Why the United States invaded Iraq and is now thinking about invading Iran.

By Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar*

On April 28, the IAEA released its report on Iran. The IAEA reported that: "the Agency cannot make a judgment about, or reach a conclusion on, future compliance or intentions." The report came as no surprise to those who have been following the ongoing dispute between Iran, United States and the IAEA.

The United States, for quite some time now, has been accusing Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons and Iran has been insisting that its intentions are peaceful and that it is only interested in peaceful use of the nuclear energy. Iran, to allay the international community's fear, froze its enrichment program and started a series of negotiations with the U.K., Germany, and France. However, without the United States these negotiations were not going to produce any results, since it was only the United States that could address the Iranian's national security concerns.

Iranians seeing themselves surrounded by American forces wanted a security guarantee that United States would not invade Iran, something that United States was not prepared to give. So the negotiations with the European three failed and Iran resumed its enrichment program. Iran was threatened with Security Council and even invasion without any effect. Now once again there is talk of a Security Council resolution under article 7 and continuous threats of invasion. There have even been talks of tactical nuclear strike on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities.

All these events are reminiscent of the negotiations and threats preceding the invasion of Iraq. The unfolding events are so similar that it makes one wonder if the Iraq scenario is not being used as a template for Iran. And with what has come to light since the Iraq invasion, we have to assume that like Iraq, the decision to invade Iran has already been taken, and that the E.U. Three negotiations and the IAEA are being used to prepare the public for that event. There are already reports of increased U.S. provocations along Iranian borders such as flying unmanned surveillance flight over Iran, and the insertion of commandos into Iran for intelligence gathering and other activities. The talk of invasion is also accompanied by war games. For example on April 14, USA Today reported: "Amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran over the future of Iran's nuclear program, the Pentagon is planning a war game in July so officials can explore options for a crisis involving Iran." [1]

But this war game is not the first of its kind. According to William M. Arkin of the Washington Post, "In early 2003, even as U.S. forces were on the brink of war with Iraq, the Army had already begun conducting an analysis for a full-scale war with Iran. The analysis, called TIRANNT, for "theatre Iran near term," was coupled with a mock scenario for a Marine Corps invasion and a simulation of the Iranian missile force. U.S. and British planners conducted a Caspian Sea war game around the same time. And Bush directed the U.S. Strategic Command to draw up a global strike war plan for an attack against Iranian weapons of mass destruction. All of this will ultimately feed into a new war plan for "major combat operations" against Iran that military sources confirm now exists in draft form." [2]

But why did the United States attack Iraq and why is she so keen on attacking Iran now? We now know that from the beginning, this administration was looking for any excuse to invade Iraq. Washington has, over time, given a number of different reasons for invading Iraq: starting with Iraq's developing nuclear weapons, to war on terror, to spreading democracy in the Middle East. All these reasons have proven to be false. Iraq did not possess any Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD); and did not have any link to Al Qaeda. And instead of democracy, Iraqis have had to endure Abu Ghraib, car bombs, and shortage of basic services such as electricity, clean water, and health care. None of the ministries are functioning properly and in addition Iraq has to deal with half a million displaced people. There is also talk of a partitioning of Iraq. [3] On top of all this, one may affirm the Iraqis now face a possible bloody civil war.

After spending over 320 billion dollars for Iraq war (officially so far) and with no end in sight, why is this administration insisting in starting another catastrophic war in the Middle East?

There have been a number of theories put forward by various groups and individuals.

Crusade –some Muslims think that United States has started a crusade against Islam and is determined to vanquish any and all countries that stand in its way.
Oil Reserves -- There are other groups who think that with the oil reserves diminishing fast, United States is trying to corner all the reserves and supplies for itself, thereby ensuring its dominant future economic position in the world.
China –There are others who think that an invasion of Iraq and targeting of Iran is part a geo-political move by United States to block China's emergence as a world power by restricting its access to oil. We should also consider this argument.
Israel - Finally there are those that argue that the United States is doing the bidding of Israel and getting rid of those that may challenge Israel's hegemony in the Middle East in the future.

The answer probably contains some of all of the above.

Comparisons with currently developing countries.

I think that the NDCs were institutionally much less advanced in those times that the currently developing countries are at similar stages of development. To make this point, levels of development of then-developing NDCs need to be compared with today’s developing countries. Tabl e 3.7 compares the per capita incomes of the NDCs during the XIX and early XX centuries (in 1990 international dollars) with the 1992 incomes of today’s developing countries. In 15my opinion, this is only a very rough-and-ready comparison, given that there are well known problems with using income figures to measure a country’s level of development, especially when it involves using historical statistics over two centuries. However, the table does give a rough idea as to where the NDCs were they were developing, in relation to those of today’s developing countries.

The comparison shows that, in the 1820s, most of the NDCs were, broadly speaking, at a level of development somewhere between Bangladesh ( §720 per capita income) and Egypt ( §1, 927 per capita income) of today – such a group includes countries like Burma (Myannmar), Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, India and Pakistan. By 1875, most NDCs had moved beyond the Nigeria –India level of income, but even the richest ones (the UK, New Zealand and Australia) were at the level of today’s China ( §3, 098)or Peru ( §3,232). The rest including USA, Germany and France, were between today’s Pakistan ( §1,642) and Indonesia ( §2,749.

By 1913, the wealthiest NDCs (the UK, the USA, Australia and New Zeeland had reached the level of the richer of today’s developing countries (for example, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Thailand). However, the majority, from Finland to France and Austria, were still at the level of today’s middle income developing countries (such as the Philippines, Morocco, Indonesia, China and Peru)

Once that NDCs in earlier times had relatively low levels of institutional development compared to the countries that are at comparable levels of development today. For example, the UK in 1820 was at a somewhat higher level of development than India today, but it did not have many of even the most ‘basic’ institutions that exist in India, such as universal suffrage ( the UK did not at that point even have universal male suffrage) , a central bank, income tax, generalized limited liability, securities regulations.

Similarly, in 1875, Italy was at a level of development comparable to Pakistan today. However, it did not have universal male suffrage, a professional bureaucracy, even a remotely independent and professional judiciary, a central bank with a note issue monopoly or competition law – institutions that Pakistan has had for decades.

To give another example, the USA in 1913 was a level of development similar to that of Mexico today, yet its level of institutional development was well behind: women were still formally disenfranchised, as de facto were blacks and other ethnic minorities in many parts of the country. It had been just over a decade since a federal bankruptcy law had appeared (1898) and barely two decades since the country recognized foreigners’ copy rights in 1891. At this stage, moreover, the USA still had a highly -incomplete central banking system, while income tax had only just come into being (1913), and the establishment of a meaningful competition law had to wait until the Clayton Act of 1914. There was also no federal regulation on federal securities trading or on child labour, and what little state legislation existed in these areas was of low quality and very poorly enforced.

From these examples the conclusion is that in the early days of their economic development, the NDCs were operating with much less developed institutional today’s developing at comparable levels of development. Needless to say the level of institutional development in the NDCs fell well short of the even higher ‘ global standards ’ to which today’s developing countries are being told to conform.

A victory for the empire

The president declined to talk about negotiations with the FARC until he had met Lula, who has offered Brazil's territory to hold talks.

He rather referred to Venezuela’s entrance into Mercosur, accusing the United States of trying to impede it.

Michael Astor | The Associated Press

MANAUS, Brazil – The Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on Thursday accused the United States of standing in the way of closer ties between Latin American nations.

Chávez, a staunch critic of Washington, said that if Venezuela is denied entry to South America's Mercosur trade bloc that it would be "a victory for the empire," in allusion to the United States.

Chávez arrived in this Amazon city of 1 million people for a meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, where the two were to discuss issues from joint energy projects to peace negotiations in Colombia.

The two leaders are opponents of U.S. -backed efforts for a Free Trade Area of the Americas that would stretch from Canada to Chile. But Venezuela's bid to join Mercosur is encountering resistance from lawmakers in Brazil who must ratify the expansion.

Meanwhile, Silva may offer Brazilian territory as neutral ground to help Chávez mediate a prisoner exchange between the Colombian government and that country's 1leftist rebels, a spokesman for Silva said. But Chávez declined to talk about those negotiations until after he had met with Silva.

Chávez is attempting to negotiate an exchange of imprisoned Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrillas for rebel-held hostages, including three U.S. defense contractors and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian citizen.

Politics. Chávez, in Brazil, says United States opposes Latin American integration.

Upon arriving at the Hotel Tropical, Chávez played down problems with Venezuela's complying with Mercosur's tariff norms that has kept the customs union from ratifying the country's full membership.

So far, Argentina and Uruguay have ratified Venezuela's entry in the group while Brazil and Paraguay have not.

Chávez said Venezuela wanted to share its immense reserves of crude oil and natural gas with Brazil and other countries in the region because " the world was entering an energy crisis" and that Brazil only had enough natural gas reserves to last 10 more years.

Silva and Chávez were to discuss a proposed natural gas pipeline spanning South America. and the Bank of the South, a development bank Chávez envisions as a home-grown alternative to U.S.-based lenders such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

President Rafael Correa planned to join the talks Thursday evening. |||

A moving forward to Integration

INTEGRATION. Presidents agree to create two Brazilian-Venezuelan joint ventures and to assign the pipeline’s construction.


A moving forward to integration.

One of the two joint ventures created will operate a crude oil field in Venezuela and the other one a refinery in Brazil.

Michael Astor | AP

MANAUS –Brazil and Venezuela agreed to forge ahead with two joint ventures between their state-run oil companies and a natural gas pipeline that would stretch across the Amazon rainforest.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez on Thursday signed a series of accords to speed the projects that had been agreed upon earlier but had gotten bogged down in bureaucracy. "With these partnerships we are showing that South America can resolve its energy problems," Silva said.

Outlining the joint ventures between state oil companies, Chávez said one company would operate Carabobo I, an extra-heavy oil field in Venezuela's Orinoco Basin. Petróleos de Venezuela SA, PDVSA, will provide 60 percent of the capital for the Carabobo project, with the remainder coming from Petróleo Brasileiro SA, Petrobras.

Lula expressed his commitment to pursuit the approval of Venezuela's entrance into Mercosur. Another company would operate an oil refinery in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco with 60 percent of the capital coming from Petrobras and 40 percent from PDVSA.

In December 2005, Silva and Chávez laid the refinery's cornerstone but cooperation between the two companies stalled and Petrobras recently began talking about building it without Venezuelan help.

Chávez called the projects " the nerve of (South American) integration," adding that they would " shield (Silva) from an energy crisis." Silva also said they would soon select a company to develop a project for a natural gas pipeline from Venezuela to Brazil's northeast.

He expressed his willingness to work in order to assure that Brazil's congress would ratify Venezuela as a full member of the Southern Cone Common Market, or Mercosur.

"With these partnerships we are showing that South America can resolve its energy problems."

The two leaders are opponents of U.S.-backed efforts for a Free Trade Area of the Americas. But Venezuela's bid to join Mercosur is encountering resistance from lawmakers in Brazil who must ratify the expansion. So far, Argentina and Uruguay have ratified Venezuela's entry in the group while Brazil and Paraguay have not.

Foreign visitors are to be fingerprinted.

WASHINGTON – Foreign visitors arriving at U.S. airports or seaports beginning Jan. 1, 2004, will have their travel documents scanned, fingerprints and photos taken and identification checked against terrorist watch-lists.

Homeland Security undersecretary Asa Hutchinson released details on Monday of the department’s new U.S. Visitor and Immigration Status Indication Technology, or U.S. VISIT, that will check the comings and goings of certain foreign travelers. The checks will apply to people who arrive in this country carrying visas, which last year was about 60 percent or 23 million of the foreign visitors, said Hutchinson, who oversees Border and Transportation Security.

“In 99.9 percent of the cases, the visitor will simply be wished a good day or sent on their way,” Hutchinson said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. “But with that small percentage of hits, our country will be made much safer and our immigration system will be given a foundation of integrity that has been lacking for too long.”

Also as part of the program, Hutchinson said the department has created an Office of Compliance that will analyze all the information collected from visitors and refer any requiring follow up to investigators.

(Taken from the Daily Journal)

The Iran option that isn't on the table

By Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh
Thursday, February 8, 2007.


As Iran crosses successive nuclear demarcations and mischievously intervenes in Iraq, the question of how to address the Islamic republic is once more preoccupying Washington. Economic sanctions, international ostracism, military strikes and even support for hopeless exiles are all contemplated with vigor and seriousness. One option, however, is rarely assessed: engagement as a means of achieving a more pluralistic and responsible government in Tehran.

The all-encompassing nuclear debate comes as Iran's political landscape is changing once again. As America became reconciled to a monolithic Iran, represented by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his brand of rambunctious politics, the results from December's local elections suggest Iranians were doing otherwise. Ahmadinejad's defiant rhetoric and populist posturing did not impress the Iranians who turned out in large numbers to elect city councils and members of the Assembly of Experts. Voters favored pragmatic conservatives and reformers who oppose their president's policies abroad and his economic programs at home. Despite this show of dissent, though, it would be a mistake to assume that Iran's regime is about to fall or that a democratic spring is looming.

Iran has long appeared ready for democracy. It has a literate, youthful population that is immersed in world culture, is at home on the internet, is keen to engage the West and is above the anti-American anger that dominates the Arab street. No other Middle Eastern country has as much civic activism or a population that has voted as often in elections at various levels. But positive social and cultural indices have so far not translated into a political opening. Iranian society may be ready to embrace democracy, but Iranian politics is not ready to accommodate it.

Iran does not have an organized pro-democracy movement. The reformers who were swept to power in 1997 never coalesced around a coherent platform, nor did they produce a political party. Their movement inspired activism and student protests, and it changed the style and language of politics, but its lack of organization ultimately cost it the presidency in 2005. Reformism was popular but politically ineffective.

The clerical regime has also proved to be enterprising in facing demands for reform, particularly by using elections to manage opposition within the bounds of the Islamic republic. Economic isolation, supported by international sanctions, has kept the private sector weak, which has in turn denied supporters of change levers they could use to pry open the regime. The public sector accounts for more than 80 percent of the Iranian economy, and the constitution gives the clerical leadership most of the power. The problem facing democracy is not so much the state's theocratic nature as it is the enormous domination it enjoys over the economy, society and politics. For democracy to succeed, the state's domination of the economy and society must be reduced.

For too long, Washington has thought that a policy of coercion and sanctions applied to Iran would eventually yield a responsible and representative regime. Events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe suggest that containment eventually generates sufficient pressure to force autocratic elites to accommodate both international mandates and the aspirations of their restless constituents. Ironically, though, U.S. policy has buttressed the Iranian regime, which has justified its monopoly of power as a means of fending off external enemies and managing an economy under international duress.

More than sanctions or threats of military retribution, Iran's integration into the global economy would impose standards and discipline on the recalcitrant theocracy. International investors and institutions such as the World Trade Organization are far more subversive, as they would demand the prerequisites of a democratic society -transparency, the rule of law and decentralization- as a price for their commerce.

Paradoxically, to liberalize the theocratic state, the United States would do better to shelve its containment strategy and embark on a policy of unconditional dialogue and sanctions relief. A reduced American threat would deprive the hard-liners of the conflict they need to justify their concentration of power. In the meantime, as Iran became assimilated into the global economy, the regime's influence would inevitably yield to the private sector, with its demands for accountability and reform.

It is important to appreciate that Iran has a political system without precedent or parallel in modern history. The struggle there is not just between reactionaries and reformers, conservatives and. liberals, but fundamentally between the state and society. A subtle means of diminishing the state and empowering the society is, in the end, the best manner of promoting not only democracy but also nuclear disarmament.

Glossary

Argument:   It has to do with the author’s intention in a paragraph, it is his reason and it is beyond what is merely and explicitly said.

Elimination:   It is a technique to get a specific argument in a paragraph. By applying this technique, you can omit unnecessary and irrelevant information to get to the essence of a text.

Substitution:  It is a technique that allows you to paraphrase and reformulate a specific argument suggested in every paragraph. This technique as well as the elimination one is also used when getting the overall argument or central theme.

Key words:  It is a technique used to concentrate on the most important information in a text, given through the form of content words or linguistic words that convey meaning. By adopting this technique, you necessarily obtain the specific argument and it also contributes to get the central theme or argument of the whole text.

Central Theme:  Once specific arguments have been obtained, you elaborate on one single statement the overall argument shown in a recurrent way and that represents the whole core of the text. There are 3 simple strategies to get it: the communicative function of the text, the discourse organizer and that recurrent argument that encapsulates the whole problem or thesis in the text.

Communicative Function:  It has to do with the author’s explicit intention in conveying his meaning. An author may expose, argue, compare, contrast, point out causes and effects and so forth arguments or reasons in the kinds of text we are dealing with in this book.

Controlling idea:  It is a sentence or a group of sentences below the title that lead you to start searching for the main idea in this type of texts. This sentence (or these sentences) is (or are) out of the text. It may consist of one, two or three sentences joined by punctuation mark. It can also take the form of questions. It is also referred to as the title of the first level. It can give light about the main communicative function of the text.

Main Idea:  It is a single one sentence inside the text that contains the core being treated in the text. It is obtained by following certain strategies. 

Main Secondary Idea: It is a single sentence that generally follows the MI and its function is to complete, support, clarify, add, confirm and so on the previous MI.

Secondary Secondary Idea:  It is a sentence inside the text that, at a deeper level, shows the author’s presence, intention or reflection about the MI of the text. It can appear before the MI, after; in the middle of a text. Its function is a kind of ‘breaking the line of thought’ or argumentation regarding a specific problem. There are some sentences that appear below a picture, at the bottom of the article as if they were different (subtitles of second and/or third level).

Linguistic Deviations (or Semantic deviations):  These are the words present in the main idea inside the text that are different from the ones announced in the controlling idea or title. These words appear as deviations or distractors to confuse you in finding the MI. Actually, they do complete its meaning. When the MI inside the text is the same controlling idea below the title, i.e. every single word is the same as it were taken identically out of the text, then, we say there are no linguistic deviations.

Synonyms:  A strategy used to search for the MI in the text taking as a point of departure the CI. You look for the similar words that express the same meaning.

Antonyms:  A strategy used to search for the MI in the text taking as a point of departure the CI. You look for completely distinct and different words that express just the right opposite meaning.

Context: Here, it refers to both linguistic and the socio-cultural situation.