U.S. SUPPORTS TYRANTS IN MIDDLE EAST, YET CALLS FOR SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAN

The U.S. call for sanctions on Iran is hypocritical insofar as the U.S. and the Obama administration continue to support tyrants in the Middle East. Consider American support and "friendship" with Saudi Arabia where it is still a crime for an unmarried female to be with a male not a relative. Or where the punishment for certain crimes is to cut off a hand or a foot. Next consider the friendly relations of the U.S. with Musharraf in Egypt or with the royal family in Jordan. In both Egypt and Jordan, don't even think about freedom of speech or freedom from search and seizure. There are no human freedoms in either country.

So when Pres. Obama or his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton call for sanctions on Iran because it wants to develop its own nuclear power, unspoken is American support for leaders of countries in the same neighborhood as Iran that deny human freedom and impose draconian punishments on their citizens.

Mohamed El Baradei, former head of the IAEA, says the same in a report in The Guardian by Jack Shenker today.

""Western policy towards this part of the world has been a total failure, in my view. It has not been based on dialogue, understanding, supporting civil society and empowering people, but rather it's been based on supporting authoritarian systems as long as the oil keeps pumping."

"The 67-year-old added: "If you bet on individuals, instead of the people, you are going to fail. And western policy so far has been to bet on individuals, individuals who are not supported by their people and who are being discredited every day.""

Instead of supporting the people in each country, El Baradei says that the western countries wage war against individual heads of state, no matter that in the process, they kill hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens of that state. Ahmadinejad of Iran might be a terrible leader but that is no reason to impose sanctions on the population at large, or even to consider a military strike, as in "all options are on the table."

"The popularity in the Middle East of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, he said, should be seen as message to the west that its "policy is not reaching out to the people. The policy should be: 'We care about you, we care about your welfare, we care about your human rights.'""

U.S. FOREIGN POLICY SHOWS HISTORY OF MEDDLING IN MIDDLE EAST FOR CONTROL OF OIL

James Traub has a review of Rashid Khalidi's Sowing Crisis in today's Sunday Book Review in The New York Times.

Khalidi argues that for at least the last 75 years, the United States has been meddling in Middle East affairs with a goal of establishing a hegemonic control over the oil and wealth of the countries there. The case of Iran is no exception.

Writes Traub:

"Khalidi’s central argument is that the Bush administration’s interventionist posture toward the Middle East is no mere post-9/11 aberration, but represents an especially bellicose expression of a longstanding campaign. Today’s enemy is terrorism; yesterday’s was Communism. And just as the threat of Communism was wildly exaggerated 50 years ago, so, these days, “the global war on terror is in practice an American war in the Middle East against a largely imaginary set of enemies.” Khalidi’s point is not that American policy toward the Middle East has been consistently hysterical; rather, he says, it has been consistently cynical, exploiting an apocalyptic sense of threat in order to achieve the kind of dominance to which great powers, whatever their rhetoric, aspire."

Khalidi reminds readers that it was the U.S. that overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran in 1953 when Mossadegh threatened to nationalize Iran's oil industry. Because of U.S. plotting against Mossadegh, the C.I.A. was able to bring back and install the Shah, a hated figure for many nationalistic Iranians.

Traub writes:

"Most histories of America’s role in the Middle East, like Michael B. Oren’s Power, Faith and Fantasy,” focus on the naïveté and misguided idealism of a nation much given to moral crusades. Khalidi looks to interests rather than principles. His story of America’s active role in the Middle East begins in 1933, when the consortium known as Aramco signed an exclusive oil deal with Ibn Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia. Khalidi reminds us of familiar if squalid acts of American intervention, like the role of the C.I.A. in the 1953 overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh, the prime minister of Iran, who had championed the nationalization of his country’s oil industry. Khalidi also describes lesser-known ones, including the delivery of “briefcases full of cash” to Lebanon’s pro-Western president Camille Chamoun in order to help Chamoun rig the 1957 parliamentary election."

OLMERT SPEAKS TO AIPAC, IRAN IS "ENEMY"

Israel's prime minister was in Washington, D.C., last night talking to that neo-con Israeli-American lobby, AIPAC. Condi Rice was also there with her own talk.

Both of them agreed Iran was the enemy. So they proceeded to demonize Iran, calling it a grave threat to peace and security.

Where have we heard this before?

Back in 2001-2002, Condi Rice was among the most vocal, calling Iraq a grave and imminent danger, saying that the U.S. could not allow "the smoking gun" to turn into a "mushroom cloud." That Saddam Hussein had WMD, that he was intent on acquiring nuclear weapons, that he had a stockpile of germ agents. All of which proved to be so much hot air and disproved speculation.

Now the focus is on Iran. "We must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon!"

Consider that there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapon or is trying to make one. Although, if it did, I could understand completely as a nuclear weapon might be the only deterrent to Bush's war machine attacking and invading Iran in the same way as it did to Iraq. Consider how Bush treads softly around North Korea which does indeed have nuclear weapons.

But nevertheless there is no proof Iran has or wants nuclear weapons. Iran's supreme religious leader came out just yesterday with a denial, saying that any intelligent nation has no need or want for nuclear bombs.

Yet the drumbeat towards attacking Iran continues, and the "coalition of the willing" consists of those reactionary Israeli government leaders like Ehud Olmert and his co-patriots who continue to build Israeli settlements on land taken from the Palestinians during the 1967 War and the neo-cons and reactionaries here in the U.S. like Bill Kristol, Elliot Abrams and the other AIPAC members, as well as key members of the Bush cabinet such as Rice and VP Dick Cheney.

Imagine what a war with Iran would do to Middle East peace and stability. There would be fallout for the next 500 years. There would be enmity between Americans and Iranians for at least that long. Consider what the Fall of Constantinople did to the relations between Greeks and Turks. After more 600 years, they still hate one another for what happened. We could expect the same between the East and West over Iran, maybe lasting even longer.

We need to talk with Iran, not demonize it and its people. We need to get rid of Cheney and Rice and Bush and their militaristic hegemony and imperialism. Instead of starting a war with Iran, we need to sit down with the Iranians and treat them with respect and dignity. That is the way to beginning to solve the so far intractable problems for the U.S. and Israel in the Middle East.

IS BUSH DISCUSSING ATTACK AGAINST IRAN WITH NEO-CON JOURNALISTS?

Dan Froomkin writes today in his blog for washingtonpost.com that Bush has been inviting conservative journalists and bloggers into the White House for private talks and briefings, and that there are signs Bush has been talking about bombing Iran.

Writes Froomkin:

"Charles Krauthammer was among the conservatives invited to the White House Wednesday for a roundtable interview with the president. (See yesterday's column.) Another attendee, The Weekly Standard's William Kristol, wrote afterwards that Bush's "most interesting comments and reflections he put off-the-record."

"In today's Washington Post, Krauthammer writes that he sees "ominous implications for the Middle East" in Syria's apparent attempt to build a nuclear facility with North Korea's help. Behind it all, Krauthammer sees the specter of Iran, and its nuclear ambitions.

""This is an extremely high-stakes game," he writes. "The time window is narrow."

"And talk about ominous: Krauthammer writes that "rival elites" should stop President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear program "before the volcano explodes," in recognition that "the one certain result of such an eruption is Iran's Islamic republic buried under the ash."

Froomkin asks:

"Is Krauthammer echoing Bush? Did the president say something about the possibility of a nuclear attack on Iran? Could the attack on Syria be a precursor to American military action? Is that the reason for all the secrecy?"

An attack on Iran would be disastrous. It would set back Middle East relations with the West and especially with the United States for at least 100 years and probably longer. It would create constant war without peace among the countries in the Middle East. It would blow the price of oil sky high, to $200 per bbl. or higher. It would cause innumerable civilian casualties. It would foment acts of terrorism here in the U.S. It would not prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, rather it would spur Iranian nuclear development if only for a weapon to be used against the Americans and their allies and supporters. And this is only a partial list of bad things that would result from a U.S. attack.