By Ardeshir Ommani

On the front page of one of the recent issues of The New York Times, the colorful picture of President Mahmood Ahmadinejad and Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan and their undeniably friendly posturing was not an outcome that the U.S. administration and the Congress was expecting to see.  George Bush and the U.S. Congress have blamed Iran and especially Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps for the arms being used by the Afghani and Iraqi resistance movements to defend their motherlands. 

However, in a striking contrast, President Karzai has called Iran a friend of Afghanistan and a source of stability in the region.  No doubt, his favorable judgment of Iran has annoyed President Bush and all those in the U.S. government who wish to see greater tension between Iran and its immediate neighbors.  The same could be exactly said for Iran-Iraq relations.  Just two weeks ago, President Nuri Al-Maliki of Iraq visited Iran and met with not only President Ahmadinejad, but also the group in the highest echelon of the government of the Islamic Republic, including the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in Iran.  Al-Maliki appraised Iran as a friend of the people of Iraq and a source of stability and security in the region.  Once again the amicable relation between Iran and Iraq pained the U.S. ruling class that imposed the war on Iraq and is responsible for the deaths of 4000 regular and mercenary troops, 30,000 U.S. troops injured and maimed and 700,000 Iraqi men, women and children killed and two million Iraqis who have been forced to abandon their homeland and face refugee status in neighboring countries. 

It is an indisputable fact that the U.S. would like to create tension or at least see a lack of cooperation between Iran and the rest of the world in the same manner it has tried to isolate Cuba, Venezuela, and Iraq before its current occupation.  But the fancy dreams of George Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza  Rice and Senator Joe Lieberman, to name a few, are turning into nightmares and despair.

Washington’s Newest Provocation

In the same issue of The New York Times, next to the picture of Presidents Ahmadinejad and Karzai, an article described that the Bush Administration with the consent of the U.S. obedient Congress is planning to declare a huge segment of the Iranian military force, known as the Revolutionary Guard Corps, a ‘terrorist’ organization.  One may ask what is behind such a naked provocation and demonization of a large defense force of a sovereign nation?

One obvious reason for the countless use of such defamatory and hateful terminologies as terrorism, terrorist and Islamofascism by the U.S. authorities and their compliant media is their open and naked hostilities towards the revolutionary resistance of the Muslim world to the violent penetration of Western imperialism.  But these misnomers are nothing new.  In Boston, the British monarchy confronting the revolutionaries in 1776, in Russia, the Tsar facing the wrath of the working class in 1917 and in Iran, the Shah confronting the upheaval of the masses of Iranians in 1979, all called their opposition: “terrorist”.  By calling the sizable army of Iran – 125,000 man strong – a ‘terrorist group’, the U.S. is pursuing a more devious objective.  Being so far unable to intimidate the influential members of the European Union (EU) and other members of the United Nations Security Council such as Russia and China to agree to pass and implement a third resolution that would impose harsher sanctions against Iran, the U.S. is trying to blackmail the international community and force their companies to divest from Iran’s economy, particularly in its oil and gas sectors. 

Limits to U.S. Blackmail

It is doubtlessly not an easy job for the U.S. to force such giants of oil and gas industries as Totalfina Elf of France, ENI of Italy, Bow of Canada, Royal Dutch Shell, Norsk of Norway, GVA of Sweden, Sheer Energy of Canada, LG of South Korea, Statoil of Norway, Inpex of Japan, Sinopec of China, DNGC of India, SKS of Malaysia, Repsol of Spain, China National Offshore Oil Co. and Liquified National Gas Ltd. of Australia, all with a projected total investment of $190 Billion, out of Iran.  These companies’ decisions to invest in Iran have certainly the backing of their respective governments and no amount of U.S. blackmail – calling Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a ‘terrorist group’ – will be convincing enough to run them out of town.

Resorting to a new mendacity, the U.S. administration is desperately attempting to impose the arbitrary rules and spurious bills passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on other sovereign nations, just because it decides to call the defense forces of other countries as “terrorist”.  Washington, unilaterally, and in its own delusional mind is setting the legal grounds, albeit nationally, to charge the oil and gas companies of other countries with the crime of cooperating with and assisting the Iranian ‘terrorist’ revolutionary corps.  Let us not forget that all the evidence gathered by the U.S. so-called intelligence services is circumstantial and does not stick.  

About the author: Ardeshir Ommani is a writer and an activist in the anti-war and anti-imperialist struggle for many years, including against the Vietnam War.  Ardeshir is a co-founder of the American-Iranian Friendship Committee (AIFC) www.progressiveportals.com/aifc , where news of his most recent visit to Iran in March & April 2006 can be read.  He helped launch the successful www.StopWarOnIran.org campaign.  In the 1960's, he was a co-founder of the Iranian Students Association (ISA), which contributed to the struggle against the Shah of Iran, a U.S. puppet.
Two of his recent articles: "Erratic U.S. Foreign Policy" can be viewed at Persianmirror.com and “U.S. Arms Sales – Source of Instability” at payvand.com.

... Payvand News - 8/28/07 ...