Iran 203

Een combinatie van Israelische en Amerikaanse terreur:

'War on Iran: Law the first casualty
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

"So foul a sky shall not clear without a storm," wrote William Shakespeare in the play King John and, indeed, the deafening saber-rattling against Iran by the United States and Israel increasingly reveals a coming storm that will likely dwarf the magnitude of the Iraq war, in light of Iran's military prowess and ability to strike back throughout the Middle East.

The US's and Israel's decision to escalate the threat levels against Iran, reflected in President George W Bush's statement in Europe this week that all options remain on the table, has been matched by an equally resolute defiance by Iran. As a result, the growing anxiety over a summer war with Iran threatens to send already rocketing oil prices to unimaginable levels.

This is not "new realism" in US foreign policy, as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice self-congratulatingly narrates in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs [1], but rather a new level of American "dumb power" that harms its own self-interest by the pursuit of warmongering policies.

The official Washington discourse is presently overwhelmed with platitude about America's "new Wilsonian" commitment to spread freedom and democracy in the Middle East. But, for example, the mere thought that "Iraq's freedom" may also mean freedom from foreign hegemonic domination is simply foreign to the discourse and understanding of US officials such as Rice. She is, nonetheless, on the mark when writing, in the article cited above, that "our policy in the Middle East is, in reality, an extension of traditional tenets".

But, looking at Iraq, where the US is desperately trying to shove down the throat of Iraqi political leaders an imperialistic "security pact" that would allow upwards of 50 or 60 US military bases in Iraq, together with the judicial immunity of US personnel, the picture reminds of another tradition - the US's gun-boat diplomacy of the 19th century. In 1854, for instance, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry forced open Japan, prompting Japan to sign the shameful "Ansei Treaties" that provided a system of "extraterritoriality" for foreign residents in that country, aptly detailed in Michael Auslin's Negotiating With Imperialism.

Instead of charting a post-hegemonic, new liberal course of action for US foreign policy, Rice's "new realism" is in many ways the old realism of empire realpolitik, using liberal semantics to give a nice cover to the US's hegemonic motives and intentions.'

Lees verder: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JF13Ak01.html