On Iran (and Iraq)

I just can't seem to get excited about this whole Iran Nukes thing.

I mean, for starters, I can't believe that the USA would be so stupid as to invade Iran right now. Not when they are still bogged down in Iraq, not while Afghanistan is sliding back to Medieval status, not with their over-stretched military's morale sinking and their massive twin deficits rising.

Of course, that won't stop the Bush regime from agitating for war. Guys like Cheney and Rumsfeld are mad enough and desperate enough to attack anyone, anywhere, whatever the stated rationale. And of course Karl Rove and many other GOP big-wigs would welcome any opportunity to change the subject from their ballooning corruption scandals. They might even figure a new war would sell well in the 2006 mid-term elections, where they otherwise look in serious danger. And Bush himself will continue to do whatever the little voices in his head tell him.

But would the people of the USA really support such an attack, however it might be packaged on FOX/CNN? While I may be a little out of touch here in faraway Australia, I just cannot believe it. The only way, it seems to me, would be if the Bush cabal can sell Iran as an immediate threat, not just to Israel but to the mainland USA. And given that Iran is still years away from getting nukes, how are they going to do that? And then you have the big problem of the Bush cabal's credibility if they cry wolf again...

Ironically, in this case, Iran actually does have some capacity to develop WMDs, which is why the rest of the UN Security Council is getting all worked up. But at this stage they are only talking sanctions. The nuclear club is a pretty closed-door group, they don't like new members crashing the party, but when it happens (India, Pakistan) they tend to put on their best smiles and bring a new seat to the table.

Sure, Iran's leaders are a wierd mob. And true, there is a fair bit of instablity in the country, with Islamists and modernists jostling for power (the modernists, you may have noticed, have been disastrously hampered by the PR debacle of Bush's illegal, immoral and indefensible Iraq War). But even if Iran does get nukes, so what? Really, so what?

In today's world, nukes are basically just a detterent, and a very powerful one at that. The Iranians would be mad to use nukes against Israel or any other countries in the region. It would be suicide to attack the USA or any other nuclear power. Click the URL above for more arguements, if you need them.

I say: if Iran wants nukes, let them have them.

I might think differently if the West had a different, less hypocritical attitude to our own nuclear armoury. But in a world where we refuse to dismantle our own nukes, aggressively threaten other countries and even invade them on false pretexts, why on earth should such other countries not do everything they can to protect their own people?

To my mind, this whole Iran Nukes story is really just a big flap, an exercise in media control, and an attempt to change the subject from far more serious issues like the collapse of US Democracy and the steady slide of the globalized economy towards corporate-controlled Fascism.

It's a big flap, a big squawking distraction from the real issues, and guess what? It's working. I mean, here I am talking about Iran instead of Bush, right?

PS: Cheney's efforts to enlist MidEast support for an attack on Iran have already failed.

UPDATE: Juan Cole suggests Cheney is also asking MidEast leaders to send troops to Iraq, covering for the US pull-back (let's not call it a pullout when there will still be massive US bases and a US puppet government), plus seeking support for the new Iraqi government, due once results of the December 15 elections are announced...

Iraqi politicians have repeatedly said that they might accept troops from other Muslim countries, but not from any direct neighbors. Egypt might therefore in principle be acceptable to them. The problem is that the government of Iraq is dominated by Shiites and Kurds, who are fighting Sunni Arabs. The Egyptians are Sunni Arabs, and will be suspected in Baghdad of sympathizing with the guerrilla movement...

The wording of the Al-Zaman article suggests that Cheney is angling with Mubarak for a contingency plan, in case things go very badly indeed when the US withdraws its troops. In other words, the Bush administration is going on hands and knees to Cairo because it is very, very desperate and very, very worried...

If the Kurds and the Shiites could be talked into it, a US withdrawal from Iraq in favor of an Arab League peace-keeping force might be the least bad end game for a terrifyingly unstable situation.