Reagan Official: Paranoia as Policy - How Bush Brewed the Iran Crisis

[bigtree]

Why did the Bush regime create a crisis over Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05232006.html



The answer is that the Bush regime is desperate to widen the war in the Middle East.

What has Iran done? Unlike Israel, Pakistan and India, countries that developed nuclear weapons on the sly, Iran signed the non-proliferation treaty. Countries that sign this treaty have the right to develop nuclear energy. The International Atomic Energy Agency monitors their energy programs to guard against the programs being used to cloak a weapons program. Until the Bush regime provoked a crisis, Iran was cooperating with the inspection safeguards. The weapons inspectors have found no Iranian weapons programs.

There is no evidence for the Bush regime's accusation that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. What the Bush regime is trying to do is to unilaterally take away Iran's right under the non-proliferation treaty to develop nuclear energy. It is the Bush regime that is violating the treaty by attempting to deny its benefits to Iran. The Bush regime is acting illegally because of its paranoid suspicion that 5 or 10 years in the future Iran will use what it has managed to learn about uranium enrichment to develop a weapons program.

Why is the Bush regime concerned about what Iran might do in the future? Is it because the US government intends to continue its bullying in the MIddle East and is worried that Iran will get tired of it and develop nuclear weapons as a check on US hegemony over the Muslim world? Why does the Bush regime think that its interest in the Middle East takes priority over the interests of the countries that are located there?

more: http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05232006.html


Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

[acmavm]

1. Okay, how to get the mainstream media to understand that

it's not in ANYONE'S best interest to keep spouting the bush** administration LIES.

[Dunvegan]

2. This all assumes continued BushCo/Republican CONTROL of the US...

...as Democratic administrations would almost surely not follow on with such grand-scale intervention and empire in the Middle East.

Does BushCo think they'll be in power for the next 20 years?

[Poiuyt]

3. True, but a McCain Administartion might continue with Bush's war-like

ways and fear mongering

[bigtree]

4. .