Nuclear threat to world peace

For more than a decade, Western nations and their powerful global media have been sounding loud alarms, warning that Iran is “building the bomb,” and they must be stopped immediately, otherwise world “peace” will be in danger.

They have been fanning the winds of war against Iran on behalf of the “international community” of course, where as usual Israel shrieks the loudest.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an eloquent example of this on December 8 when he boasted his country played a key role last month in stopping a deal from going ahead between the six world powers and Iran on limiting its nuclear program.

“Such an agreement would have effectively left Iran as a threshold nuclear power,” he said, adding that “even though Israel isn’t part of the P5+1 our voice and our concerns played a critical role in preventing a bad deal.”

No doubt nuclear weapons are bad news irrespective of who develops and keeps them ready in their arsenals. In the hands of hawkish warmongers, however, nukes are especially bad news as the martyred cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki learned.

Today, nine countries have nuclear weapons: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, India and…. “Little” Israel. The first eight have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel has not and will not, a fact the UN has just reminded them of.

Why do nations maintain nukes?

For two basic reasons:

- either for defensive purposes, as weapons of deterrence, dissuasion and protection, or

- for offensive purposes as weapons of conquest, attack and aggression.

Except for the US which was the first to build nuclear bombs and the only country to ever use them in warfare, the other nuclear powers have so far only kept them in readiness “just in case.” So far...

Which country will be the first to press the red button?

Geopolitical and military planners take into account extreme scenarios under which global crises may turn really nasty for their countries. That’s when nervous fingers start fiddling around with the red “first strike” launch button.

Today, India and Pakistan are aiming their nuclear bombs at each other; the on-going conflict over Kashmir could conceivably lead to a direct nuclear confrontation between them, a fact reflected in the “run-for-cover” nuclear attack drills held in that region.

Russia and China show no signs of toying with demented first-strike ideas. The US and UK, in turn, have jointly become very aggressive militarily since 9/11 as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan and Syria have so tragically learned, and through NATO, they have dragged nuclear power France into successive brawls. However, they jointly focus on their on-going unconventional so-called “Global War on Terror.”

In this scheme of things, NATO acts as the West’s military expansion platform: whether it’s about taking out Iraq and Libya, bringing Poland and Central Europe under the Western fold, cornering Syria, or driving a beachhead against Russia in the Ukraine.

That leaves Israel… Here we have a “special” country with a very special relationship with the US and major Western powers. Israel’s leadership seems to run the country’s foreign policy based on one key extreme scenario: What if someday the formidable array of Israel’s Muslim enemies in the Middle East were to corner Israel into a dead-end leaving it no way out?

If that happens, Tel-Aviv’s military and political planners appear to hold one last wild-card up their sleeves, aptly called the “The Samson Option” alluding to the immensely strong Biblical hero Samson who pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple bringing its roof crashing down and killing thousands of the enemy and himself in the process (Judges, 16:30).

In modern Israeli, “to-be-or-not-to-be” defense parlance, if ever that country were confronted with annihilation by its foes, surrender would never be an option - suicide would.

Enter Israel’s nuclear arsenal into this Dr Strangelove scenario: faced with annihilation, would Israel nuke the entire Middle East?

Worse still, nasty rumors seem to indicate that Israeli leaders’ paranoid far-right “trust-nobody” policies have also led them to aim their (America’s, actually) nuclear warheads at certain key European cities too. That means that if ever Samson were to attack, he would hit very hard indeed!

Would Israel’s leaders ever do such a thing?

Who knows, but if the biblical “by their fruits shall ye know them” is any guide then Israel’s behavior over the past two decades of ultra-right-wing Likud and Kadima leadership seems to hold the answer.

If PM Ariel Sharon of Sabra and Shatilla fame purposefully unleashed the second intifada in September 2000 by “reclaiming” the Temple Mount… if successive prime ministers regularly bomb, maim and humiliate the Palestinians building huge 20 foot high prison walls around them and bulldoze their homes… if Benjamin Netanyahu regularly carpet bombs Gaza whilst congresswoman Ayelet Shaked calls on Israelis to “have the blood of Palestinian mothers on their hands,” and Knesset Vice-President Moshe Feiglin calls for the immediate expulsion of 1.5 million Gaza Palestinians, then - 2 plus 2 equals 4 - we can only conclude that, yes: if pushed into a corner Israel would very likely unleash a nuclear holocaust on the world.

Worse still: America would support and do everything in its power to help and justify that. It seems Samson is in need of an urgent haircut!

We may conclude that Israel is the danger to world peace. However, that’s wrong. Iran is the danger! At least that’s what the US, UK, EU and the West’s global press scream all day long.

The “Iranian Danger”

Let’s look at some of the facts: Iran has a legitimate nuclear program for peaceful purposes closely tied to Russia’s technological support. However, with all the anti-Iran uproar raised by the West threatening Iran every other day with a “pre-emptive” military strike, it would not come as a surprise if Iran were to feel cornered into militarizing its nuclear program. Even if only to dissuade Israeli and the Western powers’ constant threats and bullying.

In fact, for over a century, the West has systematically attacked Iran. In 1953, US and British intelligence orchestrated a military coup that ousted Prime Minister Mossadeq as he was in the process of nationalizing Iran's oil industry, including one private oil monster called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, better known today as British Petroleum (“BP”) whose top brass, then and now, are Rothschild/Rockefeller/Bilderberg/Trilateral power insiders.

For the next 26 years, the US and UK placed Mohammed Reza Pahlevi in power as “Shah”. Not exactly a prime example of “democracy” but very much in line with the typical Muslim ally the US/UK demand: authoritarian, undemocratic and retrograde, the same as the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and UAE.

After the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran by the Revolutionary Guard (not cool: embassies are sacrosanct, but then again no American was hurt), in 1980 America used their proxy in the region – Saddam Hussein of Iraq – to attack Iran.

By 1982 however, the Iranians had pushed Saddam out, but in the ensuing six years of war his forces killed more than one million Iranian civilians and military, including tens of thousands who were gassed to death when Iraq used US-supplied chemical WMD’s against them. From the perspective of the US and its allies at the time, Saddam was a “good guy” fighting against the Iranian “bad guys…”

On July 3, 1988, an American warship patrolling the Persian Gulf - the ‘USS Vincennes’ – shot down an Iran Air commercial jetliner killing all 290 people on board, mostly pilgrims on their way to The Mecca. The US stated that the Airbus A300 had been mistaken for an Iranian fighter.

America’s response? The usual: “Oops, sorry! Collateral Damage!”

In January 2002, George W. Bush declared Iran was part of an “Axis of Evil" together with Iraq and North Korea.

Further back, during World War I, Iran was occupied by British, Ottoman and Russian forces. In September 1941, its then “Shah” was forced to abdicate by the Anglo-Soviet invasion. (“Sorry, guys... we need to grab your oil to fight those ghastly undemocratic Germans, Italians and Japanese!”)

Today, Iran is under constant threat from Israel and its global and regional allies. Even “surprising ISIS” has targeted Iran for destruction!

And how many times has Iran invaded, attacked or orchestrated coups against Britain, the US, Israel and other Western nations, or its Arab neighbors? Never!

In fact, Iran has not attacked another single country, neighbor or otherwise, for 200 years. Can the US, France, Britain, Israel and others say the same?

So, talking about nukes and peace, who should “the international community” really be afraid of?

And yet, Western governments, its subservient press and, above all, “Little Israel” just keep on yelling exactly the opposite, and, misquoting Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “They are all, all very honorable countries...” Right?

Right!

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.