On 11/16/06, Leigh Meyers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Nov 16, 2006, at 10:15 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:
>
>> Iran has consistently opposed the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq
>
> Tariq Ali said when I interviewed him the other week that Iran had
> tacitly given the U.S. a green light for the invasion, because they
> wanted to spank Iraq. I don't know how he knows this - I think I'll
> ask him after I send this - but it's an interesting proposition.
Right. It's NOT about the oil... National energy security.
It's because Iran gave us a 'green light'.
We wouldn't have invaded Iraq otherwise...
Creepy propaganda.
Washington would have invaded Iraq, whatever Tehran's stance was, just
as it would have invaded Afghanistan, whatever Moscow's stance was.
But both Moscow's and Tehran's foreign policies have evolved since
then, as both have stronger cards in their hands economically and
politically now, and Tehran's foreign policy has come to be to a
significant extent shaped by Ahmadinejad's populist and
anti-imperialist faction, rather than the neoliberal factions led by
Khatami and Rafsanjani, who have wanted to have normal relations with
Washington more than Ahmadinejad's faction. Khamenei has never had as
much authority as Khomeini, so this kind of change in factional
balance of power makes a lot of difference in Iran today, much more so
than during Khomeini's days.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
