Nuclear War, Iran & Michel Chossudovsky

Below is the transcript of a radio interview with Chossudovsky
on the topic of Iran. Another version of his thinking can be seen
on rense.com:
http://rense.com/general69/nuke.htm

rkm

Interview with Michel Chossudovsky - Jan. 2, 2006 - Monday
Brownbagger

Programme, Co-op radio, CFRO 102.7 FM, Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada

Interviewer: Don Nordin
Guest: Michel Chossudovsky

I have on the line today Michel Chossudovsky, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel... and http://www.globalresearch.ca/articl.... He is a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa, and we will basing the programme today on an article that he has recently written (entitled "The Anglo-American War of Terror - An Overview") that is on the website: http://globalresearch.ca and it centers around the problems in the Mid East particularly (in) Iran. Welcome to the programme, today, Michel.

Well, it’s a pleasure to be on the programme. Greetings and best wishes to everybody in British Columbia.

And you wanted to focus on the issue of Iran. Now, it seems
like we are looking at a situation building up with Iran and
it is centered around the terrorism, used as a pretext for
this agenda that they are building up, this global
domination agenda.

Q. Do you want to just get into that a bit, Michel, and
maybe you could talk around the issue of the imminent war
against Iran?

For the last year or so, the United States, Israel and
Turkey have been preparing an aerial bombing of Iran. This
went into the planning stage back in November of 2004. In
other words, it’s over a year now and essentially this
operation is using the pretext of Iran’s nuclear programme
to bomb its nuclear facilities. In fact, what is actually
being planned is a nuclear war and that nuclear war has
nothing to do with Iran. It has to do with nuclear weapons,
which are slated to be used by the United States and Israel
and I have looked into the various documents behind this.

We are not talking about surgical strikes. That’s what’s
being presented to public opinion - that the United States
is going to embark on surgical strikes directed against Iran
with a view to making the world safer and it’s all based on
the idea that Israel is threatened and so on and so forth.
In fact, what is being planned is an all out nuclear war
using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. And this is
something, which is not widely known, although it’s
confirmed in a number of military documents. (The air
assault) would use tactical nuclear weapons, which have an
explosive capacity between 1/3, and 6 times the Hiroshima
bomb.

I should mention that these tactical nuclear weapons, which
are often referred to as ’mini-nukes,’ are now in a sense
re-classified - in fact they are considered as conventional
weapons and the distinction between conventional and nuclear
weapons has been blurred following a decision in the U.S.
Senate, December 2003, which essentially allows for these
so-called mini nukes to be used in conventional war theatres
and in fact, the senate decision was reached after a
propaganda campaign waged by the Pentagon, which enlisted
nuclear scientists to the fact these nuclear bombs were
harmless to civilians, quote, unquote. That’s exactly the
term they used, that these nuclear weapons are "harmless to
civilians" because the explosion is underground, and the
system of delivery would be very similar to the conventional
bunker buster bombs.

But what is now very disturbing is that actually the
timeline for this operation has already been announced -
March of 2006. In other words, in the next three months.
This (timeline) has been confirmed by the Israelis. Prime
Minister Sharon has made the statement. His political
opponents, in particular Benjamin Netanyahu, have confirmed
that they are also in agreement with this posture - that
they will wage surgical strikes against Iran. But if you
look at in a broader context, you will realize that this is
not strictly an Israeli operation. It’s an operation, which
involved the United States, Turkey, and Israel as the main
military actors but which is firmly by America’s coalition
partners in NATO. In other words, NATO has given its
approval to this military operation. There are no
dissenting voices within the Atlantic military alliance as
occurred prior to the war in Iraq and in effect, I think
that there won’t be many dissenting voices in the United
Nations Security Council, and eventually a pretext will be
built that Iran is a threat to global security in view of
its nuclear programme, and that is of course a very
controversial issue. But as to whether this is up for
civilian use or for military use, but there is no evidence
that Iran at this stage is developing nuclear weapons.

But what we’re dealing with here is the fact that the United
States wants to launch a nuclear war. o.k.? And if it
launches a nuclear with Israel, what’s going to happen is
this is going to affect a much broader region. The war is
going to extend to the entire Middle Eastern region; it’s
going to lead to radioactive contamination over a large part
of that region and, in other words, if we thought we were in
a situation of chaos and war crimes in Iraq, we really
haven’t seen what is planned ahead because this is a major
military operation which is being envisaged.

I have been reviewing a number of military documents to that
effect, and they are now talking about what is called
Concept Plan 8022. Now Concept Plan 8022 is a plan, which
would be implemented by US Strategic Command, which is
located at the Offutt Military Base in Nebraska.
Essentially, it’s an air force base. And this Concept plan
essentially consists in what they call "global strike"; it
combines both conventional as well as nuclear strikes, and
it integrates the actions of the navy and the air force and
then of course, it would be implemented from US military
facilities in the Persian Gulf or in the Indian Ocean, in
particular, Diego Garcia, the military base, the extremely
large US facility strategically located in the Indian Ocean,
which is a joint navy/air force base in Diego Garcia, in the
Chagos Archipelago and from there they would implement the
aerial bombardments and also the missile attacks.

And so if this plan goes ahead, we are really entering into
a World War III scenario. I believe we are already in World
War III. World War III started at the beginning of the post
Cold war era, with the wars in Yugoslavia, but this is a new
stage in the deployment of America’s war machine with
devastating consequences for the future of humanity.

Q. Now these targets - they are supposedly aiming at
these nuclear facilities. Are those located near to
populated areas?

Well, absolutely, they are heavily populated, and I don’t
think they will limit these strikes strictly to these
facilities. I should mention that even if they use
conventional weapons against these nuclear facilities, the
explosions at those facilities would in fact trigger the
spread of radioactivity over a vast area because these are
nuclear power plants, and so on, which would be targeted.
But from what I understand, reading some of the background
material, is that what is contemplated is an operation in
terms of air strikes similar to what Donald Rumsfeld
implemented in March 2003 on Baghdad, prior to the actual
invasion. In other words, this ’shock and awe’ blitzkrieg
type of bombing would occur and that is confirmed in fact by
statements of the U.S. military and we are talking about a
very large deployment, again as I said, comparable to the US
bombing raids on Iraq at the outset of the war.

Now when you speak of these tactical nuclear weapons having
the power of anywhere from 1/3 to 6 times a Hiroshima bomb,
and we’ve seen the damage that those bombs did to Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, I would think that even ones with 1/3 the
power - I guess they would be the ones that maybe they
would use to take out a nuclear plant - would do a lot of
damage. But I can’t imagine where they would use one 6
times the power of a Hiroshima bomb.

I’m not entirely clear as to the explosive capacity of the
bombs that they are planning to use. I think you’re right
that the ones that are being contemplated to be delivered,
let’s say, with B-52 bombers, wouldn’t be the larger ones,
o.k? They would be delivered in much the same way as the
conventional bunker buster bombs; it’s the B-61-11, which is
the nuclear version of the conventional blue 1-13. I think
those are in fact probably of the order of about 1/2 of the
Hiroshima bomb.

But I think when we see that this process is unleashed -
once this process is triggered, we may be in a situation
where the U.S. military is landing several nuclear devices
in different parts of Iran and we must understand - and
that’s also very important - is that Iran has the capacity
to retaliate in many different ways. It has stated that it
will retaliate. It has acquired rather sophisticated air
defense systems. Russia has delivered the equipment to it.

This war which is contemplated by its architects as an
aerial operation, could well lead into a ground war. ok?
The whole idea of Con Plan is that you don’t have any
deployment of ground troops, and in fact, you have minimal
risk for your air force.

But what happens if Iran decides to confront U.S. troops
stationed in Iraq across the border, in northern Iraq? What
happens if Iran retaliates and sends its own missiles
towards U.S. facilities in the Persian Gulf or Israel for
that matter? So we are dealing with an extremely dangerous
scenario.

People don’t realize - I don’t think the military planners
realize themselves the implications of this military agenda.
And we are in a situation where in fact the military
planners, the people who actually devise the bombing
strategies, not the politicians necessarily, they actually
don’t realize that these nuclear weapons are in fact,
nuclear weapons because the military manuals that they
consult and which have been drafted by the science labs and
the weapons factories and so on, stipulate that these
tactical nuclear weapons are "harmless to civilians" because
the explosion is underground. Now when a 3-star general
picks up the military manual, and says "ha, ha, here we are,
it explains that these weapons are harmless to civilians,
let’s go ahead and use them". And so what we have is a
situation where the authors of this military propaganda, in
fact, are feeding this propaganda to their own command,
their own military command structures, so that those who
devise the propaganda believe in the propaganda which they
themselves are promoting. And that’s a very dangerous
situation when people actually believe within the system,
within the command system - high ranking officers, 3-star
generals, 4-star generals - actually believe that these
nuclear weapons are harmless, well then we are really in a
fix because all the safeguards which have protected us from
a nuclear holocaust have been literally broken down.

And I don’t think anybody really seriously has contemplated
what is behind this military agenda. I mean there are a
number of people around the world who know and understand,
but because the matter has literally not been debated in the
mainstream media, it’s not the object of media attention, it
never reaches the front pages, andŠ Perhaps what’s going to
happen is there is going to be a nuclear war in Iran and
then we are going to get a blip on the evening news, which
will follow various other news items saying "yes, there’s
been a nuclear war" but they won’t even say it’s a nuclear
war, they will say something else because the nuclear
explosions may not be acknowledged as nuclear explosions
until much later.

And I should mention that the bunker buster bombs and the
nuclear versionsŠ are quite different but you can’t always
say whether there is a nuclear explosion or a conventional
explosion because the bunker buster bomb creates such a
(large) explosion that it could be nuclear or it could be
conventional. But of course the difference is that in one
case you have radioactive materials which are spreading over
a vast area and leading to literally the devastation of all
forms of life for millions of years.

And so people, I don’t think realize, at what juncture we
are presently (at) in our history. I think it’s absolutely
devastating.

Well, this is something new, Michel, this use of nuclear
weapons on the battlefield. Why would they turn to nuclear
weapons? Why wouldn’t they just stick to high intensity
explosives?

Well, I think there are many different reasons to that.
First of all, there is a little bit of history.

Two years ago in August of 2003, in fact it was on Hiroshima
Day, the Pentagon invited the private sector, namely the
military-industrial complex, to a meeting held at the Offutt
Air Force Base in Nebraska, Strategic Command Headquarters
and at that meeting they more or less requested the private
sector to define the nuclear agenda. Previously you had the
Nuclear Posture Review, which was passed in the Senate in
the beginning of 2002. But this 2003 meeting was very
important because what it did is it privatized nuclear war.
And it involved the military contractors, the producers of
weapons systems, not only in the production side but also in
the consumption side so that they actually said to the
nuclear weapons producers, well, listen, tell us how we are
going to use these weapons, we have to define a military
agenda. And so they now have in effect, they have
privatized nuclear war.

And so that it is a market driven, profit making operation
to produce bombs because the more bombs you produce the more
money you make, and you have a military allocation of 450
billion dollars a year out of the public purse, not to
mention the 200 billion dollars which is allocated to
finance the war in Iraq. You are talking about something of
the order of an annual basis, which is certainly in excess
of 500 billion dollars, not to mention all the black budgets
and the amounts which are channeled into shell companies,
which are controlled either by U.S. military or
intelligence, and so it is a very profitable venture for
military contractors, security companies, mercenary
companies, and so on.

And so I think that’s the consensus - and how you reach that
consensus is by building, of course, pretexts for waging
war, which is what we are dealing with - and the ’fact’ that
the nuclear weapons are harmless. The war on Iran is a
market driven war. It’s profit for the military contractors,
and the military-industrial complex. It’s profit for the
oil companies because the ultimate objective is to
confiscate Iran’s oil reserves. It’s to establish control
over that broader area, which is the Central Asia, Middle
East area, which encompasses 70% of (world) oil and gas
reserves, and ultimately it is also intended to confront
other major economic powers in the world, namely Russia and
China, both of which have a sizeable interest in that
region, and I should say also the Europeans, the European
Union.

But it would appear in this particular case, there is some
kind of tacit understanding with Germany and France in
particular, on sharing the spoils of war and I think that is
why we are leading up to a military operation where there
will be ultimately consensus, much in the same way as (with)
Yugoslavia. When Yugoslavia was invaded and bombed in 1999,
and even before that, when Germany and NATO and the United
Nations interfered in the Yugoslav civil war in the early
nineties, there was a consensus. The consensus was between
the United States, Germany, and broadly the Western military
alliance. And what you see emerging now is pretty much the
same situation. There’s no dissenting voice anywhere.

In fact, even the frontline Arab states including Egypt,
Morocco, Jordan, and Algeria have been sucked into this
project. Early this year several countries of the eastern
Mediterranean conducted military exercises with several Arab
countries. And these countries were conducting military
exercises with Turkey and Israel. And so you can see how,
in effect, under NATO auspices they managed to bring in
these countries, at least the leaders of these countries,
not necessarily the people, but the leaders of these
countries - which are increasingly serving U.S. interest -
and how they managed to put them together in joint military
exercises with Israel, so that there doesn’t seem to be much
of a dissenting voice in the Middle East with regard to this
military operation directed against Iran - although if we go
into a scenario of nuclear war or even a conventional war,
in other words, conventional aerial attack, in all
likelihood this war is going to spread to the entire Middle
Eastern region because at present what do we have? We’ve
three separate war theatres: Afghanistan, Iraq, and
Palestine.

But if Israel is involved in the coalition, in the
Anglo-American coalition, officially - of course
unofficially it has been part of the coalition for some time
– but if Israel is officially involved in the coalition, and
if the war extends into Iran and if Turkey is involved, you
can see just by looking at the map, that whole area is going
to explode. And if nuclear weapons are used, well, the
consequences of course affect everybody on this planet
because nuclear radioactive material will spread and it will
spread in a very broad area of the world and the likelihood
is the war itself could extend into other frontiers. That
region borders on the former Soviet Union; it also borders
onto China. Afghanistan has a border with China; that whole
area is militarized with U.S. military bases scattered all
over the place in the former Soviet republics and as I
mentioned a ground war is not to be excluded either. It’s a
very grim scenario and it means that we have to do
everything in our power in the next few months to reverse
the tide.

STATION BREAK

Next we go to the major powers, which are, I suppose,
Russia, China, and India, who are not very far away from
even the present fighting in Iraq and they will be even
closer to the fighting that threatens the world in Iran. I
am just wondering what you think - I think I have heard
Russia say that if there are any attacks on Iran, that it
will retaliate in some way. China is certainly not going to
be happy about things that are going on there. I don’t
think I’ve heard anything fromŠ

But on the other hand, neither China nor Russia have really
made any statements overtly in the diplomatic arena. Now
Russia is supporting Iran in terms of weapons delivery -
that we know. I mean even though the Russians are not
making any public statements, but that’s part of the game.
I mean, that goes back to the Cold War era thatŠVladimir
Putin is not going to make any controversial statement
directed against the U.S. military agenda.

I think there was some statement that came from one of Š
the minister of defense or something like that. It wasn’t a
statement from PutinŠ

No, that’s entirely possible that people in the Russian
parliament, in the Russian military, can make certain
statements about what’s going on. But again they are very
cautious and they also have their own hidden agenda.

But I think we have to take very seriously the fact that the
Russians are supplying Iranians with an air defense system,
a very sophisticated air defense system. They have actually
also assisted the Iranians to establish a satellite, a spy
satellite network, which will give them early warnings of an
Israeli attack and so they signed a very large contract with
Russia to put this spy satellite into orbit. This was
actually confirmed in the Sunday Times report recently, and
so we are not simply - we are dealing with a situation where
in fact Iran has the capabilities - perhaps it doesn’t the
capabilities to challenge the United States military but it
certainly has the capabilities of defending itself to a
limited degree and it has also the capability of responding
and those capabilities.

We are talking about a country of some 60 million people.
It’s not a small dot on the map. It has a very educated
population. They have capabilities to address this
aggression and I suspect that people in Iran will rally
behind the president irrespective of whether they support
him or not. That’s a logical reaction which occurs in times
of war. So it certainly is something to bear in mind. I
sincerely wish it would be part of our election campaign
here in Canada. It should be part of the election campaign.
There we have a war, an ongoing war in Iraq, and the next
phase of this war has already been announced and the next
phase of this war could be as deadly as the ongoing phase of
this war.

But you don’t think that in the event of aggression against
Iran there would be any sort of military reaction from
Russia or China at all?

I don’t think that there would be any reaction from Russia
or China directly, no. There may be military cooperation
between Russia and Iran, which is in any event ongoing. But
I think the nature of diplomacy is that these two competing
powers, they don’t wash their dirty linen in public so to
speak. When they meet with their counterparts, the United
Nations or wherever or the G8, it’s all very polite.

Now, there are very important divisions which prevail.
There are important divisions within the western alliance as
well and soŠI think what is really needed at this juncture,
first of all, (is that) some countervailing diplomacy has to
occur.

It’s very important that citizens actually pressure their
governments to take a stance on this, to take a stance
nationally and internationally. In other words, what do
political leaders in Canada believe of an impending nuclear
holocaust by their closest ally, the United States of
America? And this something very serious, it’s not fiction.

Now, how can we reverse the tide? Well, we can reverse the
tide at several levels. I don’t think it’s necessarily
through massive demonstrations and so on, and walking
through the streets we are going to achieve it. We are
going to achieve that by ultimately unseating the military
agenda, by unseating the people behind it. In other words
by questioning the legitimacy of the main political and
military actors and the people who support them. And
essentially we are dealing with the Bush administration and
so I think that is very important.

But if for instance in Canada, in Western Europe, there
would be debate in national parliaments, where leaders would
be confrontedŠbecause in effect it is a conspiracy of
silence; nobody is talking about it. Political leaders are
not mentioning it; they are not saying they are for or
against.

But there has been absolutely no dissenting voice (that) has
occurred in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. ok? And
in a sense this particular phase of the war is far more
serious than the previous one, because it is the first time
that coalition partners Israel, Britain and the United
States, have actually confirmed their intention to use
nuclear weapons against Iran. We are not dealing with some
abstract statement.

We are dealing with a pre-emptive nuclear doctrine and that
pre-emptive nuclear doctrine has already been formulated in
quite a number of texts of the U.S. military. It’s
confirmed in speeches of the U.S. president and statements
by the U.S. military. And unfortunately our anti-war
movement is not always aware of these developments and
doesn’t address them. So that anti-war sentiments from my
point of view (are) not enough if we are going to build an
anti-war movement based on "Hey, Bush, we are against you"
and send postcards or petitions to whoever. That is not
enough. We need to dismantle the decision-making process
behind the war agenda and that means unseating the rulers
who are supporting this particular course of action.

I want to turn the last question around and I want to ask in
this march towards global domination by the U.S. and the New
World Order forces, do you think there would come a time
where New World Order forces would militarily attack either
Russia or China or are they getting what they want from
those countries now? I mean in terms of economic activity
and so forth? Maybe they wouldn’t even have to think in
terms of that type of activity.

Well there is no question that the National Security
doctrine does target China and Russia. Officially in the
Nuclear Posture Review of 2002, which was leaked to the Los
Angeles Times, China and Russia are explicitly identified as
targets for pre-emptive nuclear attacks. Now it is not to
say that is anything new because they have always been a
target going back to the Cold War era. But the fact that
they would be officially identified as targets when in fact
they are considered to be allies, at least Russia is
considered to be a friend of America, China a bit less. But
the fact that they would be officially identified as rogue
states, so to speak, indicates that the ultimate objective
of this military agenda is global, economic and military
domination, and the two remaining super powers in the world,
Russia and China, are the targets.

Now you are absolutely right, they already exert significant
influence in the area of economic activity, for instance.
China now has opened its borders to western banks. Western
banks can simply go in and take over the domestic banking
business - something which we don’t even have in Canada. We
don’t have foreign banks in Canada, at least not operating
freely in an unregulated environment and Citigroup has just
acquired very large banking stakes in China. China is the
provider of a large share of what we consume on a day-to-day
basis, produced in cheap labour factories.

I mean this idea that China is somehow a competing economic
power I think has to be qualified because in effect China is
really an economic-industrial colony of the West. Without
China the whole retail trade would collapse overnight
because most of the commodities that we buy in supermarkets
and shopping centres are produced in China, at least the
consumer durables are produced in China. And so, I think
that those inroads into the Chinese economy through inroads
in terms of banking - the outsourcing in the manufacturing
sectors - all this is happening and it indicates in effect
that China is not really a sovereign country; it may have
certain appearance of being sovereign but the way it’s
international trade is organized, its links to international
financial institutions and so on makes it very, very much
dependent on Western markets and so on.

And that I think is also ultimately part of the military and
strategic agenda. Conquest is not strictly based on
invading, conquering and so on and taking over countries;
it’s also based on overseeing the domestic banking system,
taking over trade, using country’s resources to produce
cheap commodities for the Western markets and so on and so
forth. And that’s certainly true in China.

Russia is somewhat of a different arrangement, but there you
can see that Western financial and industrial interests have
already made significant inroads into the former Soviet
Union. The International Monetary Fund is calling the shots
with regard to macro-economic reform. Large amounts of what
used to belong to the Soviet state, of state capital and
assets, have been transferred into private hands and many of
the large companies operating now in Russia, of course, are
foreign owned.

Yes, absolutely, the military agenda is one aspect. War and
globalization go hand and hand and the extension of the Free
Market is supported in turn by the military agenda.

Is it possible that the U.S. could over-extend itself in
terms of military spending and their economy could collapse
to the point where it couldn’t sustain an ongoing New World
Order military agenda?

Well, I certainly think that perhaps we are already in that
situation. It is over-extended so not much in the capacity
to finance, but certainly it is over-extended in the
capabilities that it can deploy, mainly, essentially
manpower - the fact that it still need troops on the ground
and this particular operation, in fact, the Con Plan, it’s
rationale is really to minimize the use of troops. You
don’t need to put any boots on the ground. You go in with
your missiles, smart bombs, and B-52 bombers and essentially
(inflict) large damage to Iran in this particular case, and
youdon’t need to send in any ground troops. But again that
scenario in a sense is very theoretical because even an
aerial type of military operation could well result in
unintended consequences, which eventually lead into a ground
war. And I don’t think the United States can afford another
ground war at this stage.

How cost effective are these nuclear weapons in termsŠas
opposed to conventional weapons in terms of effecting damage
to targets? Do you know?

I really don’t know whatŠI don’t know how much they cost to
produce. The thing is that you don’t really need to have
nuclear weapons to incur damage to these facilities. You
could go in with conventional weapons and the damage, the
actual damage through explosion, is enough to wipe it out.

Bombs, for instance dead weight bombs, are cheaper to
deliver than bombs on the heads of cruise missiles.

Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, that’s correct. But the
nuclear weapons can be delivered also from a B-52. You
don’t need toŠyou can use cruise missiles to deliver them
but you can also use US long range bombers, which are
deployed out of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and they
can carry both nuclear as well as conventional bombs. And
so I don’t think there’s much of a consideration - as far as
delivery is concerned, these new tactical nuclear weapons,
the mini-nukes, can be delivered much in the same way as a
conventional bunker buster bomb.

In fact, from a military standpoint, there is very little
advantage in using a nuclear device; the only difference
that I can see is that the nuclear device will kill more
people both in the short as well as the long run. But if
it’s a question of destroying a building or facilities, they
can be easily done through run of the mill conventional
weapons. But I don’t think ultimately that is the purpose
of this military operation. The purpose of this military
operation is not to disable the nuclear facilities; the
purpose is to ultimately destroy a country and to implement
very significant civilian casualties, which then opens the
door for the conquest of Iran, its oil facilities and so on.

The more fundamental question is when you use nuclear
weapons without really assessing the underlying consequences
this opens a Pandora’s Box and it leads toŠ.Pandora’s Box is
not the correct designationŠit opens the road, essentially,
to a much broader war which could threaten the future of
humanity as we know it, and that’s not an understatement.

Do you think Iran has any capability of lobbing or sending
some sort of a large bomb or weapon over to Tel Aviv?

Well they have the capabilities of retaliating that’s for
sure, and they have their own generation of ballistic
missiles which they intend to use and this is certainly well
understood. The Iranians also have these Russian Tor M-1
anti-missile systems. Certainly they do have the
capabilities of responding.

Now the Israelis also have a very sophisticated air defense
system. But whatever actually occurs, as soon as - because
we have to see the logic really of a military confrontation
– as soon as they retaliate, the United States is going to
retaliate and Israel is going to retaliate, and they are
going to retaliate with more nuclear weapons. So the logic
of retaliation in this particular case opens up again the
possibility of escalation. I mean that’s really what we
have to address is the fact if the Iranians decide to
retaliate, which they said they will do, and I believe they
will, then we expect the American will again retaliate in
retaliation.

So Israel is also sitting there with, I don’t knowŠa couple
hundred of nuclear ICBM weapons that could be used too at
some point.

Well. that is correct, because Israel is the fourth or fifth
nuclear power in the world today. Its nuclear arsenal is
said to be more advanced and sophisticated than that of
Great Britain. But the discussions that I’ve seen so far do
not mention this nuclear arsenal; they don’t mention their
nuclear arsenal. What they mention is the use of tactical
nuclear weapons so that at this stage they are not talking
about using their own nuclear warheads. They are talking
about using the (U.S.-supplied) min-nukes, but you are
absolutely right, if this whole conflict expands and leads
to escalation, there is a possibility, of course, that they
might decide to use their own thermonuclear weapons against
Iran.

Yeah. Well, on that note and in summing up, do you want to
take a few minutes to maybe again tell people what you think
they should be doing and maybe giving out some contacts?

Well, I think we have to - again, the time span is very,
very short. We have to certainly move very swiftly and
establish very consist anti-war networks across the land,
which are not necessarily geared towards major street
marches - those consume a lot of energy - they are
necessary, but they are not sufficient. We have to start
confronting our political leaders, who are complicit in this
war agenda.

Canada is involved in the war in Afghanistan, Haiti; it is
involved in joint consultations with the United States
leading up to its membership in Northern Command, which is
also on the agenda of joint Canada-U.S. negotiations. So I
think (Canadians) have to express our dissent in relation to
this military agenda and we have to ultimately also
challenge the people who are making these decisions on our
behalf and we are not going to send them a petition and ask
them please, Mr. So and so, Prime Minister, would you be so
kind as not to wage war on Iran. That kind of action is, I
think, ineffective because it ultimately accepts the
legitimacy of those who are actually conducting the war, and
these wars are criminal. They are a violation of
international law, and we have to ultimately unseat the main
political and military actors, which are pushing for this
war against Iran, as well as the war and the illegal
occupation of Iraq, which are part of the same broad
military agenda. So that I think is absolutely crucial.

We have to start the challenge at all levels, municipal,
provincial, federal, international and we ultimately have to
educate the public.

We have to confront the media-the media is complicit in this
project because if it were doing its job it would at least
be informing people of the devastating impacts of a nuclear
holocaust and it would be explaining to people the use of
tactical nuclear weapons means nuclear war. There is no
other way of saying it.

And when the United States embarks on a military adventure
in which nuclear weapons are presented as some kind of
peacekeeping instrument, essentially we can see on what
course we are. We are really going to go down the tube so
to speak. I mean down the drain, and that’s a
self-destructive statement because it presents war as a
peacekeeping operation and it presents nuclear weapons as
some kind of harmless toy and military analysts are fully
aware of the implications. Again they are too ’polite’ to
ultimately address these issues in a broad public arena.

Well, o.k., Michel. People should also check into the
website which you are involved with:
– http://globalresearch.ca.
Check in for information.