This Is What Awaits A Defenseless Iran

Iran: The Price Of Being Defenceless

By Ghali Hassan
Apr 17, 2007, 20:25
AxisOfLogic

Ever since the U.S. began its preparation for aggression against Iran, Western media and Western elites have continue to demonise Iran and provide misleading propaganda to justify U.S. attacks against the Islamic Republic.

On her part, Iran has the right to defend her sovereignty against any unprovoked act of aggression. A defenceless Iran would pay the heavy price Iraq is paying.

The same Western media and Western analysts who demonised Iraq to justify the illegal aggression are at it again, promoting new war of aggression against Iran.

...There is overwhelming evidence that Israel and the pro-Israel forces in the U.S. are promoting the current anti-Iran propaganda. It is Chomsky’s brilliant way of shielding Israel.

What is so ironic is that Iran, who is signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is being accused of having “nuclear ambitions” and threatened – with war – by the U.S. and Israel.

Israel, meanwhile, continues to enjoy Western policy of deliberate hypocrisy and unconditional support. Israel has refused to sign the NPT despite having the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the region.

The aim is to fabricate pretexts (e.g. Weapons of Mass destruction), engineer crisis and justify war of aggression against Iran for the sake of Zionism.

Since it’s creation on Palestinian land, Israel has lived with the myth of military “superiority”, dominating the region and terrorising the defenceless Palestinian people and expropriating their land.

Nevertheless, challenge to Israel domination and monopoly on violence by Palestinian and Lebanese resistance has demolished the Israeli myth and Israel’s misguided Zionist policy.

As a result of its defenceless state – enforced by the 13-years U.S.-Britain genocidal sanctions –, Iraq paid a heavy price.

From 1991, U.S. and British forces subjected Iraq to daily indiscriminate air bombardments.

The U.S.-Britain imposed illegal “no-fly zones” were designed to violate Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Unhindered by Iraq’s inability to defend its national airspace against invading aircrafts, U.S. and British warplanes were killing Iraqi civilians and destroying properties in violation of international law and civilised norms.

The aim of the daily aggression and the economic sanctions were to prepare Iraq for the 2003 illegal invasion and Occupation.

As the Indian scholar, Aijaz Ahmed, pointed out in a recent article (Frontline, Mar. 24-Apr. 06, 2007):

“The war against Iraq began not in 2003 but in 1991, when the U.S. attacked the country in order to recover Kuwait and ruin Iraq. U.S. aircraft flew 110,000 sorties between January 17 and February 28, 1991, averaging one aerial attack every 30 seconds, and dropped 88,500 tonnes of explosives, which is the TNT equivalent of seven and a half Hiroshima’s. No accurate figures are available but many sources, including the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), estimated that perhaps as many as two million Iraqis died during the six years between 1990 and 1997, including more than half a million children” under the age of five years.

Professor Ahmed added that;

“some two million [Iraqi] refugees have left the country; almost an equal number have become refugees within Iraq; over half of Iraq's 4.5 million children are malnourished; and unemployment stands at over 70 per cent.

These numbers should be seen in the perspective of the total population of the country, which was considerably less than 25 million at the onset of the war.

We are talking of perhaps as much as half the population killed, maimed and injured, driven out of the country, driven into starvation, malnutrition, epidemic diseases, despair, and even crime”.

Why?

According to recent reliable estimate, over a million innocent Iraqis have been murdered in cold blood, as a direct result of four years of Occupation. The majority of the victims were innocent women and children.

In addition, hundreds of Iraqis, including women and children are enduring torture and sexual abuses in hundreds of U.S.-Britain run prisons throughout Iraq.

The situation for Iraqi civilians is in “ever-worsening humanitarian crisis” with the worst decline in child mortality, said the recent report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“The suffering that Iraqi men, women and children are enduring today is unbearable and unacceptable”, said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the director of operation of ICRC.

Iraq’s health situation accurately summarised by Bert De Belder of Medical Aid for the Third World in Belgium as:

“[W]orse than ever because of the U.S.-led Occupation. The only way in “[r]eversing the current trend of ever-deteriorating health conditions requires first and foremost the end of the Occupation”, added De Belder. (Al-Ahram Weekly, 5 - 11 April 2007).

In sum, an entire nation was violently taken hostage and deliberately and brutally destroyed.

The U.S.-Britain aggression against the Iraqi people and the destruction of Iraq are premeditated war crimes.

Instead of being held responsible and tried for war crimes, the perpetrators of the aggression against Iraq have been re-elected, and are preparing for another war of aggression.

Their agenda is the domination of the entire planet – hegemonic imperialism – through violence.

The declared objective and true intent are to conquer people’s natural resources and using these resources to enhance an imperialist ideology.

If Western governments, the U.S. and Britain in particular, are sincerely committed to disarmament, peace and “democracy” in the region as they pretend to be, then they should disarm Israel of nuclear weapons, liberate the Palestinian people from Israel’s terror and end their imperialist Occupation of Iraq, as demanded loudly by the Iraqi people.

Finally, Iran is an important Muslim nation. After the destruction of Iraq, Iran remains the only nation in the Middle East not under Western-imperialist (U.S.-Britain) domination.

Therefore, Iran struggle is a struggle for the liberation of Muslims not only in the Middle East, but also around the World.

To counter this imperialist threat, Iran should pursue a strategy of self-defence to deter any foreign aggression on her sovereignty, and protect the Iranian people.

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.