BBC Monitoring Service: Terror label for guards is US ruse to force oil companies out of Iran – paper

Published: Sep 07, 2007

Text of report in English by Iranian Mehr news agency, authored Ardeshir Ommani for Tehran Times’ Opinion Column on 8 Sept in English

Tehran, 7 Sept: On the front page of one of the recent issues of The New York Times, the colourful picture of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad and Afghan President Hamid Karzai and their undeniably friendly posturing was not an outcome that the US administration and the Congress were expecting to see.

George W. Bush and the US Congress have accused Iran, and especially Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, of supplying the arms being used by the Afghani and Iraqi insurgencies.

However, in a striking contrast, President Karzai has called Iran a friend of Afghanistan and a source of stability in the region. No doubt, his favourable judgment of Iran has annoyed President Bush and all those in the US government who wish to see greater tension between Iran and its immediate neighbours.

The same could be said for Iran-Iraq relations. Just last month, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited Iran and met with not only President Ahmadinezhad but also the group in the highest echelon of the government of the Islamic Republic, including the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamene’i, the highest authority in Iran.

Al-Maliki appraised Iran as a friend of the people of Iraq and a source of stability and security in the region. Once again the amicable relationship between Iran and Iraq pained the US ruling class that imposed the war on Iraq and is responsible for the deaths of 4000 regular and mercenary troops, 30,000 US troops injured and maimed, 700,000 Iraqi men, women and children killed, and two million Iraqis who have been forced to abandon their homeland and face refugee status in neighbouring countries.

It is an indisputable fact that the US would like to create tension or at least see a lack of cooperation between Iran and the rest of the world in the same manner it has tried to isolate Cuba, Venezuela, and Iraq before its current occupation. But the fancy dreams of George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Senator Joe Lieberman, to name a few, are turning into nightmares and despair.

In the same issue of The New York Times, next to the picture of presidents Ahmadinezhad and Karzai, an article described that the Bush administration, with the consent of the obedient Congress, is planning to declare a huge segment of the Iranian military force, known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a terrorist organization. One may ask what is behind such a naked provocation and demonisation of a large defence force of a sovereign nation.

One obvious reason for the incessant use of such defamatory and hateful terminology as terrorism, terrorist, and Islamofascism by US officials and their compliant media is their open and naked hostility towards the revolutionary resistance of the Muslim world to the violent penetration of Western imperialism.

These misnomers are nothing new. In Boston, the British monarchy confronting the revolutionaries in 1776, in Russia, the tsar facing the wrath of the working class in 1917, and in Iran, the shah confronting the upheaval of the masses of Iranians in 1979, all called their opposition terrorist. By calling the sizable army of Iran – 125,000-men strong – a terrorist group, the US is pursuing a more devious objective. The US is unable to intimidate influential members of the European Union and other members of the United Nations Security Council such as Russia and China to agree to pass and implement a third resolution that would impose harsher sanctions against Iran. It is therefore trying to blackmail the international community and force their companies to divest from Iran’s economy, particularly its oil and gas sectors.

No doubt it is not an easy job for the US to force such giants of the oil and gas industry, as Totalfina Elf of France, ENI of Italy, Bow of Canada, Royal Dutch Shell, Norsk of Norway, GVA of Sweden, Sheer Energy of Canada, LG of South Korea, Statoil of Norway, Inpex of Japan, Sinopec of China, DNGC of India, SKS of Malaysia, Repsol of Spain, China National Offshore Oil Company, and Liquefied National Gas Ltd. of Australia, all with a projected total investment of $190 billion, out of Iran. These companies’ decisions to invest in Iran certainly have the backing of their respective governments and no amount of US blackmail – calling Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist group will be convincing enough to run them out of town.

Resorting to a new mendacity, the US administration is desperately attempting to impose the arbitrary rules and spurious bills passed in the US House of Representatives on other sovereign nations, just because it decides to call the defence forces of other countries terrorist. Washington, unilaterally, and in its own delusional mind, is setting the legal grounds, albeit nationally, to charge the oil and gas companies of other countries with the crime of cooperating with and assisting Islamic Revolution Guards Corps [IRGC]. Let us not forget that all the evidence gathered by the United States so-called intelligence services is circumstantial and does not stick.

Source: Mehr news agency, Tehran, in English 1920 gmt 7 Sep 07

BBC Monitoring

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