US: Edging Toward War with Iran?

Photo: pslweb.org

(Aljazeera) By MJ Rosenberg - Suddenly the struggle to stop Iran is not about saving Israel from nuclear annihilation. After a decade of scare-mongering about the second coming of Nazi Germany, the Iran hawks are admitting that they have other reasons for wanting to take out Iran, and saving Israeli lives may not be one of them. Suddenly the neo-conservatives have discovered the concept of truth-telling, although, no doubt, the shift will be ephemeral.

The shift in the rationale for war was kicked off this week when Danielle Pletka, head of the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) foreign policy shop and one of the most prominent neo-conservatives in Washington, explained what the current obsession with Iran's nuclear programme is all about:

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it's Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don't do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, "See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn't getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately." ... And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem.

Hold on. The "biggest problem" with Iran getting a nuclear weapon is not that Iranians will use it, but that they won't use it and that they might behave like a "responsible power"? But what about the hysteria about a second Holocaust? What about Prime Minister Netanyahu's assertion that this is 1938 and Hitler is on the march? What about all of these pronouncements that Iran must be prevented from developing a nuclear weapon because the apocalyptic mullahs would happily commit national suicide in order to destroy Israel? And what about AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and its satellites, which produce one sanctions bill after another (all dutifully passed by Congress) because of the "existential threat" that Iran poses to Israel? Did Pletka lose her talking points?

Apparently not.

Pletka's "never mind" about the imminent danger of an Iranian bomb seems to be the new line from the bastion of neo-conservativism.

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