The People’s Resolution: A Sane Response to the Iranian “Crisis“

I and other Veterans For Peace from Long Island will be lobbying members of Congress first to educate them regarding what is problematic, irresponsible, and even dangerous about Senate Resolution S. RES. 380and its counterpart in the House H. RES. 568. Then, we will encourage our Legislators to introduce and sponsor what I perhaps hubristically term the “People’s Resolution” as a more sane and efficient alternative response to the Iranian “crisis.”

Why We Should Oppose S. RES. 380 and H. RES. 568

·President Obama has made clear his willingness to wage yet another war, this time to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. S. RES. 380 and H. RES. 568 is much more “precautionary” and moves us further down the path to war by requiring that Iran be prevented from developing a “nuclear weapons capability.”

·S. RES. 380 and H. RES. 568 are shrewdly silent, however, about how to interpret a nuclear capability. In the view of many, including Senators Graham, Casey, and Lieberman, who introduced the Bill in the Senate, to delay an attack until Iran has enriched weapons grade uranium and achieved the technical knowledge necessary to manufacture a bomb is to squander a limited window of opportunity. So when exactly along the means-and-know-how continuum of acquiring a nuclear weapons capability must, according to these resolutions, intervention occur? Some have speculated that Iran is already within a year or two of having a nuclear weapon should they decide that they want or need one. So do we begin bombing immediately?

·S. RES. 380 and H. RES. 568 call for “the full and sustained suspension of all uranium enrichment-related and reprocessing activities,” a right guaranteed under the Non Proliferation Treaty. The PEOPLE of Iran understandably value their national autonomy and see such a ban as yet another attempt by the United States and Israel to subjugate their Nation. Further, Iranians argue that their nuclear enrichment program is for peaceful purposes and necessary for their energy security, to provide medical treatment to 800,000 cancer patients, and a source of National pride.

·S. RES. 380 and H. RES. 568 require “the verified end of Iran’s ballistic missile programs,” a demand that is unprecedented and goes well beyond what is required by the United Nations resolutions oranything ever demanded of Saddam Hussein’s pre-war Iraq.

·Given that Iran would not, could not, agree to such demands without sacrificing their national pride and autonomy, S. RES. 380 and H. RES. 568 render any negotiated settlement impossible and war inevitable.

·Though S. RES. 380 and H. RES. 568 are touted as “non binding,” it is only a small step from recognizing that it is in our National interest to ensure that Iran not develop a nuclear capability to deciding that military action is required to neutralize the Iranian “threat” to our National interest. Given the propensity of our President and members of Congress to see war and military adventurism as an extension of diplomacy, and embargo and economic sanctions as preferable to the hard work of negotiations, can we be confident that these resolutions do not make the next step to war inevitable?

·Military experts are clear that bombing a few nuclear sites across Iran without boots on the ground – invasion – accomplishes nothing long term other than to drive Iran’s nuclear program further underground and strengthen its resolve to pursue weapons development in secret and in earnest. Will the United States and Israel then conduct periodic bombings to, so to speak, “mow the lawn” as Iran rebuilds their nuclear program? Further, it is also clear that Iran will understandably retaliate by attacking United States interests in this country and around the world. Is Senator Graham et al so irresponsible, so out of touch with the inevitable horrors that war entail, that they areprepared to expend precious lives and treasure in yet another unnecessary and immoral war of choice?

The “Peoples Resolution” is a saner, safer, and more reasonable alternative to S. RES. 380 and H. RES. 568. Further, it is an efficient means of responding to and resolving the Iranian “crisis” as it reflects the reality of the situation in the Middle East, is free of bias and prejudice, abides by the dictates of International and Moral Law, appreciates and respects the rights and dignity of all people, builds trust and mutual respect, and provides a reasonable framework from which to achieve a negotiated settlement. Consequently, we will lobby our Legislators to accept the “People’s Resolution” in order to avoid the horror and devastation of never ending war and as a first step on the long and difficult path to world peace and stability. Time is short and the window of opportunity is closing. We hope you will consider doing so as well.

The People’s Resolution

Expressing the sense of the PEOPLE regarding the importance of a peaceful resolution of differences and preventing the Governments of the United States and Israel from continuing/escalating the aggression/terrorism against the PEOPLE of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

OFFERED IN BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE

March 12, 2012

Dr. Camillo Mac Bica (Coordinator, Veterans For Peace Long Island)

RESOLUTION

Expressing the sense of the PEOPLE regarding the importance of a peaceful resolution of differences and preventing the Governments of the United States and Israel from continuing/escalating the aggression/terrorism against the PEOPLE of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Whereas, on 19 August 1953, the intelligence Agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh;

Whereas, following the 1953 coup, Iran became a client state of the United States under the ruthless and oppressive leadership of pro western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi;

Whereas, for many Iranians, the coup demonstrated the treachery and hypocrisy of which the United States was capable, touting itself as a defender of freedom while more than willing to overthrow a democratically elected government to suit its own economic and strategic interests;

Whereas the coup and the corrupt and oppressive monarchy of the Shah significantly contributed to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which deposed the pro-Western Shah and replaced the monarchy with an anti-Western, Theocratic Islamic Republic;

Whereas, on July 1, 1968, Iran, unlike Pakistan, India, and Israel, signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has allowed frequent inspections of its nuclear program;

Whereas, on August 9, 2005, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, issued a Fatwa that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons;

Whereas, on February 27, 2012, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi stated that the majority of nations in the region, including Iran and Egypt, to the exclusion of Israel, would support the establishment of a nuclear weapon free zone in the Middle East;

Whereas, on May 17, 2010, the Obama Administration chose embargo and sanctions rather than a negotiated settlement and rejected an agreement with Iran, similar to the one put forward earlier by the United States, brokered by Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvan, under which Iran would ship 1,200kg (2,645lb) of low-enriched uranium to Turkey in return for fuel for a research reactor;

Whereas, on March, 5, 2012, Iran agreed to participate in six-party negotiations and to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to visit its key military research site at Parchin;

Whereas the Islamic Republic of Iran, under Article IV of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, is guaranteed “the inalienable right . . . to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination;”

Whereas American Intelligence agencies continue to assert that Iran poses no real and immediate existential threat to Israel or the United States;

Whereas, on Feb 16, 2012, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, that Iran has not yet decided whether to build a nuclear weapon;

Whereas, on February 16, 2012, Lt. General Ronald Burgess, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency testified that Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict but would respond if attacked;

Whereas, on Jan 29, 2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, stated that should Iran ever decide to build such a weapon, it would take at least a year to do so and another couple of years to put the weapon on a delivery vehicle;

Whereas, on July 5, 2011, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan described the idea of an Israeli air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities as “the stupidest thing I have ever heard;”

Whereas, on January 25, 2011, Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi, the head of Israeli military intelligence, told the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee that “Iran is not currently working on producing a nuclear weapon;”

Whereas, in a civilized world community, one governed by moral and International Law, nations maintain the right to territorial integrity and political sovereignty, i.e., an immunity against being attacked and/or warred against unjustifiably;

Whereas, on January 11, 2012, Ahmadi-Roshan became the fourth civilian nuclear scientist to have been assassinated in Iran in the last two years;

Whereas, since 2010, nearly a dozen major explosions have damaged Iranian oil refineries;

Whereas, since January, 2011, seventeen explosions have damaged Iranian gas pipelines,

Whereas, during 2011, at least five instances of cyber terrorism have been reported during which variants of the Stuxnet computer virus targeted the Iranian nuclear program including the Bushehr nuclear plant and the Natanz uranium enrichment facility;

Whereas evidence indicates, and the Israeli Government has not denied, that the Mossad, Israel’s secret service, working with the terrorist organization the “People’s Mujahedin of Iran” (MEK), carried out these attacks against the people and infrastructure of the Islamic Republic of Iran;

Whereas the use of violence, sabotage, bombing, and assassination against civilians and non military targets in order to convince and/or coerce a government into submission or a people to effect regime change is terrorism;

Whereas according to Chapter II, paragraph 4 of the United Nations Charter to which the United States and Israel are signatory, “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations;

Whereas, on December 2, 2011 Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned that an attack on Iran would result in “an escalation that would take place that would not only involve many lives, but I think it could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret;”

Whereas, the consequences of continuing/escalating a war with the Islamic Republic of Iran would have disastrous consequences for the United States and the world, including —

(1) further poisoning of relations between the United States and generations of Iranians; and

(2) an Iranian retaliatory response by its own agents as well as proxy groups against interests of the United States in this country and throughout the world; and

(3) violent reprisals against U.S. forces in the region and the disruption of the exports of other oil producing Nations;

Whereas any strike on the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor would cause the release of radionuclides contaminants into the air resulting in the immediate death of thousands of people living in, or adjacent to, the site, and up to hundreds of thousands of subsequent cancer deaths depending on the population density along the contamination plume;

Whereas many experts such as United States Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni note that aerial bombing of a few nuclear sites across Iran without boots on the ground – invasion – accomplishes nothing long term other than to drive Iran’s nuclear program further underground and strengthen its resolve to pursue weapons development in secret and in earnest;

Whereas Israel refuses to sign the NPT or allow inspections despite an IAEA resolution dated 18 September 2009, which “expresses concern about the Israeli nuclear capabilities, and calls upon Israel to accede to the NPT and place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards;”

Whereas, on March 6, 2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the United States has increased military aid to Israel to $3.1 billion, up from $2.5 billion in 2009.

Whereas the United States has 5,113 nuclear warheads and Israel is thought to have as many as 400 nuclear warheads;

Now therefore be it

Resolved, that the PEOPLE —

1)affirm the dictates of International and Moral Law and the rights of all nations to territorial integrity and political sovereignty;

2)oppose the acquisition AND the possession of nuclear weapons by ANY nation whether it be the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel, the United States, etc.

3)strongly supports a Weapons of Mass Destruction Freeze Zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle East as called for by the Non Proliferation Review Conference’s (May 2010) and a 1974 U.N. General Assembly resolution and then to extend the WMDFZ to encompass the entire world;

4)unconditionally reject ALL acts of terrorism as illegal and immoral whether prosecuted by sub national groups such as al Qaeda, Hamas, or MEK or state sponsored by Israel or the United States;

5)recognize preventive war – the Bush Doctrine – as aggression and a violation of International and Moral Law as it sanctions, without justification or cause, the use of military violence whenever and against whomever is perceived as a threat, however unsubstantiated and outlandish the “threat” may be;

6)urge the President of the United States to end the Bush Doctrine of Preventive war and the policy of Gunboat Diplomacy;

7)strongly support the permanent appointment of a Secretary of Peace proficient in international relations, negotiations, compromise, attaining respect and trust, conscious of our Nation’s responsibilities and obligations under Domestic, International and Moral Law, whose duties will include—

A) to facilitate sustained, direct, bilateral, unconditional, and good faith negotiations with the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea, Syria, etc., in order to build mutual trust and understanding, ease tensions, prevent war, seek a resolution to issues that concern the United States, Iran, Israel, and the International community, and create a more stable and peaceful world;

B) to consult with and seek the aid and guidance of other interested Nations to achieve the purpose as set forth in paragraph (A);

C) to ensure that all agencies of government, e.g., the military, the intelligence community, etc., are acting in accordance with Domestic, International, and Moral Law;

D) to attest, before any decision is made to go to war, to deploy the military, or employ embargo or economic sanctions, that all peaceful alternatives have been explored and exhausted;

8) understand that the bellicose rhetoric and terrorism against the PEOPLE of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based not upon actionable intelligence that Iran is planning to wage a nuclear war against Israel and/or the United States, or even that Iran has, is currently building, or has yet made a decision to build a nuclear weapon, but rather, upon nothing more than speculation that Iran is in the process of seeking the capability to develop weapons grade uranium;

9)recognize that Iran has nothing to gain from attacking Israel and/or the United States with a nuclear weapon as such an attack would certainly be answered in kind entailing Iran’s total destruction;

10)reject the notion that the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran are religious fanatics who value martyrdom more than life, are incapable of acting rationally, and therefore cannot be deterred;

11)affirm that to continue and/or escalate this Preventive War against Islamic Republic of Iran, filling Iran’s skies with drone spy planes, the destruction of its IAEA declared nuclear facilities and infrastructure, the assassination of its university professors and research scientists, and the slaughter of its citizens, violence based not upon just cause but paranoia and speculation, constitutes acts of aggression and state sponsored terrorism by Israel and the United States;

12)affirm that the devastating and unprecedented global sanctions and economic pressures imposed upon the Islamic Republic of Iran is terrorism as it is violence against civilians intended to coerce them into supporting regime change while having relatively little impact upon the ruling parties;

13)urge the President to end all sanctions and embargos against the Iranian people, stop the threats of attack, take the military option “off the table,” immediately cease drone spying and all covert operations against the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran;

14)reject as incoherent and politically motivated, the U. N. Security Council’s resolution that Iran, who has not attacked another nation in over two hundred years, who is signatory to the NPT, and whose nuclear program has been inspected by the IAEA repeatedly over many years, must stop enrichment and other nuclear activities until its peaceful intentions can be fully established, while Israel who often attacks its neighbors – Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq – wages terrorism against Iran, and who refuses to sign the NPT or accept IAEA inspection continues its nuclear program without interference or conditions;

15)realize that it is irrational, perhaps even paranoia, for Israel and the United States, nations armed with hundreds and thousands of nuclear weapons respectively to feel threatened by a nation that has yet to develop even the capability to build a single bomb;

16)express concern that this blatant violation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s national rights indicates a disdain for International and Moral Law, breeds increased hatred toward Israel and its patron the United States, and further isolates them, not Iran, from the international community;

17)urge the President to warn Israel, in the strongest possible terms, that to continue/escalate its terrorism against Iran would entail severe punitive sanctions;

18)warn that in continuing to provide billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, the United States is guilty of supporting terrorism, the very crime for which it invaded and occupied Iraq and is now threatening war against Iran;

19)urge the President to end military aid to Israel until such time as Israel signs the NPT, allows the IAEA to inspect its nuclear program, and ends its genocide against the Palestinian people;

20) recognize that it is a vital interest of the United States to become a responsible member of the international community, respected for our moral integrity and rigorous adherence to the law, not feared and hated for our military bravado and prowess;

21) support working to create a world in which all people, whether American, Israeli, Iranian, or Palestinian, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jew, are treated with respect, fairness and dignity;

22) express support for a Marshall Plan on a global scale aimed at ending poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education and healthcare at home, in the Middle East, and around the world;

23) urge politicians, members of the media, and lobbyists to become educated about, and sensitive to, the horrors and true costs of war;

24) affirm that war is not a tool but a failure of diplomacy;

25) urge politicians, members of the media, and lobbyists to put the interests of the PEOPLE, justice and the moral character of our Nation ahead of their particular biases, agendas, and the interests of corporations;

26) assert that while discussions of peace, understanding, and tolerance may certainly be difficult and requires skill and patience, they are no more unreasonable and fantastical than continuing the failed tactics of war and terrorism and expecting different results.