Italy opposes war over Iran's nuclear programme

[TonyGosling]

ROME: Italy opposes any military action against Iran over Tehran's contentious nuclear program because such an attack could destabilize the entire Middle East, Premier Romano Prodi said Tuesday.

Today the Italians officially announced they have rumbled Cheney's little game - partly thanks to these books (which got great reviews in the Italian press) and have rejected the neocon plot to kick off WWIII.
La Fabbrica Del Terrore - by Webster Tarpley - published Sep07 and
Zero - by Italian MEP Giulietto Chiesa - published Aug07
Why, oh why, wouldn't Gordon Brown say the same?

Italy's Prodi says Rome opposes any military action over Iran's nuclear program
The Associated Press
Published: November 6, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/06/europe/EU-GEN-Italy-Iran.php

ROME: Italy opposes any military action against Iran over Tehran's contentious nuclear program because such an attack could destabilize the entire Middle East, Premier Romano Prodi said Tuesday.

In a speech delivered to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, on a visit to Rome, Prodi said that Italy is against "any military solution," adding that "in addition to not solving the problem, it would open new destabilizing scenarios in the whole region."

Prodi said Iran has every right to develop a peaceful nuclear program, while the international community has an equal right to verify its peaceful nature using "the existing judicial measures."

Italy, as of this year a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, traditionally has good relations with Tehran and maintains a strong presence in Iran's gas market through Italian oil and gas giant Eni SpA.

Senior government officials, including the foreign minister, have spoken out against any use of force against Iran, saying that a new war in the region would be disastrous and calling instead for increased diplomatic efforts.

Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, but its assertions are widely disbelieved. The Security Council has demanded that Tehran suspend uranium enrichment — a potential pathway both to generating nuclear power and creating the fissile core of warheads.

Iran could face further sanctions if upcoming reports by the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency do not show improved Iranian cooperation.

[TonyGosling]

Will the U.S. response to Iran’s supposed threat heat up Cold War II?
By Noam Chomsky

These are exciting days in Washington, as the government directs its energies to the demanding task of “containing Iran” in what Washington Post correspondent Robin Wright, joining others, calls “Cold War II.”



During Cold War I, the task was to contain two awesome forces. The lesser and more moderate force was “an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost.” Hence “if the United States is to survive,” it will have to adopt a “repugnant philosophy” and reject “acceptable norms of human conduct” and the “long-standing American concepts of ‘fair play’” that had been exhibited with such searing clarity in the conquest of the national territory, the Philippines, Haiti, and other beneficiaries of “the idealistic new world bent on ending inhumanity,” as the newspaper of record describes our noble mission. The judgments about the nature of the super-Hitler and the necessary response are those of General Jimmy Doolittle, in a critical assessment of the CIA commissioned by President Eisenhower in 1954. They are quite consistent with those of Truman administration liberals, the “wise men” who were “present at the creation,” notoriously in NSC 68 but in fact quite consistently.

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Oct2007/chomsky.html

In the face of the Kremlin’s unbridled aggression in every corner of the world, it is perhaps understandable that the U.S. resisted in defense of human values with a savage display of torture, terror, subversion, and violence while doing “everything in its power to alter or abolish any regime not openly allied with America,” as Tim Weiner summarizes the doctrine of the Eisenhower administration in his recent history of the CIA. And just as the Truman liberals easily matched their successors in fevered rhetoric about the implacable enemy and its campaign to rule the world, so did John F. Kennedy, who bitterly condemned the “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy,” and dismissed the proposal of its leader (Khrushchev) for sharp mutual cuts in offensive weaponry, then reacted to his unilateral implementation of these proposals with a huge military build-up. The Kennedy brothers also quickly surpassed Eisenhower in violence and terror, as they “unleashed covert action with an unprecedented intensity” (Wiener), doubling Eisenhower’s annual record of major CIA covert operations, with horrendous consequences worldwide, even a close brush with terminal nuclear war.........
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Oct2007/chomsky.html