Category: News

Our own Tom Engelhardt is interviewed about his new book, The World According to TomDispatch, and the plan to put 58 US bases in Iraq.

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An action alert from the Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran.

The same people who called for attacking Iraq now are raising the drumbeat for military action against Iran. Despite the November 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program, the Bush administration is bolstering its case for war by labeling Iran one of the greatest threats to American security.

Call your Congressional Representatives on Tuesday, June 10th: 1-800-788-9372

·Tell them to work for direct and comprehensive talks without preconditions between the U.S. and Iran.
·The U.S. and Iran share common interests in a stable Iraq, Middle East and Afghanistan.
·The U.S. pursued negotiations with North Korea and Libya – it’s time to talk with Iran.

Tell your Congressional leaders that you want dialogue, not war!

The Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran (CNAPI) is organizing an innovative “Time to Talk with Iran” event and press conference on Capitol Hill. With the U.S. Capitol as a backdrop, Members of Congress, celebrities, former officials, and other citizens will use a row of 60’s-era red “hotline” telephones to talk directly to ordinary Iranian citizens. Concurrently on June 10, the Campaign is organizing a nationwide Call-in to Congress for Diplomacy with Iran so those outside of DC can participate and make their voice heard. The event on Capitol Hill will be held Tuesday, June 10, 2008, from 10:00 am–1:00 pm EDT; Terrace on the West Side of Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC.

The Campaign for New American Policy on Iran (CNAPI) represents a transpartisan coalition of diverse groups which share the objective of promoting responsible and effective U.S. diplomacy and leadership in resolving long-standing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Campaign supporters share the basic core beliefs outlined in the mission statement and urge direct, sustained, unconditional and comprehensive talks between the governments of the United States and Iran as a realistic way to resolve all outstanding issues.

Antiwar.com is a partner in the Campaign for New American Policy on Iran.

Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal editorial page is as hard-line as ever, today featuring a lengthy and by now familiar meditation by AEI “Freedom Scholar” and perennial intrigue entrepreneur Michael Ledeen on “Iran and the Problem of Evil.” Actually, the headline is a bit of a distortion because, in typical neo-conservative fashion, Ledeen compares the conflated threats emanating from the Arab world and Iran — or, as Ledeen puts it, “from Hezbollah and al Qaeda to the Iranians Khomeinists and the Saudi Wahabis” — to those posed by Mussolini’s fascism, Hitler’s Germany, and Stalin’s Russia. To his credit, Ledeen decided to forgo the use of “Islamofascism,” a decision which no doubt will get him in trouble with David Horowitz, Frank Gaffney, and James Woolsey, among others of his hard-line fellow-neo-cons. But, of course, by putting “Iran” and the other assorted threats in the same context, he really doesn’t have to use the word itself. In any event, the lesson — and I guess here is where the headline that features “Iran” alone — is clear enough: “As it did in the 20th century, it means war.”

Ledeen often describes himself as a historian, and, as such, I would expect Ledeen to be scrupulously careful of his facts, but one assertion about anti-Semitism in Iran in his essay really stuck out at me; namely, that The Protocol of the Elders of Zion is now circulating in a Farsi edition. I did a quick Nexis search for the “Protocol” and “Protocols”, “Iran”, and “Farsi” and could find only two articles that appeared to corroborate Ledeen’s statement. One was a 2005 article in the Likudist New York Sun by Benny Avni, who asserted that “‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ the classic anti-Semitic fraud, is a best seller in Iran…” No further evidence to support that assertion was offered. A second article, which appeared in the November 2006 edition of Playboy, by frequent New Republic contributor Joseph Braude, also asserted that the notorious forgery had been translated into Farsi with the financial help of the Islamic Republic. Again, however, he offered no supporting evidence.

I also checked with the State Department’s nearly 100-page “Global Anti-Semitism Report” published less than three months ago and could find no mention of a Farsi edition of the Protocols, although it did note that new editions had appeared in English, Ukrainian, Indonesian, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Russian, and Serbian since 2003. The report also noted that the Protocols had recently become “best sellers” in Turkey (a strong ally of Israel’s and hence, presumably, irrelevant to Ledeen thesis on “evil”) and Syria.

Now, it is true that the Iranian delegation to the 2005 Frankfurt International Book Fair displayed an English-language edition of the Protocols among its wares, but I doubt that it would have become a ”best seller” in Iran in that form, as the Sun’s Avni had asserted.

Ledeen also wrote that “calls for the destruction of Jews appear regularly on Iranian ….television,” and, while Ahmadinejad’s periodic calls for the elimination of Israel (from the pages of time, from history, from the map — depending on the translation), not to mention the “Death to Israel” sloganeering that has been staple of government rallies in Iran since the Revolution, I don’t have enough knowledge or research time to assess the truthfulness of this assertion. I would note, however, that Iran continues to boast by far the largest Jewish community in the region outside Israel; that Jews are an officially recognized minority free to worship as they wish; that the vast majority have shunned substantial financial inducements to emigrate to Israel; and that, despite Ahmadinejad’s well-publicized Holocaust scepticism, the government television station has broadcast a popular series about the Holocaust based on a true story about an Iranian diplomat in Paris who helped Jews escape Nazi-occupied France. That doesn’t mean anti-Semitism in Iran does not exist; on the contrary, most experts believe it is indeed on the rise there, spurred in considerable part by regional tensions and the crescendo of threats and counter-threats between the Israel and Iran. But lumping Iran in with more clearly anti-Semitic movements and governments — not to mention his blithe assertions about the popularity of the Protocols’ Farsi edition — does not enhance Ledeen’s — or the Journal’s op-ed fact-checkers’ — credibility.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

Leading neocon Daniel Pipes (director of the Middle East Forum) said in an interview posted Wednesday at National Review Online, that if Barack Obama is elected, George Bush would attack Iran in the remaining ten weeks of his term.

“Should the Democratic nominee win in November, President Bush will ‘do something.’ and should it be Mr. McCain who wins, he’ll ‘punt,’ and let Mr. McCain decide what to do.

He called on powers such as Russia and China to prevent a US unilateral strike by helping Washington increase pressure on Tehran. “Look, if you don’t want an American attack, then you have to join us in being very serious with the Iranians and making clear to them we will attack if they don’t stop.”

Later in the interview, Pipes commented that Israel’s nuclear capability is “substantial.”

Antiwar Radio’s new YouTube channel, YouTube.com/AntiwarRadio, is doing great. Anders Knight put it together and has already made some great videos to go along with the interview archives of my show and that of the heroic Charles Goyette of KFNX 1100 AM in Phoenix, Arizona.

Check ’em out, subscribe and please help us spread them around. Here’s what we’ve got so far:

Gareth Porter – John Cusack – Michael Scheuer – Ron Paul – Michael Schwartz – Vincent Bugliosi – Pat Buchanan – Victor Navasky – The Other Scott Horton – Gordon Prather – Christopher Ketcham – Gareth Porter