By Stephen Gowans
While the United States and its allies warn that a military attack on Iran is an option they won’t rule out, this doesn’t mean that a war on Iran is only a future possibility, not a present reality. The war is underway, and has been for years. “I often get asked when Israel might attack Iran,” says Patrick Clawson, director of the Iran Security Initiative at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I say, ‘Two years ago.’”
Clawson has a point, but two years is too short. A case can be made that the war has been going on since 1979, when Iranians booted out the US-backed dictator, the Shah, and set out on a path of independent development.
It’s just that in the last decade, the intensity of the war has been ratcheted up.
True, cruise missiles haven’t smashed into downtown Tehran. And Israeli bombers haven’t flown missions to reduce Iranian nuclear sites to rubble, despite Tel Aviv’s incessant threats to do so. But the United States and its allies have:
• Imposed crippling sanctions
• Kept up threats of military intervention
• Used cyber-warfare to cripple Iran’s uranium enrichment program
• Assassinated Iran’s nuclear scientists
• Met with Iranian dissidents to plan covert actions to destabilize the government
• Funded opposition groups
• Financed anti-government media
• Worked to foment a popular revolution under the guise of democracy-promotion
• Created Farsi language satellite television programming to broadcast anti-government propaganda into Iran.
A US military attack on Iran would be “a last option” explained the former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton. But for the moment, the United States is relying on “economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution.”
Why?
