Chairman: Today we have a very important programme at this crucial juncture I think in human history and endeavour. It is the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. We are at a very prominent juncture in human history. As you all know things are really being fermented by the powers that have tired to disable this particular revolution in its embryonic state and also in its infancy. It is the same powers who have continuously tried to emasculate, contain and also to finish off the revolution if you like.
I can’t use any other word than that. I remember Mr Owen who used to be our foreign secretary at the time of the revolution said it would finish in two weeks. Two weeks have turned into 33 years. So people will make those silly comments supposedly, educated, enlightened, knowledgeable people.
What has also changed dramatically in the last twelve months, as we are nearing the anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran and also one year since the wretched ruler of Egypt also disappeared from the scene although be it that he is still living in a sumptuous palace somewhere in Sharm El Sheikh. Nonetheless he is no longer there.
A huge change has occurred. It requires a lot of attention, a lot of analysis, a lot of understanding. I can’t add anything to what Ayatolleh Khameini said in his speech on Friday that regarding the nuclear issue. All these problems that have been created by America and the West are really problems for them.
The whole of the speech was very good but made a very useful point concerning Bahrain. He said quite clearly that if Iran was interfering in Bahrain it would be a totally different picture now. All this lie that Bahrain is being subjugated by Iranian has been exposed. He also said very clearly that if Iran gets involved anywhere it says so clearly. No activity that Iran does is covert activity. All is very clear, open and transparent.
The economic crisis is hitting the capitalist system in a profound way and no one has really thought of an alternative system to what may be called corruptocracy – the corruption of the whole system be it academics, politicians, business people or the banking fraternity. The whole system can be defined as corruptocarcy. That is perhaps a new word we can go away with from here.
Chris Bambery: I want to start by making the obvious point that the United States has not had the revenge it wants for what happened in 1979. The United States if it has not had its revenge will get its revenge even if it has to wait a long time.
The Iranian revolution in 1979 was a humiliation for America. The shah was a crucial ally of the United States even more than Mubarak in many ways. Tehran was the headquarters of the CIA in the region. The revolution was a humiliation. And what happened
next with the occupation of the embassy still seems an even greater humiliation. The Americans will wait and wait but they will still attempt to get revenge.
On the question of Iran’s nuclear programme. Our starting point has to be who are the people who are attacking Iran over the question of its nuclear programme. And they are of course, the United States, Britain and France in the forefront. All three of them have nuclear arsenals. The United States has a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the world many times. It used these weapons in 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki despite the fact that it knew that the Japanese government was suing for peace. It used those weapons as a demonstration of American power in relation to the former Soviet Union.
Britain and France are both nuclear and they provided the means by which another nuclear power, with is very loathe in its denunciation of Iran acquired those weapons. That is of course Israel. Britain and France had a secret programme in the 1950s which provided Israel with the capability of creating its nuclear arsenal. To this day Israel does not admit to the existence of nuclear weapons yet we know it has a nuclear arsenal. It does not sign up to any international treaties unlike Iran and it does not allow international inspectors unlike Iran.
And yet we know that Israel is prepared to use those weapons if push comes to shove and it is faced with a war inside that region.
There is something else to add. Who was it that encouraged Iran to develop a nuclear programme. And the answer comes from a former British minister, the Minister for Energy Tony Benn who recalls that in 1976 he visited Iran at the behest of the British government to visit the shah in his palace in Tehran about the shah’s plan to develop Iran’s nuclear programme which was far greater (as Benn points out) then anything Britain had at the time.
Benn goes on to say that he was concerned about the question of nuclear proliferation and that the regime of the Shah may use that programme to develop nuclear weapons. This was dismissed by the British Prime Minister then James Calihan who argued Britain should get in their quick to provide the shah with a means to develop his nuclear programme before France and Germany did. Benn also notes that when it comes to the United States Iran developing such a huge nuclear capacity caused no problem for the Americans. At that time the shah was America’s key ally in the region.
In 1976 it was okay for Iran to have a nuclear programme. What has changed in the intervening period? The answer of course is the shah has gone and there is another government so the Americans changed their opinion in terms of that.
We should be aware that we have two things going on in relationship to Iran at the moment. The first is the imposition of quite severe sanctions on Iran which I believe are designed to beggar Iran’s economy, particularly the oil trade. And anyone who has seen how sanctions were used in former Yugoslavia and Iraq must know that sanctions were used to essentially prepare for the invasion of 2003 by destroying that country’s economy and its ability.
Whatever we think of the regime at the time we have to understand how sanctions were used in order to prepare for an invasion. I am sure in Iran people are aware of how sanctions have been used in this way.
Secondly we are also involved in a major, major campaign aimed to prepare the peoples of Western Europe and North America for a war. I can’t believe there is anything else in view of the scale of this propaganda offensive which is going on now. This campaign is also washed down with a large amount of Islamophobia. This was been a keen feature of the last decade with the so-called war on terror. Islamphobia has never been far away from any of the Western dialogue about Iran.
To just give you a whiff of this. You would not know from reading the British and American media that just last week an IAEA mission returned from Iran saying that it had a good trip. On 6th February Iran’s foreign minister reported that the trip was satisfactory,
important steps were taken to settle the differences, the talks would continue and indeed inspectors were returning later this month. You would not know that I would argue from the current media in Britain and the United States. You would certainly no know that a report published in November by the IAEA which claimed that Iran was developing nuclear weapons did not have a shred of evidence to prove that. And of course the assurances by the leadership of Iran on a whole number of occasions that they have no nuclear weapons have simply been dismissed as lies.
Again the government and the supreme leaders of Iran are treated in a way in which no other government in the world is treated, their word is simply not taken. But we should just look at a snapshot if you may, about what has been said about Iran.
The US Defence Secretary William Panetta went on record on 29th January this year saying that the consensus is that if the [Iran] decided to do it it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then another one to two years to put in on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon.
I will come back to the argument. You would expect The Wall Street Journal to provide an unbiased commentary for its readers. Here we have a columnist writing on 18th January 2012: “America will face a potential launch from Iranian territory. Iran can sea launch from off our coast. It has itself sea launched from a barge in the Caspian. If 110 metric tonnes of cocaine were smuggled from South America into American without interdiction we cannot dismiss the possibility of Iranian nuclear charges of 500 pounds ending up in Pennsylvania or Manhattan Avenue”.
I would just say that you might think that the barge in the Caspian sea would be noted as it went from the Caspian Sea overland to the Black Sea through the Mediterranean to the Atlantic through the East Coast of America. This is in the Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal also reported on 3rd February under the headline US fears Iran’s links to Al Qaeda that US officials believe Iran recently new freedom to as many as five top Al Qaeda operatives who had been under house arrest. The men were part of Al Qaeda’s so-called management council, a group that includes members of the inner circle of Osbama Bin Laden
Later in the report it did interview an unnamed US official pointing out that there is no significant information to suggest a working relationship between Iran and Al Qaeda. That is missing from the headline. Anyone would know that there is no love lost between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Al Qaeda for obvious reasons.
On 4th February the Daily Star had a headline: Britain in range of Iran missile. The first sentence in the article said “rogue state Iran is building a missile with a 6200 mile range capable of hitting both Britain and the US”. I could go on.
Rick Santorum who won three primaries last night in America on 3rd February told an audience in Missouri once they have nuclear weapons let me assure you you will not be safe even here in Missouri. These are folks who have been at war with us since 1979, so this is a country that has killed more troops in Afghanistan and Iraq than the Iraqis and the Afghans.
His belief for this is that it is the Iranians who are supplying road side bombs which are killing people in both countries although the insurgents have the capabilities to develop bombs they did not need Iran.
The US conservative website family security matters reports on 7th February 2012 that Iran is closely aligning itself with Venezuela where it could peddle its nuclear and missile technologies.
Now we have the prospect that Iran is going to put missiles into Venezuela targeting the United States. All of this is fantasy. It is being built up I believe to prepare people for a war and it has huge echoes of what took place to the build up of the 2003 invasion. The headline in that British newspaper which says that Iraq has a missile capable of hitting Britain
recalls that idea that Iraq in 2003 we were told had weapons of mass destruction which could target Britain. It was a lie, it was admitted it was a lie but it did fantastic damage and resulted in Britain becoming involved in the Iraq war.
Let us go to more serious analysis. This is by a global US intelligence company Startfor. It is no friend of Iran. It has close links to the American military establishment. Its job is to produce accurate reportage of what is happening.
Writing on 24th January its founder, George Freedman, argued :”We have said for several years we do not see Iran as being close to having a nuclear weapon. They may be close to being able to test a crude nuclear device under controlled circumstances and we don’t this either but the development of deliverable nuclear weapons posses major challenges for Iran”.
He has half accepted that Iran has a programme to build nuclear weapons but he is discounting it. Moreover while the Iranians may aspire to have a nuclear deterrent we do not believe the Iranians see nuclear weapons as militarily useful. A few such weapons could devastate Israel but Iran would be annihilated in retaliation. While the Iranians talk aggressively historically they have acted cautiously. For Iran nuclear weapons are far more valuable as a notional threat and a bargaining chip and therefore something not to be deployed.
He also points out that Iran should develop ballistic missiles because of its experience in the Iran-Iraq war when they were the most effective weapons which could be used against the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Friedman says the real concern for the United States is not nuclear missiles because it does not believe Iran is actually developing nuclear weapons. It is what he calls the growing Iranian sphere of influence which extends from Lebanon and Gaza in the West to Afghanistan in the east, Turkey and Syria and Iraq.
We can discuss later why Iran might have that influence . Could it be because it has supported Hezbollah and Hamas, it supported democratic rule in Iraq and it has been involved in Afghanistan making its alliances.
The challenge to Iran is a challenge to Israel and there is the famous misquote of Mahmud Ahmedinjad saying that he wants to destroy Israel. The people who are probably most concerned about Iran’s regional power are probably Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia is goading the Americans to take action over this. We have seen that it has been eluded to in Bahrain. Saudi Arabia is not prepared to see Iranian hegemony over the Persian Gulf or of the region.
Iran has answered the message that was delivered verbally by Hilary Clinton offering talks. It has said it is prepared to talk on many occasions but it has not had a response. And we should remember that Iran offered George W Bush talks on the nuclear programme for some eight years but Bush refused to accept talks or even answer unless Iran scarped its whole nuclear programme.
I am someone who does not agree with nuclear weapons or nuclear power. I would prefer it if no country had nuclear weapons and I would prefer it if there was no nuclear power neither. However you cannot Britain, France, Israel and the United States lecturing Iran given their historic record around the world and the nuclear arsenals they have. This is hypocrisy.
Some of the lies which are being told about the nuclear programme are worth going through. Iran has not been an aggressive power for 500 years. It has not invaded any of its neighbouring countries. On the contrary it has been attacked by Iraq at the behest of the Americans and with the support of the Americans. It is subject to a campaign of attacks on it which the Americans have funded with millions of dollars. We know about the killings of the
nuclear scientists and we can only guess who carried them out. Iran is not an aggressive power it has been the victims of aggression.
The Americans could have chosen to make a rapprochement with Iran. We should recall that the Iranians essentially did this in the 1990 when they chose to make friendship with Russia rather than supporting the rebels in Chechnya.
In 2003 the Iranians were prepared to give the Americans the benefit of the doubt over the question of the invasion of Afghanistan. The Americans gave no recognition of this and continued to treat Iran as part of the so-called axis of evil and continue to lump them together with Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The claim that Iran is developing nuclear weapons has been repeatedly answered. Iran is developing a ballistic nuclear programme. I quote the Observer which noted that an expert at the US Rand Corporation :”Based on their experience in the Iran-Iraq war during which exchanges of ballistic missiles caused modest destruction yet had a great impact on civilian morale, the Iranians remained convinced these are the most reliable means of attacking deep targets.”
Now again this is based on Iran’s own tragic recent history. America is insisting Iran is enriching uranium with no justification. This is not the case. It is building nuclear reactors. It should recall that at time of the overthrow of the Shah by the chief enrichment consortium which had signed up to deliver fuel for a nuclear programme, Uredep of France, refused to deliver even one gram of fuel to Iran, despite a contact being signed and despite Iran owning ten percent of the company.
It is certainly true that Iran concealed its nuclear programme until 2002 but since then they have taken significant measures to put in international scrutiny. It has agreed to safeguards in return for a comprehensive agreement in respect of its basic right to enrich uranium for peaceful use. It has made offers to have open access to its programme as long as it is allowed to continue.
It is entitled under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and the current safeguard agreements contain nothing that bars Iran from enriching uranium.
Iran’s nuclear programme predates the Islamic Revolution. If it was okay then, why not now. This ignores the role of Israel.
I believe we are seeing a very dangerous situation developing. I am personally quite pessimistic about what is developing in 2012. There are currently some 9,000 military personnel in Israel testing the so-called defence shield in Israel, there are some 15,000 American troops in the Persian Gulf, there are two aircraft carriers stationed there with another one coming. Any look at a map which is available online shows that Iran, far from being a threatening power it is virtually encircled by American bases like the one in Qatar which has the ability to be expanded very quickly.
The military build-up we are seeing in the Persian Gulf is I believe very dangerous. You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to recall that the Vietnam War started with the Tolkin incident when an American ship supposedly came under attack. This was then used by the Johnson administration to justify the build-up. This was a fabrication.
When you have such a build up of American and to a lesser extent French and British forces you do not have to be conspiracy theorist to realise that something can happen which can be seized on to justify an attack.
You don’t have to be paranoid if you are an Iranian to recall some of the things which have happened. For example in 1998 a US war ship shot down an Iranian airliner with 288 people on board. When you have a build-up like this I believe it is very dangerous.
And of course we have deep hypocrisy from the West on different levels. We have talked about human rights in some countries but not Bahrain where the West is continuing to
sell weapons. Or Yemen. And the reason for this is clear. Bahrain and Yemen are crucial to Saudi Arabia and the West is not going to say anything about this. I am no supporter of the Assad regime or any regime which is killing its own people. But an article by Shemus Milne in the Guardian put this very well. The increasing worry about what is happening in Syria is that it is turning into a proxy war which is more about Iran than it is about Syria.
That shows what the West is doing. The West succeeded in its intervention in Libya. It is now imposing exactly the same so-called humanitarian agenda. It was an agenda which was put forward in 2003 as I said and it should be rejected. On the evidence we should turn around and say these sanctions and this propaganda campaign has to end.
Why is it that the British government which cannot fund health care or education has the money to continually pursue the USA in its interventions. And that is why I will conclude that it is important that all peace-loving people this year have to mobilise globally to make sure there is no attack on Iran.
Many people have said to me surely it won’t happen and I think I have put forward an argument where something could happen. The military build-up is such that accidents can happen. But even if there isn’t a war the drip, drip, drip of sanctions and this sort of propaganda is doing irremediable damage and it has to be opposed. And the facts have to put to the people of Britain and America and elsewhere that what is going on here is a war of lies which is being used to justify what America, France and Britain are doing.
Therefore I think it is important that people in America, France and Britain and across the West should make a redouble effort to rebuke those lies and say that we will not have any attack on Iran.
Zayd Al-Isa: I have to start by firstly to say that it is only right and proper to acknowledge that it is absolutely astonishing and at the same time incredibly remarkable that the Iranian Islamic Republic is not only still alive and kicking and has beyond a shadow doubt has succeeded in establishing itself as a formidable force on the world state.
Its steadfast determination and unyielding resolve to preserve its independence, sovereignty and Islamic credentials while enthusiastically and relentlessly pressing ahead with scientific and social developments is something that any fair minded observer would take his or her hat off for.
Over the past 33 the West led by the USA has made an concerted and relentless effect to destabilise, derail and severely undermine the Iranian revolution with the ultimate goal of dismantling it.
It is certainly not an over statement to underline that history has rarely witnessed such a vicious, atrocious and relentless onslaught against a revolution even when it was in its infancy stages. Only a few months passed after the Islamic Revolution and after its outright triumph in ousting the shah who was undoubtedly one of the staunchest and the most reliable allies of the West when the US gave the green light to one of the world’s most brutal and savage dictators, Saddam Hussein, to wage a vicious and unprovoked war against the Islamic Republic.
The Saudi regime which is one of the world’s most intransigent and deeply entrenched dictatorships but somehow is also America’s staunchest and closest allies moved swiftly to offer its whole hearted support and unequivocal backing but more importantly put its money where its mouth is and played a major, if not the decisive role, in financing Saddam’s efforts to oust the Islamic regime in Iran.
Saudi Arabia has opened its vast oil wealth and put it at the disposal of Saddam’s war campaign and has basically used its massive political clout to back-up and prop up and support the Saddam regime.
Even though the war was principally designed to pull the rug from under the feet of the Islamic Republic and ultimately preventing the Islamic revolution from spreading and engulfing the entire region, it was by no means the only method or instrument utilised by the US and its allies to over throw and topple the Islamic republic’s government. These included military sanctions, economic sanctions, chemical weapons, assassinations, religious fatwas issued by the Wahabi Salafi religious institution and completely backed up with the Saudi government and the Saudi regime giving religious justification for suicide attacks taking place in Iran, in Iraq and in other places in the Islamic world.
It is vital to mention that while the US and Saudi Arabia accuse Iran of meddling and interfering in the region, this represents sheer this hypocrisy and incoherence. Saudi Arabia has occupied and brutalised suppressed the overriding majority of Bahraini people under the very eyes and green light of the United States. We all know that the headquarters of the fifth fleet is in Bahrain and without the full consent and backing of the USA, Saudi Arabia would have never dared to launch such a blatant aggression against the United Nations conventions, against the Geneva conventions and even against the Persian Gulf recommendations and the stated policy that it is there to defend the Persian Gulf countries against external threats not internal threats.
It is also vital to mention that in Bahrain the demographics of a country are changing. A war is being waged against the original inhabitants trying to carry out a systematic replacement of the original inhabitants.
If we actually move to the relationship between Britain and Iran it is worth mentioning that when the shah was at the helm of power in Iran, British relations with Iran flourished, prospered and actually deepened. Britain treated Iran as a lucrative export market, especially for weapons. The West in general treated the shah as the policeman or the strongman of the Persian Gulf and as an irreplaceable, essential bulwark and counterweight to the Russian influence.
British-Iranian relations deteriorated swiftly after the toppling of the shah. The British-Iranian relationship never actually had a chance to recover during the 80s mainly because of the emphatic British support to Saddam’s regime and the a number of incidents revolving around the UK and Iranian embassies which eventually led to the closure of both embassies.
There is undoubtedly a widespread perception in Britain that the principle reason why Britain has been singled out or targeted according to the British is because the Iranians believe that Britain is the master string puller behind every evil that happens to Iran.
I am of the opinion that there is more to this than the historic reason even though it is indisputable that Britain was heavily involved in the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. It is undeniable that the so-called special relationship between Britain and the US leads to Britain being perceived a surrogate to the US.
Therefore when the US perpetrates and outrage against Iran and the UK provides its unequivocal support and backs up the US no matter what it does, the Iranian people find themselves in a position to take out their anger on the UK government.
The other reason is Britain’s active role in pursuing the Iranian nuclear programme basically ensures that it maintains its unrivalled position in the forefront of countries hostile to the Iranian government.
It is a fact that Britain and the US have led the explicit calls for tougher sanctions on Iran. It was Britain which was the first country to cut off and outlaw dealings with the Iranian Central Bank following the recent dodgey report of the IAEA which seems to have been sexed up to meet the needs and requirements of the US and its allies. It is also becoming
increasing apparent that and undeniable that Britain is spear heading the attempt to ratchet up the pressure against Iran.
I believe that sanctions will never work against Iran for the following reasons: For rounds of stringent, tough sanctions have been in place and have been imposed against the Iranian people and against the Iranian public without any effect in actually convincing of pushing the government or the people to give up the nuclear programme.
It is also worth noting that the Iranian people themselves believe that they have the ownership of that nuclear people. They are vehemently opposed to giving up the nuclear programme.
We have all learned sweeping from the sweeping, indiscriminate sanctions that were imposed on the Iraqi people from 1990 which last for 13 years. Those sanctions were not effective in tackling governments. They do not bring governments to their knees. They are effective in tightening the screws and the noose against the necks of the ordinary people. They are actually effective in bringing those ordinary people to their knees. Those sanctions have played into the hands of the Saddam regime. He has used them to reward those people who stood firmly with him and against those who opposed him.
It is also worth mentioning that those sanctions are unilateral sanctions and that they lack the legitimacy and the endorsement of the United Nations. The United Nations are not ready to back them up and that is the main reason why countries like China, Russia, India and Brazil do not believe that the way forward is to impose sanctions on the lifeblood of the Iranian people. There is an oil embargo and an embargo on the central bank. That is not the way of going about it. That is what huge countries which have the veto believe.
It is also worth noting that Iran’s oil importers are not the European Union. The European Union only imports 18 percent of Iranian oil. The main importers are actually China and South East Asia. Those are the countries that will not impose economic sanctions even though there has been intense, unprecedented and relentless pressure on countries like Japan to toe the party line and impose those unilateral sanctions.
The countries that are hardest hit by the European crisis like Greece, Italy and Spain are basically most fiercely against sanctions. They were pressured to agree to those sanctions. The European Union h as actually installed what is called a review mechanism. The astonishing thing is that this review mechanism is not intended to gauge the harmful impact or the detrimental impact on the Iranian people. It is there to gauge the effectiveness of those sanctions – the oil embargo – on the prices of the oil on the market and to see whether it has had a detrimental effect on those prices so the European Union can move to alter those sanctions. So they are not there to alter or preserve or help out the ordinary people.
In the face of such unprecedented and relentless pressure against the Iranian people and against the Iranian government. They have stood firm. They have refused to budge and to give in to aggression and they have remained defiant and they have refused to change course.
I am convinced that by using the previous experiments and disasters that happened in Iraq and in Libya that the only way forward is through dialogue. It is essential to have a sincere, genuine dialogue which is based on respect, mutual interest and the fears that Iran has that it could be subjected to aggression, that it was invaded by Saddam’s regime with the full backing of the USA and the West utilising the vast wealth of Saudi Arabia.
There are some voices coming out and I am not going to name names. Some politicians are urging Saudi Arabia not to go along with the American embargo. I just need to say one important thing. The Saudi Foreign Minister told Clinton that sanctions were not enough. Sanctions are simply a long term solution. They are not a long term solution. What is actually needed is a military strike. He was urging the US to stand up to Iran to defend its own position as a superpower. This was most revealing.
We also learned through Wikileaks that it was the king of Saudi Arabia who begged, pleaded and put pressure trying to convince the Americans to launch a military strike against Iran.
We have also learned from Wikileaks that it was not Iran as American claimed that was financing terror. According to Clinton herself Saudi Arabia is responsible for funding the Wahabi Salafi terror network. She notably mentions the Taliban. She also says she has failed to convince the Saudis that dealing with that financing is a major issue that has to be tackled head on. Thank you.
Mohammed Iqbal Asaria: I want to try and take a slightly different take and refer to two points. The first point is that if you look at facts there is no basis to the accusations against Iran as far as nuclear power is concerned.
I have an article here and strangely enough it was published on 23rd January in the Daily Telegraph which is not a pro-Iranian paper. It was written by Peter Jenkins. Jenkins puts the byline at the end of article stating that he was Britain’s representative to the IAEA from 2001 – 2006. He was at the heart of the developing crisis.
He writes that when I was a representative I was mistaken. I now understand that we played a double game with Iran and we lost. If you recall during that time Iran voluntarily agreed to suspend uranium enrichment for two years pending clarification of any issues that were on the table. During that period the Europeans played along and then they said we can only do a deal if you permanently suspend uranium enrichment i.e. you give up your rights as members of the NPT.
That was because the Bush administration was not willing to go along with the Europeans and the Europeans panicked. Now the Europeans have changed their story. Since then they have been inventing all kinds of stuff saying this is happening and that is happening and nothing is sticking.
The last IAEA report has a very silly accusation that Iran experimented with some high explosive detonations. And a couple of days later google searches and journalists realised it was a Ukranian who was helping with something else. These guys have just white washed the story.
So factually if you like there is nothing which we have a basis in. It is all political. There is no basis in fact. The rachetting up of the politics recently, before the Arab spring, stemmed from the fact that the USA and its European allies realised that their trillion dollars shock and awe barbarity in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in doing nothing but empowering Iran. It removed two problems from the borders of Iran.
They realised they had spent all this money and all these resources and they had given it to Iran and they asked how they fell into this trap. Most people do not know that the largest amount of aid which has gone into Afghanistan has come from Iran. When the pledges were taken and Iran promised $600m the Americans were shocked. They started to propagate that Iran was spreading its influence along the common border with Afghanistan. If you are giving aid you have to send people to deliver it. You have to do everything. This was one of the problems.
Another problem for about twenty years of the revolution Iran was hosting close to 15 million refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan. In this country when we have 300,000 asylum seekers we have a political storm. If we had 15 m refugees what would happen to this country. Britain’s population is comparable to Iran’s. Not a single penny of assistance came to Iran.
A consultation prepared by the IMF in July 2011 is publically available on the IMF site. I was in India last August and I was addressing a university gathering and I was saying that we Indians [I am originally from India] are now pretending that we are a super power or
want to be super power. I said let us look at the human development indicators. And I said we are not even half way to where Iran is despite all the problems that Iran has and we have all the openings.
Life expectancy in India is under 60 years. In Iran it is over 74. Infant mortality in Iran is comparable to any developed country. Literacy in Iran, both male and female, is over 80 percent. We are now looking at a country which is in terms of human development capacity fully empowered despite the problems and the challenges it has faced. That is something which disturbs people outside who are not friends of Iran.
There was a report by an Oxford Research Institute looking at the registration of patents and copyrights. Obviously there has been an increase in this activity from China, India and other countries. But there was a page there which said that three countries are causing a little bit of worry: Iran, Turkey and Tunisia. These countries made progress in scientific areas which were not expected.
Turkey and Tunisia never had any problems. Iran had problems. So this is an indigenous development of scientific and technical competence which is surprising. If you read the IAEA report it says that Iran will not be able to enrich uranium to two percent or three percent and every time the inspectors come back and say despite attempts at sabotage the enrichment is continuing.
So this is the factual base. There is no factual basis to what is happening. What else can we see? It is now one year since the Arab spring started. On the eve of the Tunisian revolt the French government was offering to send Ben Ali troops to suppress it. And when things went out of their control and when Mubarak fell they had to put in a strategy to reign back the Arab spring. It stopped in Bahrain and since then it has been reversing. This reversal has now led to desperation whatever you may think of Syria.
The Western attempt to use Saudi Arabia and Qatar as champions of bringing in a democratic transition in Syria is laughable. One doesn’t have words to describe our foreign minister when he is talking nonsense. Yesterday when he criticised China for vetoing the resolution the Chinese told him to shut up. They said look at your status, you are begging money from us. Last time when Mr Cameron went to China and started talking about human rights the Chinese told him next time please behave yourself. The world is changing.
The idea is to get a handle on the Arab spring. What did the Arab spring change? For 40 years these despots were preventing their own people from doing anything to Israel and allowing it to carry on its policy of barbaric ethnic cleansing. This is still continuing. The fear was that there would be a challenge to this. The fear was that by bringing this pressure on Iran and bringing the other despots from the region in alliance with the West the attempt is to allow Israel a free space to continue its ethnic cleansing.
So the Arab people are now beginning to be focused on Syria, Iran and all these other things. Who is talking about Israel now? Al Jazeera is not talking about Israel as if nothing was happening there.
And one particular journalist was very perceptive. He said if they try to bring in a no-fly zone over Syria now, if Israel decides to attack Gaza will they bring in a no-fly zone over Gaza? Then the contradiction will be clear. So my view is that they want space for Israel to finish its ethnic cleansing without the Arab peoples becoming excited. And Iran is part of that game.
If this analysis holds then one can say that this war talk is talk. Of course accidents can happen and things can go wrong. I am not looking at a war because having looked at Iraq and Afghanistan they know that the day after the war they will lose. There will be lots of casualties and lots of problems but the day after the war you loose.
What about sanctions? They have been brought in for two reasons. One is if you want to negotiate with somebody you bring him new problems so you can say we will not impose
new sanctions but we will keep the others. So you start to get concessions from the other side without giving anything. That could be one thing.
Having tried for the last 30 years on key issues like nuclear power or relationships with the West they have not been able to split the Iranian people from the Iranian government. It is quite clear that even the Green Movement in Iran was more hard line on the nuclear issue than the present government. Sanctions are an attempt to see if they can do some kind of split in Iran.
I don’t think that will succeed in this area. The United States classified the Muhadijeen Al Khalq as a terrorist organisation. During the last six months every senior political and funder is funding a campaign to support that organisation which is based in Iraq. So US politicians are openly supporting what they themselves call a terrorist organisation. No Iranian of whatever political colour will accept this as fair.
So this attempt to split is not going to work. At the end of the day the war, if it happens for reasons which are not based on fact, will result in greater problems.
One final point. These sanctions have been given a very different direction. These are not UN sanctions, sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran. They are sanctions from the USA and followed by Europe.
The problem is that both the US and the United Kingdom are international financial centres. By playing with these particular aspects by sanctioning the central bank during a time when they are economically bankrupt is playing with fire. Alternative settlement mechanisms could develop outside the euro and dollar area. Other countries are not stupid. Although they may be supporting the US at the moment they see that the same thing can happen to them. So they can take actions to develop alternative mechanisms to make sure they are not in that position.
If that takes momentum, for example China and Iran began to trade in Yen and gold and India in gold and rupees and Russia in gold and roubles that means the dollar and the euro are out of the equation.
So in the medium term if this goes ahead and Iran manages to hold its own the implications for the West are very serious. At the moment power is being transferred to the east but this will speed it up greatly and we will regret it.
So even if you think of the national interest of the UK this policy is totally flawed. We didn’t even have enough planes to bomb Libya because we are beggared and now we want to send a warship to the Falklands and to the Gulf. I don’t know what will happen. We may end up with our patients in corridors in hospitals because the money will not be there. We have to be careful what we are doing.
To sum up. Last week India decided to prefer a French fighter to the British Typhon. And they said we have been giving aid to India for all these years, how dare they go against our plane? Are you giving aid to India so they can buy fighter aircraft? Are you giving aid to the poor so they can buy fighter aircraft?
This is a kind or ridiculous desperation that we have gotten into. So I think space is given to Israel to finish its ethnic cleansing and there is nothing like a two-state solution. In ten years there will be no possibility of a solution and any solution will then require force able removal of people and so on which will be hugely problematic and traumatic.
I think we need to read this from a totally different angle and in that sense I don’t see war. This will hold until Israel completes its job. And Israel is no saint.
While we are talking about nuclear power let me tell you one thing. During the apartheid time in South Africa Israel gave the nuclear bomb to apartheid South Africa. Now when you think about it what would a white apartheid regime in South Africa want a nuclear weapon for? To massacre the African majority. Can you imagine what would happen if Israel gave it to them. Can you imagine the casualties if those idiots exercised that option?
They had it and they dismantled the programme after Nelson Mandela came to power. But it is documented that Israel gave it to them. There is no doubt about it.
Finally even if you are not half sensible, if you have half a nuclear bomb and somebody has tons and tons of nuclear bombs you would not be silly enough to go and attack them. This idea that even if Iran had a nuclear bomb it is going to be dangerous is stupid. It is just sabre rattling.
I hope that saner council prevails and we get to the bottom of this problem. Let me give you just one other fact which is very important. In the next ten years it is reckoned that with the use of shell gas and the tar sands the USA will not need to import Saudi oil. At that time those despots will be gone because the USA will not need them.
And they are rushing to push the USA into an attack because they see their own survival is at stake if the US doesn’t need their energy anymore. Thank you very much.
* Zayd Al-Isa is a Middle East expert, Writer, Human Rights Activist & Democracy Advocate. British Iraqi, born in New York, USA and lives in London, UK.
** M Iqbal Asaria is a trained Economist and Accountant. He has worked as an Investment Analyst in the City of London for several years. For the last several years he has been involved in consultancy on financial product structuring in the UK. As part of these services he has advised many banks and insurance companies in the UK on their launch of Islamic financial services. He was awarded the CBE in the 2005 Queen’s Honours List for services to international development.
*** Chris Bambery is a journalist and author who appears regularly on Russia Today, IRIB TV, Press TV, the Islam Channel and BBC Radio 2’S Jeremy Vine Show. He contributes to Military History monthly and has published anumber of books. His History of the Second World War will be published next year. Mr Bamberry is a member of the stop the war coalition.
