran.’ Most choose, wisely, to cease doing business with Iran.â€
_____
As Hillary Leverett spelled out, “Our recommendations regarding U.S. policy toward Iran, both in and out of government, have been grounded on our best judgments about what course optimally serves U.S. interests and the cause of regional stability . . .â€
iirc, Drs. Leverett have stated explicitly that US-Iran rapprochement is in the best interest of the United States. I agree.
____
In a series of comments in this thread, fyi and Pak have presented the view that Iran-US rapprochement is not in the best interests of Iran.
I agree entirely that an Iran-US relationship that has the characteristics of a capitulation, in which Iran effectively becomes a vassal state is not in Iran’s interest (nor is it in the interests of the US). However, it was my impression that the resistance to US-Iran relationship from the Iran side came from a more fundamental position; that NO form of relationship of Iran with the US would be acceptable because US had grievously offended Islam, and because Israel and the US have been browbeating Iran for several decades, and now have Iran ringed with US military bases, and CIA and Mossad are infiltrating Iran.
Their view should be considered seriously. The US has pushed too far, and is still pushing. The US is on the path of once more “losing Iran.â€
But it’s not just Iran that is being lost.
To paraphrase Stuart Levey, US policy makers have a choice: Should the policies of the United States provide to the American people a future that promises a relationship in trade, culture, education, environmental protection, with Iran, or with Israel?
Expanding that concept, as Ros-Lehtinen suggested in her comments, Iran does not stand alone; she concedes that although she and the US House Foreign Affairs committee have spent fourteen years attempting to coerce the international community to join the US in its ideologically-driven campaign to demonize Iran, several nations are still resisting. Russia, China, Turkey, Brazil, and Armenia are not fully committed to depriving their own citizens and economies of the opportunities to trade and enjoy mutually beneficial relations with Iran.
So it’s necessary to add those states to Stuart Levey’s choice: Should US policymakers assure for the American people a future that involves trade and cultural relations with
Russia population: 139 million GDP purch power $2.1 trillion
China population: 1.33 billion GDP purch power 8.8 trillion
Brazil population: 201 million GDP purch power 2.01 trillion
Turkey population: 77.8 million GDP purch power 880 billion
Armenia population: 3 million GDP purch power 16.25 billion
plus Iran:
Iran population: 76.9 million GDP purch power $826 billion
For a total of 1.797 billion men, women, and children, with total purchasing power GDP of $14.79 trillion.
or with
Israel population: 7 million* GDP purch power $207 billion
(data from CIA Factbook, Nov. 24, 2010)
Stuart Levey is an appointed employee of the United States Department of the Treasury. The mission of the Department of the Treasury is to:
“Maintain a strong economy and create economic and job opportunities by promoting the conditions that enable economic growth and stability at home and abroad, . . . protecting the integrity of the financial system, and manage the U.S. Government’s finances and resources effectively.â€
Stuart Levey, give an accounting of your stewardship. The US economy is in a shambles; job opportunities are at their lowest level in 80 years; the US financial system was so corrupted by internal misfeasance that the American people were told that only the infusion of $700 billion would rescue it from total collapse. In your tenure, Stuart Levey, the US debt has doubled.
When the next foreign minister from an Egypt or Turkey or China of the future asks, Who lost Iran AGAIN, the answer will be, Stuart Levey.
And, when the American history books record who lost control of the United States Treasury that precipitated massive unemployment, staggering debt, and fundamental economic decline, the answer will be, Stuart Levey.
everything wikileak has done is to back US version of events in the world. This is the latest trash, attempting to forment regional conflict. This is clearly a State Dpt leak. A global view of it all shows there is nothing in it that is truely harmful to US. It supports the narrative being sold on network media.
Fiorangela
Insightful. Well worth the read with a powerful argument.
This story is such obvious crap. More lies to demonize Iran.
By the way, the above Pouya is not me, the administrator of the site. I always sign on as iPouya, fyi.
Pouya
That is correct, I am not iPouya. Does iPouya wishes me to change my name? I am open to it.
Dan Cooper On November 29, National Public Radio(NPR) emphasized that the cables showed that Iran was isolated even in the Muslim world, making it easier for the Israelis and Americans to attack. The leaked cables reveal that the president of Egypt, an American puppet, hates Iran, and the Saudi Arabian government has been long urging the US government to attack Iran. In other words, Iran is so dangerous to the world that even its co-religionists want Iran wiped off the face of the earth.
NPR presented several nonobjective “Iranian experts†who denigrated Iran and its leadership and declared that the US government, by resisting its Middle Eastern allies’ calls for bombing Iran, was the moderate in the picture. The fact that President George W. Bush declared Iran to be a member of “the axis of evil†and threatened repeatedly to attack Iran, and that President Obama has continued the threats—Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has just reiterated that the US hasn’t taken the attack option off the table—are not regarded by American “Iran experts†as indications of anything other than American moderation.
Somehow it did not come across the NPR newscast that it is not Iran but Israel that routinely slaughters civilians in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, and that it is not Iran but the US and its NATO mercenaries who slaughter civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yeman, and Pakistan.
Iran has not invaded any of its neighbors, but the Americans are invading countries half way around the globe.
The “Iranian experts†treated the Saudi and Egyptian rulers’ hatred of Iran as a vindication of the US and Israeli governments’ demonization of Iran. Not a single “Iranian expert†was capable of pointing out that the tyrants who rule Egypt and Saudi Arabia fear Iran because the Iranian government represents the interests of Muslims, and the Saudi and Egyptian governments represent the interests of the Americans.
Think what it must feel like to be a tyrant suppressing the aspirations of your own people in order to serve the hegemony of a foreign country, while a nearby Muslim government strives to protect its people’s independence from foreign hegemony.
Undoubtedly, the tyrants become very anxious. What if their oppressed subjects get ideas? Little wonder the Saudis and Egyptian rulers want the Americans to eliminate the independent-minded country that is a bad example for Egyptian and Saudi subjects.
As long as the dollar has enough value that it can be used to purchase foreign governments, information damaging to the US government is unlikely to have much affect. As Alain of Lille said a long time ago, “money is all.â€
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/101130_who_attacking.htm
Top 10 Anti-Iranian Propaganda
Western News Outlets : Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbours or the U.S.
Fact : Iran has not launched an aggressive war in modern history (unlike the U.S. or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of “no first strike.” This is true of Supreme religious leader Khamenei as well as of Revolutionary Guards.
Western News Outlets : Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.
Fact : Iran’s military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.
Western News outlets: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to “wipe it off the map.”
Fact: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of ‘no first strike’ to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.
Western News Outlets: But didn’t President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to “wipe Israel off the map?”
Fact: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that “this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.
Western News Outlets : But aren’t Iranians Holocaust deniers?
Fact: Some are, some aren’t. (very much like in the west, otherwise we would not need laws threatening people with jail or fines for denial) Former president Mohammad Khatami has castigated Ahmadinejad for questioning the full extent of the Holocaust, which he called “the crime of Nazism.” Many educated Iranians in the regime are perfectly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. In any case, despite what propagandists imply, neither Holocaust denial (as wicked as that is) nor calling Israel names is the same thing as pledging to attack it militarily.
Western News Outlets: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.
Fact: Iran has a nuclear enrichment site at Natanz near Isfahan where it says it is trying to produce fuel for future civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity. All Iranian leaders deny that this site is for weapons production, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly inspected it and found no weapons program. Iran is not being completely transparent, generating some doubts, but all the evidence the IAEA and the CIA can gather points to there not being a weapons program. The 2007 NIE by 16 US Intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defences Intelligence Agency, assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program. This assessment was based on debriefings of defecting nuclear scientists, as well as on the documents they brought out, in addition to U.S. signals intelligence from Iran. While Germany, Israel and recently the U.K. intelligence is more suspicious of Iranian intentions, all of them were badly wrong about Iraq’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and Germany in particular was taken in by Curveball, a drunk Iraqi braggart.
Western News Outlets : The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.
Fact : Iran announced itself first to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had begun work on a second, civilian nuclear enrichment facility near Qom. There are no nuclear materials at the site and it has not gone hot, so technically Iran was not and is not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran has pledged to allow the site to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, and if it honors the pledge, as it largely has at the Natanz plant, then Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons at the site, since that would be detected by the inspectors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Sunday that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons at Natanz precisely because it is being inspected. Yet American hawks have repeatedly demanded a strike on Natanz.
Western News Outlets : The world should sanction Iran not only because of its nuclear enrichment research program but also because the current regime stole June’s presidential election and brutally repressed the subsequent demonstrations.
Facts : Iran’s reform movement is dead set against increased sanctions on Iran, which likely would not affect the regime, and would harm ordinary Iranians.
Western News Outlets : Isn’t the Iranian regime irrational and crazed, so that a doctrine of mutually assured destruction just would not work with them?
Fact : Iranian politicians are rational actors. If they were maniacs, why haven’t they invaded any of their neighbours? Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded both Iran and Kuwait. Israel invaded its neighbours more than once. In contrast, Iran has not started any wars. Demonizing people by calling them unbalanced is an old propaganda trick. The U.S. elite was once unalterably opposed to China having nuclear science because they believed the Chinese are intrinsically irrational. This kind of talk is a form of racism.
Western News Outlets : The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.
Fact : The centrifuge technology that Iran is using to enrich uranium is open-ended. In the old days, you could tell which countries might want a nuclear bomb by whether they were building light water reactors (unsuitable for bomb-making) or heavy-water reactors (could be used to make a bomb). But with centrifuges, once you can enrich to 5% to fuel a civilian reactor, you could theoretically feed the material back through many times and enrich to 90% for a bomb. However, as long as centrifuge plants are being actively inspected, they cannot be used to make a bomb. The two danger signals would be if Iran threw out the inspectors or if it found a way to create a secret facility. The latter task would be extremely difficult, however, as demonstrated by the CIA’s discovery of the Qom facility construction in 2006 from satellite photos. Nuclear installations, especially centrifuge ones, consume a great deal of water, construction materiel, and so forth, so that constructing one in secret is a tall order. In any case, you can’t attack and destroy a country because you have an intuition that they might be doing something illegal. You need some kind of proof. Moreover, Israel, Pakistan and India are all much worse citizens of the globe than Iran, since they refused to sign the NPT and then went for broke to get a bomb; and nothing at all has been done to any of them by the UNSC. (With Thanks to Juan Cole)
What are you people complaining about? I hope it’s true and Iran did take those fuckers out.
Voice of Tehran says:
December 28, 2010 at 7:22 am
“â€These pictures are from President Ahmadinejad’s trip to Karaj taken today:
http://www.irna.ir/Show.aspx?SD=0&NID=30156276&PID=840665
Painful aren’t they— for enemy of Iran
YEAR PLEA FOR http://www.RaceForIran.comâ€
Fiorangela says:
fascinating information on Mondoweiss:
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/12/u-s-has-lost-the-football.html
– Abbas has been practicing diplomacy with EU and Great Britain, in preparation for declaration in United Nations of an independent Palestinian state;
-Great Britain has upgraded its ambassador from Palestine
-Brazil is almost entire pro-Palestinian,
-key South American States have formed alliances one with another and with Cuba leans leftward, Palestinian-ward, and away from US influence:
São Paolo forum, a group established jointly by Lula and Cuba’s Fidel Castro in order to advance a “consensual unity of action†among Latin American countries. Founded in 1990, the Forum has exercised an inordinate influence on the current crop of leaders; most of those now in power are, in fact, Forum alumni. The views inculcated by its teachings, inherently anti-Western and essentially unsympathetic to Israel’s cause, make it all but inevitable that when it comes to a conflict between the dictates of traditional international law and sovereignty on the one hand, and the wishes of the Palestinians on the other, the latter will win the nod.
Can the US try a Hail Mary pass if it does not have the football?
Liz
Today is the anniversary of the defeat of the US government and its green allies and mercenaries in Iran.
http://alef.ir/1388/content/view/61666/