Petrodollars and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: Understanding the Planned Assault on Iran
February 10, 2006
From... GlobalResearch.ca
Iran has been in the gun-sights of George W. Bush and his entourage from the moment that he was parachuted into the
presidency in November 2000 by his father’s Supreme Court.
A year ago there were signs, duly reported by Seymour Hersh and others, that the United States and Israel were working
out the targeting details of an aerial attack on Iran that it was anticipated would occur in June 2005 (see Hersh, Gush
Shalom, Jensen). But as Michel Chossudovsky wrote in May 2005, widespread reports that George W. Bush had “signed off
on” an attack on Iran did not signify that the attack would necessarily occur during the summer of 2005: what the
‘signing off’ suggested was rather “that the US and Israel [were] ‘in a state of readiness’ and [were] prepared to
launch an attack by June or at a later date. In other words, the decision to launch the attack [had] not been made”
(Chossudovsky: May 2005).
Since December 2005, however, there have been much firmer indications both that the planned attack will go ahead in
late March 2006, and also that the Cheney-Bush administration intends it to involve the use of nuclear weapons.
It is important to understand the nature and scale of the war crimes that are being planned—and no less important to
recognize that, as in the case of the Bush regime’s assault on Iraq, the pretexts being advanced to legitimize this
intended aggression are entirely fraudulent. Unless the lurid fantasies of people like former Undersecretary for Arms
Control and International Security and now Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton count as evidence—and Bolton’s
pronouncements on the weaponry supposedly possessed by Iraq, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela show him to be less
acquainted with truth than Jean Harlow was with chastity—there is no evidence that Iran has or has ever had any nuclear
weapons development program. Claims to the contrary, however loudly they may have been trumpeted by Fox News, CNN, or
The New York Times, are demonstrably false.
Nor does there appear to be the remotest possibility, whatever desperate measures the Iranian government might be
frightened into by American and Israeli threats of pre-emptive attacks, that Iran would be able to produce nuclear
weapons in the near future. On August 2, 2005, The Washington Post reported that according to the most recent National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which represents a consensus arrived at among U.S. intelligence agencies, “Iran is about a
decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five
years” (Linzer, quoted by Clark, 28 Jan. 2006).
The coming attack on Iran has nothing whatsoever to do with concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Its
primary motive, as oil analyst William Clark has argued, is rather a determination to ensure that the U.S. dollar
remains the sole world currency for oil trading. Iran plans in March 2006 to open a Teheran Oil Bourse in which all
trading will be carried out in Euros. This poses a direct threat to the status of the U.S. dollar as the principal world
reserve currency—and hence also to a trading system in which massive U.S. trade deficits are paid for with paper money
whose accepted value resides, as Krassimir Petrov notes, in its being the currency in which international oil trades are
denominated. (U.S. dollars are effectively exchangeable for oil in somewhat the same way that, prior to 1971, they were
at least in theory exchangeable for gold.)
But not only is this planned aggression unconnected to any actual concern over Iranian nuclear weapons. There is in
fact some reason to think that the preparations for it have involved deliberate violations by the Bush neo-conservatives
of anti-proliferation protocols (and also, necessarily, of U.S. law), and that their long-term planning, in which
Turkey’s consent to the aggression is a necessary part, has involved a deliberate transfer of nuclear weapons technology
to Turkey as a part of the pay-off.
Prior to her public exposure by Karl Rove, Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, and other senior administration officials in July
2003, CIA agent Valerie Plame was reportedly involved in undercover anti-proliferation work focused on transfers of
nuclear technology to Turkey that were being carried out by a network of crooked businessmen, arms dealers, and ‘rogue’
officials within the U.S. government. The leaking of Plame’s identity as a CIA agent was undoubtedly an act of revenge
for her husband Joseph Wilson’s public revelation that one of the key claims used to legitimize the invasion of Iraq,
Saddam Hussein’s supposed acquisition of uranium ore from Niger, was known by the Bush regime to be groundless. But
Plame’s exposure also conveniently put an end to her investigative work. Some of the senior administration officials
responsible for that crime of state have long-term diplomatic and military connections to Turkey, and all of them have
been employed in what might be called (with a nod to ex-White House speechwriter David Frum) the Cheney-Bolton Axis of
Aggression. Thanks to the courage and integrity of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, there is evidence dating from
2002 of high-level involvement in the subversion of FBI investigations into arms trafficking with Turkey. The leaking of
Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent may therefore have been not merely an act of revenge for her husband’s
contribution to the delegitimizing of one war of aggression, but also a tactical maneuver in preparation for the next
one.
George W. Bush made clear his aggressive intentions in relation to Iran in his 2002 State of the Union address; and his
regime’s record on issues of nuclear proliferation has been, to put it mildly, equivocal. If, as seems plausible, Bush’s
diplomats had been secretly arranging that Turkey’s reward for connivance in an attack on Iran should include its future
admission into the charmed circle of nuclear powers, then the meddling interference of servants of the state who, like
Plame and Edmonds, were putting themselves or at least their careers at risk in the cause of preventing nuclear weapons
proliferation, was not to be tolerated.
The ironies are glaring. The U.S. government is contemplating an unprovoked attack upon Iran that will involve
“pre-emptive” use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear-weapons-holding state. Although the pretext is that this is
necessary to forestall nuclear weapons proliferation, there is evidence to suggest that planning for the attack has
involved, very precisely, nuclear weapons proliferation by the United States.
It would appear that this sinister complex of criminality involves one further twist. There have been indications that
the planned attack may be immediately preceded (and of course ‘legitimized’) by another 9/11-type event within the U.S.
Let us review these issues in sequence.
Plans for a conventional and ‘tactical’ nuclear attack on Iran
On August 1, 2005 Philip Giraldi, an ex-CIA agent and associate of Vincent Cannistraro (the former head of the CIA’s
counter-intelligence operations and former intelligence director at the National Security Council), published an article
entitled “Deep Background” in The American Conservative. The first section of this article carried the following
headline: “In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you
Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran.” I quote the first section of Giraldi’s article in its entirety:
“The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States
Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type
terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional
and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected
nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be
taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on
Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force
officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being
set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.”
The implications of this report are breathtaking. First, it indicates on the part of the ruling Cheney faction within
the American state a frank in-house acknowledgment that their often-repeated public claims of a connection between
Saddam Hussein’s regime and the 9/11 attacks are the rubbish that informed people have long known them to be.
At a deeper level, it implies that “9/11-type terrorist attacks” are recognized in Cheney’s office and the Pentagon as
appropriate means of legitimizing wars of aggression against any country selected for that treatment by the regime and
its corporate propaganda-amplification system. (Though the implicit acknowledgment is shocking, the fact itself should
come as no surprise, since recent research has shown that the Bush administration was deeply implicated not merely in
permitting the attacks of September 11, 2001 to happen, but in actually organizing them: see Chossudovsky 2002: 51-63,
144-56; Chossudovsky 2005: 51-62, 135-46, 237-61; Griffin 2004: 127-46, 169-201; Griffin 2005: 115-35, 277-91; Marrs
134-37; and Ruppert 309-436.)
And finally, Giraldi’s report suggests that the recent U.S. development of comparatively low-yield nuclear weapons
specifically designed to destroy hardened underground facilities, and the recent re-orientation of U.S. nuclear policy
to include first-strike or pre-emptive nuclear attacks on non-nuclear powers, were both part of long-range planning for
a war on Iran.
Articles published by William Arkin in the Washington Post in May and October 2005 reported on what the U.S. military’s
STRATCOM calls CONPLAN 8022, a global plan for bombing and missile attacks involving “a nuclear option” anywhere in the
world that was tested in an exercise that began on November 1, 2005; the scenario for this exercise scripted a
dirty-bomb attack on Mobile, Alabama to which STRATCOM responded with nuclear and conventional strikes on an unnamed
east-Asian country that was transparently meant for North Korea.
Jorge Hirsch has outlined the deployment of key administrative personnel and of ideological legitimations in
preparation for a nuclear attack on Iran (Hirsch, 16 Dec. 2005). And Michel Chossudovsky has described the command
structure that has been set up to implement STRATCOM’s current plans for preemptive ‘theatre’ nuclear warfare (see
Chossudovsky 2006). But it must be emphasized that these plans, as tested in November 2005 in the exercise referred to
by Arkin, involve the creation of an impression of what theorists of nuclear war call “proportionality.” An attack on
Iran, which would presumably involve the use of significant numbers of extremely ‘dirty’ earth-penetrating nuclear
bombs, might well be made to follow a dirty-bomb attack on the United States, which would be represented in the media as
having been carried out by Iranian agents.
Yet as Giraldi indicates, although the bombing of Iran would follow and be represented as a response to “another
9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States,” the planned pattern involves a cynical separation of appearance from
reality: “the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in [this] act of terrorism….”
Earth-Penetrator ‘dirty bombs
Talk about “low-yield” nuclear weapons, by the way, means simply that the most recent U.S. nuclear weapons can be set
to detonate with much less than their maximum explosive force. The maximum power of the B61-11 earth-penetrating
“bunker-buster” bomb ranges, by different accounts, from 300 to 340 or 400 kilotons (see Nelson; Hirsch, 9 Jan. 2006).
(By way of comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August, 1945, killing some 80,000 people outright, and a further
60,000 over the next several months due to radiation poisoning and other injuries, had a yield of 15 kilotons.) The
lowest-yield setting of the BL61-11 is reportedly 0.3 kilotons—equivalent, that is to say, to the detonation of 300 tons
of TNT.
But since these new weapons are designed as earth-penetrating “bunker-buster” rather than air-burst bombs, each one can
be expected to produce large volumes of very ‘dirty’ radioactive fallout. Robert Nelson of the Federation of American
Scientists writes that even at the low end of the B61-11 bomb’s yield range, “the nuclear blast will simply blow out a
huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area.” The very intense local
fallout will include both “radioactivity from the fission products” and also “large amounts of dirt and debris [that]
has been exposed to the intense neutron flux from the nuclear detonation”; the blast cloud produced by such a bomb
“typically consists of a narrow column and a broad base surge of air filled with radioactive dust which expands to a
radius of over a mile for a 5 kiloton explosion.”
Yet wouldn’t the “tactical” and “low-yield” nature of these weapons mean that civilian casualties could be kept to a
minimum? A study published in 2005 by the National Research Council on the Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other
Weapons offers estimates of the casualties that could be caused by these weapons. According to Conclusion 6 of this
report, an attack in or near a densely populated urban area could be expected, depending on the B61-11’s yield setting,
to kill from several thousand to over a million people. An attack in a remote, lightly populated area might kill as few
as several hundred people—or, with a high-yield setting and unfavourable winds, hundreds of thousands.
But what kinds of yield settings might the U.S. military want to use? Conclusion 5 of the NRC report might seem to
suggest that genuinely low-yield settings might be possible: the yield required “to destroy a hard and deeply buried
target is reduced by a factor of 15 to 25 by enhanced ground-shock coupling if the weapon is detonated a few meters
below the surface.” Conclusion 2, however, is more sobering. To have a high probability of destroying a facility 200
metres underground, an earth-penetrating weapon with a yield of 300 kilotons would be required—that is to say, a weapon
with twenty times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb. Extrapolating from the information the report provides, one
might guess that a weapon in the 7-8 kiloton range—with half the power of the Hiroshima bomb—could be deployed against a
facility like Natanz, the sensitive parts of which are buried 18 metres underground and protected by reinforced concrete
(Beeston). A similar or smaller weapon might be used against the uranium fuel enrichment facility at Esfahan—a city of
two million people which is also, by the way, a UNESCO World Heritage City.
The NRC report, it should be noted, was written by a committee, and one that on the issue of civilian casualties seems
to have had some difficulty in making up its collective mind. Conclusion 4 of the report informs us that “For the same
yield and weather conditions, the number of casualties from an earth-penetrator weapon detonated at a few meters depth
is, for all practical purposes, equal to that from a surface burst of the same weapon yield.” But Conclusion 7 tells a
different story: “For urban targets, civilian casualties from nuclear earth-penetrator weapons are reduced by a factor
of 2 to 10 compared with those from a surface burst having 25 times the yield.”
The most charitable interpretation I can give to Conclusion 7 is that it was composed for a readership of arithmetical
illiterates—who the authors assume will be unable to deduce that what is actually being said (assuming a linear relation
between yield and casualties) is that an earth-penetrating weapon will cause from 2.5 to 12.5 times more casualties than
a surface-burst weapon of the same explosive power.
In light of the fact that the NRC report was commissioned by the United States Congress, we can ourselves conclude that
the U.S. government is contemplating, open-eyed, a war of aggression that American planners are fully aware will kill—at
the very least—many tens of thousands, and perhaps many hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The pretexts
The principal reason being advanced for an attack upon Iran is the claim that Iran is on the verge of becoming a
nuclear threat with the capacity and presumably the intention of launching nuclear ballistic-missile attacks upon Israel
and even western Europe and the United States.
Iran does possess ballistic missiles, including the Shahab-3, which with a range of 1300 kilometers is capable of
striking Israel, as well as U.S. forces throughout the Middle East. (Why Iran would dream of initiating military
aggression against the U.S. or against Israel, which possesses an arsenal of some 200 nuclear warheads, together with
multiple means of delivering them, including ballistic missiles, is not explained.)
A fear-mongering article published by The Guardian on January 4, 2006, included the information that the next
generation of the Shahab missile “should be capable of reaching Austria and Italy.” The leading sentence of this same
article declares that “The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment
needed to develop a nuclear bomb, according to the latest western assessment of the country’s weapons programmes”
(Cobain and Traynor). But neither this article nor a companion piece (Traynor and Cobain) published the same day
provides any evidence that Iran actually has a nuclear weapons program, even though both articles were based upon a
“report from a leading EU intelligence service,” a “55-page intelligence assessment, dated July 1 2005, [that] draws
upon material gathered by British, French, German and Belgian agencies.”
There is in fact very good evidence, in the form of exhaustive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency
since 2003, that Iran does not have and has never had any such program. As the physicist Gordon Prather wrote in
September 2005, “after two years of go-anywhere, see-anything inspections, [the IAEA] has found no indication that any
special nuclear materials or activities involving them are being—or have been—used in furtherance of a military purpose”
(Prather, 27 Sept. 2005).
But what about intentions? The Guardian journalists inform us that “western leaders … have long refused to believe
Tehran’s insistence that it is not interested in developing nuclear weapons and is only trying to develop nuclear power
for electricity” (Cobain and Traynor). Perhaps it is time these “western leaders”—George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and
whatever rag-tag and bob-tail of lesser luminaries they are dragging after them—began to attend to the facts.
A good place to start might be with William Beeman’s and Thomas Stauffer’s assessment of the physical evidence for an
Iranian nuclear weapons program. (Stauffer, by the way, is a former nuclear engineer and specialist in Middle Eastern
energy economics; Beeman directs Brown University’s Middle East Studies program; both have conducted research on Iran
for three decades.) Beeman and Stauffer note that Iran has three principal nuclear facilities.
Of the first two, a uranium enrichment plant in Natanz and a deuterium research facility in Arak, they remark that
“Neither is in operation. The only question of interest is whether these facilities offer a plausible route to the
manufacture of plutonium-based nuclear bombs, and the short answer is: They do not.”
Beeman and Stauffer compare the third facility, the PWR pressurized “light-water” reactor under construction at
Bushehr, with Israel’s heavy-water graphite-moderated plant at Dimona. The Bushehr reactor is designed to maximize power
output through long fuel cycles of 30 to 40 months; it will produce plutonium isotopes (PU240, 241 and 242) that are
“almost impossible to use in making bombs”; and “the entire reactor will have to shut down—a step that cannot be
concealed from satellites, airplanes and other sources—in order to permit the extraction of even a single fuel pin.”
Israel’s Dimona plant, in contrast, produces the bomb-making isotope PU239; moreover, it “can be re-fueled ‘on line,’
without shutting down. Thus, high-grade plutonium can be obtained covertly and continuously.”
Claims emanating from the U.S. State Department to the effect that Iran possesses uranium-enrichment centrifuges or
covert plutonium-extraction facilities are dismissed by Beeman and Stauffer as implausible, since “the sources are
either unidentified or are the same channels which disseminated the stories about Iraq’s non-conventional weapons or the
so-called chemical and biological weapons plant in Khartoum.”
As Michael T. Klare remarks, the U.S. government’s “claim that an attack on Iran would be justified because of its
alleged nuclear potential should invite widespread skepticism.” But skeptical intelligence appears to be the last thing
one can expect from the corporate media, whose organs report without blinking Condoleezza Rice’s threat that “The world
will not stand by if Iran continues on the path to a nuclear weapons capability” (see [Rice]), and George W. Bush’s
equally inane declaration, following the IAEA’s vote to refer Iran to the UN Security Council, that “This important step
sends a clear message to the regime in Iran that the world will not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons”
(see [Bush]).
There is much to be said about the sorry process of propagandizing, diplomatic bullying, and behind-the-scenes
blackmail and arm-twisting within the IAEA and in other forums—all of it strongly reminiscent of the maneuverings of
late 2002 and early 2003—that has led to the present situation, where in early March the Security Council will be called
upon, as in the case of Iraq three years ago, to accept and legitimize the falsehoods on which the new war of aggression
is to be based. The early stages of this process were lucidly analyzed by Siddharth Varadarajan in three fine articles
in September 2005. Its more recent phases have been assessed by Gordon Prather in a series of articles published since
mid-September 2005, and also, with equal scrupulousness and ethical urgency, by another well-informed physicist, Jorge
Hirsch, who has been publishing essays on the subject since mid-October. I will not repeat here the analyses developed
in their articles (the titles of which are included in the list of sources which follows this text). But Varadarajan’s
recent summary judgment of the diplomatic process is worth quoting: “Each time it appeases Washington’s relentless
pressure on Iran, the international community is being made to climb higher and higher up a ladder whose final rungs can
only be sanctions and war. This is precisely the route the U.S. followed against Iraq in its quest to effect regime
change there” (Varadarajan, 1 Feb. 2006).
It is also worth saying something, however briefly, about the media campaign that has accompanied the diplomatic
preparations for war. This has included, since mid-2005, accusations that that Iran was involved in the terrorist
attacks of 9/11, some of whose perpetrators are alleged (by members of the wholly discredited Kean Commission of inquiry
into the events of 9/11) to have passed through Iran on their way to the U.S. (see Coman; Hirsch, 28 Dec. 2005; and
also, if you believe The 9/11 Commission Report to have any credibility, Griffin 2005).
A more relevant accusation surfaced in November 2005, when the New York Times reported that senior U.S. intelligence
officials had briefed IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei and his senior staff on information gleaned from a “stolen
Iranian laptop computer” which they said demonstrated that Iran had developed nuclear weapons compact enough to fit onto
its Shahab missiles. But as Gordon Prather wrote, “‘sources close to the IAEA’ said what they had been briefed on
appeared to be aerodynamic design work for a ballistic missile reentry vehicle, which certainly couldn’t contain a nuke
if the Iranians didn’t have any. Furthermore, according to David Albright, a sometime consultant to the IAEA, who has
actually had access to the ‘stolen Iranian laptop,’ the information on it is all about reentry vehicles and ‘does not
contain words such [as] ‘nuclear’ and ‘nuclear warhead’” (Prather, 23 Nov. 2005).
Sorry, boys: no biscuit.
And yet the object of the exercise was evidently not to persuade the IAEA people, who are not idiots, but rather to get
the story into the amplification system of that Mighty Wurlitzer, the corporate media.
This strategy has evidently worked. The New York Times, for example, may have parted company with Judith Miller, the
‘star’ reporter whose sordid job was to serve as a conduit for Bush regime misinformation during the lead-up to the
invasion of Iraq, but in Elaine Sciolino they have a reporter who is no less skilled in passing off neocon propaganda as
fact (see Prather, 7 Jan. 2006). The New York Times also gave front-page space in mid-January to an article by Richard
Bernstein and Stephen Weisman proposing “that Iran has restarted ‘research that could give it technology to create
nuclear weapons’” (quoted by Whitney, 17 Jan. 2006). “Perhaps,” Mike Whitney suggests, “the NY Times knows something
that the IAEA inspectors don’t? If so, they should step forward and reveal the facts.”
The key facts, as Whitney wrote on January 17, are that there is no evidence that Iran has either a nuclear weapons
program or centrifuges with which to enrich uranium to weapons-grade concentration. “These are the two issues which
should be given greatest consideration in determining whether or not Iran poses a real danger to its neighbors, and yet
these are precisely the facts that are absent from the nearly 2,500 articles written on the topic in the last few days.”
Add to these the further fact, noted above, that the August 2005 National Intelligence Estimate doubled the time
American agencies thought Iran would need to manufacture “the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon” from the previous
estimate of five years to a full decade.
Why then is the American public being incited to ever greater anxiety in the face of a weapons program which—on the
paranoid and unproven assumption that it actually exists—is if anything a receding rather than a gathering threat?
Fox News has led the way among the non-print media in drum-beating and misinformation—to the extent, as Paul Craig
Roberts observes, that a Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll can plausibly report “that 60% of Republicans, 41% of Independents,
and 36% of Democrats support using air strikes and ground troops against Iran in order to prevent Iran from developing
nuclear weapons.” Worse yet, an LA Times/Bloomberg poll apparently finds that 57% of the respondents “favor military
intervention if Iran’s government pursues a program that would enable it to build nuclear arms.” Any civilian nuclear
power program opens up this possibility (Canada, had it so desired, could have become a nuclear-weapons power forty
years ago)—but the function of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is precisely to open the way to peaceful nuclear
power generation while preventing the further dissemination of nuclear weapons. What the LA Times/Bloomberg poll
therefore means, Roberts says, is that “if Iran exercises its rights under the non-proliferation treaty, 57% of
Americans support a US military attack on Iran!”
Numbers like these suggest that George W. Bush will indeed get the new war he so desires. And it appears that he will
get it soon. As Newt Gingrich declared on Fox News in late January, the matter is so urgent that the attack must happen
within the next few months. “According to Gingrich, Iran not only cannot be trusted with nuclear technology, but also
Iranians ‘cannot be trusted with their oil’” (Roberts).
The Euro-denominated Tehran Oil Bourse
Gingrich’s wording may sound faintly ludicrous. However, it would appear to be a slanting allusion to the fact that the
Iranian government has announced plans to open an Iranian Oil Bourse in March 2006. This Bourse will be in direct
competition with the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE)—and unlike
them will do business not in U.S. dollars, but in euros. What Gingrich evidently means is that the Iranians cannot be
trusted to market their oil and natural gas in a manner that continues to benefit the United States.
Peter Phillips and his colleagues in Project Censored explained very clearly in 2003 how the current U.S.
dollar-denominated system of oil and gas marketing provides the U.S. with a highly advantageous system of exchange. In
1971, “President Nixon removed U.S. currency from the gold standard”:
“Since then, the world’s supply of oil has been traded in U.S. fiat dollars, making the dollar the dominant world
reserve currency. Countries must provide the United States with goods and services for dollars—which the United States
can freely print. To purchase energy and pay off any IMF debts, countries must hold vast dollar reserves. The world is
attached to a currency that one country can produce at will. This means that in addition to controlling world trade, the
United States is importing substantial quantities of goods and services for very low relative costs.” (Phillips)
As Krassimir Petrov has observed, this amounts to an indirect form of imperial taxation. Unlike previous empires, which
extracted direct taxes from their subject-nations, the American empire has “distributed instead its own fiat currency,
the U.S. Dollar, to other nations in exchange for goods with the intended consequence of inflating and devaluing those
dollars and paying back later each dollar with less economic goods—the difference capturing the U.S. imperial tax.”
Oil, backed by military power, has provided the rest of the world with a reason for accepting depreciating U.S. dollars
and holding ever-increasing amounts of them in reserve. Petrov remarks that in 1972-73 the U.S. made “an iron-clad
arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the power of the House of Saud in exchange for accepting only U.S. dollars for
its oil. The rest of OPEC was to follow suit and accept only dollars. Because the world had to buy oil from the Arab oil
countries, it had the reason to hold dollars as payment for oil. [….] Even though dollars could no longer be exchanged
for gold, they were now exchangeable for oil” (Petrov).
But as Phillips notes, the economic reasons alone for switching to the euro as a reserve currency have been becoming
steadily more persuasive: “Because of huge trade deficits, it is estimated that the dollar is currently [in late 2003]
overvalued by at least 40 percent. Conversely, the euro-zone does not run huge deficits, uses higher interest rates, and
has an increasingly larger share of world trade. As the euro establishes its durability and comes into wider use, the
dollar will no longer be the world’s only option.” The result will be to make it “easier for other nations to exercise
financial leverage against the United States without damaging themselves or the global financial system as a whole.”
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, several analysts suggested that one very obvious motive for that war was the fact that,
beginning in November 2000, Iraq had insisted on payment in euros, not dollars, for its oil. In mid-2003, by which time
the U.S. had made clear the intended terms of its occupation of Iraq, one such analyst, Coilin Nunan, remarked that it
remained “just a theory” that American threats against Iraq had been made on behalf of the petro-dollar system—“but a
theory that subsequent U.S. actions have done little to dispel: the U.S. has invaded Iraq and installed its own
authority to rule the country, and as soon as Iraqi oil became available to sell on the world market, it was announced
that payment would be in dollars only” (Phillips). William Clark writes, more directly, that the invasion was
principally about “gaining strategic control over Iraq’s hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain[ing] the US$ as
the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market” (Clark, 28 Jan. 2006).
There is currently some debate over the extent to which U.S. war preparations against Iran are motivated by concern for
the continued hegemony of the petrodollar (see Nunan). I find the analyses of William Clark and Krassimir Petrov
persuasive.
Clark notes that an important obstacle to any major shift in the oil marketing system has been “the lack of a
euro-denominated oil pricing standard, or oil ‘marker’ as it is referred to in the industry.” (The current “oil
markers,” in relation to which other internationally traded oil is priced, are Norway Brent crude, West Texas
Intermediate crude [WTI], and United Arab Emirates [UAE] Dubai crude—all of them U.S. dollar denominated.) In his
opinion, “it is logical to assume the proposed Iranian bourse will usher in a fourth crude oil marker—denominated in the
euro currency,” and will thus “remove the main technical obstacle for a broad-based petro-euro system for international
oil trades.” This will have the effect of introducing “petrodollar versus petroeuro currency hedging, and fundamentally
new dynamics to the biggest market in the world—global oil and gas trades. In essence, the US will no longer be able to
effortlessly expand credit via US Treasury bills, and the US$’s demand/liquidity value will fall” (Clark, 28 Jan. 2006).
An even partial loss of the U.S. dollar’s position as the dominant reserve currency for global energy trading would, as
Petrov suggests, lead to a sharp decline in its value and an ensuing acceleration of inflation and upward pressure on
interest rates, with unpleasant consequences. “At this point, the Fed will find itself between Scylla and
Charybdis—between deflation and hyperinflation—it will be forced fast either to take its ‘classical medicine’ by
deflating, whereby it raises interest rates, thus inducing a major economic depression, a collapse in real estate, and
an implosion in bond, stock, and derivative markets […], or alternatively, to take the Weimar way out by inflating, […]
drown[ing] the financial system in liquidity […] and hyperinflating the economy.”
Any attempt, on the other hand, to preserve what Mike Whitney calls the “perfect pyramid-scheme” of America’s currency
monopoly (Whitney, 23 Jan. 2006) by means of military aggression against Iran is likely to result in equal or greater
disruptions to the world economy. American military aggression, which might conceivably include attempts to occupy
Iran’s oil-producing Khuzestan province and the coastline along the Straits of Hormuz (see Pilger), will not just have
appalling consequences for civilians throughout the region; it may also place American forces into situations still more
closely analogous than the present stage of Iraqi resistance to the situation produced in Lebanon by Israel’s invasion
of that country—which ended in 2000 with Israel’s first military defeat (see Salama and Ruster).
The involvement of Turkey
One significant difference between the warnings of a coming war circulating in early 2005 and those which have appeared
in recent months is the current evidence of feverish diplomatic activity between Washington and Ankara. The NATO powers
have evidently been co-opted into Washington’s war plans: the so-called EU-3 (France, Germany, and Britain) presented
Iran with a negotiating position on the nuclear fuel cycle for Iran’s power plants that seemed designed to produce an
indignant refusal. (As Aijaz Ahmad writes, the European group “was not negotiating; it was relaying to Iran, and to all
and sundry, what the U.S. was demanding and threatening to report Iran to the Security Council if the latter did not
comply. Everyone knows that Iran had closed its Isphahan facility voluntarily, as a confidence-building measure,
expecting some reciprocity, and then re-opened it, in retaliation, after having waited for reciprocity for many months
and not getting it—indeed, receiving only escalated demands.”)
But according to the well-connected Jürgen Gottslich, writing in Der Spiegel in late December, Iran was not discussed
during the new German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung’s recent visit to Washington. Gottslich wrote that “the
speculation surrounding an American strike against Iran centers more on developments in Turkey. There has been a
definite surge in visits to Ankara by high-ranking National Security personnel from the U.S. and by NATO officials.
Within the space of just a few days, FBI Director Robert Mueller, [CIA] Director [Porter] Goss and then NATO Secretary
General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer visited Turkey.” Condoleezza Rice also flew to Turkey immediately after her December trip
to Berlin.
The aim of these visits has quite obviously been to bring Turkey into line with a planned attack on Iran. As Gottslich
writes, “On his Istanbul visit, Goss is alleged to have given Turkish security services three dossiers that prove
Iranian cooperation with al-Qaeda. In addition, there was a fourth dossier focusing on the current state of Iran’s
nuclear weapons program.”
But why, beyond the obvious fact of Turkey’s shared border with Iran, should Turkey be such an important factor in
American war plans? The answer is suggested by an article published by an American academic, Robert Olson, in the June
2002 issue of Middle East Policy. According to Noam Chomsky, Olson “reports that 12 percent of Israel’s offensive
aircraft are to be ‘permanently stationed in Turkey’ and have been ‘flying reconnaissance flights along Iran’s border,’
signaling to Iran ‘that it would soon be challenged elsewhere by Turkey and its Israeli and American allies’” (Chomsky
159). These Israeli aircraft would evidently take part in any American and Israeli aerial attack on Iran, and Turkish
consent would no doubt be necessary for their use in such an act.
What advantages might Turkey hope to gain from its consent? The collaboration of Britain, France and Germany in the
cranking up of diplomatic pressure on Iran might suggest that Turkey’s much-desired admission to the European Union
could have been held out as one carrot—possibly with the argument that participation in an attack on a fundamentalist
Islamic state could be one way of calming European fears over the entry of a Muslim nation into the Union. An equally
persuasive advantage may have been a secret promise of future admission to the select group of nuclear powers.
Christopher Deliso has assembled evidence both of Turkey’s persistent involvement in the smuggling and production of
nuclear weapons technology, including centrifuge components and triggering devices (Deliso, 21 Nov. 2005)—and also of
the very interesting fact that the key administration officials involved in the outing of Valerie Plame, who was
investigating these murky operations, included people, among them Marc Grossman, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, who
give every appearance of having been centrally involved in the very network of nuclear arms proliferation that the CIA
was working to uncover (Deliso, 24 Nov. 2005). Even when supplemented by Sibel Edmonds’ indications of high-level
collaboration in the frustration by Turkish agents of the FBI’s parallel investigations of what appears to be the same
network, the evidence remains at best suppositious. And yet despite the inaccessibility of details—which will no doubt
remain inaccessible for as long as Dick Cheney, John Bolton and the rest retain the power to frustrate investigations
into the activities of their close associates and subordinates—the larger pattern is, to say the least, intriguing. The
same highly-placed neoconservatives who have been crying wolf over Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons appear to have
been deeply—and lucratively—involved in the trafficking of restricted and forbidden weapons technology into Turkey.
Should this pattern turn out indeed to involve corruption, hypocrisy, and treachery on the grand scale that Deliso’s
investigative reporting would suggest, is there any reason one should be surprised?
What else, to be frank, would you expect from people such as these?
*************
Global Research Contributing Editor Michael Keefer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Guelph. He is
a former President of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English. His recent writings
include a series of articles on electoral fraud in the 2004 US presidential election published by the Centre for
Research on Globalization.
Sources
Ahmad, Aijaz. “Iran: Imperialism’s second strike.” Frontline (India); available at the Centre for Research on
Globalization (29 January 2006), http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=%20AH20060129=1844
Arkin, William. “Not Just A Last Resort? A Global Strike Plan, With a Nuclear Option.” The Washington Post (15 May
2005): B1, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/14/AR2005051400071.html
----. “Nuclear War in … Alabama.” The Washington Post (21 October 2005),
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2005/10/nuclear_war_in_.html
Beerman, William O., and Thomas Stauffer. “Is Iran Building Nukes? An Analysis. The physical evidence for a nuclear
weapons program in Iran simply does not exist.” Pacific News Service; available at the Centre for Research on
Globalization (2 February 2006), http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=BEE20060202=1877
Beeston, Richard. “Hawks have warplanes ready if the nuclear diplomacy fails.” Timesonline (7 February 2006),
http://www.timeonline.co.uk/article/0,3-2027979,00.html
Bolton, John R. “Preventing Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons.” Remarks to the Hudson Institute, Washington DC (17
August 2004). Available at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/iran1.htm
[Bush, George W.] “World won’t permit Iran to have nukes: Bush.” Yahoo! News (5 February 2006),
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060205/pl_afp/irannuclearpoliticsus
Chomsky, Noam. Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003.
Chossudovsky, Michel. War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11. Shanty Bay, Ontario: Global Outlook, 2002.
----. America’s “War on Terrorism.” Pincourt, Québec: Global Research, 2005.
----. “Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran.” Centre for Research on Globalization (1 May 2005),
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=%20CH20050501=66
----. “Nuclear War Against Iran.” Centre for Research on Globalization (3 January 2006),
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=%20CH20060103=1714
Christison, Bill, and Kathleen Christison. “Let’s Stop a US/Israeli War on Iran: It’s More Important than Slowing
Nuclear Proliferation.” Counterpunch (29 December 2005), http://www.counterpunch.org/christison12292005.html
Clark, William R. “The Real Reasons Why Iran is the Next Target: The Emerging Euro-denominated International Oil
Market.” Centre for Research on Globalization (27 September 2004),
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=CLA20050927=199
----. “Iran’s euro-denominated oil bourse to open in March; US$ crash imminent!” Vheadline.com (28 January 2006),
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=47790
Cobain, Ian, and Ian Traynor. “Secret services say Iran is trying to assemble a nuclear missile.” The Guardian (4
January 2006), http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1677542,00.html
Coman, Julian. “Now America accuses Iran of complicity in World Trade Center attack.” The Telegraph (18 July 2004),
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wiran18.xml=/portal/2004/07/18/ixportaltop.html
Deliso, Christopher. “Plame, Pakistan, a Nuclear Turkey, and the Neocons.” Antiwar.com (21 November 2005),
http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=8091
----. “Lesser Neocons of L’Affaire Plame.” Antiwar.com (24 November 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=8137
Edmonds, Sibel. “Gagged, but Still Going Strong.” Antiwar.com (16 May 2005),
http://www.antiwar.com/edmonds/?articleid=5954
----, and John M. Cole. “FBI Penetrated: Again!” Antiwar.com (8 October 2005),
http://www.antiwar.com/edmonds/?articleid=7558
Giraldi, Philip. “Deep Background.” The American Conservative (2 August 2005),
http://www.amconmag.com/2005_08_01/article3.html. The first section of this article is also available as “Attack on
Iran: Pre-emptive Nuclear War.” Centre for Research on Globalization (2 August 2005),
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=20050802=791
Gottslich, Jürgen. “U.S. Reportedly Planning 2006 Attack on Iran.” Trans. Carl Bergquist. Der Spiegel (23 December
2005), http://www.watchingamerica.com/derspiegel1000006.shtml
Griffin, David Ray. The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11. 2nd ed.
Northampton, Massachusetts: Olive Branch Press, 2004.
----. The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. Northampton, Massachusetts: Olive Branch Press, 2005.
Gush Shalom. “The US wants to ‘set Israel loose’ to attack Iran.” Centre for Research on Globalization (20 February
2005), http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=20050219=436
Hersh, Seymour. “The Coming Wars.” The New Yorker (24-31 January 2005, posted 17 January),
http://www,newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact
Hirsch, Jorge. “How to Stop the Planned Nuking of Iran: Congress should enact emergency legislation.” Antiwar.com (9
January 2006), http://antiwar.com/hirsch/?articleid=8359
----. “Nuking Iran With the UN’s Blessing: Only the American people can stop it.” Antiwar.com (28 December 2005),
http://antiwar.com/hirsch/?articleid=8312
----. “Nuclear Deployment for an Attack on Iran.” Antiwar.com (16 December 2005),
http://antiwar.com/hirsch/?articleid=8263
----. “Nuking Iran Without the Dachshund: The meaning of the Philip Giraldi story.” Antiwar.com (26 November 2005),
http://antiwar.com/hirsch/?articleid=8153
----. “Can a Nuclear Strike on Iran be Prevented? Or will the world allow it to happen?” Antiwar.com (21 November 2005),
http://antiwar.com/hirsch/?articleid=8089
----. “A ‘Legal’ US Nuclear Attack Against Iran: The real reason for the IAEA Iran resolution.” Antiwar.com (12 November
2005), http://antiwar.com/hirsch/?articleid=8007
----. “The Real Reason for Nuking Iran: Why a nuclear attack is on the neocon agenda.” Antiwar.com (1 November 2005),
http://antiwar.com/hirsch/?articleid=7861
----. “Israel, Iran, and the US: Nuclear War, Here We Come.” Antiwar.com (17 October 2005),
http://antiwar.com/hirsch/?articleid=7649
Jensen, Mark. “Scott Ritter Says US Attack on Iran Planned for June.” Centre for Research on Globalization (20 February
2005), http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=20050220=438
Klare, Michael T. “Oil. Geopolitics, and the Coming War with Iran.” TomDispatch.com (11 April 2005),
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2312
Linzer, Dafina. “Iran is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb: U.S. Intelligence Review Contrasts With Administration
Statements.” The Washngton Post (2 August 2005): A1.
Marrs, Jim. Inside Job: Unmasking the 9/11 Conspirators. San Rafael, California: Origin Press, 2004.
Media, Mike. “Ex-FBI translator’s case may reveal Plame’s crucial CIA role.” Online Journal (16 December 2005),
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_340.shtml
National Research Council. Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press (www.nap.edu), 2005. Conclusions linked by Hirsch, 9 Jan. 2006, and available at
http://books.nap.edu/catalog/11282.html
Nelson, Robert W. “Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons.” FAS Public Interest Report 54.1 (Jan./Feb. 2001),
http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm
Nimmo, Kurt. “Head of CIA Tells Turks to Prepare for Attack on Iran.” Centre for Research on Globalization (21 December
2005), http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=20051221=1578
Nunan, Coilin. “Energy Bulletin (Coilin Nunan): Trading oil in euros—does it matter?” Vheadline.com (1 February 2006),
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=48101
Petras, James. “Iran in the Crosshairs: Israel’s War Deadline.” Counterpunch (24/25 December 2005),
http://www.counterpunch.org/petras12242005.html
Petrov, Krassimir. “The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse.” Information Clearing House (19 January 2006),
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11613.htm
Phillips, Peter, and Project Censored. “U.S. Dollar vs. the Euro: Another Reason for the Invasion of Iraq.” (With
Updates by William Clark and Coilin Nunan.) In Censored 2004: The Top 25 Censored Stories. New York: Seven Stories
Press, 2003. 94-97.
Pilger, John. “Iran: the Next War.” The New Statesman (9 February 2006), available at The Centre for Research on
Globalization (9 February 2006), http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=PIL20060209=1929
Prather, Gordon. “Neocrazies Foiled.” Antiwar.com (17 September 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=7300
----. “Weapons of Mass Murder.” Antiwar.com (20 September 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=7320
----. “Such a Blot.” Antiwar.com (24 September 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=7374
----. “Case Closed, Condi.” Antiwar.com (27 September 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=7404
----. “US-Israeli Diplomatic Triumph Over Iran.” Antiwar.com (1 October 2005),
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=7462
----. “Pleading Incompetence.” Antiwar.com (4 October 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=7502
----. “Saving Face.” Antiwar.com (8 October 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=7555
----. “Doing Bush’s Bidding.” Antiwar.com (11 October 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=7574
----. “Bolton the Peacemaker.” Antiwar.com (15 October 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=7643
----. “Stifling Neo-Crazy Media Sycophants.” Antiwar.com (22 October 2005),
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=7728
----. “Other Parties? Whoops!” Antiwar.com (15 November 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8034
----. “Without Discrimination.” Antiwar.com (19 November 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8087
----. “Iran Has Nuke Warheads! Not.” Antiwar.com (23 November 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8121
----. “Outing Brewster Jennings.” Antiwar.com (26 November 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8156
----. “Dirty Bomb Redux.” Antiwar.com (29 November 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8168
----. “Neo-Crazies Already Planning Beyond Iran.” Antiwar.com (3 December 2005),
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8204
----. “Total Transparency.” Antiwar.com (6 December 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8210
----. “Referring Nuke-Threats to Security Council.” Antiwar.com (10 December 2005),
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8239
----. “Nuclear Threats, Real and Imagined.” Antiwar.com (13 December 2005),
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8245
----. “Those Crazy Mullahs.” Antiwar.com (17 December 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8268
----. “Lump of Coal for Condi.” Antiwar.com (24 December 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8304
----. “ElBaradei Isn’t Perfect.” Antiwar.com (27 December 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8308
----. “Diplomatic Rout.” Antiwar.com (31 December 2005), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8327
----. “Nuclear Back-Scratching.” Antiwar.com (3 January 2006), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8336
----. “On Another Planet.” Antiwar.com (7 January 2006), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8357
----. “Stuff and Nonsense.” Antiwar.com (10 January 2006), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8365
----. “Planting Evidence.” Antiwar.com (14 January 2006), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8388
----. “What Noncompliance?” Antiwar.com (17 January 2006), http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8397
[Rice, Condoleezza.] “Rice to Iran: Heed this clear message.” Yahoo! News (4 February 2006),
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060204/pl_afp/irannuclearpoliticsus_060204202223
Roberts, Paul Craig. “The Coming War on Iran: Fox News Fans the Hysteria.” Counterpunch (30 January 2006),
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01302006.html
Ruppe, David. “Preemptive Nuclear War in a State of Readiness: U.S. Command Declares Global Strike Capability.” Global
Security Newswire (2 December 2005); available at the Centre for Research on Globalization (2 January 2006),
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=RUP20060102=1705
Ruppert, Michael C. Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. Gabriola
Island, B.C.: New Society, 2004.
Salama, Sammy, and Karen Ruster. “A Preemptive Attack on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities: Possible Consequences.” CNS (Center
for Nonproliferation Studies) (12 August 2004, updated 9 September 2004), http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/040812.htm
Sale, Richard. “State told Libby of agent’s identity: State Department phone call gave key aide name of CIA officer.”
Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 (27 October 2005),
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2005/10/state_told_libb.html
Traynor, Ian, and Ian Cobain. “Intelligence report claims nuclear market thriving.” The Guardian (4 January 2006),
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,167754,00.html
Varadarajan, Siddharth. “Iran and the Invention of a Nuclear Crisis: Part I of a Three Part Series.” Centre for Research
on Globalization (23 September 2005), http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=VAR20050923=987
----. “What the IAEA really found in Iran. The Persian Puzzle: Part II.” Centre for Research on Globalization (23
September 2005), http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle=VAR20050923=986
----. “The world must stand firm on diplomacy: The ‘nuclear crisis’ is the product of 15 years of US hostility towards
Iran. Persian Puzzle: Part III.” Centre for Research on Globalization (27 September 2005),
http://www.globalresearch.ca.index.php?context=viewArticle=VAR20050927=1009
----. “Messy Compromise on Iran.” The Hindu; available at ZNet (1 February 2006),
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22=9642
Walker, Martin. “German media: U.S. prepares Iran strike.” UPI (30 December 2005),
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20051230-112208-8968r
Whitney, Mike. “The countdown to war with Iran.” Online Journal (17 January 2006),
http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_425,shtml
----. “Iran’s Oil Exchange threatens the Greenback.” OpEdNews.com (23 January 2006),
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mike_whi_060123_iran_92s_oil_exchange_.htm
*************
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global
Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL hyperlink address to the original CRG article
must be indicated. The author's copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print
or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at Global Research's News and Discussion Forum
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Michael Keefer, GlobalResearch.ca, 2006