WHY IS IRAN STILL IN THE CROSS-HAIRS? CLUES FROM THE PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY

This is a dated article but the insight is profound and may actuallly be at the root of things, I believe.

WHY IS IRAN STILL IN THE CROSS-HAIRS?

CLUES FROM THE PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY

Ellen Brown, January 12, 2008

In
the latest escalation of tensions with Iran, on January 5, 2008 five
Iranian patrol boats surrounded three U.S. ships in the Strait of
Hormuz, coming within a “threatening” 200 meters. A voice with a thick
accent then said in English, “I am coming at you – you will explode in
a couple of minutes.” The U.S. ships prepared to strike, when the
patrol boats backed off. That is how the Pentagon told it, but Iranians
have questioned where the threatening voice came from, and Pentagon
officials have admitted that they could not confirm that it came
directly from the Iranian crews involved. They have also admitted that
the voice and the video film were recorded separately, adding to the
mysterious circumstances.1

Skeptical
observers might think that the two countries were being goaded into
World War III – either that, or that someone wanted to convince
American viewers that Iran indeed remained a threat, despite a recent
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) finding that the country is not
engaged in a nuclear weapons program as formerly alleged. Before
President George W. Bush left for his Middle East visit on January 8,
he told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, “Part of the
reason I’m going to the Middle East is to make it abundantly clear to
nations in that part of the world that we view Iran as a threat, and
that the NIE in no way lessens that threat.”2 Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) said in a recent MSNBC news broadcast that there
is still a “great possibility” of nuclear action against Iran. The
target has just shifted from nuclear power plants to the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard, which has been declared a terrorist organization.
Paul said, “[T]here are still quite a few neoconservatives who want to
go after Iran under these unbelievable conditions.”3

The question is, why?
One popular theory holds that the push for war is all about oil; but
many countries have oil, and we don’t normally invade them to get their
assets. Why go to war for Iran’s oil when we can just buy it?

Another
theory says that the saber-rattling is about defending the dollar. Iran
is threatening to open its own oil bourse, and it is already selling
most of its oil in non-dollar currencies. Iran has broken the
petrodollar stranglehold imposed in the 1970s, when OPEC entered into
an agreement with the United States to sell oil only in U.S. dollars.4 But as William Engdahl pointed out in a March 2006 editorial, Iran is
not alone in wanting to drop the dollar as its oil currency; and war
with Iran has been in the cards as part of the U.S. Greater Middle East
strategy since the 1990s, long before it threatened to open its own oil
bourse.5

The Greater Middle East strategy . . . Could the published plans for that program hold some clues? Iran
was targeted in the infamous policy paper titled “Rebuilding America’s
Defenses,” published by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
in 2000. The document was patterned from an earlier blueprint called “A
Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” drafted for
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1996.6 In a May 2005 summary of the PNAC directive, Professor Michel
Chossudovsky described PNAC as a neo-conservative think tank linked to
the Defense-Intelligence establishment, the Republican Party and the
powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which plays an important
role in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. In “Rebuilding
America’s Defenses,” PNAC called for “the direct imposition of U.S.
‘forward bases’ throughout Central Asia and the Middle East, with a
view to ensuring economic domination of the world, while strangling any
potential ‘rival’ or any viable alternative to America's vision of a
‘free market’ economy.”7

Strangling any potential rival or viable alternative to America’s vision of a free market economy . . . Could that be it? It is a matter of historical interest that the
notion of a “free market” economy hasn’t always been “America’s
vision.” In the nineteenth century, “free trade” was something many
Americans resisted. They saw it as a British scheme to exploit America
of its resources, at a time when British bankers had a corner on the
gold that was the exclusive coin of international trade. When the gold
standard was abandoned in 1971, the U.S. dollar became the world’s
reserve currency in its stead. Many disillusioned people in developing
countries today suspect that America’s global “free market” is another
form of exploitation -- prying countries open to be plundered of their
physical and human resources in return for loans of the dollars
necessary to buy oil at inflated prices. Oil is the bait for ensnaring
the world in the debt trap, and the terrorism that must be suppressed
is the rebellion of any locals who will not be ensnared quietly. The
weapon in this economic war is debt, and the bullets are compound
interest.

The story has been widely circulated that when Albert
Einstein was asked what the most powerful force in the universe was, he
replied, “compound interest.” The story is probably apocryphal, but it
underscores the force of the concept. Compound interest has allowed a
private global banking cartel to control most of the resources of the
world. The debt trap was set in 1974, when OPEC was induced to trade
its oil only in U.S. dollars. The price of oil then suddenly
quadrupled, and countries with insufficient dollars for their oil needs
had to borrow them. In 1980, international interest rates shot up to 20
percent. At 20 percent interest compounded annually, $100 doubles in
under 4 years; and in 20 years, it becomes a breathtaking $3,834. The
impact on Third World debtors was devastating. President Obasanjo of
Nigeria complained in 2000:

“All that we had borrowed up to 1985
was around $5 billion, and we have paid about $16 billion; yet we are
still being told that we owe about $28 billion. That $28 billion came
about because of the injustice in the foreign creditors’ interest
rates. If you ask me what is the worst thing in the world, I will say
it is compound interest.”9

Could
the “viable economic alternative” that threatens the Western economic
model be one that declares the collecting of interest to be illegal?
That is the model Iran is now holding out to the world. In 1979, Iran
was established as an “Islamic Republic,” designed to enforce the
principles of the Koran not just morally or religiously but as a matter
of state government policy. Afghanistan, which is also in the
cross-hairs of the U.S. war machine, and Pakistan, which the U.S. is
trying hard to control, are also Islamic Republics. The economic
principles of the Koran include Sharia banking, which forbids “usury.” In the Koran, usury is defined as charging not just excess interest but any interest.

That
is also how the term was defined under Old English law until Protestant
scholars redefined it in the seventeenth century, opening the Christian
world to a form of economic advantage formerly available only to Jewish
money lenders. In Jewish scriptures, charging interest was forbidden
between “brothers” but was allowed in dealings with “foreigners.” (See,
for example, Deuteronomy 23:19, “You must not make your brother pay interest,” and 23:20, “You may make

a
foreigner pay interest, but your brother you must not make pay
interest.”) This point is raised here not to indict the Jewish people
(who are not the “global bankers”) but for its historical relevance in
tracking the divergence of two religious systems. Charging interest on
loans has been accepted banking practice throughout the Judao-Christian
world for so long that we don’t think there is anything wrong with it
today, but that hasn’t always been true. The history of interest is
detailed in an article in The World Guide Encyclopedia, which is published in Uruguay and has a Third World/Islamic slant. It states:

“The
practice of usury – lending money and accumulating interest on the loan
– can be traced back 4,000 years. But it has always been despised,
condemned, restricted or banned by moral, ethical, legal or religious
entities. . . .

“During the prophet Muhammad’s lifetime,
criticism of usury became established. This stance was reinforced by
his teachings in the Qur’an, around 600 AD. . . .

“Judaism’s
criticisms of usury are rooted in several passages of the Old Testament
in which charging interest is scorned, discouraged and prohibited. . .
. [I]n Deuteronomy, [the ban] extends to all loans, excluding trade
with foreigners. The word “foreigner” is interpreted in general as
“enemy” and, armed with this text, Jews employed usury as a weapon, as
other people’s needs could be transformed into submission. . . .

“The
prohibition of usury was adopted as a major campaign by the earliest
Christian Church, following on from Jesus’ expulsion of the
money-lenders from the temple. . . . [T]he Catholic Church of the 4th
century AD banned the clergy from charging interest, a rule that was
later extended in the 5th century to the laity. . . .

“[A]round
1620, according to the theologian Ruston, “usury passed from being an
offense against public morality, which a Christian government was
expected to suppress, to being a matter of private conscience, and a
new generation of Christian moralists redefined usury as excessive
interest”. . . . [I]t is interesting to contrast the clear moral
mandate expressed through Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (634-644 AD)
about “ravenous usury” as “a demon condemned by the Church but
practiced in a deceitful way by avaricious men,” with Pope John Paul
II's encyclical Solicitude Rei Socialis (1987) which omits any explicit
mention of usury, except for a vague reference to recognizing the Third
World debt crisis.

“This “demon” governs current global
relations, condemning most of the world population to living under the
sign of debt: i.e., each person born in Latin America owes already
$1,600 in foreign debt; each individual being conceived in Sub-Saharan
Africa carries the burden of a $336 debt, for something that its
ancestors have long ago paid-off. In 1980 the Southern countries’ debt
amounted to $567 billion; since then, they have paid $3,450 billion in
interest and write-offs, six times the original amount. In spite of
this, that debt had quadrupled by the year 2000, reaching $2,070
billion.”10

Islamic
scholars have been seeking to devise a global banking system that would
serve as an alternative to the interest-based scheme that is in control
of the world economy, and Iran has led the way in devising that model.
Iran was able to escape the debt trap that captured other developing
countries because it had its own oil. Few Islamic banks existed before
Iran became an Islamic Republic in 1979, but the concept is now
spreading globally. With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the
viable economic model that threatens the global dominance of the
Western banking clique may no longer be Communism. It may be the
specter of an Islamic banking system that would strip a private banking
cartel of the compound interest scheme that is its most powerful
economic weapon.

President Bush assured allies before his
Mideast trip, “It’s important for the people in the region to know that
while all options remain on the table, that I believe we can solve this
problem diplomatically, and the way to do that is to continue to
isolate Iran in the international community.”11 Isolate Iran from whom? Isolation is something that is done to prevent
contagion. The contagion to be contained may be the creation of an
Islamic State pursuing the principles of Sharia law, something that is now the rallying cry for many Muslims around the world.

Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt,
her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal
Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has
usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how
we the people can get it back. Her eleven books include the bestselling
Nature's Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.

1 Ed Pilkington, “Doubts Grow Over Iranian Boat Threats,” The Guardian (January 11, 2008).

2 Laurent Lozano, “During Mideast Tour, Bush to Insist Iran Remains a Threat,” Yahoo! News (January 7, 2008).

3 David Edwards et al., “Paul: We’re Getting Ready to Bomb Iran,” The Raw Story (December 27, 2007), citing MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” December 27, 2007.

4 Krassimir Petrov, “The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse,” Gold-Eagle (January 15, 2006).

5 William Engdahl, “Why Iran’s Oil Bourse Can’t Break the Buck,” Asia Times Online (March 10, 2006).

6 Bette Stockbauer, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: A Summary,” Information Clearing House (May 6, 2003); Jim Lobe, et al., “The Rise and Decline of the Neoconservatives,” International Relations Center, Right Web (November 17, 2006).

7 Michel Chossudovsky, “Iran: Next Target of Military Aggression,” Global Research (May 2005).

9 Rodney Shakespeare, The Modern Universal Paradigm (2007), pages 63-64.

10 “The Morals of Money-Lending,” The World Guide, www.henciclopedia.org.

11 L. Lozano, op. cit.