At AIPAC (long story) and need info on Iran ASAP

[eckstein88]

Hey guys,


I am currently at AIPAC (American Israeli Political Action Committee...long story :) ) at a breakout session called "What does Iran really want?"


They are doing a Q and A session in about half an hour, and I want to ask some good questions up. I specifically wanted to address how the US supports militant and terrorist organizations in Iran and how it is hypocritical of us to criticize them of doing the same in Iraq....but I don't have specific names and dates with me.


Any info or links you guys have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks


Eckstein88

[eckstein88]

Also, they just brought up the point that if one nation of the non-proliferation act breaks the treaty (Iran), it will start an arms race in nations such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, as well as Japan and Brazil.


Any counter-arguments worth bringing up?

[constituent]

cliffs notes:

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Timeline_new2_0125.html


print that out and run!

[constituent]

Also, they just brought up the point that if one nation of the non-proliferation act breaks the treaty (Iran), it will start an arms race in nations such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, as well as Japan and Brazil.


Any counter-arguments worth bringing up?

"... and that is their right."

[Rangeley]

Also, they just brought up the point that if one nation of the non-proliferation act breaks the treaty (Iran), it will start an arms race in nations such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, as well as Japan and Brazil.


Any counter-arguments worth bringing up?
You could always point out that Israel already has nuclear weapons and never even signed the treaty, while there is no evidence Iran is breaking the treaty (civilian nuclear power is fully legal within it.)

[eckstein88]

"... and that is their right."




Thanks for the quick reply. :)


And yea, while I agree it is their right, the argument being made here is to try to prevent a world with 20 nuclear powers. Also the argument is being made that Iranians would give nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations much like they have given conventional weapons and funding.

[eckstein88]

You could always point out that Israel already has nuclear weapons and never even signed the treaty, while there is no evidence Iran is breaking the treaty (civilian nuclear power is fully legal within it.)

I think I'm gonna bring up this argument. But i think they might say that Israel ha snot threatened any nation in the area, while Iran has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map".


Also, they speak as though Iran is certainly building nuclear weapons, and are saying the the NIE was damaging to US and Israel interests because it enboldened Tehran to hasten their nuclear [weapons] program.


Any counter? Only 20 minutes left...

[Danke]

I think I'm gonna bring up this argument. But i think they might say that Israel ha snot threatened any nation in the area, while Iran has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map".



In the early 80's Israel bombed a nuclear power plant in Iraq. As one example.

[Danke]

The "Wipe Israel Off The Map" Hoax
What Ahmadinejad really said and why this broken record is just another ad slogan for war

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Friday, January 26, 2007

Barely a day goes by that one can avoid reading or hearing yet another Israeli, American or British warhawk regurgitate the broken record that Iran's President Ahmadinejad threatened to "wipe Israel off the map," framed in the ridiculous context that Israelis are being targeted for a second holocaust. This baseless rallying call for conflict holds about as much credibility as Dick Cheney's assertion that Saddam Hussein was planning to light up American skies with mushroom clouds.

Today it's the turn of would-be future British Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, who repeated the "wipe Israel off he map" fraud in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, using it to qualify his refusal to rule out a military strike on Iran under a Tory government.

Did Ahmadinejad really threaten to "wipe Israel off the map" or is this phrase just another jingoistic brand slogan for selling the next war in the Middle East?

The devil is in the detail, wiping Israel off the map suggests a physical genocidal assault, a literal population relocation or elimination akin to what the Nazis did. According to numerous different translations, Ahmadinejad never used the word "map," instead his statement was in the context of time and applied to the Zionist regime occupying Jerusalem. Ahmadinejad was expressing his future hope that the Zionist regime in Israel would fall, not that Iran was going to physically annex the country and its population.

To claim Ahmadinejad has issued a rallying cry to ethnically cleanse Israel is akin to saying that Churchill wanted to murder all Germans when he stated his desire to crush the Nazis. This is about the demise of a corrupt occupying power, not the deaths of millions of innocent people.

The Guardian's Jonathan Steele cites four different translations, from professors to the BBC to the New York Times and even pro-Israel news outlets, in none of those translations is the word "map" used. The closest translation to what the Iranian President actually said is, "The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time," or a narrow relative thereof. In no version is the word "map" used or a context of mass genocide or hostile military action even hinted at.

The acceptance of the word "map" seemingly originated with the New York Times, who later had to back away from this false translation. The BBC also wrongly used the word and, in comments to Steele, later accepted their mistake but refused to issue a retraction.

"The fact that he compared his desired option - the elimination of "the regime occupying Jerusalem" - with the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel. As a schoolboy opponent of the Shah in the 1970's he surely did not favor Iran's removal from the page of time. He just wanted the Shah out," writes Steele.

"It's important to note that the "quote" in question was itself a quote, writes Arash Norouzi, "they are the words of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution. Although he quoted Khomeini to affirm his own position on Zionism, the actual words belong to Khomeini and not Ahmadinejad. Thus, Ahmadinejad has essentially been credited (or blamed) for a quote that is not only unoriginal, but represents a viewpoint already in place well before he ever took office."

Professor Juan Cole concurs, arguing, "Now, some might say, "So he didn't say, 'wipe off the map,' he said 'erase from the page.' What's the difference? Anyway he's saying he wants to get rid of Israel. Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope -- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government. Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that 'Israel must be wiped off the map' with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time."


Let's consider for a moment that Ahmadinejad really does wish to initiate a nuclear war on Israel, is this feasible? It would be like Paris Hilton picking a fight with Mike Tyson. The CIA's own estimates put Iran five to ten years away from being able to produce one nuclear bomb even if they were in the planning stages now, which is highly unlikely given that international inspectors have found no evidence of such a program and CIA satellite imagery also shows no proof of nuclear arms. Contrast this to an Israeli arsenal of anything up to 200 launch ready nukes allied to the might of the U.S. which has nearly 6,000 active warheads not to mention so-called "mini-nukes."

While it can be reasonably argued that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon at some point in the future, to then claim that this means Ahmadinejad wishes to enact a second holocaust is an unfathomable leap of logic. The real reason for any nation in that region trying to acquire a nuclear weapon is for self defense, because they are surrounded by other hostile powers that already have the bomb.

Returning to the "wipe Israel off the map hoax," loathe are we to forget another of the commercial jingles concocted for hoodwinking Americans into attacking a certain other Middle Eastern country - "he used weapons of mass destruction against his own people," referring of course to Saddam Hussein's alleged role in the Halabja massacre where Iraqi Kurds were gassed. In reality, as former CIA analyst Stephen Pelletiere has revealed, Halabja came as a result of a battlefield exchange between the Iranians and the Iraqis after the Kurds had sided with the Iranians and allowed them to enter the city. According to the DIA's own report at the time, the type of gas that killed the Kurds was not used by the Iraqis but was used by the Iranians. The incident was a tragedy of war, not a directed program of genocide at the behest of Saddam Hussein.

Whenever Bush administration officials and others used Halabja as a pretext for war, the mass media routinely failed to mention the DIA report, just as they have failed to provide any balance on the real meaning of Ahmadinejad's statement, despite the fact that it is completely distorted almost every day and used as a call to arms as well as a propagandistic ploy to convince western populations that dark skinned invaders are hell-bent on their wholesale destruction.

[constituent]

I think I'm gonna bring up this argument.

1) But i think they might say that Israel ha snot threatened any nation in the area, while Iran has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map".


2) Also, they speak as though Iran is certainly building nuclear weapons, and are saying the the NIE was damaging to US and Israel interests because it enboldened Tehran to hasten their nuclear [weapons] program.


Any counter? Only 20 minutes left...

1) Uh-huh. Tell me again about that preemptive strike on Iraq back in the eighties and how Israel has threatened no one. Tell me again about what happened last summer in Lebanon, and remind me again how israel has not threatened any nation.

Give me a break.

2) "they speak as though" then i guess the burden of proof is on them. conjecture is not enough to start a war. And remind me again why we should pay in blood and treasure to prevent this from happening.

Not every problem has "war" for a solution.

[Hook]

Well, it is unlikely that Iran would give a nuke to any terrorists, because it would guarantee Iran's immediate destruction by us. More likely it would be used as a bargaining chip to keep other nations from attacking Iran.

In any case, Israel is the only nation in the region that has the capability of "wiping a nation off the map". So I wouldn't worry too much about that.

[orafi]

Iran won't give nukes to terrorists because Iranians aren't idiots. Not because America would blow them off the face of existence, but because, considering Iran has been dealing with their own terrorist pests, they'd realize it wouldn't be in their interests to give such power to a rag tag bunch of crazies who could turn out to be their own worst enemies.

[rpfan2008]

Russia's topgeneral implies that may intervene with nuclear weapons if (Iran) attacked


Russia's top military commander said on Saturday that the country is prepared to use its nuclear weapons to defend itself and allies in the event of a severe external threat

...Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Yury Baluyevsky, told a conference at the Academy of Military Sciences in Moscow: "We do not intend to attack anyone, but consider it necessary that all our partners clearly understand, and that no one has any doubts, that the Armed Forces will be used to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, including preventative action, and including the use of nuclear weapons."

RIA Novosti
Russian National News agency


http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080119/97339084.html

Please ask this

[rpfan2008]

...

[Ready2Revolt]

I hope I am not too late.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-12-04-israeli-iraq-threat_x.htm

Ask them if they possibly lied about the intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq, why should we believe them now?

[Aratus]

mcClellan's book exposes how artificial a construct the WMD arguements were, that tried
for a linkage of the Iraqi tyrant's two sons to Al Qaeda. If G.W Bush is not 100% honest...

[eckstein88]

Russia's topgeneral implies that may intervene with nuclear weapons if (Iran) attacked




http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080119/97339084.html

Please ask this



I didn't have much time in the Q & A because there were a lot of people with quesitons, but I am now in a session called "Is Israel a Strategic Asset to America or a Dangerous Liability".


I'm going to bring up the Russia-Iran link but am just trying to think of the best way to frame the question.

Suggestions appreciated, and everything so far has been great.

[RideTheDirt]

Q:Recently Russia's top military commander said on Saturday that the country is prepared to use its nuclear weapons to defend itself and allies in the event of a severe external threat. Do you believe, with our forces stretched thin, that we can defend ourselves in this scenario?

[mczerone]

Thanks for the quick reply. :)


And yea, while I agree it is their right, the argument being made here is to try to prevent a world with 20 nuclear powers. Also the argument is being made that Iranians would give nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations much like they have given conventional weapons and funding.

What's the difference if there are 2 States with 2000 bombs or 20 States with 2000 bombs?

The mere fact that States, and even non-state entities, already posses Nuclear Weapons is what is the driving force for Iran to seek their own, just as adding Iran to the list of "haves" will incite its neighbors, allies and enemies to seek their way onto the list.

"Mutually Assured Destruction" isn't an option when your state doesn't have missiles to fire back at your nuclear armed enemies, so the natural tendency is buildup.

The only way to make the costs higher than the benefits of seeking nuclear weapons is for all states to genuinely agree to totally disarm. I doubt that will ever happen.

So, in light of the current situation, we should back off Iran, let them develop a nuke, and then bomb the crap out of them once it can be proven that they are the aggressor we claim that they will become. Our Military has great strength when called upon for a task such as that. Unless they've been exhausted in Nation Building efforts.

[HOLLYWOOD]

I didn't have much time in the Q & A because there were a lot of people with quesitons, but I am now in a session called "Is Israel a Strategic Asset to America or a Dangerous Liability".


I'm going to bring up the Russia-Iran link but am just trying to think of the best way to frame the question.

Suggestions appreciated, and everything so far has been great.

There are over 20 million Muslims in Russia... Russia and the Caspian states are trying their own hand at an OIL CARTEL. This is why the US are so adamant Afghanistan/Pakistan and the pipeline from the Caspian Countries through Afghanistan to the ports in Pakistan. The global grab for OIL REAL ESTATE. Let's use national security and oil as the excuse. (Covered by Rep. Howard L. Berman
Chairman - California foreign affairs)

link to Berman's post on OIL and Security

http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press_display.asp?id=515 (http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press_display.asp?id=515)


IEA - International Energy Ageny's analyst on Caspian(Russia/Iran/Turkmenistan/Uzbekistan/... region OIL pdf. look at page 10 of the pdf
http://www.iea.org/textbase/speech/2003/va_vienna.pdf (http://www.iea.org/textbase/speech/2003/va_vienna.pdf)