Wayne’s comments pretty much say it all—the proper American attitude is might makes right. Power politics, pure and simple. There are no standards of conduct—only the use of power with occasional diplomacy if it might achieve the same results.

That is why Wayne can seemingly avoid a few other salient facts: that the Americans overthrew an elected government of Iran in 1953 and kept a rather unpopular Shah at the head of the country for 25 years.  But all Wayne can see are American hostages.  And about that Saddam character: the man was responsible for killing quite a number of Iraqi citizens, no doubt.  But when was that actually happening?  Some of the worst of it was in the early 80’s, and the US knew about it, and didn’t care.  In fact, Reagan was only too happy to take Iraq off the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, either in 1982 or ‘83.  But, but, but, but—this man was killing his own people!

Why don’t people like Wayne just give up the pretense of law and admit that power is its own justification?

Here is the link to Ahmadinejad’s speech in Farsi as some here requested:

http://www.president.ir/farsi/ahmadinejad/speeches/138 4/aban-84/840804sahyonizm.htm

All who know Farsi know what it means. 

Thanks for Dr. Cole clarifying it.  The word by word translation “The regime that is occupying Jerusalem should be cleared from being present [or existance]”

There is nothing in it that says anything about map or country of Israel.

The translation (not word by word right) is here

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/weekinreview/30iran. html?ex=1142485200&en=60861e175f00885c&ei=5070

I have never understood why the Iranians have been off limits for all these years.  I know about the embassy hostages, and was as outraged as anyone else.  I know about Iranian covert ops (read Bob Baer’s book, it is good).  However, it seems to me that we simply make things worse at this point by refusing to have normal diplomatic relations.  We end up creating another Cuba.  Regime change didn’t work there, and it won’t work in Iran.

It is easy to distrust the Iranians on nuclear technology, harder to understand why anyone would think that the first option, the very first option, is military action.  Why not do a Nixon goes to China thing?

A okay article to begin with. All usa media is run by few, only 2 political party running usa, and both supported by AIPAC so who ever pleases AIPAC will certainly be next president and control the senate and house. USA is digging a big hole, and poor soldiers are paying the price with there life. Regarding Iran, if the religious leaders has openly condemed nuclear weapons, then rest assured they will not make one. Probably that’s the reason why USA is so bold, knowing Iran has not one and will not have one. Try your luck with north korea or india. Poor Iran, I feel sorry for that country.

Hi James, There was no undeclared nuclear projects in Iran.  The only violation of NPT that is attributed to Iran is a small enrichment of uranium apparently to test some enrichment equipment which based on Iranian claim they forgot or didnt know they had to declare.  A technical voilation at best.  Since then it has come out that Egypt and South Korea did similar things recently, in case of South Korea the enrichment was to the level of highly enrichment(HEU). In Iran’s case the enrichment was low level and in miligrams I think.

IAEA (and US) were aware of all the sites and infrastructure Iran was intending to build.  As a matter of fact the Isfahan and Natanz sites were contracted to be buid by Chinese and Russians but under US pressure they canceled the contracts in the 90’s.  Iran decided to build those sites on their own and they did so, they were under no obligation to report building those sites until they were ready to introduce fissionable materials. Although they build these sites secretly, they didnt violate any agreement.  The reason they give why they build them secretly is because US would have done something to prevent them to finish. They actually beleieve US broke its commitment to NPT by pressuring Russia and China from completing those projects.  There is alot more about all of these written by Dr. Gordon Prather.

Another thing even though I don’t agree with Ahmadinejad’s many policies Dr Cole is right about what Ahmadinejad said here is his full speech translated

http://themiddleeastnow.com/ref/jadspeech

the exact persian word he used is better translated to wiped, vanished or cleared rather than “wiped off the map” which means a geographically located place and never mentions Israel or occupiers but occupying regime.

The WORLD should be working together to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or technology for weapons. It seems this would prevent a possible nuclear war in the Middle East with Israel from ever happening. If all nations work together on this then no bombs will ever drop because of this issue. And I don’t believe any of this is about oil or dollars either. Iran does want nuclear weapons and more importantly, they would want to use them!

Is Israel going to give up its secret nookular program or Weapons of Mass Murder? Is the USA?

oh!

This isn’t about WMDS, or Israel, but the US $ and the Iranian Oil Bourse. The US Government deserves its downfall, so do the US Citizens!

Fluff up your feather pillow and keep that tar on the back burner. World Revolution is coming!

Yet again Mr. Bush is throwing out outright lies.  The present top man in the Iraqi government said yesterday that Iran is not flooding Iraq with IED’s or personnel.  In a recent speech Mr. Bush left out the word “not.” I’m beginning to think that Mr. Bush is a pathological liar.

I question the main assertion in the article.  According to the article, From an Iranian point of view, the Americans are simply being unreasonably aggressive.  Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei has given a fatwa or formal religious ruling against nuclear weapons, and President Ahmadinejad at his inauguration denounced such arms and committed Iran to remaining a nonnuclear weapons state.

Professor Cole may be a bit out of date.  This is what historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen wrote on March 2, 2006 in The New Republic: And now, in the context of the current crisis, after years of withholding their support, Iranian clerics who follow Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, Ahmadinejad’s spiritual adviser, have ominously issued a fatwa justifying the use of nuclear weapons.

So much for Cole’s theory.

Goldhagen, prior to the noted point, also indicates, with reference to Iran and the bomb - and note the statement by the allegedly moderate Mr. Rafsanjani -:

No less than three successive Iranian presidents have publicly called for the annihilation of Israel and the effective mass murder of hundreds of thousands or millions. Falsely depicted in this respect as an Iranian “radical,” Ahmadinejad’s call to “wipe Israel off the map"--together with Iran’s insistent drive to develop nuclear weapons--echoes the “moderate” former president and current Iranian power broker Hashemi Rafsanjani’s more elaborate account from December 2001 of the Iranian political Islamic leadership’s underlying thinking. “If, one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists’ strategy will reach a standstill, because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.” Here Rafsanjani is dispassionately thinking through the implications of a genocidal policy in which one nuclear bomb dropped near Tel Aviv would effectively destroy geographically tiny Israel. He gladly declares to his nation and the world that the costs--including hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Iranians dead as a result of nuclear retaliation from Israel’s invulnerable nuclear-armed submarines--would be worth it.

Are these calls for genocide real, as Goldhagen believes them to be, or are such calls just talk that are not even worth a comment from Cole? Well, according to Goldhagen, the Iranian thinking is as follows:

A renascent and ascendant Muslim world would first acquire nuclear weapons and thus attain parity of power with the West. Then it would annihilate Israel. Aided by global Islamic forces (there are an estimated 1.2 billion Muslims in the world), which are already showing their strength in Europe, political Islam would proceed to assail the West, weaken it, and ultimately subdue it.

If Goldhagen is correct, the world is dangerous not just because the US is meddlesome but because the Iranians and others have a very dangerous, genocidal agenda.  Would it not make sense for Cole, if he believes his own position, to explain why Goldhagen’s evidence and argument is wrong rather than asserting the best case for his position - in this case, evidently, overlooking a fatwa in Iran allowing the use of nuclear weapons -?

The majority of ordinary Americans are ignorant about the real issues hidden behind Iran’s nuclear agenda: the Iranian Oil Bourse. Unfortunately, the mainstream media in America plays in favor of the Bush Administration; therefore, they live in a bubble of lies which are feed with so much propaganda of fear (i.e. the “War on Terror").
Just remember what Abraham Lincoln once said: Perhaps Americans who might read this post will start to have second thoughts about Bush and his policy towards Iran
Here I’m enclosing a link to a very informative article about the Iranian Oil Bourse by William Clark.

Article found at :
http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=7707

Original article :
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/17450

“The occupation regime” is one of the ways these deeply hate-filled societies avoid using the name “Israel.” Another one is ‘the Zionist entity.” When they refer to the occcupation, they mean Tel Aviv as well as Ramallah. Governments that recognize Israel, such as Jordan, mean the West Bank and East Jerusalem when they refer to the occupation. Iran is certainly not among them.

The meeting at which the Iranian president called for “the occupation regime” to “vanish” was a conference entitled “A World Without Zionism.” Zionism is the idea that the Jews, like any other people of the earth, are entitled to a state of their own. For some reason it must have been inconvenient for Mr. Cole to mention the name of this conference.
As for the relevance of Holocaust denying, the parallel is to those racists in the 20th century (thankfully rare now) who claimed slavery was not a bad institution. They denied the suffering of African Americans and portrayed them as infantile beings who benefited from their masters’ kind concern. After the Civil Rights movement these racists deviated from what one poster called “the party line” just as Holocaust deniers do today. 

Should anyone concerned about racism trust someone who denies the facts about slavery?  Similarly, should anyone concerned about the use of atomic weapons against civilian populations trust someone who denies the genocide against the Jews that has already happened?

Why would the Iranian government turn down a Russian offer for already enriched Uranium for Nuclear plants?  This would seem to solve many problems for Iran with regards to a possibly ostensible civilian power program:
-It will cut down on the time it takes to obtain enriched uranium.
-Allow Iran to have nuclear plants without a fear of non-complience by Israel/US.
-Remove excuses for US/Isreal to ratchet up efforts for a military strike of some kind.

If Iran wants the bomb, they will get it one way or the other so the whole argument seems moot at this point.  There is enough missing plutonium out there for the taking that why even build a reactor becomes the question.

The NPT is a piece of paper - a joy joy Chamberlain/Hitler type of flash in the pan agreement without substance.  It means nothing - even the US is in violation of the treaty. So why bring it up.

The US has enough domestic problems that we are not facing, nor can we muster enough fortitude to face and it seems that pointing the other way is just another means to hide and cover our own faults. 

Perhaps it might be better for the US to tend to home matters first and then issues outside its borders later.

I grew up during the Viet Nam build up – I’m hearing the same style rhetoric only different names are used.  I’m hearing the same fear mongering, but now it is in the Middle East and not Asia. 

If Iran has ‘the bomb’ idealizations, so be it for they also know the first time they flip one, the world will use like in kind and there will be no Iran.  If they want simple energy – let them build reactors and they too will find out what a mess it is to upkeep and maintain.  But, to create a world wide shouting match - my gawd. 
Me thinks the man (both of them) protests too much.

If Iran cannot be trusted, who is to say the US can be trusted?  Both sides are now calling each other the culprit and that reminds me of kindergartners. 

In short, what exactly is the problem?

Regarding Comment #5140 by Wayne: This, to me, is the crystalization of everything wrong with this country right now. 9/11 ripped the scab off every xenophobic, racist impulse brewing below the surface of American culture, and the horrific attack of that day on innocent US citizens is now used to justify all manner of horrors perpetrated on (primarily innocent civilian) foreign citizens by the US abroad. It is not up to the US to decide which countries can to exist, and which can’t. Every country can be spun into a “threat” when the right propaganda is applied. Will this country ever be run by adults again?

I’m sure that you are very uncomfortable with the idea of another American war.

Little inconvenient facts like: Afghanistan being an absolute quagmire with thousands of dead American soldiers by now at the hands of Saddamn-supported Taliban and AL Qaeda insurgents, the fact that most of the weapons and funding support for the current insurgency in Iraq is coming from Iran, or that Iran has aided and abetted Al Qaeda in escaping Afghanistan don’t ever seem to register on some people’s radars.

Saddamn was killing tens of thousands of his own people every month, but we’re the viscous evil murderers of Iraqis.

All wars may be bad but I’m absolutely sure that future history will tell that the attempts to free the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan AND HOPEFULLY IRAN from the tyranny of dictators and Islamofascists will be better than any alternative. Not only for them but for us as well.

Places where one day suicide bombers have no basis of support and no way to operate and places that don’t end there meetings with chants of “Death to America” are places that are not a threat to us and our descendents.

That last alone is reason for us to go to war with Iran. Not to mention the 444 days our citizens remained as hostages from OUR OWN EMBASSY. This outrage and act of war has has never answered and if we are to have the true respect within the culture of the Middle East, 911 and its various similar acts and these Iranian facts must be answered with our righteous fist.

Like the Japanese, we did not seek war with these people but in order for us to have a freindship and proper respect like we do now with the Japanese we must educate them in the manner we did the Japanese: we squash their violent ambitions like a sledge hammer flattens a mosquito. This is the best and only true way to acheive peace with passionate,prideful, and ignorant societies.

Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect and monitor its nuclear energy research program, as required by the treaty. ..........Tehran denies having military labs aiming for a bomb, and in November of 2003 the IAEA formally announced that it could find no proof of such a weapons program.

Which is more than can be said of what the IAEA is allowed to inspect in the UK (signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and staunch ally of the U.S.), as stated in 2003 by the then Energy Minister.

“The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can carry out limited inspections of only Britain`s civilian and not military nuclear facilities, Energy Minister Stephen Timms has revealed.
“The IAEA can designate any UK civil nuclear facility, or any part thereof, for safeguards inspection visits but has no right of access to nuclear material required for national security and sites such as Aldermaston” where nuclear weapons are made”

Full text at : http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/uk/uk-0 31204-irna01.htm

This weekend, it was revealed that the “UK develops secret nuclear warhead”

“BRITAIN has been secretly designing a new nuclear warhead in conjunction with the Americans, provoking a legal row over the proliferation of nuclear weapons.”

Article at : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2081800,0 0.html

It very much seems to be the case of the pot calling the kettle black - again.

As a long-time reader of Juan Cole’s, I always value his contributions.  Juan argues that it would not be rational for Bush + Co to bomb Iran—that the consequences would be too negative for the U.S. in Iraq and around the world.  But might this be a faulty assumption?  Bush seems to operate on his own gut feelings and perhaps even divine revelations.  I fear that he will bomb Iran within a year.

It’s trully is as Juan C. translates. I’m from Iraq and have lived in Iran for 4 years. There are no wise politians in US for a long long time. They are looking for another Iraq,

Juan only forgets 1 realy important fact:

Iran wants to open the 3th oil bourse in the world. It will be the end for US$. Go and google about it en the its effects. Its an eye opener.

regards,

I think we need to address what I see as the elephant in the room.  Rather than some idealistic injection of democracy or individual freedom in the Middle East by overthrowing Saddam, Bush has caused a change in the balance of power among literally age-old rivalries: Persian vs. Arab, Shiite vs. Sunni, and all against the Jews.

We may be dealing with Bush and his Neocon foreign policy wonks little experiment in the Middle East for the rest of the century.  Just like in the previous century, WWI which led to WWII, the atomic bomb, and the Cold War, all started with that little trouble in the Balkans.  The Bush noble but naïve involvement in Iraq may have the lasting effect that he had hope but nothing like what he anticipated. 

While Mr. Cole does not believe the Iranians are really trying to obtain the bomb, the perceived threat is against other Arab nations, especially Saudi Arabia, rather than the U.S. or Europe.  How many Wahabis will move across the border to aid their Sunni brothers?  Can Turkey allow a independent Kurd state across their border?

Have they located accessible flat roofs in the Green Zone, from which helicopters could leave in a hasty, emergency exit?

This whole flap over Iran just shows how much we are willing to impose standards on others that we refuse to impose on ourselves.  Go take a look at a map.  To the east of Iran are: Afghanistan, where there are about 25,000 US troops, and Pakistan, an ally of the US with nukes.  To the north is Uzbekistan, which is allowing the US to use airbases there.  To the west is Iraq, with 150,000 US troops. To the northwest is Turkey, a powerful US ally.  To the south is Qatar, Doha, etc., with substantial forces.  And let’s not forget about Azerbaijan, to the north, where Donald Rumsfeld has been spending a bit of time lately. And then, of course, there is Israel, with the biggest open secret in the world - its nuclear weapons capabilities.

So, Iran is surrounded. It has every right to feel paranoid, and it’s plain that this administration is doing everything to try to provoke them.  To say that Iran is a “threat” is to implicitly ignore the enormous threats faced by Iran.  It should be hardly surprising that Ian might have an interest in developing nukes.  Any country that is so obviously threatened would be looking into ways of defending itself, and North Korea has proved that one of the best ways is to have nukes.

To argue that Iran should stay out of Iraqi politics is to once again apply standards to others that we do not apply to ourselves.  What is the US’s role in Iraq if not to interfere in Iraqi politics?

You said it all and thank you!

Hello:

I wonder if you may direct me to a web page someplace that would have the original text of the Ahmadi Nejad’s speech in Farsi, with the reference to wiping Israel off the face of the earth in it.

As an Iranian i’d like to say that Mr. Cole has once again missed the mark on the Islamic dictatorship.  Whenever there is any opposition the current dictatorship Mr. Cole runs to their aid and defense.  Similar to the bloodsuckers who defended the Savak Mr. Cole is a bloodsucker who defends the current dictatorship to the teeth. He’s naive, arrogant, and often dillusional.

A good article, but it misses the real reason BushCo will bomb Iran. It is the same reason BushCo invaded Iraq.

That reason is the decision to trade oil for Euros rather than Dollars.

The US finds itself in the enviable position of being the sole printer of the sole currency now accepted globally for oil purchases. It costs the Fed 2.3 cents to print a $100 bill, yet China, India, and every other world trading partner must acquire this money to buy the oil it needs. We buy DVD players from China with money we print for pennies...because BushCo make the rules. Nice work if you can get it, but not entirely fair.

Saddam agreed to take Euros in Sept 2000. He did so until he was overthrown by BushCo in 2003. BushCo quickly reverted to using only Dollars.

Hugo Chavez has been threatening to take Euros; he survived a BushCo/CIA coup attempt a few years ago. He has not mentioned Euros since then.

Which now brings us to Iran, which, while not a nuclear threat is a very real financial threat to the US Dollar monopoly. If the Euro were to compete with the Dollar as a World Reserve Currency, the Dollar would drop in value (think: Argentina). BPaying for oil is the Dollar’s primary use, because America has outsourced so much of her manufacturing we have little to sell.

The coming attack on Iran, like the invasion of Iraq, is really about Dollar Hegemony. All the rest is BushSpeak.

And we know what that is.

I’m an old woman without the historical background of those on this page, but Juan Cole is my first read each morning.

I have watched the United States vilify its “enemies” all my life, beginning with Castro.  Now I learn that Milosevic was probably painted worse than he was, certainly Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez and this latest—Ahmadinejad.

So I have developed a rule of thumb, especially after watching the Bush administration make villains of even its domestic critics:  If the President and his people say bad things about someone, it’s very likely propaganda and requires information from independent sources.

I have a guess as to the “other motivation.” New York and London have the only world markets to buy oil, and they both price oil in US dollars.  This month Iran will open a market to sell oil for euros.  If the world can buy oil for euros, why would the world want to use the rapidly depreciating dollars that the Treasury and Fed Reserve crank out by the billions every week?  And if the world doesn’t need our dollars any more, that will put a painful end to our trade and budget deficits.  The last person who sold oil for euros was Saddam Hussein.  When the US, Britain and Israel finish with Iran, its new market will be gone or will convert to selling oil for US dollars.  Then a smiling President will give us a double thumbs-up and say, “Mission accomplished!”

There are so many things wrong with the authors way of thinking I don’t know where to begin. All the retoric and verbage does not preclude the fact (well founded belief) that the Iranians are not our friends, they are not to be trusted, and once the have nueclear weopons they will use it. Their sole purpose is to destroy Israel, murdering millions, and they don’t care how many Moslems they kill in the process, after all, they will be martyrs.
If Iran is allowed to continue WWIII will commence.

Re: Comment #5099 by Joe Citizen on 3/13 at 5:03 pm

In considering the influence of evangelical Christians (I was raised as one as a child), we have to remember their belief in the end times prophesy of the re-establishment of the State of Israel and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

The scarey part is their belief in the Battle of Armageddon (taking place in the Middle East) to defeat the forces of evil.

Ring any bells?

Informative article.

You say “In some ways, by invading Iraq and destabilizing it, as well as fostering the rise of Shiite religious parties in Baghdad, the Bush administration has inadvertently strengthened Shiite Iran’s hand”

Yes, but one can go much further. People need to understand that the Iraq invasion has not only strengthened Iran’s hand it has CLEARLY DESTABILIZED IRAN and pushed it away from liberalization and towards anti american policies. 

And America’s confrontational attitude ensures this will only continue.

This more than the mess in Iraq may be the lasting disasterous legacy of America’s “sloppy and callously executed” invasion.

Cole correct. Almost all the world knows Iran is no threat, compared to the vast nuclear arsenal of the Brits, France, China, Russia & us. One wonders, there are at least 20 other nations that have worst human rights records. Look at Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, in Africa many countries with genocidal regimes, Burma, etc. In fact, now Afghanistan is a narco state, with close to 90% of worlds heroin production. Also, look at nukes of Inida, Israel, Pakistan & North Korea. Dozens of inspections at Iran’s nuclear plants. We need a peace initiative with Iran.

James #5096 mentions “the smoking gun” of Iran. When did Iran start shooting at anyone recently? I know that it is just a figure of speech, but I worry that we will all absorb more of the prejudicial content of the rhetoric about the Arab world from this administration than we would like to.  Has anyone noticed how loosely the word ‘enemy’ is used by the Republicans when talking about Iraq? It seems that Juan Cole’s deep knowledge of the Middle East and its languages is the advantage that helps him produce his excellently rich analyses of situations over there. To much of Washington’s plans and policies about the ME are based on what they want to get out of wars and other manipulations of them, not JC’s depth of understanding...Unless the admin. knows as much as Juan does about the Arab world, but just LIES meticulously and monumentally to us.

Hasn’t anyone thought about the economic side of the Bush push for regime change RIGHT NOW rather than in a few years?  The UAE just switched a portion of its reserve to euros. (To punish the US for renaging on the port deal?) Iran is set to switch to euro based currency around March 20.  This would devalue the dollar.  Remember, one of the first things Bush did after mission accomplished in Iraq was to switch back the oil base from euros to dollars.

Well iam an iranian who lived in canada for the past 6 years and unlike most iranians who left iran after the revolution my family just came here for a better life and education all due to the sanctions that the U.S government has slapped on iran for the past 25 years sure they made living hard in iran for some but you have to remember that since its creation in 500-600 Bc ira was never occuped exept twice once by alexander the great for about 50 years next time by mongols again for about 40-50 yaers it was the king of iran who freed the jews from the egyptions and helped them build the wall in juresulam, so my point is comes under pressure from outsiders the people of iran forget who their guverment is shah, islamist or watever else they come together to protect their people and their land. and i ask you americans and westerners to please get your facts before you judge and start talking and supporting bush iran with a history of 3000 years hasent killed as many people that the united states from its creation or even in the past 50 years. but besides all that you think you have democracy in the west but all you really have is 100 tv channels that feed you what your government wants you to think fear iran fear middle east or anything else that is in their intrest just a thought for all you to consider did you all know that the united states naval forces in perasian gulf DESTROYED an iranian passenger plane in the 1980’s during iran iraq war killing over 250 people and they called it an error they thought it was a threat when we all know how a 747 looks and it can not posses a threat and it was going trough its civilian air road over the gulf and they got no warning they just got shut down but okay EVEN IF IT WAS A MISTAKE WHICH IS IMPOSIBLE THEY BROUGHT THE GENERAL OF THAT SHIP BACK TO THE STATES AND AWARDED HIM SO AFTER MANY THINGS LIKE THAT HAPPEN HOW DO YOU EXPECT THE IRANIANS TO RESPECT AND TRUST THE AMERICANS WOULD YOU TRUST US IF WE HAD DONE THE SAME TO YOU .
PLEASE I REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT U THINK SORRY IS SOME PARTS OF THIS COMMENT DONE MAKE SENCE BUT I CAN DO MY BEST TO EXPLAIN IT TO YOU .

Joe Citizen wrote (5099), ‘...serious analysts have attributed the winning margin of victory to Mr. Bush’s success at winning key segments of the Jewish vote.’

Israeli influence in America is not exerted through the miniscule Jewish vote; it is exerted through the power of the purchase dollar. This is how the mechanism works:

U.S. tax payors give five billion, more or less, to Israel every year. Much of this money is channeled back to the U.S. defense industry, in which the neocons are heavily invested. Well-known examples are the Bush family and the Carlyle Group, and of course, Chaney and Halliburton.

You might say that we are paying for our own misery. The situation drips with bitter irony.

Mr. Cole’s news about what the Iranian president really said about Israeli occupation—as opposed to the translation we have all heard about wiping Israel “off the map”—is quite a revelation, if true.

I have to wonder: couldn’t US pressure on Iran give Iran even greater incentive to cause trouble in Iraq and further undermine—at this crucial, very sensitive time—US and Iraqi efforts to achieve political stability?

I also have to wonder to what degree current US foreign policy is deterimed by domestic political considerations. Although much focus has been given to the decisive role played by evangelical Christians in the last election, some quite serious analysts have attributed the winning margin of victory to Mr. Bush’s success at winning key segments of the Jewish vote.

Unlike his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier.

I’ll never understand why this point matters. Acceptance or non-acceptance of the “Official Party History” is one of the hallmarks of the Bolshevik/Stalinist era. People went to jail for it back then, just as they are today.

If I didn’t know any better, I would make a quick conclusion that Mr. Cole is an Iranian sympathizer.  However, I am grateful that pieces like that of Cole’s are still published in some form in the media.  This is a well-written piece with a lot of information never seen from the mainstream press.  I would have never known about the translation error by the American media regarding the Iranian president’s words about the “occupation regime.” It’s subtle things like these we need so badly in the mainstream press to give a fuller picture of what is going on in the world.  Again, I would have written off Cole as an Iranian sympathizer.  It’s hard to do so after reading this eye-opening piece.  Although, I do have one criticism: Cole seems a bit quick when writing off Iran’s nuclear capabilities.  Was the secret nuclear project (not mentioned to the IAEA) nothing more than a civilian project with no surreptitious underpinnings?  The article makes sense when things like these are not considered too seriously.  However, this article does not go out of its way to show with absolute certainty that Bush and Co. are entirely wrong.  Yes, the president of Iran can take a course in public relations.  But, surely, within the context of al-Qaeda’s influence in the Middle East, the uprising Shia, etc., can we just write off the smoking gun of Iran as nothing more than Bush and Co.’s ability to raise hell?