It is often stated that Iran presents a "threat" to the world, and can't be "trusted" - but who is really a threat to whom?

Bush has explicitly threatened to kill up to a million Iranians (a crime of GENOCIDE) by nuking Iran.

"During an impromptu April 18 press conference, President George W. Bush was asked if his assertion that "all options are on the table" regarding Iran included the possibility of a nuclear strike. Bush reiterated, "All options are on the table. We want to solve this issue diplomatically, and we're working hard to do so." In no uncertain words, the president of the United States directly threatened Iran with a preemptive nuclear strike. It is hard to read his reply in any other way."

And the rest of the

world does see it that way too, not just the authors

of this article in the

href="http://www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=so06norris">Bulletin

of the Atomic Scientist.

That's how it was reported

href="www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2006/04/20/2003303676">worldwide:

"US President George W. Bush refused to rule out

nuclear strikes..."

This isn't the first time either. The official US nuclear policy espouses the first-use of nuclear weapons even against non-nuclear armed states. The policy was leaked in the Nuclear Posture Review

document - probably intentionally, and is a violation of international law.

Even the Washington Post

href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040801082_pf.html">

reported:

"Pentagon planners are ... contemplating tactical

nuclear devices."

And it was reported by

href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact">Seymour

Hersh:

"The attention given to the nuclear option has created

serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have

talked about resigning."

And based on polls the world DOES apparently see Bush as a greater threat than Iran.

The Germans

href="http://de.news.yahoo.com/12042006/286/umfrage-deutsche-finden-us-regierung-gefaehrlicher-teheran.html">think

so.

The South Koreans consider the US to be more

href="http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2004/ea_skorea_01_14.html">threatening

The Arabs

href="http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/Sep252005/foreign1640532005924.asp">think

so.

The Canadians seem to

href="http://www.macleans.ca/switchboard/article.jsp?content=20060713_164730_5044">agree?

And so do the

href="http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13028">Europeans.

FYI Israel is believed by Europeans in 15 countries to

be the

href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/04/1067708209067.html">greatest

threat to world peace, greater than North Korea,

Iran or Afghanistan.

And lets look at the history of the US dealings with Iran:

Lets not forget that the US Navy shot down a civilian Iranian

airliner inside Iranian airspace and then tried to lie and blame the

victims.

See Newsweek's "Sea of Lies" article

http://www.alt-f4.org/img/seaoflies.html

Let also not forget that the US was arming Saddam with chemical and

other weapons to be used against Iranians and Kurds.

SOURCE: "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup; Trade in Chemical Arms

Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds" The Washington Post

December 30, 2002

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A52241-2002Dec29

ANd there's more:

For a start, remember that 1982, Saddam Hussein's regime was *REMOVED* from the State Dept list of "Terrorist Nations" to ease the transfer of funds and technology to his regime.

Profile: Helping Saddam; Iraqi government ordered anthrax and botulism-producing bacteria from United States in late 1980s

60 Minutes (CBS) 02/22/1998

MORLEY SAFER, co-host:

Exactly what weapons Saddam is hiding and where he's hiding them remains a mystery. Where he got them and how he developed them is not. He got a lot of help from the British, the French, the Germans, the

Russians and from us. Back in the late '80s when Saddam was considered by some as our friend or at least the enemy of our enemy Iran, we provided Iraq with two of the deadliest substances known to man,

bacteria that produces botulism and anthrax . Among those who thought that what we were doing was all wrong was a former deputy undersecretary of defense named Dr. Steven Bryen...

And see

Hypocrisy Seen in U.S. Stand on Iraqi Arms

Mideast: Officials say American intelligence aided Baghdads use of chemical weapons against Iran in 80s.

By ROBIN WRIGHT, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -A decade before the current showdown

over weapons of mass destruction, the United States turned a blind eye when Iraq used American intelligence for operations against Iran that made rampant use of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles, according to senior administration and former intelligence officials..."It was all done with a wink and a nod," said a former U.S. intelligence official. "We knew exactly where this stuff

was going, although we bent over backwards to look the other way."

And when Saddam was caught using chemical weapon, the US tried to cover it up and shift the blame into Iran

America didn't seem to mind poison gas

by Joost R. Hiltermann International Herald Tribune Friday, January

17, 2003

http://www.iht.com/articles/83625.html

Analysis of thousands of captured Iraqi secret police documents and declassified U.S. government documents, as well as interviews with scores of Kurdish survivors, senior Iraqi defectors and retired U.S. intelligence officers, show (1) that Iraq carried out the attack on Halabja, and (2) that the United States, fully aware it was Iraq, accused Iran, Iraq's enemy in a fierce war, of being partly responsible for the attack. The State Department instructed its diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame. The result of this stunning act of sophistry was that the international community failed to muster the will to condemn Iraq strongly for an act as heinous as the terrorist strike on the World Trade Center.

THe UK was involved in this too:

Iraqis given anthrax secrets by Porton Down scientists

SHYAM BHATIA

The Observer (UK) 01/25/1998

...The West's role in providing Iraq with anthrax know-how began at a key workshop in Winchester in 1988. Among 80 scientists from around the world were Dr Nasser el-Hindawi and his assistant, Dr Thamer Abdel Rahman, microbiologists working for Iraq 's secret biological weapons programme. The programme's aim was to develop weapons to spread anthrax , gas gangrene, botulism toxin, brucellosis, rabbit foot and tetanus....

And see this

HEADLINE: UNDISCLOSED CONNECTION / SCIENTIST ON GULF WAR SYNDROME

LINKED TO SUPPLIER OF IRAQI ANTHRAX

BYLINE: By Patrick J. Sloyan. WASHINGTON BUREAU

Newsday (NY) November 27, 1996

...Washington - A Nobel laureate who headed a 1994 Pentagon study that dismissed links between chemical and biological weapnos and Persian Gulf War illnesses was also a director of a U.S. firm that had earlier

exported anthrax and other lethal materials to Iraq before the 1991 conflict, according to federal records...Newsday has found that the nonprofit Rockville, Md., firm made 70 government-approved shipments of anthrax and other disease-causing

pathogens to Iraqi scientists between 1985 and 1989, according to congressional records.

And this

Exports of Biological Materials to Iraq

Hearing Before Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs On US Chemical and Biological warfare-related Dual Use Exports to Iraq

(also known as the Riegle Report)

www.rrojasdatabank.info/pfpc/usiraq01.htm (also available from your local Gov. Printing Office or on Thomas.gov)

Also, see National Security Council Staff Member Howard Teicher's affidavit filed in the Southern District Court of Florida:

"The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin

military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq. The United States was anxious to have other countries supply assistance to Iraq. One of the reasons that the United States refused to license or sell U.S.

origin weapons to Iraq was that the supply of non-U.S. origin weapons to Iraq was sufficient to meet Iraq's needs. Under CIA DIrector Casey and Deputy Director Gates, the CIA made sure that non-U.S.

manufacturers manufactured and sold to Iraq the weapons needed by Iraq. In certain instances where a key component in a weapon was not readily available, the highest levels of the United States government

decided to make the component available, directly or indirectly, to Iraq. I specifically recall that the provision of anti-armor penetrators to Iraq was a case in point...."

http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/collections/hidden/teicher.htm

ANd see

Read also Mark Phythian's book: Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain

Secretly Built Saddam's War Machine (Northeastern Series in

Transnational Crime) -- Mark Phythian, Nikos Passas; Hardcover

And see

Rep. Henry Gonzales' investigation into this matter which is part of the COngressional Record:

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992/h920325wp.htm

And also

Arming Iraq: How George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan helped Iraq Develop their Weapons of Mass Destruction

December 13, 2002

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/12/13_iraq.html

ANd

Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally

Armed Iraq

by Alan Friedman

Bantam Doubleday (November 1993)

Shall I continue?

And lets not forget that the Iranians have bent over backwards to try to avoid a confrontation over the nuclear issue with the US but every one of their 8 compromise offers have been rejected offhand by the US:

"[N]ow we know, thanks to documents posted by the Arms Control Association on its website that contrary to the usual rightwing propaganda, that Iran has no serious intent of negotiating over its nuclear program, Iran has devised at least five proposals which included provisions designed to assure the international community that its nuclear activities are exclusively for peaceful purposes, rather than nuclear weapons (See: http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Iran_Nuclear_Proposals.asp ) " .

SOURCE: David Isenberg, Preparation of the Iranian Battlefield: http://blog.psaonline.org/2006/08/18/preparation-of-the-iranian-battlefield

And also see this:

Since August 2004, Iran has made eight far-reaching proposals. What's more, Iran throughout this period adopted extensive and costly confidence- building measures, including a voluntary suspension of its rightful enrichment activities for two years, to ensure the success of negotiations.

Over the course of negotiations, Iran volunteered to do the following within a balanced package:

1- Present the new atomic agency protocol on intrusive inspections to the Parliament for ratification, and to continue to put it in place pending ratification;

2- Permit the continuous on-site presence of IAEA inspectors at conversion and enrichment facilities;

3- Introduce legislation to permanently ban the development, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons;

4- Cooperate on export controls to prevent unauthorized access to nuclear material;

5- Refrain from reprocessing or producing plutonium;

6- Limit the enrichment of nuclear materials so that they are suitable for energy production but not for weaponry;

7- Immediately convert all enriched uranium to fuel rods, thereby precluding the possibility of further enrichment;

8- Limit the enrichment program to meet the contingency fuel requirements of Iran's power reactors and future light-water reactors;

9- Begin putting in place the least contentious aspects of the enrichment program, like research and development, in order to assure the world of our intentions;

10- Accept foreign partners, both public and private, in our uranium enrichment program.

11- Iran has recently suggested the establishment of regional consortiums on fuel-cycle development that would be jointly owned and operated by countries possessing the technology and placed under atomic agency safeguards.

SOURCE: We in Iran don't need this quarrel - Int'l Herald Tribune op/ed by Javad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to UN - http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/05/opinion/edzarif.php

AND:

"While defending Iran's sovereign right to produce nuclear power using indigenously enriched uranium, and enumerating the reasons why Iran cannot rely on promises of foreign-supplied reactor fuel to power its economy, [Ahmadinejad] proposed to operate Iran's enrichment programme as joint ventures with private and public sector firms from other countries, to ensure that the programme remained transparent and could not be secretly diverted for military purposes. This was no small offer. It closely resembled a proposal previously put to the IAEA by a committee of experts looking into the risk that nuclear technology developed for peaceful purposes might be diverted to non-peaceful uses (See: Bruno Pellaud, "Nuclear fuel cycle: which way forward for multilateral approaches?", IAEA Bulletin Online, vol 46, no 2, 2004.)

SOURCE: Iran needs nuclear energy, not weapons

Le Monde Diplomatique November 2005

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:Wv7d_FdiMH0J:mondediplo.com/2005/11/02iran

We are told that Iran can't possibly need nuclear power since it has so much oil and gas - how true is this?

“In the absence of a ‘smoking gun’, Washington often says the fact Iran is the No. 2 producer in OPEC and sits on the second biggest natural gas reserves in the world is enough to make its atomic ambitions suspicious.

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee of Britain’s parliament said last March that based on a study it commissioned: ‘It is clear … that the arguments as to whether Iran has a genuine requirement for domestically produced nuclear electricity are not all, or even predominantly, on one side.’

Some US arguments against Iran ‘were not supported by an analysis of the facts’ the committee added, noting that much of the natural gas flared off by Iran – which US officials say could be harnessed instead of nuclear power – was not recoverable for energy use….”

Reuters 3/4/2005 – Iran’s Arguments for Nuclear Power Makes Some Sense by Paul Hughes

See More

Past Arguments Don't Square With Current Iran Policy

By Dafna Linzer

Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3983-2005Mar26.html

The fuel behind Iran's nuclear drive

By David Isenberg

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH24Ak02.html

Harvard International Review: Forced to Fuel

Iran's Nuclear Energy Program. by Muhammad Sahimi

http://www.hir.harvard.edu/articles/1294/

We are told that Iran has "blocked inspections" of its nuclear sites - how true is this?

Iran has permitted more inspections than it was legally obliged to permit.

“Iran has continued to facilitate access under its Safeguards Agreement as requested by the Agency,and to act as if the Additional Protocol is in force, including by providing in a timely manner therequisite declarations and access to locations.” (IAEA Deputy Director General for Safeguards report of 31 January 2006)

In fact the Bush administration doesn’t accuse Iran of having nuclear weapons program but of “intending to create the capability” of building nukes, so no amount of inspections will suffice anyway since no inspector can see into the future (as the IAEA itself has stated)

And we're also told that Iran "hid" a "Secret" nuclear progam for 20 years until it was "revealed" in 2002 - how true is this?

Iran was under no obligation to disclose the construction of Natanz and Arak since they weren’t within the 180 time limit specificed by Iran’s safeguard agreement, and finally Iran’s enrichment plans were never a secret; and IAEA inspectors had planned to cooperate with Iran in 1983 on the program until the US pressured them to stop, IAEA inspectors were invited to vist Iran’s uranium mines in 1992, and Iranian radio had declared the discovery of uranium for enrichment in 1982.

SOURCES:

“Although Iran is a party to the nuclear

Nonproliferation Treaty and has concluded a

comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA, it

has not concluded an Additional Protocol to its

agreement. The Additional Protocol would provide for

more rigorous inspections, including inspections of

undeclared nuclear facilities. On December 13,

ElBaradei called upon Iran to conclude such a

protocol. Iran, however, is not required to allow

visits to the Arak and Natanz sites under its current

agreements with the IAEA.

– IAEA to visit two ‘secret’ nuclear sites in Iran

Arms Control Today January 1, 2003

“A spokesman for the U.S. Department of State asserted

in a press briefing last week that Iran was out of

compliance with its IAEA obligations because it had

failed to notify the IAEA of its intent to build the

facilities 180 days prior to construction.

IAEA officials told NuclearFuel Dec. 18 that was not

the case. Rumyantsev’s assertion that Iran did not

violate its commitments ‘’was correct,’’ one official

said.

In 1992, after the Gulf War, the IAEA Board of

Governors recommended by consensus that member states

provide design information to the IAEA 180 days in

advance of construction. Iran, however, singularly

raised objections to that. Compliance with the board’s

recommendation, an IAEA official said, has since been

‘’voluntary.’’ A similar provision is contained in the

Additional Protocol for integrated IAEA safeguards,

which thus far Iran has refused to join and which so

far is not binding.

Infcirc-153, the model safeguards protocol for member

states of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT),

including Iran, discusses facility design information

in Articles 42-47. But any specific requirement on a

member state for reporting design information and

notification to the IAEA of an intention to construct

a nuclear facility subject to safeguards is handled in

confidential Subsidiary Arrangements, which are

annexed to the safeguards agreement and are

country-specific.

In the case of Iran, the Subsidiary Arrangements for

Infcirc-214—Iran’s safeguards agreement with the

IAEA—require Iran to notify the IAEA of any new

nuclear facility and to provide information on the

design no later than 60 days prior to the introduction

of nuclear material into the facility.

In early safeguards agreements such as Iran’s—it

dates from 1974—member states were allowed

considerable freedom in notifying the IAEA of new

nuclear facility construction, said one former U.S.

official, ‘’practically right up until they loaded

fuel.’’ More recent agreements require notification in

advance. For example, the Subsidiary Arrangements for

Argentina and Brazil under the Brazilian-Argentine

Agency for Accounting & Control of Nuclear Material

(Abacc) regime, dating from 1994, specified that the

two countries must give notification ‘’at the time the

decision is made to construct an installation,’’ he

said.”

– U.S. BRIEFED SUPPLIERS GROUP IN OCTOBER ON SUSPECTED

IRANIAN ENRICHMENT PLANT Nuclear Fuel December 23,

2002

“Iran did not have to declare that it was building a

pilot plant until 180 days before it expected to

introduce nuclear material into the plant.”

Furor over fuel; Iran. Bulletin of the Atomic

Scientists May 1, 2003

Albright, David; Hinderstein, Corey