Another year of sabre-rattling at Iran continues.

The year ended with Leon Panetta sabre rattling at Iran, though his aides quitely corrected the media reports which claimed that Panetta had said Iran was just months away from making nukes.

The US Senate also passed the Kirk-Menendez bill that would require the US to impose (secondary) sanctions on Iran's central bank. Note that the resolution passed unanimously - something that usually never happens in the Senate, not even when it comes to bills proposing totally benign and non-controversial things such as naming US Post Office stations. AIPAC of course celebrated the Senate's approval of the bill - probably because they had in fact drafted it in the first place. And Senator Kirk has been one of the largest recipients of AIPAC campaign donations. As Tom Friedman, a pro-Israel activist himself, pointed out, the US Congress has been essentially "bought and paid for" by pro-Israeli lobbyists.

And so by now it is clearer than ever that the US has never actually tried to engage Iran, has always sought ways to promote and justify a war, and the US system as a whole is simply functionally not able to stop the rush towards a conflict anymore.

This is around the same time that the Republican presidential debates are going on, displaying the most vulgar, ignorant jingoism seen on TV in a while - including statements by practically every candidate (except Ron Paul) trying to outdo each other in the sabre rattling at Iran. The irony here is that the proponents of attacking Iran are civilians whilst the opponents to a military attack on Iran are mostly from the US military and the experienced diplomats like Luers, Pickering and Walsh - but of course, no one listened to them 4 years ago either. And so MJ Rosenberg, himself a former AIPAC employee, predicts that the same crowd that gave us the Iraq invasion will continue to press for a military attack on Iran in the next year.

And today, Iran reported that it had manufactured its first nuclear fuel rod to power the medical reactor which is used to treat Iran's 800,000 cancer patients. The pundits are trying to downplay this, claiming that Iran could be 'exaggerating' but the reactor under question is under IAEA safeguards and so the matter will be clarified in the next IAEA report - the point here is that not so long ago the same pundits were declaring that since Iran could not possibly manufacture nuclear fuel rods, then its 20% enrichment must be for making nukes (nevermind that making nukes is much harder than making fuel rods.)

The next parliamentary elections in Iran are going to be next propaganda operation. Naturally the anti-Iran elements in the US will declare the elections to be fraudulent and tainted etc., regardless, because to say otherwise risks recognizing the legitimacy of the regime there. And if some elements in Iran decide to boycott the elections for their own reasons, they'll just be playing into this spin.

All in all, it doesn't appear that there's a prospect of any sort of breakthrough in US-Iran relations in 2012. The US policy making process, aside it being an election year which brings the nuts out of the woodwork, is fundamentally compromised by AIPAC lobbyists, the US president is too weak to stand up to them even if he wanted to, and so Israel continues to call the shots.

Meanwhile of course Israel itself is gradually turning into a failed state with a rising religious fascism and rife with growing internal dissent, and so the need for creating uniting foreign enemies is all the more pressing there. After all, it was Herzl who defined the nation of Israel as a group of people united by a common enemy, and both Iran and the Palestinians (who are now embracing HAMAS as well as garnering greater recognition as a country by the international community) serve that function quite well, so there won't be any particular rush to resolve those conflicts either.

And also watch for the growing Islamophobia in the West being fed by both ultra-right wing nationalists and pro-Israel activists, combined with the passage of new laws in the US that greatly expand the power of the government to violate what used to be considered sacrosanct constitutional rights such as a trial by jury. Fear, after all, is a great way to control people, and control is deemed to be necessary as the country faces increasing resentment at the massive and growing economic disparity that plagues the US. Once this resentment leads to action, it will be conveniently characterized as 'economic terrorism' thus turning dissent into crime.

Comments

[salam]

Thank you so much for the great analysis. Do you think Ron Paul has any chance of winning? Can you please write about him and his chances?!

[nima]

The people of Iran will boycott the Parliamentary elections. They have no credibility, nor have they ever!

[k_w]

Cyrus, a happy new year, health and wealth to you and your family.

This one should be better: http://www.wrmea.com/pdf/2010pac_charts.pdf .

[Thanks - fixed.]