From WMDs to ‘increased Iranian threats’

Once again the US seems to be on the brink of war, creating the conditions to commence another invasion of the Middle East. The world’s leading super power is in the middle of building tensions between itself and the Islamic Republic of Iran.   

The enmity between Iran and the US is not new.  

The US is apparently still smarting from the slap in the face it received from Iran back in 1979, when it overthrew the US-puppet regime led by the then Shah of Iran, followed by the the long-drawn out hostage crisis of the US embassy in that country. Many believe this was the reason why the US backed Saddam Hussein at the time of the Iran-Iraq war and why it provided logistical support to Saddam including provision of banned chemical weapons.  

The US has obviously still not forgiven Iran for that humiliation.   

Today once again the US seems to be preparing the ground for a push to war. We are hearing once again the same old stories, of countries posing a threat to the security of the US, its allies and the people of America.  

Today we are being told of Iranian Republican Guards loading munitions of varied sorts onto dhows -sailing vessels used by Arabian countries- intended to be used against US ships and those of US allies.   

Out of nowhere suddenly there appeared reports of four Saudi Arabian tankers being attacked/sabotaged in the Gulf of Hormuz. What was strange however, was there were no claimants to the attack.   

The US continues to persistently talk of an “imminent” threat from Tehran. The US Secretary of State Pompeo personally briefed EU governments regarding this ‘threat’.   
Media reports say the US Secretary of State received a cool reception from the EU leaders. No doubt because the US has not produced any firm, record of evidence of hostile Iranian action. It also probably brought back memories of the Iraqi invasion based on false US intelligence regarding WMDs, the devastation of that country, and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who uselessly lost their lives to the said ‘faulty’ US intelligence.  

The pattern seems all too familiar. Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the US claimed it had secret intelligence of Iraq’s possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).   
This blatantly false claim led to the US-UK invasion of Iraq.  

Up to date, over fifteen years since Britain and the US invaded Iraq to ‘save humanity’ from the threat of Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, not a single weapon has been found as yet.   
Sadly for the people of Iraq; though no Weapons of Mass Destruction were ever found, the ‘Huffington Post’ reported in 2013 December, nearly half a million Iraqis had died from war-related causes in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003. The report went on to add the death toll is far higher than the nearly 115,000 violent civilian deaths reported by the British-based group Iraq Body Count.  

The figures were based on a detailed study carried out by a research team from the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University, Simon Fraser University and Mustansiriya University. The groups conducted the work on a volunteer basis using pooled internal resources instead of seeking outside funds.   

Recently Major-General Chris Ghika, the British Deputy Commander of the coalition against ISIS, categorically refuted American claims of increased Iranian threats. “There’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria,” he said. Since Ghika the British Deputy Commander of the coalition is based in Baghdad, he is in the best position to know the veracity of whether or not Iran poses the threat as claimed by the Americans.  

But the US rejected the assessment saying the assessment runs counter to ‘identified credible threats’.  

Just as then British premier Tony Blair blindly followed the US lead, so the day after General Ghika’s statement that there was no increased threat from Iran, the British government disowned its General, probably under US pressure.   

It is sad, but it looks as though the Iranian people too may soon face a fate similar to their brothers in Iraq.