By
Pirouz
Mojtahed-Zadeh
His Excellency President George W. Bush
The White
House
Washington DC.
United States of
America
16 April 2006
Mr. President
I am writing
to you in the name of peace and in the name of human dignity. And in the absence
of a balanced debate in Western political, academic and media circles on the
issue of Iran’s nuclear energy program, I would humbly invite Your Excellency to
spend a few minutes of your most valuable time to read an alternative argument
about the said issue for the sake of peace and preservation of human
dignity.
I wrote to you
once before (5/2/2002) to say that as an academic of Iranian origin in
Great
Britain, I was seriously offended by your
remarks in your state of the union address of that year about our nation
being a member of the so-called axis of evil. In that letter I stated
that Iran was not Afghanistan or Iraq to have been created by the former British
Empire for their geo-strategic needs of the time and/thus it is not be meddled
with by new powers when desired. It is a nation of about 70 million with a long
history of civilization; a major contribution to the progress of mankind and a
substantial cultural influence in the region. It is equipped with a strong sense
of national identity and patriotism. Perhaps Iran’s eight years of relentless
defense in the face of Saddam Hussein’s war that was encouraged by Washington
and supported by the Soviet Union and almost all who profess to be US ally,
including Britain, France, Germany, Israel etc. who directly or otherwise
breached the UN imposed ban on supply of arms to the belligerent states and
armed Saddam Hussein with all kinds of military hardware and intelligence, as
well as soldiers and countless of billions of dollars from Arab states of the
Persian Gulf. The world witnessed that against all these and in spite of its
defense ability having been seriously undermined in the process of revolution
that preceded the war, the Iranians staged a resistance of the kind that had no
precedence in the history of mankind. With their bare foot they marched on Iraq
of Baath Party and with their hands deprived of any advanced weaponry they
effectively defeated Saddam Hussein and all those who backed him, chasing them
back to where they had come from. I think that unmatched display of national
unity and pride made it clear to all that Iran is not Afghanistan or Iraq of former
description.
I also pointed
out that as a nation-state of today; Iran has come a long way. Exactly a
century ago, when all of Asia was still living
in dark ages this nation began its eventful journey to the modern world of human
dignity, social equality, political integrity and economic prosperity. In this
long journey, Iran has experienced many ups and
downs, but never succumbed to the indignity of accepting outside interests
deciding for its destiny. The task of democratization of Iran might not have, as
yet, been completely successful, but Sir, when you talk about wanting to spread
your brand of democracy to the so-called Greater Middle East or creating
democracy in Iraq in order to influence Iran, you could have taken into
consideration the fact that first; democracy is real and sustainable when it is
home-grown. Second; the US
version of democracy, in which the lobbies are gradually replacing the demo,
leaves much to be desired, as your Excellency has appointed two of former
US presidents to study ways of
improving on its election system. Third, there is not any symbol of democracy in
the Middle East to be modeled on by the others; in reality, there is no
democracy in the Middle East; Israel is a state that deprives a large segment of
its population of the basic human rights; sends tanks and helicopters to fight
women and children; invades its neighbours to grab their lands; pays no
attention to repeated UN resolutions to behave responsibly etc.
Turkey, though has managed to
construct a façade of democracy as a result of pressure from the
US and EU, its military junta decides
how the Turks and non-Turks are to live there. The mockery of the concept of
democracy US friends have created in places like Jordan and Egypt, cannot be acceptable even by Washington.
It seems Sir,
your advisers either do not
have the necessary knowledge or do not find it discernable to explain that apart
from Bahrain, Iran is the only country in the Middle East that has made some
progress towards a real democracy; it still has many problems, but the society
is debating a democracy that cannot be sustainable unless it is home-grown.
Moreover, given Iran’s
millennial civilizational and cultural influence in West Asia, it is more likely
that Iran’s progress in
democracy influenced Iraq and
others in that part of the world to develop their own homogenous democracy, if
only the West stops meddling in the internal affairs of Iran and others
in Muslim Middle East. Having said all that, it is no denying however, that we
Iranians still have a long way to go to achieve our final national goals in this
respect, but that has very little to do with outside powers, and for that
matter, I would not even bore you explaining what these problems are. In fact,
US interference in support for those
involved in democratic debates will inevitably brand our hard work as being
inspired or instructed by a power that unfortunately leaves no stone unturned in
proving to be our national enemy.
Sir, evidently you have
heeded these parts of my said letter and on some occasions you indeed repeated
the fact that Iran is not
Iraq or Afghanistan, and/thus promised to treat
Iran differently. You even went as
far as stating in your ‘state of the union’ address of 31 January 2006 that:
Tonight, let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran: America respects you, and we respect
your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own
freedom. And our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free
and democratic Iran. But Sir; did you really
mean that America respects our nation and that
you respect our country? Or your government’s frantic endeavor to construct an
internationally acceptable case to justify destruction of our country by war or
worldwide economic sanction is their way of respect for Iran as a
nation? Are we to believe that your efforts and those of your Secretary of State
for instance to get India to retreat from Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline deal
which is vitally important to the economy of all three, is your way of showing
respect for the Iranians; a project that has nothing to do with Iran’s strategic
policies and nuclear program? Surly you know that each time Washington threatens Iran of military options, the business world in
Iran looses large portions of its
hard earned business, which has nothing to do with the ruling clergy. Is this
your government’s way of expressing respect for Iran as a
nation?
Sir, in their shortsighted
views, your neo-con aids and advisers may think of Iran as a terrorist nation who cannot be
trusted to have nuclear weapon while India, Pakistan and Israel who are
constantly at war can have it. But it is sad that the President of the United
States is not advised by wise people that America has never been short of, that
under any kind of regime, Iran has not even threatened any nation in the past
200 years, and/or there has not been even one single Iranian involved in so many
terrorist activities of the recent years. Iran is a
civilized nation that is fully aware that nuclear weapon is not to be used; that
it is for regional and global deterrence and balance of power for peace.
Iran is fully aware that even
international villains like Stalin, Hitler did not use their nuclear weapons.
Even Ariel Sharon did not threaten to use nuclear weapon against those he
considered as enemies of his country; but the United States of
America did use it at the end of World War II.
Not only America has failed
to justify use of this evil tool to the satisfaction of human conscience, but
also is using the bunker buster variety of it in its military adventure in
Iraq and is threatening to use it
against our country. Iran believes that even as deterrence, nuclear weapon
cannot guarantee lasting peace and security in the world and/thus what is needed
for the Middle East at least, is a nuclear disarmament that would make her
age-old desire of a nuclear free zone in that volatile region a reality.
Sir, may I respectfully
assure you that very few Iranians have been influenced by your promise of
respect for our country and our right to choose our own future. This was
more like asking us to ignore what we see in your government’s fierce global
endeavour to get our nation condemned internationally, not because it is really
developing nuclear weapon, but because of the Islam-o-phobic fear of a few in
Israel that Iran might decide sometime in future to develop nuclear weapon and
might decide to use it against Israel. Your UN Ambassador, John Bolton, promised
the AIPAC meeting of Zionist Lobby on 7 March 2006 to inflict pain
on Iran in that international forum.
When making that promise, he twisted his fist in gesture to display his hatred
of Iran and the sadistic desire to
inflicting pain on a nation that his boss had claimed to have respect
for.
Moreover, you have made the best of President Ahmadinejad’s ideological
remarks about the state of Israel ought to be wiped off the world map; a
non-practical proposition; an expression of ideological wish which was not
supported by proposing any practical plan or policy for carrying it out; an
ideological rhetoric that had been repeated many times before him in the world
of Islam without having caused such a fuss. But you Sir, made the best of this
ideological expression by presenting it as launching plans to eradicate the
state of Israel and mixed it, may I say respectfully, disingenuously with the
lie about Iran having built or is about to build nuclear weapons to use against
Israel… in order to justify an international ganging up of the strong against
the weak so that the way is paved at the United Nations to sanction wiping the
state of Iran off the map of the world. The problem of Islam-o-phobia in the
West seems to have reached the point that even comparing Israel to a rotten tree triggers angry promises
by the State Department that the US will make the G8 summit to declare sanctions
to starve the people of Iran
because their president does not like Israel. He certainly seems to have
touched a raw nerve in Washington. On the other hand, let us assume
for the argument’s sake that Iran has a nuclear bomb and wants to use it
against Israel. How could anyone think that
an Islamic state would dare to drop atomic bomb on Israel without causing catastrophe to Muslim
nations of the Lebanon,
Jordan, and Palestine, the densely populated areas of which are
situated in such a close proximity of Israel’s population centres. The
Israeli extremists have for obvious reasons suffered historically from the
over-exaggerated fear of their safety and security. Even expression of doubt
about the holocaust leads to imprisonment of a British historian for three years
in a Western democracy, and telling a pestering Jewish reporter off will result
in suspending for a month the office of the elected Maier of London. But
publishing the optimum of insult against the prophet of Islam is covered by the
freedom of speech???
On the other hand, by
concocting fanciful statistics about the ethnic variations forming the nation of
Iran, the naïve but over-zealous Michael Ladeen for instance, gathered together
after your state of the union address of this year, all the wondering gangs of
terrorists and separatists amongst Iranian Americans; elements who are openly on
the pay of either the CIA (like MKO/MEK), or some Pan-Turkish and/or Pan-Arab
sources, (like the Gray Wolf and Al-Ahvaz) encouraging them to fight for the
disintegration of Iran. Meanwhile, your Secretary of State asks the Congress to
allocate a budget of several million dollars to pay for the expenses of the
activities of the gangs that are being used by all the president’s men and woman
in order to wipe the state of Iran off the map. Your overzealous
neo-con colleagues like Michael Ladeen are too naive to realize that these
elements are consumed by their racially inclined ideas, and that playing with
the fire of racism of their kind can be as dangerous to world peace and
stability as playing with the fire of religious extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan
proved to be. They seem not to have drawn any lesson from US experience of trying to use Islamic extremism
in 1980s against Soviet Union in Afghanistan which has been the cause
of all anti-West terrorism of our world of today.
Similarly, your allies in
Britain and
Canada have not learnt any lesson
about the danger of playing with the fire of religious or racial extremism.
Their leaders have met the leader of terrorist gang al-Ahvaz and promised
support for him. The British have in fact went as far as granting this terrorist
gang permission to place their head-office in London where it had attacked and occupied Iranian Embassy
in 1980 when they were invented by Saddam Hussein at the start of his war
against Iran. The siege of the Embassy was
crashed in the famous SIS operation and the gang was officially branded as
‘terrorist’ by the British authorities. Now that this gang is revived and is
actively engaged in bombing campaign in Iran which has caused great harm to our
brother Iranian Arabs of Khuzestan, your government described their terrorism as
action in the defense of the rights of the Arab nation (in Iran), and
asked Iran not to try and eradicate their terror against Iranian Arabs who were
first to make so much sacrifice in the defence of their Iranian homeland in
Saddam Hussein’s war. Similar request was made by the British who are supporting
them in the hope that they will contribute to the US-Israeli-Canadian-British
sponsored plot to wipe Iran off the map of the world. In
other word: while President Ahmadinejad only expresses an ideological wish about
the state of Israel, US, Israel, UK, and Canada actively endeavour to support
those who are poised to wipe Iran off the map of the
map.
But in the final analysis,
may I ask if it is true that the costly and dangerous US efforts in making the
idea of clash of Christian West with Muslim East a reality, is about America
being committed to the defense of the state of Israel, or it is about defending
the excesses of the regime in Israel and its desire to keep the lands they have
stolen from their Arab neighbours? Is it really because Dr. Ahamdinejad wants to
single-handedly wipe out the state of Israel, or the reality is that your
government has been made to commit itself to grant the extremists like Ariel
Sharon, his successor, and others like Netanyahu their atrocious wish of
devastating any nation in the world of Islam who dares to support the
Palestinian struggle to regain their homes, their dignity and their basic human
rights in their own homeland?. When the majority of the Israelis sensibly
enforced the policy of ‘land for peace’, the United States
failed to adequately support that humane proposition by trying to prevent
Zionist extremists from conspiring to overthrow that policy. Instead, your
government supported Sharon’s overbearing policies even to the detriment of your
own road map; your government failed to give proper support to the wise
initiative of H. M. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and failed measurably to
remember your own admission in the wake of September 11 that all these problems
come from your blind support of people like Ariel Sharon in Israel and that you
were going to modify your one-sided policies towards Arab-Israeli conflicts.
Instead of remembering to do that, your government invaded and occupied
Afghanistan; invaded and occupied Iraq, and now is threatening to invade Iran
while completely complacent about the impracticality of the task and its
terrifying consequence in the form of realization of the clash of civilizations
(clash of Christian West with Muslim East) etc.
As far as Iran is concerned, the United States started, from the time of the
emergence of the Islamic Republic, to use any kind of excuses to enforce a
regime change even at the price of devastating Iran and its
neighbouring nations. The first excuse was that Iran was
exporting its revolution to the neighbouring states and US friends and allies in
the West and in the region bought that hilarious claim without asking themselves
how could any revolution be exported. A war with more than one million dead and
well over a thousand billion dollars of devastation was encouraged and supported
by the West against Iran with
no result for anyone except that it united the people of Iran with the
revolutionary Islamic Republic, which in turn guaranteed its survival in its
shaky start.
Now, by wanting to repeat the
same adventure, this time not using the Saddams of the region, but directly,
your government is repeating the same mistake by making an excuse of
Iran’s nuclear energy program to
justify your incomprehensible threats of new wars and devastation in the Muslim
Middle East. For this, of course you have the support of a handful of right-wing
extremists like John Howard of Australia and Silvio Berlusconi of
Italy with their psychopathic views
of Islam and other races. But as far as world opinion is concerned, please do
not let your naïve Secretary of State and her British counterpart prevent you
from knowing the fact that the world considers the United States of America
under the neo-cons as a new Empire that has become the main source of threat
against global security, and its president, may I respectfully say, as a
war-monger who would do only the pleasure of those in Israel and USA suffering
from their Islam-o-phobia.
On the
other hand, in order to paint a legal colour to disguise these war-mongering and
to achieve an international justification for your said plan against Iran and
its people, your ally in Britain, H. E. Premier Blair argued (on 9th
March 2006) that:
Obligations that are entered into in the international community should be
kept, and if they aren't that's a serious situation and that's the reason for
reporting Iran to UNSC. But he failed to make it clear as to how Iran's voluntary undertaking in the
temporary Paris agreement of 2004 for the interim period of Iran-EU3
negotiations, has in his judgment amounted to Iran's international
obligations of permanent nature? In the face of such ambiguity in
reference one can only assume that Mr. Blair refers to Iran's withdrawal of
voluntary undertakings, when she was enticed to voluntarily suspend its
uranium enrichment process for as long as negotiations with EU3 went on. I
hope I will not be considered as too presumptuous to propose that before
accusing Iran of not honouring its so-called international obligations,
Mr. Blair needed to make it clear firstly; weather or not Iran's agreement to
suspend all activities regarding uranium enrichment was a voluntary or an
obligatory undertaking. Certainly the undertaking could not have been
obligatory and imposed upon her under duress as it would be totally against NPT
and other international laws and regulations. But on the other hand, if the
undertaking was voluntary, then we seem to have differences of opinion as to
what a voluntary undertaking would mean. English dictionary tell us that a
voluntary undertaking is a state of affairs that could be:
Arising, acting, or resulting
from somebody's own choice or decision rather than because of external pressure
or force. Should this definition be
acceptable then surely a voluntary undertaking and an
international obligation are mutually exclusive and present contradiction
in terms.
Secondly, it is of consequence
that Misers Blair & Chirac and Ms. Merkel made it clear if there was a
time-limit in the Paris agreement for Iran's suspension of uranium enrichment
activities, for if no time-limit was provisioned then it could not have been
considered as a finally concluded legal instrument that required no further
negotiations. But as talks went on after the signing of that agreement, then it
could not have been but an interim legal instrument only designed to better
shape the negotiations which were hoped to arriving at a treaty according to
which both the West would build confidence with Iran’s nuclear program and Iran
would be allowed to enjoy its established rights under the terms of
NPT (Article IV) to
develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
And that the nuclear states of the West would be obligated to assist the
non-nuclear Iran with the
development of nuclear energy, while they could legally observe her to make sure
that Tehran did
not deviate from peaceful use of nuclear energy.
On the
other hand, in spite of
confirmation by all international onlookers that US-Indian nuclear deal of March
2006 has seriously weakened the proliferation regime by making a mockery of the
NPT regulations, Mr. El-Baradei, the obliging Director General of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) praised that unjustifiable deal on
March 2, 2006 as "would boost non-proliferation efforts". By so serving
the pleasure of the United
States, he ignored the plane fact that that deal allows
India, which has already developed nuclear weapons, to keep its
secret strategic nuclear sites away from any inspection by IAEA. This is the UN
official who, under the US and EU3 pressure reported Iran to the UN
Security Council on the basis of innuendos such as: Iran was not completely
honest in its disclosure of everything some time in the past: yet he
declined to state the truth that IAEA investigations eventually found out
everything about Isfahan and Natanz, which proved those sites to be problem-free
and formed the integral parts of Iran's rights to peaceful nuclear energy, and
that failure of their disclosure was because of administrative mismanagement
than anything else. Or; in her cooperation with the IAEA investigation
Iran showed some reluctance
in allowing agents to inspect some of its military bases: But, he fails to
remember that in his reports of investigations he repeatedly praised
Iran for cooperating with the task of
investigation. He also fails to mention that this reluctance is normal as no
other state welcomes any prospect of its sensitive military sites being
intrusively looked at by foreign agents who would not give any real guarantee
for the confidentiality of information that are deemed to be vital for national
security of the state being investigated. These are, at best, debatable issues
for IAEA Board of Governors. UN Security Council is not the forum to debate
them, but why you Sir, and your obliging friends in London, Paris and Bonn insist it to be
referred to the United Nations? Can the answer be anything but what Ambassador
Bolton has promised his AIPAC friends?
Mr.
El-Baradei reported the case of Iran’s nuclear energy program to the UN Security
Council solely to make it possible for John Bolton to inflict his promised pain
on Iran, in spite of the fact that the UN Security Council’s job is to find
solutions to real threats to world peace from rebel states like Israel, not to
condemn a member nation like Iran to war and devastation on the basis of a
decided crisis over her future nuclear energy plans; a nation that has not even
threatened another country for the past two centuries. This gentleman has
bravely discarded the embarrassment that the file he reported to the UN Security
Council not only contained no evidence of wrong doing on the part of Iran, but
also puts on full display before the world opinion his own repeated official
reports of investigation of all sites in Iran and verification that no evidence
had been found to incriminate Iran of any plan for developing nuclear weapons.
Yet, he unashamedly asked the Security Council to deal with Iran’s case for
the purpose of ‘inflicting pain’ on its people on the basis of the said
innuendos. In returning El-Baradei’s report to him the UN Security Council
returned to him for implementation of the idea of giving Iran 30 days to deprive
itself of an independent nuclear energy research for all eternity; a demand that
cannot be acceptable even to the weakest of nations. No government in the world
can decide to deprive all future generations of its nation from their
established rights. But when it comes to a point as incomprehensible as this,
UN Security Council is to be
asked to verify that asking Iran to indefinitely deprive itself of nuclear
research activities would not effectively mean to paralyse the NPT protection of
Iran, and that its membership of the treaty is lost, and her continued
membership is just as good as withdrawn.
Sir in
the final assessment of what the governments of the neo-cons have done so far, I
have to regretfully say, that it amounts to no less than total destruction of
America’s post-World War II
credibility as a power that supports peace, democracy and human rights in the
world. To destroy this highly praised position, the neo-cons had to ignore the
facts of history and principles of civility; In order to make their
imperialistic desire of New World Order in the wake of the collapse of
the by-polar world order, they ignored the advice of those wiser amongst the
Americans like Professor Russell Kirk who observed: Our prospects in the
world of the twenty-first century are bright – supposing we Americans do not
swagger about the globe, proclaiming our omniscience and our omnipotence….
Any American New World Order will likely cause the United States to be more detested – beginning
with the Arab peoples (Muslims) – than the Soviet
Union ever was.
From
the point of view of the Iranians, all your Excellency’s government has done by
ganging up US and EU3 against the established rights of the people of Iran, was
to unite this people behind the Islamic Republic once again, but this time in a
way that has no precedence in Iran’s history. Apart from those involved in
terrorism, all those in the camp opposed to the IRI have united to defend Iran’s
legitimate rights; the national right that you and your European colleagues are
pressing the IRI to suspend indefinitely without even thinking how could it be
possible for any government to sign a document that deprives even the unborn
generations of its nation of nuclear energy. No state can make such a pledge,
but the atrocious demand has motivated an all out national unity, which at this
particular junction of our national debate for democracy, can only slow done
this debate that is vitally important for the future of peace and stability of
Iran and the neighbouring nations.
Yours
sincerely
Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh
Ph.D.
Professor of Political
geography and Geopolitics – Tehran
Chairman of Urosevic Research
Foundation - London
590
Field End Road, Middlesex HA4 0QZ, UK
Tel/Fax: +44-20 8422
7992
E-mail: pirouzmojtahedzadeh@hotmail.com
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