Noam Chomsky 22

'Noam Chomsky on U.S. Policy Towards Iran
Video and Transcript

Are assumptions about Iran wrong?

"Suppose it was true that Iran is helping insurgents in Iraq. I mean,
wasn’t the United States helping insurgents when the Russians invaded
Afghanistan? Did we think there was anything wrong with that? I mean,
Iraq's a country that was invaded and is under military occupation.
You can't have a serious discussion about whether someone else is
interfering in it. The basic assumption underlying the discussion is
that we own the world."

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR: ElBaradei, is the head of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, stated quite definitively there is no evidence
of a nuclear weapons program in Iran. The recent resolution—the Kyle-
Lieberman amendment—and the recent U.S. sanctions against Iran, which
one of the charges is that Iran has been helping what they call
insurgents in Iraq. There's practically no evidence of that either.
Based on what we know as evidence, there's not a lot of reasons for
U.S. policy to be as aggressive right now towards Iran as it is,
certainly not for the stated reason. What really does motivate U.S.
policy towards Iran?

NOAM CHOMSKY, PROFESSOR OF LINGUISTICS, MIT: Well, if I can make a
comment about the stated reasons, the very fact that we're discussing
them tells us a lot about the sort of intellectual culture and moral
culture in the United States. I mean, suppose it was true that Iran
is helping insurgents in Iraq. I mean, wasn’t the United States
helping insurgents when the Russians invaded Afghanistan? Did we
think there was anything wrong with that? I mean, Iraq's a country
that was invaded and is under military occupation. You can't have a
serious discussion about whether someone else is interfering in it.
The basic assumption underlying the discussion is that we own the
world. So if we invade and occupy another country, then it's a
criminal act for anyone to interfere with it. What about the nuclear
weapons? I mean, are there countries with nuclear weapons in the
region? Israel has a couple of hundred nuclear weapons. The United
States gives more support to it than any other country in the world.
The Bush administration is trying very hard to push through an
agreement that not only authorizes India's illegal acquisition of
nuclear weapons but assists it. That's what the U.S.-Indo Nuclear
Pact is about. And, furthermore, there happens to be an obligation of
the states in the Security Council and elsewhere to move towards
establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the region. Now that
would include Iran and Israel and any U.S. forces deployed there.
That's part of Resolution 687. Now to your question. The real reasons
for the attack on Iran, the sanctions, and so on go back into
history. I mean, we like to forget the history; Iranians don't. In
1953, the United States and Britain overthrew the parliamentary
government and installed a brutal dictator, the Shah, who ruled until
1979. And during his rule, incidentally, the United States was
strongly supporting the same programs they're objecting to today. In
1979, the population overthrew the dictator, and since then the
United States has been essentially torturing Iran. First it tried a
military coup. Then it supported Saddam Hussein during Iraq's
invasion of Iran, which killed hundreds of thousands of people. Then,
after that was over, the United States started imposing harsh
sanctions on Iran. And now it's escalating that. The point is: Iran
is out of control. You know, it's supposed to be a U.S.-client state,
as it was under the Shah, and it's refusing to play that role.'

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