Illuminati, Nazis and the Illegal State of Israel

Rothschild Agent Balfour, planting the Zionists in the Middle East

It’s Worse Than Anyone Thinks – Who Still Can, and Dares to

  … by  Dean Henderson

If we wish to end the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, we need to know who created Israel and why. 

In 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour penned a letter to Zionist Second Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild in which he expressed support for a Jewish homeland on Palestinian-controlled lands in the Middle East. 

This Balfour Declaration justified the brutal seizure of Palestinian lands for the post-WWII establishment of Israel.

Israel would serve, not as some high-minded “Jewish homeland”, but as lynchpin in Rothschild/Eight Families control over the world’s oil supply.

Baron Edmond de Rothschild built the first oil pipeline from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean to bring BP Iranian oil to Israel.  He founded Israeli General Bank and Paz Oil and is considered the father of modern Israel.

The Rothschilds are the planet’s wealthiest clan, worth an estimated $100 trillion.  They control Royal Dutch/Shell, BP, Anglo-American, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Bank of America and scores of other global corporations and banks. 

They are the largest shareholders in the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve and most every private central bank in the world.  They needed a footprint in the Middle East to protect their new oil concessions, which they procured through Four Horsemen fronts like the Iranian Consortium, Iraqi Petroleum Company and Saudi ARAMCO.

The Brothers Rothschild

Rothschild’s Shell and BP formed these cartels with the Rockefeller half of the Four Horsemen- Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco.  This new alliance required a “special relationship” between Great Britain and the US, which still exists today.

Rothschild and other wealthy European shareholders could now utilize the United States military as a Hessianized mercenary force, deployed to protect their oil interests and paid for by US taxpayers.

Israel would serve the same purpose in closer proximity to the oilfields.  The Israeli Mossad is less a national intelligence agency than it is a Rothschild/Rockefeller family security force.

The Rothschilds exert political control through the secretive Business Roundtable, which they created in 1909 with the help of Lord Alfred Milner and Cecil Rhodes- whose Rhodes Scholarship is granted by Cambridge University, out of which oil industry propagandist Cambridge Energy Research Associates operates. Rhodes founded De Beers and Standard Chartered Bank.

The Roundtable takes its name from the legendary knight King Arthur, whose tale of the Holy Grail is synonymous with the Illuminati notion that the Eight Families possess Sangreal or holy blood- a justification for their lording over the people and resources of the planet.

According to former British Intelligence officer John Coleman, who wrote Committee of 300, “Round Tablers armed with immense wealth from gold, diamond and drug monopolies fanned out throughout the world to take control of fiscal and monetary policies and political leadership in all countries where they operated.”

John Coleman

Rhodes and Oppenheimer deployed to South Africa to launch the Anglo-American conglomerate.  Kuhn and Loeb were off to re-colonize America with Morgan and Rockefeller.

Rudyard Kipling was sent to India.  Schiff and Warburg manhandled Russia.

Rothschild, Lazard and Israel Moses Seif pushed into the Middle East.  At Princeton, the Round Table founded the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) as partner to its All Souls College at Oxford.

IAS was funded by the Rockefeller’s General Education Board.  IAS members Robert Oppenheimer, Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein created the atomic bomb.

In 1919 Rothschild’s Business Roundtable spawned the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) in London.  The RIIA sponsored sister organizations around the globe, including the US Council on Foreign Relations.  The RIIA is a registered charity of the Queen and, according to its annual reports, is funded largely by the Four Horsemen.

Former British Foreign Secretary and Kissinger Associates co-founder Lord Carrington is president of both the RIIA and the Bilderbergers.  The inner circle at RIIA is dominated by Knights of St. John Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, Knights Templar and 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Freemasons.

The Knights of St. John were founded in 1070 and answer directly to the British House of Windsor.  Their leading bloodline is the Villiers dynasty, which the Hong Kong Matheson family- owners of the HSBC opium laundry- married into. The Lytton family also married into the Villiers gang.

Edward Lytton – Bloodlines of de Rascals

Colonel Edward Bulwer-Lytton led the English Rosicrucian secret society, which Shakespeare opaquely referred to as Rosencranz, while the Freemasons were symbolized by Guildenstern.

Lytton was spiritual father of both the RIIA and Nazi fascism.  In 1871 he penned a novel titled, Vril: The Power of the Coming Race.  Seventy years later the Vril Society received ample mention in Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Lytton’s son became Viceroy to India in 1876 just before opium production spiked in that country.  His good friend Rudyard Kipling introduced the swastika to India and later worked under Lord Beaverbrook as Propaganda Minister, alongside Sir Charles Hambro of the Hambros banking dynasty.

Children of the Roundtable elite are members of a Dionysian cult known as Children of the Sun.  Initiates include Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence and H. G. Wells.  Wells headed British intelligence during WWI.  His books speak of a “one-world brain” and “a police of the mind”.

William Butler Yeats, another Sun member, was a pal of Aleister Crowley.  The two formed an Isis Cult based on a Madam Blavatsky manuscript, which called on the British aristocracy to organize itself into an Aryan priesthood.  Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society and Bulwer-Lytton’s Rosicrucians joined forces to form the Thule Society, out of which the Nazis emerged.

Rothschild, Rockefeller and the rest of the Illuminati bankers backed the Nazis.  Max and Paul Warburg sat on I. G. Farben’s board, as did H. A. Metz, who was director at the Warburg Bank of Manhattan- later Chase Manhattan.  Bank of Manhattan director and Federal Reserve Board member C. E. Mitchell sat on the board of I. G. Farben’s US branch.

In 1936 Avery Rockefeller set up a combination with the German Schroeder family, who served as Hitler’s personal bankers.  Time magazine called the new Schroeder, Rockefeller & Company “the economic booster of the Rome-Berlin Axis”.  Morgan Guaranty Trust and Union Banking Corporation (UBC) also funded the Nazis.  UBC board member Prescott Bush is W’s grandfather.

The WWI Veteran in the Crowd – Adolf Hitler

In 1933 at the home of banker Baron Kurt von Schroeder, a deal was cut to bring Hitler to power.  Attending the meeting were brothers John Foster and Allen Dulles- Rockefeller cousins and partners at law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, which represented Schroeder Bank.

Schroeder, managing director T. C. Tiarks, was a director at the Rothschild-controlled Bank of England.  In the spring of 1934 Bank of England Chairman Montagu Norman convened a meeting of London bankers who decided to covertly fund Hitler.

Royal Dutch/Shell Chairman Sir Henri Deterding helped in this effort.  Even after the US went to war with Germany, Exxon Chairman Walter Teagle remained on the board of I. G. Chemical- the US I. G. Farben subsidiary.  Exxon was integral in supplying the Nazis with tetraethyl lead, an important component of aviation fuel.  Only Exxon, Du Pont and GM made the stuff.  Teagle also supplied the Japanese with his product.

Exxon and I. G. Farben were such close business associates that by 1942 Thurman Arnold – head of the US Justice Department’s Anti-Trust Division- produced documents that showed, “Standard and Farben in Germany had literally carved up the world markets, with oil and chemical monopolies established all over the map.”

Daddy Prescott Bush had his companies seized during

WWI for ‘trading with the enemy’ – but managed to get

all his money back after the war, which financed the Bush

 political dynasty.

In 1912 railroad magnate Edward Harriman’s widow joined John D. Rockefeller in funding a eugenics research lab at Cold Spring Harbor, NY.  That same year the First International Congress of Eugenics was convened in London with Winston Churchill presiding.

In 1932 the conference was held in New York.  Hamburg-Amerika Shipping Line, owned by George Walker and Prescott Bush, brought the German contingent to the gene-fest.

One member of the German delegation was Dr. Ernst Rudin of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy in Berlin.  He was unanimously elected president for his work in founding the German Society of Race Hygiene- a forerunner to Hitler’s race institutes.

As of 1998 there were still scores of lawsuits pending against Ford, Chase Manhattan, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Allianz AG and several Swiss banks for their dealings with the Nazis.

At the heart of Hitler’s inner circle were the secret societies Germanordern (brothers of Yale’s Skull & Bones), the Thule Society, and Vril.  The concepts “Great Masters”, “Adepts” and the “Great White Brotherhood”, which the Nazis used to justify their idea of Aryan superiority, were ancient ideas carried forth from the Egyptian Mystery Schools by the Teutonic Knights, the Illuminati, and Hebrew Cabalists.

These same concepts can be found in today’s New Age Movement, whose New Age magazine was first published by the Grand Orient Masonic Lodge of Washington, DC.  Henry Kissinger was an early supporter.

Nazi occultists believed ancient German tribes were the true keepers of the Ancient Mysteries which had their origin in Atlantis, when seven races of God-men were introduced to Earth.  Thule was a Teutonic Atlantis believed by the Nazis to house these long-vanquished races, who lost their godly Annunaki powers by interbreeding with humans.

At the inner core of the Thule Society were Satanists who practiced black magic. Hitler was once described as a “child of Illuminism”.

Is it time to check Hitler’s DNA?

According to Dr. Walter Langer, who did a war-time psychoanalysis of Hitler for the CIA-predecessor OSS, Hitler was also a Rothschild.  Langer uncovered an Austrian police report proving Hitler’s father was an illegitimate son of a peasant cook named Maria Anna Schicklgruber, who at the time of her conception was a servant in the Vienna home of Baron Rothschild.

In May 1941 Rudolf Hess parachuted into the estate of the Duke of Hamilton, saying a supernatural force told him to negotiate with the British.  Hitler was ostensibly visited by this same apparition and suddenly turned vehemently against occultism.

He ordered a crackdown against Freemasons, Templars and the Theosophical Society.  Suddenly the international banker crowd pulled the plug on Hitler’s finances and began to denounce him.  Six months later the Hessianized US military entered WWII.

Hitler’s fate was no different than that of Saddam Hussein or Manuel Noriega.  The Illuminati bankers’ modus operandi is to use men of low integrity to do their dirty work, before conveniently discarding and distancing themselves from them.

The horrific Holocaust that ensued assured sympathy for the already-planned state of Israel.  Towards the end of WWII, the murderous Haganah and Stern Gangs were deployed by the Rothschild bankers to terrorize Palestinians and steal their land.  Jews who escaped Hitler’s gas chambers were those of means who bought into Zionism.

For a fee of $1,000 – lots of money at that time – these right-wingers bought passage to Israel and escaped the fate of the poor Jews, Serbs, communists and gypsies.  The whole bloody affair was a massive eugenics project.  It had more to do with culling the herd along class lines, than it did with ethnicity or religion.

The key to this historic puzzle is to understand that the Rothschild/Rockefeller sangreal international bankers supported both the rise of the Nazis and the creation of Israel.  None of this has anything to do with religion.  It has everything to do with oil, arms, drugs, money and power.

The Rothschilds say they are Jewish.  The Rockefellers claim to be Christian.  These are irrelevant smokescreens.  Any demagogue- who blames injustice a religion or race of people- is sadly misinformed.  Throughout history the Illuminati Satanists have sacrificed people of all race and religion to further their agenda of total planetary control.

Israel is not a “Jewish homeland”.  It is an oil monopoly lynchpin.  Its citizens are being put in harms way- used by the Four Horsemen and their Eight Families-owners as geopolitical pawns in an international resource grab.  No peaceful solution is possible until the stolen land is returned to its rightful Palestinian owners.

Israel is an illegal entity.  Viva Palestine!

Dean Henderson is the author of four books: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries, Das Kartell der Federal Reserve & Stickin’ it to the Matrix.  You can subscribe free to his weekly Left Hook column @ www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com

Source

Netanyahu Blackmailing West Over Iran

Useful Idiot Mitt Romney with Psychotic War Criminal Benjamin Netanyahu

 … by  Gordon Duff and Press TV

“The fragile western economy would shatter immediately were Hormuz blockaded due to military action. Netanyahu is blackmailing the west, threatening to “crash” their currencies and destroy their economies.”—

Related Interviews:

• ‘Lebanon must hold on to national unity’
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Straits of Hormuz

The US government has intelligence reports that Israel is planning a pre-emptive strike on Iran in order to throw the US presidential election to Mitt Romney.

 

America’s political response is to stage one of the largest naval exercises in history is taking place near the Straits of Hormuz, the “choke point” on the Persian Gulf where Iran is capable of shutting off 35% of the world’s oil.

The fragile western economy would shatter immediately were Hormuz blockaded due to military action.

Netanyahu is blackmailing the west, threatening to “crash” their currencies and destroy their economies.

In addition, it was reported in The Guardian that Britain has denied use of her bases in Cyprus, Diego Garcia and the Ascension Islands along with existing bases in the United Kingdom by the United States if any plan to enter into a pre-emptive attack on Iran is suggested.

Ministry officials have informed Prime Minister Cameron that an attack on Iran would represent a “war crime” and would be inconsistent with International Law. From today’s Guardian: “Military action not right course”, Downing Street says.

Britain has rebuffed US pleas to use military bases in the UK to support the build-up of forces in the Gulf, citing secret legal advice, which states that any pre-emptive strike on Iran could be in breach of international law.

The US approaches are part of contingency planning over the nuclear standoff with Tehran, but British ministers have so far reacted coolly.

They have pointed US officials to legal advice drafted by the attorney general’s office, which has been circulated to Downing Street, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defense.

This makes clear that Iran, which has consistently denied it has plans to develop a nuclear weapon, does not currently represent “a clear and present threat”. Providing assistance to forces that could be involved in a pre-emptive strike would be a clear breach of international law, it states.”

“The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran,” said a senior Whitehall source. “It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans.”

What options are really available?

Similarly, this week, Russia announced that it has found Iran’s nuclear program as entirely peaceful and will block any efforts to authorize the use of force against Iran:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that there is “absolutely no evidence” that Iran has decided to include a military component in its nuclear program, RIA Novosti reported.

Speaking during an interview with the Russian daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Lavrov also said that his country will scuttle any UN Security Council resolution that could be interpreted as authorizing military action against Iran.

“As the Libyan experience has shown, sadly, a military scenario is possible,” Lavrov stated when asked whether Israel or the United States could start military operations in Iran.

Russia will therefore exercise an extremely cautious approach at the UN Security Council, he added.

“We won’t allow any more such disingenuous interpretations. We will see to it that no resolution is open to interpretation like the one on Libya,” Lavrov stated.

A day later, Lavrov was joined by Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter who indicated that Switzerland opposes sanctions against Iran and is willing to work closely with Russia to prevent an escalation in the region.

“Won’t Get Fooled Again!” – Lavrov

American politics and plans for Israeli expansionism into Syria and Iraq are at the heart of conflict with Iran’s capabilities representing the balance of power in the region. Extremists in Israel believe Obama, in a second term, is unlikely to support Israel despite his recent promises.

Romney has been losing ground in Ohio despite attempts to misrepresent his political strength and without Ohio; Romney stands no chance of winning.
Only a war, perhaps a world war can save Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu believes Israel is doomed if there is another four years of Obama presidency.

In order to attempt to control Israeli aggression, President Obama has agreed to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Britain recently sent Sir John Sawyers, head of MI-6 to try to convince Netanyahu of the futility of his stated objectives.

Iran’s Northern Front – Secured Diplomatically

The Israeli strike had been planned to be launched from Azerbaijan but diplomatic efforts from Tehran have “closed that door” on Israeli aggression. It is said that two squadrons of American built F-15 and F-16’s returned to Israel over Georgia and Turkey, then off the Syrian coast to Israel, being refueled by American air tankers.

A shorter route over Iraq or Armenia, perhaps even Syria may have had serious consequences.

This leaves Israel the only option of flying directly over Saudi Arabia. Any other path, Turkey, Iraq, the 4500-mile “open sea” route are unlikely.

Turkey had recent talks with Iran, has supported Iran in her efforts to end the nuclear stalemate and is unwilling to be seen as a NATO “doormat” for Israel’s expansionism against Islam. Similarly, Iraq has had recent talks with Iran, and has added to her air defense capabilities with a $4 billion order for advanced Russian weaponry, both air defense and advanced combat aircraft.

S400′s in Iran now – But how many?

Though Iran has claimed to have significantly improved her existing air defense system, rumors in the defense community support the supposition that Russia has delivered S400 systems to Iran, though not in significant numbers, enough to down, with absolute certainty, any Israeli or other plane, even ballistic or cruise missiles, that approach Iran though hundreds of miles away.

The critical issue to the current naval exercise which includes three American carrier battle groups is the attempt to impress upon Iran that her anti-ship missile defenses can be overwhelmed by massive airpower.

The issue has nothing to do with Israel, as reports on the attack profile planned by Israel indicate that they have chosen a “soft profile.”

This means that Israel has no plans to attack heavily defended facilities as aircraft and pilot losses are certain. Israel feels its political objective can be accomplished by attacking rural and even abandoned areas with no targets of value and little or no air defense in depth.

This is the same tack that Israel chose in their two attacks on Syria, in 2003 and 2007, attacking open desert and claiming propaganda victories. No actual targets were destroyed as Syria, since 1996 has had a non-export S300 advanced air defense system capable of destroying any missiles or aircraft currently in Israel’s or even America’s inventory.

The September 2007 “missile base attack” is supposed to have taken place in the middle of Turkish sponsored peace talks between Israel and Syria, attacks on a base manned entirely by Russian personnel, and, as such, a totally imaginary attack. This is the nature of “War by Deception.”

As the 25 nation exercise ends, and the thousands of Marines and Special Forces return home, happy they are unlikely to face Iran’s 800,000-man army and 13 million ready reserves, Iran, herself, is planning a naval exercise.

The Iranian exercises will test 3,600 defensive locations in order to test integration capabilities between air defense and the ability to respond to acts of aggression.

A British defense source is quoted:

“If it came to war, there would be carnage. The Iranian casualties would be huge but they would be able to inflict severe blows against the US and British.

The Iranian Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) is well versed in asymmetrical warfare and would use swarm attacks to sink or seriously damage ships. This is a conflict nobody wants, but the rhetoric from Israel is unrelenting.”

It is not just Iran that is concerned about attacks. Military forces within the United States have been on high alert for the past several weeks, though no reasons have been given.

A “9/11” style attack, most likely on Washington, could be expected if a need to blame “Islamic extremists” is seen as the only way to support Israel’s territorial ambitions in the Sinai, West Bank, Syria and Iraq.

Source

Don’t Vote for Evil

By Paul Craig Roberts

"Information Clearing House" - Back during the George W. Bush neocon regime, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in his UN speech summed up George W. Bush for the world. I am quoting Chavez from memory, not verbatim.  “Yesterday standing at this same podium was Satan himself, speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulfur.”

Chavez is one of the American right-wing’s favorite bogyman, because Chavez helps the people instead of bleeding them for the rich, which is Washington’s way.  While Washington has driven all but the one percent into the ground, Chavez cut poverty in half, doubled university enrollment, and provided health care and old age pensions to millions of Venezuelans for the first time.

Little wonder he was elected to a third term as president despite the many millions of dollars Washington poured into the election campaign of Chavez’s opponent.

While Washington and the EU preach neoliberalism–the supremacy of capital over labor–South American politicians who reject Washington’s way are being elected and reelected in Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia.

It was the Ecuadoran government, not Washington, that had the moral integrity to grant political asylum to WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange. The only time Washington grants asylum is when it can be used to embarrass an opponent.

In contrast to the leadership that is emerging in South America as more governments there reject the traditional hegemony of Washington, the US political elite, whether Republican or Democrat, are aligned with the rich against the American people.

The Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has promised to cut taxes on the rich, taxes which are already rock bottom, to block any regulation of the gangsters in the financial arena, and to privatize Social Security and Medicare.

Privatizing Social Security and Medicare means to divert the people’s tax dollars to the profits of private corporations. In Republican hands, privatization means only one thing: to cut the people’s benefits and to use the people’s tax dollars to increase the profits in the private sector.  Romney’s policy is just another policy that sacrifices the people to the one percent.

Unfortunately, the Democrats, if a lesser evil, are still an evil. There is no reason to vote  for the reelection of a president who codified into law the Bush regime’s destruction of the US Constitution, who went one step further and asserted the power to murder US citizens without due process of law, and who has done nothing to stop the exploitation of the American people by the one percent.

As Gerald Celente says in the Autumn Issue of the Trends Journal, when confronted with the choice between two evils, you don’t vote for the lesser evil. You boycott the election and do not vote. “Lessor or greater, evil is evil.”

If Americans had any sense, no one would vote in the November election.  Whoever wins the November election, it will be a defeat for the American people.

An Obama or Romney win stands in stark contract with Chavez’s win. Here is how Lula da Silva, the popular former president of Brazil summed it up: “Chavez’s victory is a victory for all the peoples of Latin America. It is another blow against imperialism.” Washington, making full use of the almighty dollar, was unable to buy the Venezuelan election.

How will a Romney or Obama win be summed up?  The answer will be in terms of which candidate is best for Israel’s interest;  which is best for Wall Street’s interest, which is best for agribusiness; which is most likely to attack Iran; which is most likely to subject economic and war protesters to indefinite detention as domestic extremists.

The only people who will benefit from the election of either Romney or Obama are those associated with the private oligarchies that rule America.

This article was originally posted at Counterpunch

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.  His latest book,  Wirtschaft am Abgrund (Economies In Collapse) has just been published.

Iran Bomb: The Ever-Burning Fuse

Wile E Coyote, Prime Minister of Israel, uses a diagram of a bomb to describe Iran's nuclear program while delivering his address to the 67th United Nations General Assembly meeting 27 September 2012 at the United Nations in New York. (Photo: AFP - Don Emmert)

By: Yazan al-Saadi

Published Friday, September 28, 2012
 

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly and spoke of the need for a “clear red line” on Iran’s nuclear program, hinting at military action against the Islamic Republic. This seemingly escalatory tone against Iran is nothing new as Netanyahu and others have been crying wolf on Iran’s nuclear weapons for decades.

The accusation that Iran has been militarizing its nuclear energy program dates further back than most people realize: in fact, it first surfaced during the final years of pro-Western Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s reign.

Since then, Israeli and Western government officials and political pundits have routinely predicted the “imminent” construction of an Iranian nuclear weapon, frequently contradicting assessments by their own intelligence agencies and other international experts. The depiction of the menace and the sense of urgency stoked by such claims have only increased in recent years – the latest of which forecasts the possible development of an Iranian nuclear weapon in a mere matter of weeks.

■ Timeline of The Iran Bomb

 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad waves before entering an airplane upon his departure to the United States to attend the UN General Assembly, at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport, on 22 September 2012. (Photo: AFP - Atta Kenare)Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad waves before entering an airplane upon his departure to the United States to attend the UN General Assembly, at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport, on 22 September 2012. (Photo: AFP - Atta Kenare)

Inextricable from this doom-saying over Iran’s nuclear program are sales of weapons and military equipment to Iran’s foes in the region, as well as an increase in belligerent activities against the Islamic Republic, including economic sanctions and assassinations. These tactics have in turn fermented Iran’s own concerns, motivating it to double-down and push forward with a nuclear program Tehran insists is for peaceful use only.

And so a self-fulfilling pattern is spawned, leaving the region’s inhabitants perpetually on the brink of an avoidable catastrophe.

Nuclear Beginnings

The Iranian state initiated its nuclear energy program in 1957 with close cooperation from the United States under the “Atoms for Peace” program, first envisioned by American President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. A small research nuclear reactor was purchased by Iran from the US in 1960. It became active seven years later, with the US providing enriched fuel.

Soon after, Iran signed on to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and established the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to oversee the development of this project.

Today, Western pressures are based on holding Iran strictly accountable for a treaty signed by a repressive government that was eventually overthrown; while Israel, which is widely believed to actually possess a nuclear weapons arsenal, is granted incredible leeway by Western states under the justification that it has not signed on to the treaty and therefore is not governed by its rules. This double standard is one of the fundamental points of disagreement, which continue to incite mistrust and skepticism from Iran's side.

Prior to his overthrow, Pahlavi was reportedly involved in negotiations with the US, France, and West Germany to develop 20 nuclear reactors and perhaps help with a clandestine nuclear weapons development program in the works.

The Shah, likely motivated by news that India had successfully tested its own nuclear bomb, told Le Monde in 1974 that one day “sooner than is believed, [Iran would be] in possession of a nuclear bomb.” It was an ambitious, brazen statement that was quickly retracted by the Iranian embassy in France. 

Nevertheless, it suggested that among the higher echelons of the Iranian state, possessing nuclear weapons was at the very least being contemplated.

Iranian attempts to develop a full nuclear fuel cycle, a key component of weaponization, were adamantly opposed by much of the American establishment despite Iran being a vital ally. Nuclear power symbolizes independence and strength and the knowledge itself tends to be jealously guarded by those already in possession of such capabilities.

Concerns over Iran’s ambitions were reflected in a number of memos sent by American defense and energy departments at the time, which warned, in hyperbolic fashion, that “the annual plutonium production from the planned 23,000 MW Iranian nuclear power program will be equivalent to 600-700 warheads.”

Undeterred by such fears, Iran had allies within the administration, including Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Both individuals, who in a twist of fate later came to view Iran as a major enemy, lobbied in support of the Iranian nuclear program under the pretext that it would secure Iran’s future energy needs, and more importantly, would be highly lucrative for American corporations.

A deal was struck in 1978: in return for helping Iran develop its nuclear program, Washington secured the right to the return and storage of spent reactor fuel from all reactors built in Iran. This way, Iran’s nuclear weapons program would be restricted and controlled according to the whims of the Americans. However, fickle fate had other plans.

In 1979, the Shah was ousted by a popular uprising and all ties between Iran and the Western countries were severely downgraded or out-right terminated, replaced by mutual antagonism and overt hostility.

Iran under Siege
 
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who would rise to become the religious leader of the Iranian revolution, at first opposed nuclear power and weapons on religious grounds and rapidly took measures against the program. Pre-existing plans for the completion of two semi-finished reactors at Bushehr and two further reactors were immediately scrapped. Yet, this initial opposition to nuclear power and weapons by Iran’s new policymakers was soon reconsidered for two main reasons.

First, major economic losses were incurred because of the unfinished nuclear reactors and Iran needed to secure its future energy requirements.

Secondly, and more crucially, post-revolution Iran was viewed as a threat to American interests in the Gulf. More so, the Iranians were surrounded by states that possessed nuclear weapons or were trying to develop them. Of great concern was Iraq, which had launched an attack against Iran in 1980, only a year after the revolution, deploying chemical weapons against Iranian forces early in the conflict.

A letter reportedly composed by Khomeini close to the end of the Iran-Iraq War sheds some light on his motivation to reluctantly reactivate the country’s nuclear program. Khomeini was driven by defensive rather than expansive considerations; in particular Iraq’s use of chemical weapons during the war, which it had developed with help from the West, influenced his decision.

While Iran was at war with Iraq, American and Israeli military relations entered a new phase, as the two countries conducted their first ever joint sea and air exercises, complemented by the construction of facilities to stockpile American military equipment in Israel in 1984.

Additionally, the Reagan administration authorized a massive arms sale to a number of Gulf States, which were fearful of the Iranian state and its ideology of exporting an Islamic revolution, and were supporting Iraq.

There was no clear decision by Iranian policymakers to construct nuclear weapons in the early 1980s, despite moves to develop the nuclear energy front of the program.

Irrespective of that fact, in April 1984, British defense magazine Jane’s Defense Weekly became the first publication in the West to claim that Iran was “engaged in the production of an atomic bomb, likely to be ready within two years.”

Jane’s prediction apparently stemmed from information gathered by West German intelligence sources after West German engineers visited the unfinished Bushehr nuclear reactor that year. This first public prediction was echoed across the Atlantic by US Senator Alan Cranston’s announcement that Iran was expected to have nuclear weapons as early as 1991.

These embryonic Western prophecies of a forthcoming Iranian bomb, like many others that followed over the years, were not based on concrete evidence. Moreover, they routinely disregarded that Tehran was reacting to a siege on multiple fronts, which only grew in the coming decades.

When the Iran-Iraq war sputtered to a whimpering conclusion, following an estimated loss of over one million lives, the Islamic Republic was granted a moment’s respite, as Western states concentrated on Iraq following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. This brief respite lasted until the end of the First Gulf War and afforded Iran room to pursue ties with states such as China, Pakistan, Argentina and Russia to help develop its nuclear energy program.

By 1992, Benjamin Netanyahu, then an Israeli parliamentarian, began expressing the belief that Iran could develop nuclear weapons within “three to five years” and therefore must be stopped through “an international front headed by the US.” His statements were reiterated by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, but Peres pushed the clock to 1999.

“Iran is the greatest threat [to peace] and greatest problem in the Middle East … because it seeks the nuclear option while holding a highly dangerous stance of extreme religious militantism,” Peres told a French news agency.

Following suit, a task force of the US House Republican Research Committee claimed that there was a “98 percent certainty that Iran had already had all (or virtually all) of the components required for two or three operational nuclear weapons.”

More officials in Washington and Tel Aviv joined in the distressing, but always unsubstantiated contentions.

One notable case involved former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who in 1998 reported to Congress that Iran could build an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear or a biological payload that could hit the US within five years. Of course this was mere speculation, but that did not stop such statements from reverberating within the American establishment. 

Rumsfeld’s report to Congress can be seen as the seed for future American foreign policy.

Meanwhile, arms sales to the Arab Gulf countries churned along and grew significantly, correlating with the hysteria towards Iran.

Adding to this, the US promoted security coordination with the Gulf Cooperation Council, pledging to contain any threat from either Iran or Iraq. In the spirit of this policy, the US entrenched its military presence in the Gulf, setting up bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and proceeding to upgrade its naval forces to fleet status in Bahrain.

By the dawn of the new millennium, the portrayal of Iran as a major threat, painstakingly crafted throughout the 1990s, kicked into high gear.

Becoming Enemy Number One

During George W. Bush’s tenure, Iran was firmly placed as part of the “axis of evil,” even as the reformist Iranian President Mohammed Khatami attempted to reach out to his American counterpart on multiple occasions, including by denouncing the 9/11 attacks and cooperating with America’s invasion of Afghanistan.

As part of this conciliatory approach, Iran allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit its nuclear facilities in February 2003 for the first time. These visitations were not without their complications, but they were goodwill steps toward de-escalation.

While Iran maintained that its nuclear program was entirely peaceful, the IAEA noted small breaches in safeguard agreements and accused the Islamic Republic of a “pattern of concealment.” However, the atomic agency found “no evidence” that Iran was attempting to build an atomic bomb. The IAEA’s conclusion was quickly denounced by the US government as “impossible to believe.” 

Britain, France, and Germany then began a dialogue with Iran, resulting in the Paris Agreement, in which Iran agreed to a temporary suspension of its program pending the progress of further negotiations. This suspension ultimately lasted for three years before Iran restarted its nuclear enrichment activities.

For its part, the US refused to participate in any negotiations with Iran. Despite American embroilment in a worsening quagmire following their invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, they maintained their repudiation of international diplomacy and continued to up the ante vis-a-vis Iran.

In the spirit of this aggressive American policy that defined the Bush era, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed in 2004 that Iran had been working on technology to fit a nuclear warhead onto a missile. These allegations came as Powell’s Iraqi weapons of mass destruction assertions were being proven to be unsubstantiated.

"We are talking about information that says they not only have [the] missiles but information that suggests they are working hard about how to put the two together," he declared.

To support Powell’s allegations, a year later the US presented 1,000 pages of designs and other documentation supposedly retrieved from a laptop computer in Iran, which were said to detail high-explosives testing and a nuclear-capable missile warhead. The “alleged studies,” as they have since been called by the IAEA and other international experts, were dismissed by Iran as forgeries by hostile intelligence services.

Conciliatory efforts by Iran largely tapered out with the departure of Khatami in 2005 and the subsequent ascendancy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who adopted a more hard-line position as Iranian president. Tensions between Iran and the US grew.

In the midst of this growing rift, Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini as supreme religious leader, issued his own fatwa forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons, during a meeting with the IAEA Board of Governors in Geneva in 2005. But this public fatwa did not ease pressures on Iran.

More and more political commentators around the world began to disseminate their own estimates of when or how a war would break out. In the minds of those within American and Israeli political and military circles, the matter appeared already settled. A notable report highlighting this mentality was written by The New Yorker’s renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who quoted US political and military sources as saying that a strike on Iran was all but inevitable.

Like its predecessors, the Bush Administration coupled this panic towards Iran by bolstering its military relationship with Iran’s enemies. The Gulf Security Dialogue was established in May 2006 as a response to was promoted as a dramatic shift in the regional strategic balance. In addition, Israel attacked Lebanon in the summer of 2006. The assault was widely seen as a precursor for what an assault on Iran would entail and part of an overall strategy to further isolate Iran by weakening its alliances in the region.

Just as tensions appeared to be scaling ever new heights, an unclassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), released in November 2007, stated with "high confidence" that Iran had given up any nuclear weapons effort in 2003. 

The report represented the views of America’s 16 spy agencies. What should have been taken as an indicator to reconsider the rhetoric against Iran, was instead promptly ignored or spun in a negative light.

On the diplomatic front, negotiations between the West and Iran were painfully slow and ultimately stalled. The UN Security Council, although not entirely unanimous in its view of the danger posed by Iran, passed four rounds of economic sanctions against Iran between 2006 and 2010. These measures barely dented Iran’s desire for nuclear energy.

When all seemed lost, a sudden, surprising breakthrough occurred in May 2010. Brazilian and Turkish officials were able to broker a deal with Iran to swap nuclear fuel abroad. For a fleeting moment, conflict appeared to have been averted, Western nations, specifically the US, rejected the terms and the deal collapsed.

Throughout 2010 and 2011, under the administration of Barack Obama, the Americans expanded operations against Iran together with their Israeli and European allies - the US had already initiated hostilities through proxies such as the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan and Jundallah, as far back as late 2005. This alliance utilized a combination of cyber-warfare, diplomatic provocation, assassinations of Iranian scientists, economic sanctions, a bolstered military presence and unceasing threats of a strike by Israel.

Throughout all this, there was still no evidence of an Iranian nuclear bomb. In fact, the matter exceedingly became an issue of whether Iran was trying to learn how to make a weapon, rather than if it had developed one.

Completing the Cycle

In a June 2011 article in The New Yorker, Hersh emphasized the incredible exploitation of the issue:

“Despite years of covert operations inside Iran, extensive satellite imagery, and the recruitment of many Iranian intelligence assets, the United States and its allies, including Israel, have been unable to find irrefutable evidence of an ongoing hidden nuclear-weapons program in Iran, according to intelligence and diplomatic officials here and abroad.”

The IAEA, which under Mohammed al-Baradei was keen not to repeat the calamity of Iraq, transformed under the administration of his successor, Yukiya Amano.

Reversing its long held position, the atomic agency suddenly asserted that Iran had for years been working on weapons-related activities. It buttressed this new claim by publishing a report last November that was based on more than 1,000 pages of design information, which it says, is corroborated by data from 10 member states and its own investigation and interviews. Among the documents used by the IAEA to craft these new accusations is the disputed evidence provided by the Bush administration in 2005.

Amano’s new direction may be partially explained by a US embassy cable document released by WikiLeaks in December 2010. The cable revealed that Amano was “solidly in the US court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”

Like clock-work, the growing spotlight on Iran has been followed by major weapons sales. In late 2011, the US and the Gulf monarchies committed to what has been called “one of the largest re-armament exercises in peacetime history.”

The sale amounted to around US$123 billion worth of fighter jets, helicopters, missiles, tanks, and other advanced weaponry. The hysteria was profitable for the US arms trade. Furthermore, The New York Times also noted that the US dominated the arms trade in 2011 with around 78 percent of total arms sold worldwide – most of which were exported to the Persian Gulf region. These sales make the Iran bomb threat, which remains a phantom threat, one of the most profitable ploys for Western defense investors and arms-traders.

On the Iranian side, efforts continue to emphasize the peaceful nature of the nuclear program, while also ensuring that Iran’s rights are not compromised. On a number of occasions, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reconfirmed his 2005 fatwa, most recently last month during the Non-Aligned Movement’s meeting held in Tehran. The nuclear program has become tied to Iran’s identity as a regional and independent power. Any compromise for the Iranians is deemed a capitulation to foreign aggression.

To date no corroborated evidence exists indicating the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb. A report by Reuters in March of this year reiterated this fact without much fanfare. It noted that privately, US, European and even Israeli officials agree that “Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.” 

Nevertheless, the US and EU have recently expanded sanctions to include Iran’s oil and banking sector, and are increasing their military presence along Iran’s shores and borders.

Arab Gulf countries have played their part in the growing hostilities against Iran, whether by privately urging an attack on Iran or by complaining of Iranian meddling in their affairs. One month before the IAEA was to release its November report, a fantastical Iranian plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador in Washington – involving a used car dealer and a Mexican drug gang – was unveiled. 

Concurrently, the Israelis have persisted in their threats, the latest invoked by Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak and the current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Barak alleged that a new classified NIE report optioned that Iran had made surprising headway in developing a nuclear bomb. He added that this new report brings the US position closer to that of Israel and preparations were beginning for an assault.

For his part, Netanyahu reportedly got into a spat with the American ambassador to Israel last month over the Obama administration’s unwillingness to take matters to a more aggressive level. The Israeli prime minister was “at his wit’s end” because, he claimed, Iran was “four to eight weeks” away from a nuclear bomb. A few weeks later, Netanyahu backtracked from this prediction, and pushed the deadline to six or seven months away.

There is a growing sense of fatigue over the never-ending, often contradictory prophesying over Iran’s nuclear program. The fact remains that no one, other than the Iranians, really knows the extent of the program.

This fatigue was perfectly articulated by Stephen M. Walt, a prominent American academic and political commentator, writing in Foreign Policy: “[T]hose prophesying war [with Iran] are starting to sound like those wacky cult leaders who keep predicting the End of the World, and then keep moving the date when the world doesn't end on schedule. At what point are we going to stop paying attention?”

Iran accuses Israel, US of "nuclear terrorism"

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