"... is he (Blair) about to collude in one more crime before he goes?"

[understandinglife]

<clip>

Blair knows this. He also knows the real reasons for an attack and the part Britain is likely to play. Next month, Iran is scheduled to shift its petrodollars into a euro-based bourse. The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn. The cost of the Iraq adventure alone, according to the Nobel Prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could be $2trn. America's military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases and limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally China.

That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran's nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world's fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly. Will the world's central banks then begin to shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar? Saddam Hussein was threatening to do the same when he was attacked.

While the Pentagon has no plans to occupy all of Iran, it has in its sights a strip of land that runs along the border with Iraq. This is Khuzestan, home to 90 per cent of Iran's oil. "The first step taken by an invading force," reported Beirut's Daily Star, "would be to occupy Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province, securing the sensitive Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the Iranian military's oil supply." On 28 January the Iranian government said that it had evidence of British undercover attacks in Khuzestan, including bombings, over the past year. Will the newly emboldened Labor MPs pursue this? Will they ask what the British army based in nearby Basra - notably the SAS - will do if or when Bush begins bombing Iran? With control of the oil of Khuzestan and Iraq and, by proxy, Saudi Arabia, the US will have what Richard Nixon called "the greatest prize of all."

But what of Iran's promise of "a crushing response"? Last year, the Pentagon delivered 500 "bunker-busting" bombs to Israel. Will the Israelis use them against a desperate Iran? Bush's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review cites "pre-emptive" attack with so-called low-yield nuclear weapons as an option. Will the militarists in Washington use them, if only to demonstrate to the rest of us that, regardless of their problems with Iraq, they are able to "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major-theatre wars," as they have boasted? That a British prime minister should collude with even a modicum of this insanity is cause for urgent action on this side of the Atlantic.

Much more at the link to The Next War - Crossing the Rubicon by John Pilger:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021006A.shtml

With Bush, Cheney, Rove and all the criminal neoconsters beginning to realize what happens when they do not control the 110th US Congress, do they have any reason not to attack Iran.

And, that's before they think of the dollar and all that oil.

And, if you think the Sunni Saudi's have any problem with the Shia Iranians being crushed, once and finally, think again.


Peace.

[Dunvegan]

1. The Dollar + Oil = The Big Prize

How could they not do this...being who they are?

[understandinglife]

2. "How could they not do this...being who they are?" -- Precisely.

Peace.

[understandinglife]

3. Feb 9 2006. British Parliament Debates Iran Policy

Part 1:

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5716

Part 2:

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5719

Part 3:

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5720

Peace.