The edge of the glass towards conflict between Iran and its enemies is getting closer and closer. News this week has Israel callously considering bombing Iran. The US propaganda machine is pushing for the conclusion of the Ayatollah regime. The Catch-22 for Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions have led to a no doubt that they cannot turn back now because other signifiers in historic context reflect any which way but lose.
Iran has been in the US oil interest eye and government foreign policy since the 1970’s revolution that surprised the western hegemony. Before the multi-faceted revolution, the Shah was America’s favorite oil dictator. Before the Ayatollah usurped the face of the revolution to merely extremism, the revolution had diversity and alternative potential. But like Stalin and Napoleon, the leadership that followed suffocated the very potential of new opportunities.
Fast forward to the post-9/11 world where the chicken-hawks of Bush and Cheney pushed the US into unprecedented wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since the first air strike into Afghanistan, Iran had to be at the edge of their alertness. With the following entry into Iraq, I would say that Iran had already anticipated that if they wanted to maintain a secure safety-net they had to seek nuclear weapons. Why?
Firstly, any country with a hostile military invading two countries that border it in the north and the southwest would be very agitated. For example, if some army were to have invaded Canada and Mexico, the US would not just patiently sit in between a rock and a hard place. Iran’s neighbors were being crushed with weapons from a foreign power with no anticipation to halt attacks until oil fields and natural resources were divided up to Halliburton and other corporations.
The only true reason the US military went into Iraq was because those at the very top clearly knew due to the heavy sanctions and past sales to the very dictator that Saddam did not have nuclear weapons. Unlike in North Korea and Iran, Iraq's nuclear ambition was never as transparent. That is a given.
Secondly, if Israel, Pakistan and India all have nuclear weapons and the international community was unable to stop them, why would Iran be any more of a threat than even say China and Russia or the US for having the weapons? Isn’t one of the key Amendments in the US, the right to bear arms? The right to seek a weapon for self-defensive measures seems praise for the American way. This defensive mechanism saved China and Russia during the Cold War so that the US did not bomb them as done onto Japan. Clearly double standards are apparent. The parent and teacher that says ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say’ leads through example, never through words, and the message is taught through the action. So Iran is not ignorant and can see that countries like China and Israel were able to acquire the power, which once received stopped outside interest from overriding into national sovereignty.
Thirdly, Iran cannot turn back from seeking this power at this point for two key reasons: two lessons learned from Libya. One, after 9/11 Libya sought to negotiate with the United States and dismantle its nuclear ambition. In a 2006 Amnesty International Report, the organization noted the strides Gaddafi had made in working with the US and Italy to change its image from terrorist supporter to international poster child of change. Eventually we would learn he was outsourcing torture for US renditions, as Wikileaks noted. The lesson Iran clearly learned, don’t change your tactics because your aggressors will not be genuinely friendly. That is where the second lesson from Libya has played out.
If one negotiates and changes their tactics, there are no assurances. The oppressed opposition in Iran is eager to have more human rights, more civil rights, and more basic freedoms. As in Libya, the first sign of unrest and instability would be a key opportunity for the Western powers to enter in and destroy the national hegemony. Though the support for the freedoms and democratic hopes of the people are the political rhetoric for assisting Libyan and Iraqi people, those with the real power in the corporate elite truly only want the oil resources. If Iran changes its tactics now, they would only allow speculators to find propaganda to enter.
If Saudi Arabia had nuclear weapons, the US and other nuclear powered nations would not protest. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship that oil interests can deal with. But Iran is too independent, just as Libya has been.
Iran has everything to lose if they seek nuclear power, and they have everything to lose if they do not seek nuclear power. The Iranian people want to overcome oppression. The supportive humanists in more open societies want democracy and justice to prevail. The capitalists are greedy enough to want to find any means necessary to reclaim the control over the oil under Iran’s soil that they once had at their fingertips under the Shah. This Catch-22 only gives Iran an inevitable conclusion. It is only a matter of time how history will be played out. Most of us hope that the changes will be achieved with the least amount of violence as possible.
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