Hysterical
Bush administration continues to pursue an aggressive media strategy against Iran

Daniel M Pourkesali
May 11, 2006
iranian.com

Since the beginning of this new manufactured crisis, the so called mainstream media has done everything in its power to conceal the facts and spin the details in a way that advances the warmongers objectives. No doubt the propaganda is working as evident by the results of a recent Time /Bloomberg pole that found bout half of those surveyed support military action if Iran continues its nuclear activity. This is reminiscent of the polling done prior to Iraq invasion when about the same percentage gullibly bought the Saddam/911 connection and the WMD he was ready to unleash on us lest we acted.

This time around what is intentionally left out or at best casually mentioned as an insignificant footnote in most reports, is the fact that Iran by continuing its uranium enrichment activity is not in violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Uranium enrichment is a central tenet guaranteed by article 4 of the NPT as an "inalienable right" granted to all non-nuclear states. It is the carrot without which there is no incentive for countries to join the NPT as they would be accepting an apartheid system that rewards nuclear states without any practical benefits for the non-nuclear members. The right to utilize nuclear technology without developing nuclear weapons is vital for the treaty to remain credible.

What Iran has done is refusing the Security Council's "request" to give up its right under the NPT to enrich uranium which it did voluntarily for a period from November 2004 until August 2005 for what it called "confidence building" measures. Having failed to win any meaningful economic or diplomatic incentives from the west for giving up what is practically guaranteed and practiced by every other member state, it did the only thing they could do: decline the request.

After all, Iranians closely followed every step the Bush administration took in the long march to war with Iraq, so they've wisely chosen a different path which precludes allowing the UN to rummage through every inch of its territory identifying all weapon stores, radar stations, and missile sites feeding the Pentagon war planners a list of "good targets" under the guise of an intrusive IAEA inspection.

The NPT has already been undermined by several non-signatory states namely India, Pakistan, and Israel, the later suspected of having an arsenal of over 100 nuclear weapons and refusing to open its nuclear facilities to international inspections with full U.S. backing. Iran, on the other hand, has fully complied with the most rigorously monitored inspections in the history of the IAEA which have not produced "any evidence" that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons or diverting nuclear material from its use in peaceful technology.

Nonetheless, the administration continues to pursue an aggressive media strategy feeding public hysteria in preparation for what has already become a familiar outcome: another illegal war at the expense of the present and future American generations for the sole benefit of the few in the oil and military industrial complex.