[WCUSP] Israel & Lobby Pushing Iran War - Scott Ritter

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

"A former United Nations weapons inspector and leading Iraq War  opponent has 
written a new book alleging that Jerusalem is pushing the Bush  
administration into war with Iran, and accusing the pro-Israel lobby of dual  loyalty and “
outright espionage.”...

"In early 2004, Ritter charged in an  interview on the Web site Ynet, 
operated by the daily Yediot Aharonot, that  Israeli intelligence had deliberately 
overstated what it knew to be a minimal  threat from Iraq in an effort to push 
America and Britain to launch a  war."

Ritter Book: Israel, Lobby Pushing Iran War 
_http://www.forward.com/articles/book-israel-lobby-pushing-iran-war/_ 
(http://www.forward.com/articles/book-israel-lobby-pushing-iran-war/) 
Nathan Guttman | Fri. Dec 29, 2006 

A former United Nations weapons inspector and leading Iraq War opponent  has 
written a new book alleging that Jerusalem is pushing the Bush  administration 
into war with Iran, and accusing the pro-Israel lobby of dual  loyalty and “
outright espionage.” 

In the new book, called “Target Iran,” Scott Ritter, who served as a  senior 
U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998 and later became one of  the 
war’s staunchest critics, argues that the United States is readying for  
military action against Iran, using its nuclear program as a pretext for  pursuing 
regime change in Tehran. 
 
“The Bush administration, with the able help of the Israeli government and  
the pro-Israel Lobby, has succeeded,” Ritter writes, “in exploiting the  
ignorance of the American people about nuclear technology and nuclear weapons so  
as to engender enough fear that the American public has more or less been  
pre-programmed to accept the notion of the need to militarily confront a nuclear  
armed Iran.”


Later in the book, Ritter adds: “Let there be no doubt: If there is an  
American war with Iran, it is a war that was made in Israel and nowhere else.” 
 
Ritter’s book echoes recent high-profile attacks on the pro-Israel lobby by  
former President Jimmy Carter and by scholars Stephen Walt and John 
Mearsheimer.  Ritter, who recently returned from a weeklong speaking engagement on The 
Nation  cruise, speaks of a “network of individuals” that pursues Israel’s 
interests in  the United States. The former weapons inspector alleges that some 
of the  pro-Israel lobby’s activities “can only be described as outright 
espionage and  interference in domestic policies.” Ritter also accused the American 
Israel  Public Affairs Committee of having an inherent dual loyalty. He 
called for the  organization to be registered as a foreign agent.


Representatives for both Aipac and the Israeli Embassy in Washington  
declined to comment on Ritter’s accusations. 
 
In his book, Ritter also accuses the pro-Israel lobby of invoking the  memory 
of the Holocaust and of crying antisemitism whenever Israel is accused of  
betraying America. “This is a sickening and deeply disturbing trend that must  
end,” Ritter writes.


According to Ritter, Iran is far from developing a nuclear weapons program  
and will not do so in the future if the world makes sure that stringent  
inspections are in place to verify that the Iranians live up to the requirements  of 
the Non-Proliferation Treaty.


“If Iran does make a political decision to develop nuclear weapons, it will  
take them a decade and it won’t go undetected,” Ritter said. “But it will 
take  the U.S. only five weeks to build up a force capable of destroying Iran by 
air  strikes. It’s a timeline of five weeks compared to a decade, so I’m not 
worried  about taking a risk.” 
 
As for Israeli and American fears regarding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the  Iranian 
president who vowed to “wipe Israel off the map,” Ritter dubbed the  leader 
a “sick joke” and asserted that he does not make the decisions in  Tehran.


Ritter argues that the Bush administration knows that inspections can solve  
the Iranian nuclear problem but, at the urging of Jerusalem and its American  
allies, is in reality pursuing a different goal: regime change in Tehran. 
 
“Israel has, through a combination of ignorance, fear and paranoia,  elevated 
Iran to a status that it finds unacceptable,” Ritter writes in his  book. “
Israel has engaged in policies that have further inflamed this situation.  
Israel displays arrogance and rigidity when it comes to developing any  diplomatic 
solution to the Iranian issue.” 
 
Ritter is no stranger to controversy.


As a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, he headed several surprise inspection  
missions that were denied access to suspicious sites, and led to the Saddam  
Hussein regime accusing Ritter of being an American spy. The frequent refusal of 
 the Iraqis to provide Ritter and his team access to sites of interest led  
eventually to the abandonment of the inspection regime in Iraq. Ritter resigned 
 his post in 1998, accusing the United States and the U.N. of caving in to 
the  Iraqis. 
 
But Ritter later became a leading voice warning against taking military  
action against Iraq, arguing that a resumption of inspections would be  sufficient 
to contain Hussein. He accused the United States of trying to use the  U.N. 
inspection force for spying purposes and claimed that Iraq was deliberately  
held to higher standards than other countries in order to justify a military  
invasion.


In early 2004, Ritter charged in an interview on the Web site Ynet,  operated 
by the daily Yediot Aharonot, that Israeli intelligence had  deliberately 
overstated what it knew to be a minimal threat from Iraq in an  effort to push 
America and Britain to launch a war. Ritter’s accusations were  roundly rejected 
across the Israeli political spectrum. Security officials  interviewed by the 
Forward insisted that no branch of the military could or  would deliberately 
skew the findings in that way, but they also said that  Israeli intelligence 
tended to exaggerate threats because it was operating under  flawed assumptions.


Now Ritter is arguing that a similar effort is under way to produce an  
attack against Iran. 
 
Speaking to the Forward this week, Ritter stressed that he is not accusing  
all American Jews of having dual loyalty, saying that “at the end of the day, I 
 would like to believe that most of American Jews will side with  America.”


Ritter is already working on his next book, due for publication in March  
2007. In this tome, he sets out to teach the anti-war movements that he supports  
how to wage an effective campaign to win over American public opinion. 

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