Yesterday’s The Times newspaper featured this article on its front-page, entitled Iran could make an atom bomb. I urge you to read it while bearing the following in mind:
- Israel has one of the largest armies in the world, already has nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and routinely breaks international law. In fact, the USA gives Israel many of its nuclear weapons. Why is Israel’s neighbour, Iran not allowed even to have nuclear power? Is it because it is the only resource-rich Muslim state not in US control left in the world?
- The whole article has been prompted into existence by a leaked intelligence report. Do you not think that this is ridiculous? This is the same sort of ‘intelligence’ that was actually believed by some people and indeed led to the illegal occupation of Iraq and the death of 1 million Iraqis and thousands of Western soldiers.
- How is it that The Times can just perpetuate the paradigm that Iran is not worthy of nuclear power but others like Israel are? It devotes no words to a debate on whether Iran ’should’ ‘get away with’ having nuclear power.
- Israel has nuclear weapons that can reach any part of the world. Yet, regarding the range of different nuclear weapons, all we hear is how “Iran has done extensive research and testing on how to fashion the components of a nuclear payload to be delivered by the Shahab 3, a medium-range missile capable of hitting Israel and parts of southern Europe”.
- Why does the article feature many quotations from people like Obama’s National Security Advisor, but there is only one quotation from an Iranian person? The only quotation from an Iranian person is from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s Supreme Leader who apparently said in 1984 that “a nuclear arsenal would serve Iran as a deterrent in the hands of God’s soldiers”. The article attacks Iran and villanizes it. Yet the only quotation from an Iranian person is not from a politician, it is from 1984 and features the word ‘God’. If you don’t believe that Iran is our new target, in part, because it is a Muslim state, think seriously about the significance of this being the only quotation carried from an Iranian person in the entire article, and that it features a religious point.
If you want something to counter the mainstream warmongering, try getting your news from somewhere like The Real News Network.
Thanks for reading.
