Stephen Gowans: The United States' Barbarous Policy On Iran

"Sanctions, "New York Times"reporter Rick Gladstone writes, have subjected "ordinary Iranians" to "increased deprivations" in order to "punish Iran for enriching uranium that the West suspects is a cover for developing the ability to make nuclear weapons" In other words, Iran is suspected of having a secret nuclear weapons program, and so must be sanctions to force it to abandon it. Contrary to Gladstone, the West doesn't really believe that Tehran has a secret nuclear weapons program, yet even if we accept it does believe this, the position is indefensible. Why should Iranians be punished for developing a capability that the countries that have imposed sanctions already have? The reason why, it will be said, is because Iranians are bent on developing nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. Didn't Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to "wipe Israel off the map"? Regurgitated regularly by US hawks and Israeli politicians to mobilize support for the bombing of Iran, the claim is demagogic rubbish. Ahmadinejad predicted that Israel as a Zionist state would someday disappear much as South Africa as an apartheid state did. He didn't threaten the physical destruction of Israel ad expressed only the wish that historic Palestine would become a multinational democratic state of Arabs and of Jews, who trace their descent from antecedents who arrived in Palestine before the arrival of Zionist settlers, i.e, that it would someday become a more humane alternative to what it is today. No less damaging to the argument that Iranians aspire to take Israel out in a hail of nuclear missiles is the reality that it would take decades for Iran to match Israel's already formidable nuclear arsenal, if indeed it ever aspires to.