{"id":10497,"date":"2012-06-26T14:08:11","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T21:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=10497"},"modified":"2012-06-26T14:08:11","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T21:08:11","slug":"us-hegemonic-expansionism-cannot-proceed-with-iran-as-a-significant-regional-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=10497","title":{"rendered":"US Hegemonic Expansionism cannot proceed with Iran as a significant regional challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Media Strikes Iran\u2019s Nuclear Facilities As Talks Fail<\/strong>
\n22 June, 2012 – There Will Be War<\/p>\n

The recently wrapped up Moscow talks between the P5+1 (the five U.N. Security Council members plus Germany) and Iran over the latter\u2019s nuclear program, the second round after those held Baghdad in late May, have failed to bear fruit. To play the blame game and castigate just one side would be an exercise in schoolyard oversimplification.<\/p>\n

In the end, it seems Iranian negotiators could not entertain a strict demand to \u201cstop, shut and ship\u201d\u2014stop enriching, shut down the Fordow site and ship out their load of 19.75 percent uranium. Not a shock that they balked: this is basically telling a proud nation it has no right to an independent nuclear program, that it should dismantle years of hard, complicated work and toss hundreds of millions of rials into the Gulf. Meanwhile Iranian promises of a fatwa against nuclear weapons, of full cooperation with the IAEA, and of low-grade enrichment limits\u2014should sanctions be relaxed\u2014did little to assuage the U.S. and its cohorts. Rightly so: Why would the Western nations trust an antagonistic, power-hungry regime who will say or do anything to improve its chances at regional hegemony? Indeed, much has been written about how both sides have overplayed their hands, feeling they have the leverage to walk away from the negotiating table.<\/p>\n

This breakdown means we must prepare for the return of an endless onslaught of articles baldly assuming an imminent military strike on Iran\u2019s enrichment facilities, similar to those we saw on cover stories through January and February. We will see not only straight-up calls for a pre-emptive attack but articles like those in The New York Times that correctly caught flak for their subtle allusions to Iran\u2019s nuclear arsenal, which doesn\u2019t exist. Back then, the eager calls by warhawks in the U.S. and Israel to bomb Iran backfired, even as scare tactic, by prompting numerous Israeli military and Mossad vets to denounce the plan as nothing short of stupid.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to June: Even before the negotiations officially ended, the calls for strikes against Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities were coming in loud as well as insidious.<\/p>\n

Jumping the gun and surprising no one was The Weekly Standard\u2019s Jamie Fly and Will Kristol. Though the bulk of their advice amounted to \u201cisn\u2019t it time for the president to ask Congress for Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iran\u2019s nuclear program,\u201d the buildup to this gem was meant to manipulate the uninformed. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion but using a 1936 Winston Churchill speech to make the implicit\/explicit connection of Iran to Nazi Germany is tired, cliched and wrong. Points awarded for not referencing the classic warmonger Chamberlain-Munich-1938 catch-all (which was probably considered) though I predict this will be regurgitated ad nauseam soon. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Media Strikes Iran\u2019s Nuclear Facilities As Talks Fail 22 June, 2012 – There Will Be War The recently wrapped up Moscow talks between the P5+1 (the five U.N. Security Council members plus Germany) and Iran over the latter\u2019s nuclear program, the second round after those held Baghdad in late May, have failed to bear fruit. more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[3137],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10499,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497\/revisions\/10499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}