What terrible news for the 'Bomb Iran' brigade:
From The Hindu:
Tehran: Iran on Monday agreed to swap a major part of its low enriched uranium stocks on Turkish soil for an equivalent amount of uranium enriched to 19.75 per cent, potentially ending a stand-off with the U.S. and Europe that threatened to spiral into sanctions.
Iran needs the higher grade enriched uranium to fuel the Tehran Research Reactor, used by it to produce medical isotopes.
The deal was reached after 18 hours of negotiations ending 4 a.m. among Iran, Turkey and Brazil, leaving Washington and its allies red-faced. The U.S. and Europe are pressing for the punitive route and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had predicted last week that the Brazilian-Turkish attempt at mediation would fail.
And what is the response of Britain’s neocon Foreign Secretary to this news?
Reuters reports:
Britain said work on a new U.N. sanctions resolution must go on. Iran's move "may just be a delaying tactic," said Foreign Secretary William Hague.
How utterly predictable. And how utterly pathetic. Hague and co are itching to impose swingeing new sanctions on Tehran - and the nuclear issue is just a pretext.
Does Hague’s reaction remind you of anything? Think back to the period 2002-3, when no concession that Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government made was ever enough for the neocon warmongers. The very same people who were gunning for Iraq then, are gunning for Iran now.
As Alan Hinnrichs says in his excellent letter in the Morning Star:
The UK anti-war movement needs to get off its knees and mobilise now for the possible eventuality of war with Iran. It will simply not be enough to do as the SWP would have us do and march from A to B then go home.
4 comments:
American sanctions on Iran are more concerned with the Great Game for the oil and has of Eurasia and the IAEA has not found conclusive evidence that Iran is actually building an atomic bom.
Washington has consistently exerted pressure on Turkey not to buy gas from Iran, so either Russia, in the form of Gazprom offers itself and Turkey uses its geostrategic position to get oil and gas from both.
This thwarts US designs to encircle Iran and use its control over Central Asia gas that is to come from the TAPI pipeline from Turkmenistan to block of the rival IPI pipeline to the East.
Firstly, it means that being nuclear sufficient, Iran has more control over its supplies of oil and gas which the "humanitarian war" in Afghanistan is now about stopping throught TAPI.
The TAPI pipeline is due to be complete by 2011, when the "surge" is supposed to have worked its magic and when the pipeline was scheduled to be completed according to petro-economist John Foster.
Secondly, Turkey is no longer a committed NATO member in being obsessesed with Euro-Atlanticist designs, primarily those of Zbigniew Brzezinski to ensure global hegemony by dominating Eurasia.
The catastrophic war against Iraq has backfired, as shown when Turkey refused in 2003 to allow its airbases to be used for US strikes on Saddam's regime.
As Mark Almond puts it,after the decline of the Soviet Union and its threat,
"Turkey's most sensitive border is with the US ally, Iraq. Kurdish guerrillas launch terrorist attacks from havens in northern Iraq into southeast Turkey. The American-backed Iraqi Government has mixed success in controlling them. Syria and Iran have made sure that their Kurds don't complicate relations with Ankara".
The break up of Iraq, never a real "nation" in the first place but an oil protectorate set up after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, let loose what Ankara feared would be irredentist Kurdish forces.
The new geopolitics of Turkey's strategic position between energy- poor Europe and energy-rich Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East has led these nations to be prime cusomers for its export goods.
In this sense, the deal between Turkey and Iran reflects a total rejection of the US's Eurasian strategy as Turkey already has markets with the EU without EU membership and can have the best of both world's economically-that of the West and the Near East.
As Turkey modernises it needs access toto oil and gas for it;s energy-hungry industries and that has led to a reapprochement with the ancient enemy Russia. Trade with the EU is dependent on maintaining good relations with Moscow.
What Turkey needs least from this perspective is states like Georgia causing trouble with its neighbours, not least as Azerbaijan, a human rights abusing dictatorship on "our side" keeps hostile attitudes towards the Arminians.
Turkey requires stability in these ex-Soviet republics and not the USA stirring up the cauldron on of irredentist tendecies as it has done consistently to gain control over oil and gas which Turkey can get from Gazprom.
As Almond puts it, "today it is business opportunities, energy resources and other practical matters, rather than ethnic unity, that are creating a loose Turkic "commonwealth." Shoddy US realpolitik masquerading as humanitarian concern is just throwing a spanner in the works.
As Turkey is a NATO member, these facts and the return of the Great Game blow Edward Lucas' asinine and inflammatory rhetoric about a "New Cold War" away completely. There is no "New Cold War".
Turkey's links with Israell have also come under strain by Israeli investment in Kurdistan and in Georgia, whence much of its weaponry and training used by Saakashvili when he attacked South Ossetia derives.
I read a piece the other day (can't remember where unfortunately) which dissected the responses to the deal in the major US newspapers. They all fitted the pattern Neil describes. It's all very reminiscent of the way they straight-faced reported, after the failure to find WMD in Iraq, that Saddam's denial that he had WMD had been in fact a clever ruse to make 'the international community' think he DID have them because he thought that would dissuade invaders. I used to wonder how the people promoting these wars, and their apologists in the MSM, sleep at night. Now I'm fairly sure they don't; they sleep during the day in coffins.
KND - great stuff! That sounds about right!
Shamefully the Guardian refuses to have that reasoned and balanced comment appear on its CiF website. People are free to disagree with me. I even let people who abuse me on my website comment ( revealing them as fools ). What is wrong with these people at the Guardian? I backed off for six months. Maybe they are, as Neil says, illiberal liberals.They didn't like it when accused them of using "moderation" as a euphemism for censorship.
http??;centraleuropewatch.blogspot.com
@Krakow's New Dragons
Actually Turkey has been at the forefront of supporting pan Turkish Ottoman terrorism in the North Caucasus, Balkans and Eurasia aiding US and British lead western efforts to create an alternative energy block in Eurasia away from Russian control with Turkey being the main transport hub for energy routes that bypass Russia.
In 97 with the installation of the “moderate” regime of Maskhadov British intelligence asset and former Polish Solidarity leader Mansour Yahimchik became a naturalised citizen and Chechen presidential adviser on foreign economic issues under the new Maskhadov regime was instrumental linking British establishment/Rothschilds financial interests setting up the Caucasian investment fund, in Washington was registered the Caucasus-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Lord McAlpine - Representative of the Financial Group at Goldsmiths’ - promised to invest 3 billion dollars in the Chechen oil industry.
http://evrazia.org/article/1128
At the same time terror networks were created and extended linking those create in Afghanistan and the Balkans with the KLA in Kosovo as well as Azzam publications, recruiter, financer and webmaster for Basayeav and Khattab transferring funds, equipment and fighters to Chechnya run by Babar Ahmad here in Britain and Bin Ladins Saudi base Al-Haramain terrorist front NGO operating around the world even in Afghanistan as late as 2004.
http://www.investigativeproject.org/case/107
http://www.investigativeproject.org/case/248
If you read Paul Murphy’s book Wolves of Islam: Russia and the Faces of Chechen terrorism of the extensive state sponsored terrorism of Turkey prior to, during and after the first war training terrorist in Turkey in military base between the starting with de facto independence time of 97 coordinating with Sakka in Turkey and Khattab in Russia and Chechen camps in Afghanistan with Saudis and Pakistanis help to train and bring foreign fighters into Chechnya and the North Caucasus.
This is acknowledged in US own declassified 1998 DEA document and revealed in a court case in Turkey were Sakka trained some of the 9/11 hijackers who were initially supposed to fight in Chechnya but were denied visa entry into Georgia. Which is not a surprise as all the 9/11 hijackers and there affiliates where originally recruited to fight in Chechnya with assistance and oversight of western intelligence through the Bosnian-Chechen network through intelligence front private security firms and NGO’s.
It would be embarrassing if it became common knowledge if the trail traced back to Vienna, Germany and Bosnia who have been sponsoring terrorism in the Balkans since 89 and not Afghanistan and a man in a cave with kidney problems something our “free” mass media will never report.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/story/2004/nov/defense-intelligence-report-details-al-qaedas-plans-russia-chechnya-and-wmd
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/15/551916/-Sibel-Edmonds-Case:-The-Central-Asia-Islamization-Cocktail:-Mosques,-Madrassas,-HeroinTerrorism
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