US VICE-PRESIDENT CHENEY THREATENS IRAN MILITARILY

By Rainer Rupp

[This article published in: Junge Welt, 2/9/2006 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.jungewelt.de/2006/02-09/048.php?print=1.]




US Vice-president Dick Cheney threatened Teheran again on Tuesday. “All options are on the table,” including the military option, he told the US TV-station PBS. Iran is a promoter of terrorist organizations and a “main source of instability” in the region. DER SPIEGEL and other media promptly saw this threat as evidence that Washington will again “rely on severity.” This provoked the worry in the peace movement that the “next US offensive war is immediately imminent. Cheney is still the one who sets the tone in the Bush administration. While his accusations against Teheran are like those leveled before the US invasion of Iraq, there are differences.

In a speech Cheney delivered on August 28, 2002 – six months before the attack on Iraq -, he was severe and ruthless. “We must immediately attack Saddam,” h said at that time, because Iraq is “a mortal danger” for the US. Therefore a “preventive war is absolutely necessary.” His superior, president George W. Bush, said the “end game” had begun. “All possibilities for avoiding a war were exhausted,” according to US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. Secretary of State Powell declared that the “authority of the UN would be negligible” if it did not sanction the war. In a word, the White House appeared resolved for war and underscored this attitude through US ultimatums to Iraq that could not be fulfilled. Thus the war became unavoidable. The Bush administration refused to lose “face” and its political powers of self-assertion before friends and enemies.

Washington wants to demonstrate war resolution today to intimidate Iran. Cheney appears more moderate compared to his earlier anti-Iraq tirades – at least for US audiences. The US could try to settle the conflict with diplomatic means, he said. In fact, nothing else is left to Washington. The resistance already expressed among military and political leaders of the US against the Iraq adventure is more striking now. The White House strenuously denied this resistance. The main worry of critics at that time was excessive casualties in Iraq’s long military occupation. Worries multiply today with view to an attack on Iran. Many things speak against an immediately imminent attack.