Iran and US
From: David Silver
Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2006 11:55 AM
Subject: Iran and US
The interlocked network of wealthy families and high-level executives who own and manage large income-producing properties in the US comprise a ruling class that dominates US political life, shaping public policy through its structural economic power and control of the two major political parties, the principal positions in the White House, State Department, Pentagon and Treasury, public policy foundations, think-tanks, and public relations organizations, including the mass media.
There are many reasons why the US ruling class would like to replace the current economic nationalist government in Tehran with one under US influence.
1. The favored policy of forcing a change in regime by imposing US sanctions has failed, because the governments and the wealthy families and high-level executives of many other countries have recognized that by not signing on to the US program, they are in a position to take advantage of profit-making opportunities free from US competition. By moving in when the US moves out, their bottom lines are fattened. At the same time, the US sanctions regime is undermined. Instead of the US oil industry investing in the Azadegan petroleum fields, the Japanese corporation Inpex is. Instead of a consortium of US firms building Iran’s civilian nuclear industry, Russian companies are.
2. Iran has the second largest petroleum reserves of any OPEC country. Only Russia has more natural gas. (Washington Post, April 20, 2006.) A new regime under US control would open these reserves to exploitation on terms favorable to the US oil industry and to that of whatever other country joined a US coalition of the willing.
3. A puppet government under Washington’s thumb would abrogate Tehran’s restrictions on foreign investment in oil and gas, transport, telecommunications, industry, banking and finance. It would also sweep away Article 44 of Iran's constitution, which mandates state ownership of power generation, postal services, telecommunications, and other large-scale industries. Iran would be transformed from what the Coors family-backed Heritage Foundation describes as “anti-foreign investment,” into a country which zealously panders to US corporations.
4. A US-backed successor government would eliminate tariff and other barriers to trade, expanding export opportunities for US corporations.
5. The growing network of anti-imperialist states, which includes Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Bolivia, would lose one of its members and would therefore be weakened.
6. A message would be sent to other countries that pursuing or contemplating economic nationalist or genuinely socialist policies will be met by the intervention of the military or intelligence services of the United States.
Tehran’s nuclear program is not the reason Washington seeks to oust the current government. It is, instead, both a potential impediment to a future military intervention, and a pretext for military intervention.
The goal of opening Iran’s doors to unfettered investment by US corporations can only be achieved by replacing the current economically nationalist government, hostile to the US, with a “reformist, pro-Western” government, i.e., one willing to sacrifice the country’s economic development to the interests of Wall Street. This cannot be achieved simply by arriving at a narrow settlement with Tehran, in which the Islamic republic agrees to relinquish its right to enrich uranium. Instead, the government must be overthrown, in the manner of a color revolution, or by force. This is why Washington refuses to grant security guarantees.
To build public support for regime change, the public relations apparatus of the US ruling class has been pressed into service to demonize Iran’s current president, and the program has followed the well-worn path of depicting the leaders of target regimes as new Hitlers. PR firms, financed and directed by the same ruling class that has an interest in regime change, cobble together ridiculous stories to be broadcast by the mass media. One story, entirely apocryphal, claimed the Ahmadinejad government had prepared legislation along the lines of the Nazi’s Nuremberg laws. The story, accompanied by an arresting photograph of a Jewish businessman wearing a yellow star, culled from an historical archive on Nazi Germany, ran on the front page of Canada’s The National Post. Other media outlets cast all restraint aside, stooping to absurd levels of hyperbole, to calumniate the Iranian president as an anti-Semitic fanatic intent on annihilating Israel by launching a barrage of nuclear missiles. While this carries on the practice, in the extreme, of discrediting opposition to the expulsion of Palestinians and the denial of their right of return by smearing opponents as vicious anti-Semites, it also serves to invest agitation for war against Iran with a certain anti-racist, progressive flavor, allowing the soft left to rationalize its backing of imperialism as inspired by hatred of racism and the misogynistic practices of conservative Islam. It also creates an air of intimidation, discouraging anyone from daring to speaking favorably of Ahmadinejad for fear they’ll be accused of acting as an apologist for whatever heinous crimes he stands accused of at the moment. Those with courage will say, without equivocation, that Ahmadinejad’s championing of economic justice at home and political justice for Palestinians is admirable and that Iran’s struggle against foreign intimidation is progressive in its anti-imperialism and deserves our unqualified support. US-engineered regime change in favor of a pro-imperialist government in Tehran is neither in the interest of Iranians nor of the ordinary people of the countries whose governments seek this outcome.
Informant: jensenmk
From ufpj-news
Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2006 11:55 AM
Subject: Iran and US
The interlocked network of wealthy families and high-level executives who own and manage large income-producing properties in the US comprise a ruling class that dominates US political life, shaping public policy through its structural economic power and control of the two major political parties, the principal positions in the White House, State Department, Pentagon and Treasury, public policy foundations, think-tanks, and public relations organizations, including the mass media.
There are many reasons why the US ruling class would like to replace the current economic nationalist government in Tehran with one under US influence.
1. The favored policy of forcing a change in regime by imposing US sanctions has failed, because the governments and the wealthy families and high-level executives of many other countries have recognized that by not signing on to the US program, they are in a position to take advantage of profit-making opportunities free from US competition. By moving in when the US moves out, their bottom lines are fattened. At the same time, the US sanctions regime is undermined. Instead of the US oil industry investing in the Azadegan petroleum fields, the Japanese corporation Inpex is. Instead of a consortium of US firms building Iran’s civilian nuclear industry, Russian companies are.
2. Iran has the second largest petroleum reserves of any OPEC country. Only Russia has more natural gas. (Washington Post, April 20, 2006.) A new regime under US control would open these reserves to exploitation on terms favorable to the US oil industry and to that of whatever other country joined a US coalition of the willing.
3. A puppet government under Washington’s thumb would abrogate Tehran’s restrictions on foreign investment in oil and gas, transport, telecommunications, industry, banking and finance. It would also sweep away Article 44 of Iran's constitution, which mandates state ownership of power generation, postal services, telecommunications, and other large-scale industries. Iran would be transformed from what the Coors family-backed Heritage Foundation describes as “anti-foreign investment,” into a country which zealously panders to US corporations.
4. A US-backed successor government would eliminate tariff and other barriers to trade, expanding export opportunities for US corporations.
5. The growing network of anti-imperialist states, which includes Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Bolivia, would lose one of its members and would therefore be weakened.
6. A message would be sent to other countries that pursuing or contemplating economic nationalist or genuinely socialist policies will be met by the intervention of the military or intelligence services of the United States.
Tehran’s nuclear program is not the reason Washington seeks to oust the current government. It is, instead, both a potential impediment to a future military intervention, and a pretext for military intervention.
The goal of opening Iran’s doors to unfettered investment by US corporations can only be achieved by replacing the current economically nationalist government, hostile to the US, with a “reformist, pro-Western” government, i.e., one willing to sacrifice the country’s economic development to the interests of Wall Street. This cannot be achieved simply by arriving at a narrow settlement with Tehran, in which the Islamic republic agrees to relinquish its right to enrich uranium. Instead, the government must be overthrown, in the manner of a color revolution, or by force. This is why Washington refuses to grant security guarantees.
To build public support for regime change, the public relations apparatus of the US ruling class has been pressed into service to demonize Iran’s current president, and the program has followed the well-worn path of depicting the leaders of target regimes as new Hitlers. PR firms, financed and directed by the same ruling class that has an interest in regime change, cobble together ridiculous stories to be broadcast by the mass media. One story, entirely apocryphal, claimed the Ahmadinejad government had prepared legislation along the lines of the Nazi’s Nuremberg laws. The story, accompanied by an arresting photograph of a Jewish businessman wearing a yellow star, culled from an historical archive on Nazi Germany, ran on the front page of Canada’s The National Post. Other media outlets cast all restraint aside, stooping to absurd levels of hyperbole, to calumniate the Iranian president as an anti-Semitic fanatic intent on annihilating Israel by launching a barrage of nuclear missiles. While this carries on the practice, in the extreme, of discrediting opposition to the expulsion of Palestinians and the denial of their right of return by smearing opponents as vicious anti-Semites, it also serves to invest agitation for war against Iran with a certain anti-racist, progressive flavor, allowing the soft left to rationalize its backing of imperialism as inspired by hatred of racism and the misogynistic practices of conservative Islam. It also creates an air of intimidation, discouraging anyone from daring to speaking favorably of Ahmadinejad for fear they’ll be accused of acting as an apologist for whatever heinous crimes he stands accused of at the moment. Those with courage will say, without equivocation, that Ahmadinejad’s championing of economic justice at home and political justice for Palestinians is admirable and that Iran’s struggle against foreign intimidation is progressive in its anti-imperialism and deserves our unqualified support. US-engineered regime change in favor of a pro-imperialist government in Tehran is neither in the interest of Iranians nor of the ordinary people of the countries whose governments seek this outcome.
Informant: jensenmk
From ufpj-news
rudkla - 18. Jun, 18:22
