Nexus - 1203 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

ONWARD TO IRAN AND THE "WAR ON TYRANNY" ONWARD IRAN AND THE "WAR TYRANNY" The US Bush administration is moving closer to confrontation with Iran over not just the nuclear weapons issue but also over Iran's plans to open an oil bourse and keep control of its own oil reserves. n the weeks after 9/11/2001, US President George W. Bush announced the existence of an "Axis of Evil" comprised of the nations of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. In speeches that followed, he implied that he regarded it desirable to achieve "regime change" in all three countries. In the years since, the first of the three, Iraq, has been invaded and reduced to a desolate landscape of violence and hopelessness. In speeches since the November 2004 elections, Bush and his new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have spoken of a "War on Tyranny", which is presumably intended to replace the now-shopworn "War on Terror". The semantic shift reveals much about Washington's plans for the next four years. The new campaign will imply no need to jus- tify pre-emptive attacks based on other nations' possession of banned weapons. Washington can simply target regimes it dislikes, even democratic ones, on the basis of their reputed "tyrannical" nature. Evidently the manipulation of elections has become such an exact science (not only within the US, but elsewhere as well) that "freedom" and "democracy" can be exported wholesale in slogan form with considerable propaganda effect, but with no danger whatever to the interests of those who call the shots. Potential targets for the War on Tyranny, compiled from the statements of various gov- ernment officials, include Iran, Syria, Sudan, Algeria, Yemen, Malaysia, Somalia, Indonesia and Georgia—countries strategically critical to the Bush administration's goal of controlling global energy resource extraction and transportation routes. But in every leaked or published list, Iran is the first nation mentioned. There are good reasons to assume that a US campaign against Iran will commence with- in months, and that this will serve to open the next and much expanded phase of what is actually the "Global Oil War" of the 21st century. Because of Tehran's connections with other countries troublesome to the United States—including China, Russia and Venezuela—the campaign in Iran will be the key to a planned clean sweep of nations impeding America's "full-spectrum dominance". What follows is partly speculation; how- ever, there is now enough information available upon which to base plausible conjectures as to intentions, likely actions and consequences. IRAN: BRIEF HISTORY AND BACKGROUND But first, let us consider the geographic and historical context of the impending events. The country now known as Iran (ancient Persia) was a centre for pre-Islamic Indo- European culture from the second millennium BCE, and for Islamic culture from the fifth century CE. It was the birthplace of Zoroastrianism, the home of Sufi poet Rumi, a site of empires and a frequent object of conquest. In the early 19th century, Persia began to fall under the rival commercial and imperial attentions of Britain and Russia, serving as a pivot for the Great Game of Eurasian geopolitics. In 1901, an Australian explorer named William Knox D'Arcy managed to persuade the Persian shah to grant him mineral rights to the country for 60 years in exchange for £20,000 and a 16 per cent share of the proceeds. D'Arcy then began prospecting for oil, which he found in 1908. Iranian history from then on has hinged on this discovery. Britain meanwhile had realised the strategic importance of petroleum for the future of industrial production and warfare (the British war fleet was converting from coal to oil) and was seeking secure supplies of the resource in the Middle East. Sidney Reilly, the famous British spy, talked D'Arcy into parting with his contract, and thus was born the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which would later become British Petroleum or BP. by Richard Heinberg © March 2005 Editor/Publisher, MuseLetter 1604 Jennings Avenue Santa Rosa, CA 95401, USA Email: rheinberg@museletter.com Website: http://www.museletter.com from MuseLetter #155, March 2005 by Richard Heinberg © March 2005 APRIL — MAY 2005 NEXUS = 11 www.nexusmagazine.com