{"id":10948,"date":"2011-08-11T07:35:15","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T15:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=10948"},"modified":"2011-08-11T10:15:50","modified_gmt":"2011-08-11T18:15:50","slug":"aipacs-support-of-iran-sanctions-parallels-lead-up-to-iraq-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/11\/aipacs-support-of-iran-sanctions-parallels-lead-up-to-iraq-war\/","title":{"rendered":"AIPAC’s Support of Iran Sanctions Parallels Lead Up To Iraq War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eli Clifton has an important addendum to his earlier post on the push from almost the entire Senate for Obama to add further sanctions on Iran<\/a>\u00a0(which I posted on here<\/a>). Obviously, the Israel lobby supports these sanctions too, but Clifton says their tactics resemble all too closely the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.\u00a0He writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

a Tuesday press release [PDF<\/a>] from the\u00a0American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)<\/a>\u00a0brings to mind eery parallels between the escalation of sanctions against Iran and the slow lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The press release read:<\/p>\n

AIPAC applauds today\u2019s bipartisan letter\u2014signed by 92 U.S. Senators\u2014to the administration urging it to sanction the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), or Bank Markazi.<\/strong>\u00a0The letter, spearheaded by Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), notes that the CBI lies at the center of Iran\u2019s strategy to circumvent international sanctions against its illicit nuclear program.<\/p>\n

Sanctioning Bank Markazi might, as mentioned by\u00a0the Wall Street Journal\u2019s Jay Solomon<\/a>, be interpreted as an act of war. But that doesn\u2019t seem to bother AIPAC. Indeed, they\u2019ve been down this sanctions road once before before the invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n

In June, Robert Dreyfuss interviewed former AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman who offered details of how AIPAC and its allies in the Bush administration pushed the allegation that Saddam Hussein was in league with al Qaeda. More importantly, Weissman discusses AIPAC\u2019s plans for ultimately bringing regime change in Iran.\u00a0Dreyfuss writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Weissman says that Iran was alarmed at the possibility that the United States might engage in overt and covert efforts to instigate opposition inside Iran. He says that\u00a0many in AIPAC, especially among its lay leadership and biggest donors, strongly backed regime change in Iran.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThat was what Larry [Franklin] and his friends wanted,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u201cIt included lots of different parts, like broadcasts, giving money to groups that would conduct sabotage, it included bringing the Mojahedin[-e Khalgh], bringing them out of Iraq and letting them go back to Iran to carry out missions for the United States.<\/strong>Harold Rhode<\/a>\u00a0backed this\u2026. There were all these guys,\u00a0Michael Ledeen<\/a>,\u00a0\u2018Next stop Tehran, next stop Damascus.\u2019<\/strong>\u201c<\/p>\n

Indeed, as shown in the AIPAC press release, Iran is now the target of similar sanctions and bellicose rhetoric similar to those that targeted Iraq in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Sanctioning Iran\u2019s central bank and imposing a de facto oil embargo on Iranian oil exports would appear to be pages torn from the playbook before the invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eli Clifton has an important addendum to his earlier post on the push from almost the entire Senate for Obama to add further sanctions on Iran\u00a0(which I posted on here). Obviously, the Israel lobby supports these sanctions too, but Clifton says their tactics resemble all too closely the lead up to the 2003 invasion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10948"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10969,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10948\/revisions\/10969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10948"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}