…The controversial issue of Iranian ambitions for a civilian nuclear energy project ironically began with the assistance of the United States during the reign of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi. In 1957, Iran signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States as part of the United States Atoms for Peace Program. Additionally, under this program Iran purchased a research nuclear reactor from the United States that was put into operation in 1967.

Thus, these recent Iranian aspirations for nuclear weapons as purported by American policy makers are not a recent occurrence; the Shah in 1974 established the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and stated that Iran would have nuclear weapons without a doubt very soon. This pursuit of nuclear aspirations both for civilian power and regional military deterrence of Egypt and Iraq began before Israel was considered as a target, as is widely purported today; in fact during this period prior to the 1979 Revolution in which the Arab coalition had an oil embargo in place, Iran was an implicit supplier of petroleum products to Israel.

In addition to the financial and technological assistance from the United States, France and Germany signed several agreements with the Shah to provide Iran with enriched uranium, nuclear reactors and research centers. However, following the 1979 Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini immediately suspended construction indefinitely at all nuclear facilities in the “Islamic State” because as aforementioned, fundamental Islamic religious and jurisprudential beliefs consider all weapons of mass destruction as immoral.

Even during the Iran-Iraq War, Iran never explicitly announced a decision to pursue proliferation of weapons of mass destruction albeit their neighbor to the West, Iraq, was offered arms and military guidance from the United States and its Cold War allies. Throughout this period of internal institutional change and external military engagement with Iraq, Iran never resorted to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction even though Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator in control of a nation with a Muslim majority, began to produce and amass a stockpile of lethal nerve agents such as Sarin and VX nerve gas and other unconventional weapons which he would later use on his own populace in the first Gulf War.

Additionally, it has been widely reported in intelligence circles but never truly confirmed, that Israel has a nuclear program in place for defensive military purposes which was assembled hastily with American and Norwegian support during the Six-Day War against the Arab coalition. Thus, despite these aforementioned geopolitical threats throughout the Cold War and the collapse of Arab nationalism which were great periods of instability in the region, Tehran never restarted their nuclear program which was originally started by the Shah nor resorted to proliferation of non-conventional weapons.
informationclearinghouse.info

Iran rejects Israel’s accusation on Tel Aviv bombing
TEHRAN: Iran on Saturday dismissed as “baseless” remarks by Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz accusing Iran and Syria of being behind a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that wounded 19 people.

“Shaul Mofaz’s comments are baseless,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement. “The crisis in Palestinian lands are because of the inhuman policies of Israeli leaders and such comments show the desperation of the Zionist regime.”

Currency War
A funny thing happened to the Europeans on their way to get the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors to refer Iranian nuclear fuel-cycle programs – all Safeguarded and certified by the IAEA to be for peaceful purposes – to the UN Security Council by March.

They were on their way – reluctantly – at the insistence of Bush, Cheney, Bolton and Condi-baby. Reluctantly, because the Security Council will likely throw the IAEA Board referral – if obtained – directly into the waste bin as being frivolous.

Why? Well, Bush wants the Security Council to apply Article 39 of the UN Charter to the IAEA Board referral.

“The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
Threat to the peace? Act of aggression? How can Bush et al. expect the Security Council to conclude that IAEA Safeguarded programs constitute a threat to the peace or that pursuing them is an act of aggression?

Or expect the Council to take measures under Article 41 (sanctions), much less Article 42 (use of force)?

Obviously, as the Iranians, themselves, have pointed out, Bush had sent the Europeans on a Fools Errand.

Fortunately, the recent temporary curtailment of Russian natural gas supplied to Western Europe by a pipeline which passes through Ukraine, and the terms agreed to by Ukraine and Russia for restoration of supply, may have put a hitch in the Europeans gitalong.

And perhaps that hitch caused them to slow down long enough to reflect upon the Iranian Bourse that is scheduled to become operational – coincidently? – as early as March.

What is the Iranian Bourse and what has a Russian natural gas curtailment got to do with it?

Well, to answer the second question; in future, some gas delivered to Ukraine and perhaps on to Western Europe via pipeline will be Iranian.

And, according to Iranian officials, the Iranian Bourse will be a state-owned international oil, gas and refined products exchange, operating principally over the Internet, with transactions denominated principally in Euros.

The Iranian Bourse will be competing directly with London’s International Petroleum Exchange and New York’s Mercantile Exchange, both of which are owned by US corporations, and whose transactions are denominated in Dollars.

This may give context to the Georgia pipeline blast.

A Duke professor says he is doubtful about Thursday’s audiotape from Osama bin Laden. Bruce Lawrence has just published Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, a book translating bin Laden’s writing. He is skeptical of Thursday’s message.

“It was like a voice from the grave,” Lawrence said.

He has doubts about the tape, and thinks bin Laden is dead. Lawrence
recently analyzed more than 20 complete speeches and interviews of the al Qaida leader for his book. He says the new message is missing several key elements.

“There’s nothing in this from the Koran. He’s, by his own standards, a faithful Muslim,” Lawrence said. “He quotes scripture in defense of his actions. There’s no quotation from the Koran in the excerpts we got, no reference to specific events, no reference to past atrocities.”

While the CIA confirms the voice on the tape is bin Laden’s, Lawrence questions when it was recorded. He says the timing of its release could be to divert attention from last week’s US air strike in Pakistan. The strike targeted bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, and [reportedly] killed four leading al Qaeda figures along with civilians.

…Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower by William Blum had languished below 200,000 on Amazon’s top-seller list but stormed to 21 yesterday, with the online retailer struggling to meet demand.

After issuing new threats to attack the US and calls for President George Bush to withdraw American troops from Iraq, Bin Laden then found time to “plug” Mr Blum’s book. “If Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, it would be useful for you to read the book Rogue State,” he announced in his message relayed to a potential audience of billions via Arab satellite television.

Mr Blum is a long-standing and fierce critic of the White House, laying scorn on Mr Bush and his predecessor, Bill Clinton. His 320-page book tears to pieces US foreign policy and its opening line reads: “Washington’s war on terror is as doomed to failure as its war on drugs has been.”

Mr Blum has described the attacks on 11 September as “an understandable retaliation against US foreign policy”, stopping short of calling that a justification.

Once an employee of the State Department until his career was cut short after he led demonstrations against the Vietnam War, Mr Blum, 72, has been taken aback by his sudden celebrity. News networks in the US are clamouring to interview him. “The Washington Post refuses to publish my letters, but now they are coming to my house,” he told reporters.

Talking to a New York radio station, he said most interviewers have pressed him to reject Bin Laden’s endorsement but he says he has no qualms about being promoted by the world’s most wanted man. Mr Blum said: “I happen to share with Osama bin Laden a certain view of US foreign policy, and this is great if more people read my book.”
independent.co.uk

MOSCOW, Jan. 22 — A pitched row erupted between Georgia and Russia on Sunday after explosions in southern Russia hit a pipeline and an electricity transmission tower, cutting off the supply of natural gas and reducing electricity supplies to Georgia as temperatures plunged in the country.

Georgia, which has a poorly functioning electrical grid, uses natural gas to heat homes and power some industries. “The situation is very difficult. We have enough gas for just one day,” said Teona Doliashvili, a spokeswoman for the Energy Ministry.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili accused Russia of being behind the explosions to punish his country, presumably for its pro-Western policies. The Russian Foreign Ministry, in response, said the allegation was “an instance of hysteria and bacchanalia.”
washingtonpost.com

TIWANAKU, Bolivia – Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales, dressed in a bright red tunic worn only by the most important pre-Inca priests, promised to do away with vestiges of his country’s colonial past Saturday in a spiritual ceremony at an ancient temple on the eve of his inauguration.

To roars from the crowd of tens of thousands, Morales — the first Indian to be elected as Bolivia’s president and a fierce critic of the U.S. — called his landslide election a victory for indigenous populations around the world, saying it was evidence that poor countries can rise up to challenge richer ones.

“With the unity of the people, we’re going to end the colonial state and the neoliberal model,” said Morales, who spoke mostly in Spanish but also offered greetings in the Aymara language he grew up speaking as a boy.

Spectators walked for miles to listen to the leftist leader, passing thatched adobe huts and grazing sheep to reach the archaeological remains of the Tiwanaku civilization that flourished around 500 B.C. near the shores of Lake Titicaca, 40 miles from La Paz.

When Morales arrived, they shouted “Viva Evo! Viva Bolivia!” in both Spanish and Aymara, waving rainbow-colored flags representing 500 years of Indian resistance, first against Spaniard domination, then against nearly two centuries of grinding poverty in a country with a deep divide between rich and poor.

Many of Bolivia’s Indians, representing 60 percent of the country’s 8.5 million citizens, contend a white elite is responsible for continued repression.

Morales first walked barefoot up the Akapana pyramid and donned the tunic and a cap decorated with traditional yellow and red Aymara patterns. Then he was blessed by priests and accepted a baton adorned with gold and silver, symbolizing his Indian leadership.

After putting on sandals, he descended from the pyramid to address the crowd in front of the Kalasasaya temple.

Morales thanked Mother Earth and God for his political victory and promised to “seek equality and justice,” as he closed the ceremony performed by Indian priests, the cultural inheritors of this pre-Incan city whose people mysteriously disappeared without written record long before the Spaniards took control of much of South America.

He also praised the guerrilla Che Guevera, killed in Bolivia while trying to mount an armed revolution, and Tupac Katari, the 18th-century Indian leader who tried to capture La Paz from the Spanish.

He also pledged to work hard to change an international economic order dominated by developed countries that he blames for keeping poor nations trapped in misery.

“The time has come to change this terrible history of looting our natural resources, of discrimination, of humiliation, of hate,” Morales said.

“We need the strength of the people to bend the hand of the empire,” he added.

Wilfredo Silva, a 32-year-old gas station manager, traveled 25 hours with his two small children on dilapidated buses and trains from a town on the border with Argentina to witness what he called the most important event in Bolivia’s history.

“It’s an important day for Bolivia because it’s a monumental change,” Silva said, near Indians standing at attention in dark red ponchos and fedora hats. “The people wanted change, this is giving us the opportunity.”

Eusebio Condori, a 50-year-old Aymaran, played Andean music on a reed flute with a group performing Indian dances that were prohibited by the Spaniards during three centuries of Spanish domination that ended during the 19th century.

“It’s a joy and a pleasure to be with one of our own,” said Condori, wearing a black cap adorned with feathers and a leather cape.

Morales later headed back to La Paz, where the U.S. Embassy said Bolivia’s next president would meet Saturday night with Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, who heads the State Department’s Western Hemisphere affairs bureau.

During Sunday’s official inauguration, Morales will meet with more modern traditions: full military honors and the bejeweled medals worn by all presidents.

But the former coca growers’ union leader also arranged his own proletarian touch: Along with 8,000 police, crowds of miners have volunteered additional protection to Morales in a gesture of solidarity.

A critic of U.S. foreign policy and close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Morales has promised to fight corruption and poverty by securing more profits from Bolivia’s natural resources, including its vast natural gas reserves.

“This struggle won’t stop, this struggle won’t end,” he said.
news.yahoo.com

What are you supposed to do when the world’s most over-armed, belligerent and dangerous nation, which outspends all the rest of the world combined on arms, and which is the major arms supplier to the rest of the world, tells a little country like Venezuela that it is guilty of spending “too much” on its military?

The initial response is laughter. What a joke, right? Venezuela, awash in oil revenue and feeling a little threatened by threats from the United States to assassinate its leader and by U.S. funding for groups that are trying to foment a coup, wants to spend a few hundred million bucks on planes from Spain and Brazil to modernize its airforce, and the U.S. State Department gets all worked up.

The transactions are something “we would consider an outsized military buildup,” says State Department flak Sean McCormack.

“Outsized military buildup?”
counterpunch.org

IN almost every sense of the word, there is a vast distance between this impoverished West African country and prosperous, sophisticated Chile. But they share a legacy of bloodshed and oppression that color the politics of today. And in both countries last week, it became clear that voters had chosen female presidents not despite – but at least in part because of – their sex.

For Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, an economist and banker who was inaugurated Monday and is the first woman elected president in Africa, and for Michelle Bachelet, a general’s daughter who was elected as Chile’s first female president, a key to victory was the power of maternal symbolism – the hope that a woman could best close wounds left on their societies by war and dictatorship.

Unlike Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir, the strong women of the previous generation, Ms. Bachelet and Ms. Johnson Sirleaf have embraced what they have both called feminine virtues and offered them as precisely what countries emerging from the heartbreak of tyranny and strife need.

“We have been fighting wars for 15, 20 years in this region,” said Rosaline M’Carthy, leader of the Women’s Forum in Sierra Leone, who traveled here last week for the inauguration. “To see the first female president elected from a war-torn country shows people are now beginning to see what men have wrought in this region. It is the minds of men that make war. Women are the architects of peace.”

On the campaign trail, Ms. Johnson Sirleaf was sometimes called the Iron Lady. But another, more popular name was her favorite: Ma Ellen. In her speeches, she often compared Liberia to a sick child in need of a loving mother’s tender care.

Western news reporters, schooled in taboos against referring to female politicians as matronly or grandmotherly, hesitated to use such language to describe her. But she and her supporters heartily embraced it. It conveyed, in this culture, that this candidate might finally bring some unity and peace to a fractured society.

While Ms. Bachelet was more the Western feminist in her style, her core argument conveyed something similar: that she was better prepared than her rivals to heal her society and reconcile the Chilean military with the victims of its rule. She recently joked to a biographer that perhaps she should give up a struggle to control her weight. Otherwise, she said, “Chileans would lose the mother they have been seeking.”
nytimes.com

JERUSALEM – Israel’s defense minister hinted Saturday that the Jewish state is preparing for military action to stop Iran’s nuclear program, but said international diplomacy must be the first course of action.

“Israel will not be able to accept an Iranian nuclear capability and it must have the capability to defend itself, with all that that implies, and this we are preparing,” Shaul Mofaz said.

His comments at an academic conference stopped short of overtly threatening a military strike but were likely to add to growing tensions with Iran.

Germany’s defense minister said in an interview published Saturday that he is hopeful of a diplomatic solution to the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program, but argued that “all options” should remain open.

Asked by the Bild am Sonntag weekly whether the threat of a military solution should remain in place, Franz Josef Jung was quoted as responding: “Yes, we need all options.”

French President Jacques Chirac said Thursday that France could respond with nuclear weapons against any state-sponsored terrorist attack.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Saturday that Chirac’s threats reflect the true intentions of nuclear nations, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
news.yahoo.com

NY Times: Why Not a Strike on Iran?
DIPLOMATS around the world keep repeating the mantra: There is no military option when it comes to slowing, much less stopping, Iran’s presumed ambitions to get the Bomb. The Europeans say so. The Chinese, who need Iran’s oil, and the Russians, who make billions supplying Iran’s civilian nuclear business, say so emphatically.

Even the hawks in the Bush administration make no threats. When Vice President Dick Cheney was asked Thursday, in a television interview, if the United States might ever resort to force to stop Iran, he handled the question as if it, too, were radioactive.

“No president should ever take the military option off the table,” he said, carefully avoiding the kind of language he once used to warn Saddam Hussein. “Let’s leave it there.”

Mr. Cheney, it seemed, was trying to sow just enough ambiguity to make Iran think twice. Which raises two questions. If diplomacy fails, does America have a military option? And what if it doesn’t?

“It’s a kind of nonsense statement to say there is no military solution to this,” said W. Patrick Lang, the former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency. “It may not be a desirable solution, but there is a military solution.”

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Bush administration is spending foreign aid money to increase the popularity of the Palestinian Authority on the eve of crucial elections in which the governing party faces a serious challenge from the radical Islamic group Hamas.

The approximately $2 million program is being led by a division of the U.S. Agency for International Development. But no U.S. government logos appear with the projects or events being undertaken as part of the campaign, which bears no evidence of U.S. involvement and does not fall within the definitions of traditional development work.

U.S. officials say their low profile is meant to ensure that the Palestinian Authority receives public credit for a collection of small, popular projects and events to be unveiled before Palestinians select their first parliament in a decade. Internal documents outlining the program describe the effort as “a temporary paradigm shift” in the way the aid agency operates. The plan was designed with the help of a former U.S. Army Special Forces officer who worked in postwar Afghanistan on democracy-building projects.

U.S. and Palestinian officials say they fear the election, scheduled for Wednesday, will result in a large Hamas presence in the 132-seat legislature. Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, is at war with Israel and is classified by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization. But its reputation for competence and accountability in providing social services has made it a stiff rival of the secular Fatah movement, which runs the Palestinian Authority and has long been the largest party in the Palestinian territories.
washingtonpost.com

Groups Worried About New US Aid Czar
WASHINGTON -The United States has unveiled a new plan for how it spends foreign aid dollars that links U.S. security to democracy and development overseas.

But development activists fear the new overhaul could be ideologically motivated and criticised the appointment of a new aid director who they say had performed poorly in his previous position.

“In today’s world, America’s security is linked to the capacity of foreign states to govern justly and effectively,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday as she announced the plan. “Our foreign assistance must help people get results.”

The new re-structuring plan unifies U.S. aid agencies, aid accounts and individual programmes under one director. President George W. Bush said he will appoint Randall Tobias, who now heads the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the U.S. global AIDS programme.

Israel on alert as Hamas leads poll
The acting Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is to hold urgent talks with senior cabinet members and security officials today to discuss Israel’s response to the strengthening wave of support for Hamas.
The talks come as it has become clear that the organisation – best known in the West for sponsoring terrorist attacks – is certain to command a substantial share of the vote in this week’s Palestinian elections, with profound consequences for the Middle East peace process.

The first voting in the elections began yesterday as thousands of members of the Palestinian security forces cast their ballots ahead of Wednesday’s crucial poll. Some 58,000 security personnel have been allowed to vote in advance of the elections to free them on 25 January to protect polling sites in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem amid fears of political violence. Two polls on Friday showed Hamas and the late Yasser Arafat’s Fatah neck-and-neck in the last few days of campaigning.

Support for Hamas, which is standing in elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council for the first time, has been buoyed up by its promise to root out corruption and its reputation for discipline and organisation in contrast to Fatah’s endless in-fighting that – in Gaza in particular – has left a vacuum of power. Olmert and his officials are certain to discuss the conflicting signals that Hamas has been sending in recent weeks as part of its efforts to win more widespread political support among Palestinians disgruntled with Fatah.

As part of the group’s new tactics its Gaza-based leader, Dr Mahmoud al-Zahar, has proposed a ‘bullet and the ballot box’ approach to the struggle against Israel.

Speaking to The Observer, he said: ‘There are three approaches. There is resistance only. There is negotiation only, which has failed. And there is a combination of the two.’

…About 5,000 demonstrators assembled on a dry riverbed in a mountain market town near the site of strike, shouting “Long live Osama bin Laden!” and “Death to America!” They also burned effigies of President Bush.

“America is the biggest terrorist in the world,” said Maulana Mohammed Sadiq, a lawmaker of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party that helped organize the protest. “America bombed innocent people inside their homes.”

The rally was the latest in a string of protests over the missile strike.

The assault has sparked friction between Islamabad and Washington and widespread outrage in the Islamic nation of 150 million. Thousands have taken to the street in protest over the past week in Pakistan’s biggest cities.

On Saturday, Pakistan’s President Gen. Pervez Musharraf told visiting U.S Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns that the United States cannot repeat such attacks, a Foreign Ministry official said. Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri called the assault “counterproductive” given the “prevailing public sentiment.”
washingtonpost.com