Iran - Blair calls for war
WORKERS, NOV 2007 ISSUE
In Blair's first major speech since leaving office, at a Roman Catholic charity dinner in New York on 18 October, he called for a new war, against Iran. This might be considered merely the raving of an ex-Prime Minister, had not Brown agreed with Bush in July that Britain would back air strikes on Iran if it could be justified as a "counter-terrorist" operation.
Blair claimed, "This ideology now has a state – Iran – that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace." He went on, "There is a tendency even now, even in some of our own circles, to believe that they are as they are because we have provoked them and if we left them alone they would leave us alone. I fear this is mistaken. They have no intention of leaving us alone."
Who is it that won't leave whom alone? What about the MI6–CIA coup in Iran, Operation Boot, which in 1953 overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, the popular, democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, and reinstalled the country's exiled monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah? Never happened. The recruitment of CIA asset Saddam Hussein to attack Iran in 1980? Never happened. Selling arms to Iraq for its eight-year assault on Iran? Never happened. At least in Blair's view of world events.
Iran has never attacked another country and it has not been implicated in any act of terror against a Western country since 1996. Iran is not a threat. It is not about to attack anybody. There is no reason to attack it.
But there are threats to attack Iran. The USA and Britain have stationed troops along Iraq and Afghanistan's borders with Iran and the USA is building a base on the Iraq–Iran border. Any attack on Iran would be illegal, a breach of the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force.