[WCUSP] Charging Iran with 'Genocide' Before Nuking It

[KATHARLOW at AOL.COM]

_http://www.counterpunch.com/leupp02092007.html_ 
(http://www.counterpunch.com/leupp02092007.html)  
February 8, 2007 
An "Existential" Conflict
Charging Iran with "Genocide"  Before Nuking It

By GARY LEUPP 
In a very interesting analysis last month, the  former chief of staff of the 
Russian Army, Gen. Leonid Ivashov, predicted a U.S.  nuclear strike on Iran by 
this April. "Within weeks from now," he wrote, "we  will see the 
informational warfare machine start working. The public opinion is  already under 
pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian militaristic  hysteria, new information 
leaks, disinformation, etc." I'm afraid this has the  ring of truth.  
Then you have Gen. Oded Tira, chief artillery officer of the Israeli Defense  
Forces declaring last month that "an American strike on Iran is essential" 
for  the very existence of the Jewish State. Suggesting that "President Bush 
lacks  the political power to attack Iran," he urgently appealed to the resurgent 
 Democratic Party to work towards that Israeli goal. "As an American strike 
in  Iran is essential for our existence," he declared, "we must help him pave 
the  way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself 
foolishly) and  US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian 
issue to a  bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure." 
Tira specifically urged the Israel Lobby in the U.S. to "turn to Hilary  
Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party so  
that they support immediate action by Bush against Iran." The Lobby seems to be  
doing a great job at that, Tira's criticisms about Democrats' "foolishness"  
notwithstanding. All the Democratic presidential frontrunners have assured 
AIPAC  or Israeli audiences that they're at least as hawkish on Iran as the 
unpopular  Bush. Meanwhile the Israeli allegation that Iran poses an "existential" 
threat  to itself, made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the U.S. Congress 
last  year, has insinuated its way into American official discourse.  
Referring to the vaguely defined "war on terror" in general, Cheney recently  
told Fox News, "This is an existential conflict. It is the kind of conflict  
that's going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 
40  years." His daughter Elizabeth (Assistant Secretary of State for Near 
Eastern  Affairs and the VP's liaison with the spooky new "Office of Iranian 
Affairs")  wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last month, "America faces an  
existential threat We will have to fight these terrorists to the death  somewhere, 
sometime. We can't negotiate with them or 'solve' their jihad." The  
administration, still led by neocons clustered around Cheney, has embraced the  Israeli 
rhetoric of paranoiac prophesy. It has decided to attack the Islamic  Republic, 
to end its existence, for the self-defense of Israel and America. To  gain 
support it must sow fear and must demonize Iran, ratcheting up the rhetoric  week 
by week.  

The "informational war machine" to which Ivashov alludes has been  shoveling 
out disinformation faster than the public can digest, no doubt on the  
assumption that rumors even if later disproved can usefully damage reputations  and 
set up targets for attack. The Straussian neoconservatives who tirelessly  
campaigned to foist their Noble Lies about Iraq on the American people up to the  
Iraq attack in March 2003 might not much care if the lies they tell now about  
Iran are exposed down the road. What they want is regime change soon and  
therefore, a compelling casus belli or two.  
During the lead up to the Iraq War, the main charge against Baghdad  
(skeptically received at the UN) was that it possessed weapons of mass  destruction 
threatening the whole world including New York City, which President  Bush, 
Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials warned could result in  a 
mushroom cloud over the Big Apple. Bush and Cheney intimated to certain  audiences 
that Iraq posed a particular threat to Israel, but in general this  issue was 
downplayed, probably because the administration wanted to avoid the  
accusation that it was going to war "for Israel" as opposed to America or the  mythic 
but impressive-sounding "international community." 
This time it's different. Although Israel attacked and destroyed Iraq's  
French-built Osiraq nuclear rector in 1981 (in an illegal action then condemned  
by the Reagan administration and virtually all other governments, although  
Cheney and his neocons find inspiration in it today), and although the Israeli  
government enthusiastically greeted the invasion of Iraq, it didn't overtly  
campaign for the war. But now it is feverishly beating the drums for a U.S. war  
on Iran. And as Cheney has pointedly noted, if the U.S. doesn't attack Iran,  
"Israel might do it without being asked." Most likely it will, if it happens, 
be  a joint effort. 
Notice how the case against Iran articulated in Israel forms the bulk of the  
Bush administration's brief. It runs something like this: Iran is a radical  
Islamist theocratic state that supports terrorists, including Lebanon's Shiite 
 Hizbollah (which follows the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini), and various  
Palestinian organizations. It is large, powerful, and hostile to Israel, the  
only democracy in the Middle East. The Iranian regime is anti-Semitic; 
President  Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust and calls for Israel to be "wiped off the 
map."  Iran is concealing the existence of an illegal nuclear weapons 
program, a  program that threatens the existence of the Jewish state. Therefore it is 
guilty  of "planning to commit genocide"---just like that universally 
acknowledged  incarnation of evil, Nazi Germany.  
To this alarmist case, the U.S. propaganda mill adds the charges that Iran  
harbors al-Qaeda members; provides improvised explosive device (IED) components 
 to "insurgents" in Iraq, who use them to kill Americans; and generally 
"meddles"  in Iraq. (One should ask how those occupying a country, against the will 
of its  people, 6000 miles from U.S. shores can talk about a neighboring 
country  sharing a 600 mile border with Iraq, a common Shiite religious faith and 
3000  years of incessant interaction can complain about Iranian "meddling" 
with a  straight face. Especially when they cherish their own right to meddle in 
Latin  America whenever it pleases them.) But these flimsy charges haven't 
been at the  top of the list. The main issue, as in the Iraq case, is the WMD 
one, and  specifically the future prospect of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel 
 producing a second Holocaust. 
>From the (often Israeli-American dual national) neocons' point of view, what  
can you do as an encore after terrifying Americans with the vision of 
mushroom  clouds over New York? What image has the terrifying power of that one? Why, 
 genocide of course! The conscious, evil, extermination of a whole  
people---in this case a people regarded by many American evangelical Christians  as 
God's Chosen People, whose miraculous reestablishment of a state in the  
twentieth century fulfilled biblical prophecy and whose state indeed augurs the  
yearned-for Second Coming of Christ. This genocide issue looks like the  ideal 
issue to get the American people on board a massive, likely  nuclear, assault on 
Iran. 
In December, following lots of discussion in Israel on this issue, outgoing  
U.S. UN Ambassador John Bolton called on the UN International Court of 
Criminal  Justice to charge Ahmadinejad with "inciting genocide." "It's time to take  
action," Bolton told a Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish  
Organizations symposium. "We're being given early warning, unambiguously, on  
what his intentions are." There was apparently no doubt in Bolton's mind that  
Iran wants to kill all Israelis. (For the record, Bolton has in the past  
asserted confidently that Cuba's widely admired pharmaceutical research projects  
are actually a front for the development of biological weapons. The State  
Department itself, embarrassed and acknowledging no evidence for this claim, had  
to shut him up.) 
Also last December, former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud Party leader  
Benjamin Netanyahu summoned seventy foreign diplomats in Israel to a meeting to  
pressure them to join Israel in efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program.  
According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, the meeting was  "the 
first event in an international public relations campaign. It will include  a 
proposal to file a complaint in the International Court of Justice against  
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for war crimes, and his plans to commit  
genocide will be presented."  
"We must cry Gevalt before the entire world," declared Netanyahu.  (Gevalt: a 
Yiddish expression of shock or dismay.) "In 1938, Hitler  didn't say he 
wanted to destroy [the Jews]; Ahmadinejad is saying clearly that  this is his 
intention, and we aren't even shouting. At least call it a crime  against humanity. 
We must make the world see that the issue here is a program  for genocide."  
But Netanyahu (like Gen. Tira) is probably much more concerned about  
American public opinion than that of "the world." He knows that the  average American 
hearing the official Israeli case, ill-equipped to challenge  its vilifying 
assumptions, might actually be inclined to embrace it. Ignorance  and fear are 
excellent allies here, and should be countered with some rational  
presentation of historical fact, the neocon propagandists' great enemy.  
Most Americans do not suspect, for example, that Hizbollah (which Israel  
tried in vain to destroy last summer) is a popular political party in Lebanon,  
where it represents the Shiite population and is respected for the efficient  
social services it provides. It emerged as a resistance movement among the  
Shiites in the south after the Israeli invasion of 1982. (Initially, many  
Shiites had actually welcomed the Israelis, since they were targeting the PLO at  a 
time of considerable conflict between Palestinian refugees and the Lebanese.  
But the occupying troops were deeply hated, and resistance mounted.)  
Most Americans don't know that in the last parliamentary election Hizbollah  
and its allies won 27% of the total seats. It had ministers in the Lebanese  
cabinet before withdrawing them recently in protest of the U.S.-backed prime  
minister's policies. It has radio and television stations. Hizbollah is widely  
credited with forcing the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and can  
attract hundreds of thousands, even a million protesters to demonstrate in a  
country of 3.8 million. It has forged an alliance with General Michel Aoun, a  
Christian military leader who once fought against Syrian forces and now heads 
a  mainly Christian political party. Netanyahu knows that few Americans think 
about  these things when they hear him describe Hizbollah as a "terrorist  
organization." 
Nor do most Americans know much about the Palestinian organizations that Iran 
 supports with office space, funds, or weapons. They've probably heard of 
Hamas,  but have no idea whether it's Shiite-based (and thus connected to Iran  
religiously), or Sunni and less influenced ideologically by Iran. (It is 
Sunni.)  They may not realize that Hamas grew up in opposition to the Palestinian  
Liberation Organization (once categorized as a "terrorist" organization by the  
U.S. but later recognized by Israel---and funded by the U.S. and other  
countries--- in the form of the "Palestinian Authority") and are widely seen as  
more honest, capable and pious than the PLO politicians widely associated with  
corruption, inefficiency and secularism. They may not realize that Hamas 
handily  won the last Palestinian elections, which were fair and fairly reflected 
the  sentiments of the Palestinian people. They may not sense a contradiction 
between  President Bush's rhetoric about "democracy in the Middle East" and his 
 government's refusal to accept a democratically elected government in 
Palestine.  They may not know that Hamas called and maintained a ceasefire with 
Israel for  16 months before June 2006 (when Israeli artillery shells killed seven 
 Palestinians, including three children, at a family picnic on a crowded Gaza 
 beach). And they certainly know little of the histories of other Iran-backed 
 Palestinian organizations. That makes them easy targets for anti-Muslim  
disinformation campaigns in general. 
Most Americans are sheltered from news reports about Palestinian life under  
Israeli occupation, or in the vast prison-camp of Gaza. They are conditioned 
to  perceive Arab and Muslim hostility to Israel as a reflection of 
anti-Semitism  and religious animosity and intolerance, rather than understandable 
reaction to  the historical experience of Palestinian displacement and abuse, 
repeated  Israeli attacks on Lebanon, continued construction of illegal Jewish 
settlements  on the occupied West Bank, annexation of the Golan Heights, etc. They 
are  inclined to believe that Israel, as a "democracy," is America's natural 
ally in  the Middle East, while many American Christians are convinced that its 
very  existence is in fulfillment of biblical prophesy. Netanyahu understands 
all  this, basking in the glow of the evangelicals' adulation and perhaps 
marveling  at their gullibility. 
The American media has repeated ad infinitum the report that  Ahmadinejad has 
called for Israel to be wiped off the map. This matter-of-fact  acceptance of 
the validity of the quote has been a huge boon to the vilifying  warmongers. 
The Persian-language statement, which has now been analyzed and  translated by 
several western scholars, in fact makes no reference to any map at  all.  

_http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_steele/2006/06/post_155.htm _ 
(http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_steele/2006/06/post_155.htm )  
What Ahmadinejad said, quoting Ayatollah Khomeini (who died in 1989) was that 
 "the occupation of Jerusalem" will be "erased from the page of time." The  
statement is a bit vague and in poetic language but makes no reference to a map 
 at all, to say nothing of genocide. Yet Bolton and Netanyahu want us to read 
it  as a clear intention that Ahmadinejad wants to destroy all Jews!   
Ahmadinejad used the quote in a speech noting that the Soviet invasion of  
Afghanistan, the Soviet Union itself, and the regime of Saddam Hussein all ended  in 
time, as he maintained the Israeli occupation of one of Islam's holiest  cities 
would too.  
It's true that the Iranian president has made provocative statements  
questioning the occurrence of the Holocaust. But his political powers are  limited, 
he does not control foreign policy, and he faces substantial criticism  from 
other members of the Iranian power elite. Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad's  
predecessor as president from 1997 to 2005 and still an influential player in  the 
Iranian power structure, has pointedly distanced himself from Ahmadinejad's  
comment, telling an Arab audience that the Holocaust was "an historical fact."  
But then, he's an internationally respected proponent of the "dialogue of  ci
vilizations" who while in power sought better relations with the U.S., only to 
 be rebuffed. Anyway Americans don't hear much about differences among 
Iranian  leaders; we're encouraged to see them all as threatening and vile. When in  
February 2003 Secretary Colin Powell's lieutenant Richard Armitage  
matter-of-factly called Iran a "democracy," Cheney's neocons were all over him.  
Americans aren't supposed to know that Iran has hotly contested elections,  
even though all candidates for office must be approved by the Guardian Council  
of six jurists elected by the Majlis (Parliament) and six clerics chosen by 
the  Supreme Leader, who is himself elected by a parliamentary body of 86 
people.  (Basically, the democratic process is constrained by repressive religious  
oversight. But that happens elsewhere too. Note that Israeli "democracy" is  
predicated on the idea that any Jew from anywhere arriving in Israel gets  
citizenship and voting rights. Israeli Arabs have these rights too, but they do  
not exist among the four million strong Palestinian exile community denied 
their  right of return.)  
But back to the big issue, the putative nuclear weapons program that might  
someday destroy Israel. The U.S. press refers routinely to "Iran's nuclear  
weapons program" as though it obviously had one, while most Americans  don't know 
that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, actually issued a  fatwa 
against the production, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons in  2005. Most know 
that Iran is enriching uranium, but probably don't know that  all countries 
have the right to enrich uranium, and that countries  without nuclear weapons 
programs (like Japan, Germany, the Netheralnds, Brazil)  have enriched it 
without American protest. Signatories of the Non-Proliferation  Treaty are in fact 
guaranteed the right to do so, so long as they  renounce nuclear weapons 
development and submit to IAEA inspection---as Iran has  done. (Indeed, Iran has 
submitted to unprecedentedly intrusive UN inspections.)  Meanwhile, countries 
that haven't signed the treaty (like India,  Pakistan, and Israel, 
non-signatories that have nuclear weapons)  aren't legally bound to its terms at all! 
Americans might ask: Why do these  three countries enjoy such close relations with 
the U.S. despite their defiance  of the nonproliferation regimen the U.S. 
demands Iran respect? (North Korea was  a signatory but withdrew from the Treaty in 
2003 in the face of unremitting U.S.  hostility and tested nuclear weapons in 
2006.) 
Most Americans probably don't know that Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Peace Prize  
laureate and head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a man who  
understands the science, keeps saying there is no evidence that Iran's  enrichment 
program is related to a military program. True, he declared, after a  meeting 
with Condi Rice in March 2006 (in which she agreed to lift U.S. efforts  to 
fire him as IAEA head), that the IAEA was "not at this point in time in a  
position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or  activities 
in Iran." The Bush administration has used that convoluted  double-negative 
statement, and the September 2005 IAEA statement on Iran, to  justify its 
preparations for war.  
According to that statement Iran's "many failures and breaches of its  
obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement [voluntarily signed by  Iran 
in 2003]constitute non-compliance" with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, while  
the "history of concealment of Iran's nuclear activities" and "resulting 
absence  of confidence that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful 
purposes  have given rise to questions that are within the competence of the 
Security  Council." Most Americans don't realize that this statement was actually 
 opposed by 13 of the 35 voting countries (including Russia, China,  
Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela and South Africa) but backed by  NATO 
country representatives voting as a bloc. (This was used to produce UNSC  
Resolution 1737, which having affirmed the right of Non-Proliferation Treaty  
signatories "to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for  peaceful 
purposes without discrimination," contradictorily "decides" that "Iran  shall 
without further delay suspendall [uranium] enrichment-related and  
reprocessing activities.") 
Misled by politicians (including AIPAC heroine Hilary Clinton) and poorly  
served by the mainstream news media, many Americans just might swallow the  
accusation that Iran is planning genocide, in league with Hizbollah and Hamas.  
Some might believe that a nuclear Iran would somehow threaten the Homeland,  
perhaps by sharing nuclear arms with terrorist groups. More might believe that  
Iran is at least developing nuclear weapons, following Dick Cheney's reasoning  
that Iran with all its oil can only be pursuing a nuclear program with  
weapons in mind. (They might not know that in the 1970s, U.S. administrations  and 
corporations such as General Electric were encouraging Iran to  develop a 
peaceful nuclear program! But that was when Iran was under the Shah, a  U.S. 
client toppled in the most mass-based genuine revolutionary upheaval in the  modern 
history of Islamic countries in 1979.)  
But there is in fact no reason to suppose that Iran plans to attack any  
country. It has not, for the record, in modern times although it was itself  
attacked by Iraq (supported by the U.S.) from 1980 to 1988. The closest it came  to 
invading a neighboring country came in 1998, when following the killing of  
seven Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan, Tehran mobilized against the Taliban  
regime. (In 2001 it cooperated with Washington to topple that regime and 
replace  it with one rooted in the Northern Alliance forces.) 
In August 2006 Ahmadinejad stated that Iran was not a threat to any country,  
"not even to the Zionist regime." French President Jacques Chirac recently  
acknowledged, in an unguarded honest moment, that even if Iran had a few 
nuclear  weapons it would still be "not very dangerous." It is ludicrous to depict 
the  Iranian regime as a menace to the United States, which has half the 
world's  total military budget, troops based in 120 countries, and bases surrounding 
(and  threatening) Iran in Afghanistan and Iraq. As former Secretary of State 
Colin  Powell's chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson has revealed, the State 
Department  received an Iranian offer in mid-2003 to end support for Palestinian 
militant  groups, cooperate with the U.S. in stabilizing Iraq and settling the 
 Israeli-Arab dispute, and make its nuclear program more transparent. In 
return  Iran asked for an end for U.S. support for the Mujahadeen Khalq Iranian 
militant  group based in Iraq, withdrawal of trade sanctions and an end to U.S. 
hostility.  Welcomed by Powell, the overture was contemptuously rejected by 
Cheney's  office-much as overtures from Iraq and Syria had been summarily 
rejected earlier  by officials saying, "We don't negotiate with evil, we defeat it." 
Is it not obvious that any strike against Israel or the U.S. from Iran would  
result in unacceptable consequences for the Islamic Republic? Is it not 
obvious  that Netanyahu's sensationalistic genocide charge is part of a general  
propaganda campaign intended to pave the way for an unprovoked attack on a  
sovereign nation? In Israel itself, supposedly marked for annihilation, the  
putative Iranian threat is hyped by some, downplayed by others. Efraim Halevy,  
former head of the dreaded spy agency Mossad, recently dismissed the notion that  
Iran poses "an existential threat to Israel." 
"Israel is indestructible today," he declared. "It's not so simple just to  
think you 
can have a device on your hand and you will able to hurl it on to  a certain 
location and wipe out a nation Israel has known of this threat [from  Iran] 
for more than a decade-and-a half and has watched this threat grow ­  you 
must assume that Israel was not sitting on its hands ... or [waiting] for  
someone else to do the job" Can Iran destroy Israel? "I don't think this is  doable 
in pure operational terms."  
So enjoy what Ha'aretz called the "international public relations  campaign," 
the general the "informational warfare machine" as it heats up.  Expect to be 
told more and more in the coming weeks that Iran is not only  killing U.S. 
troops in Iraq, but threatening your very existence. Imagine  the boldest of 
Straussian "Noble Lies" screaming from your TV screens for weeks.  Iran's 
fanatical leaders, we'll be told, want a caliphate stretching from Spain  to 
Indonesia. They want mushroom clouds over New York. They want  genocide---indeed 
they're already planning genocide. And so (as Bush and  Hilary both declare) 
"nothing is off the table" when it comes to "dealing" with  the Islamic Republic.  

Gevalt! Netanyahu cries. "Gevalt!" one should reply  to the warmongers, and 
ask:
How have these shameless disinformation artists  fooled so many people about 
this Iran 'threat'?  
How has a discredited administration brought us so close to another crime  
against peace as defined by the Nuremburg Principles and United Nations Charter? 
 
How has the Iran attack lobby acquired such political clout in this country?  
How have shrewd political manipulators even been able in any respectable  
forum to connect opposition to the slaughter of Iranians with anti-Semitism?  
How did the 9-11 attacks of receding memory propel this country into such an  
era of madness?  
How can the Democrats swept to power in a wave of antiwar revulsion sit on  
the fence or actively assist as the administration plans to use its own (real,  
existing) nuclear weapons on Iran? 

Gevalt indeed!  
Ivashov doubts that "the world's protests can stop the U.S." and suggests  
that "the revenues of [the U.S.] military-industrial complex" is what "matters  
to Americans." I can only hope we prove him wrong, mobilizing to end the Iraq  
War, to impeach the war criminals in power, and to stop the attacks on Iran 
and  Syria before they start. 
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct  
Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of _Servants,  Shophands and 
Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/069102961X/counterpunchmaga) ; _Male  Colors: The Construction of 
Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520209001/counterpunchmaga) ; and _Interracial  Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese 
Women, 1543-1900_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0826460747/counterpunchmaga) . He is also a  contributor to CounterPunch's chronicles on the 
merciless wars on Iraq,  Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, _Imperial  Crusades_ 
(http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html) . 
He can be reached at: _gleupp at granite.tufts.edu_ 
(mailto:gleupp at granite.tufts.edu) 
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