After a long break caused by serious health problems, Venezuela’s H. Chavez resumed on November 15 the practice of televised addresses on key policy issues. As a key message prompted by the recent developments, the Venezuelan leader sent to his nation and to the international community a strong warning about the threat of a nuclear conflict currently brewing in the Middle East… “There’s a nuclear war threat…The most guilty [of this risk] is the United States government and its allies such as Israel, who have many nuclear bombs,” said Chavez in a voice full of emotion.
The US propaganda campaign built around the myth of Iran’s nuclear-arms ambitions has been unfolding for years, growing increasingly hysterical in the process. Chavez at all times reiterated Venezuela’s support for Iran, expressing confidence in the civilian character of the country’s nuclear program. The statements invariably drew Washington’s ire or even allegations of the Venezuelan regime’s complicity with Ahmadinejad in secretly building nuclear weapons. Among other groundless claims, the US information warfare forces floated the fictitious story of uranium mining in Venezuela in the interests of the Iranian nuclear program and even fed to the media photographs of the Venezuelan uranium mine which, as it transpired shortly, actually showed a bicycle-assembling factory which used Iranian-supplied components. No apologies followed, as for the Empire lies are a normal instrument employed to influence the world around. The world is used to hearing lies from US presidents, secretaries of state, defense secretaries, bankers, journalists, diplomats, and intelligence operatives. The intensity of alarmist call for a global war on terror, ostensibly to counter the terrorist threat targeting the US at all angles, peaked in the wake of the September 11, 2001 drama when the Trade Center in NY was blown up on the order from the US “shadow government”. A tide of US special operations immediately swept across the world from Afghanistan and Iraq to Russia.
At the moment Syria, like Iran, is facing an unprecedented smear campaign. Armed groups trained by the US and Israeli intelligence services are penetrating the country with the mission of destabilizing Bashar al-Assad’s regime and igniting clashes, which could be cited internationally as a pretext for an intervention. The mercenaries’ atrocities in Syria seem to indicate that they have been trained by the US, Israeli, and French instructors who gained much of their past experience in Libya. Israeli commandos and Mossad operatives are particularly notorious for cruelty. Tel Aviv is fanning the internal strife in Syria to weaken the country militarily in the run-up to air raids against Iran’s allegedly arms-related nuclear infrastructures, along with its command and communication centers, air-defense installations, and munitions depots.
With memories still fresh of what happened in Iraq and Libya, of the sufferings the countries’ populations had to endure, and of the killings of S. Hussein and M. Gadhafi, Iran is determined to fight back in every way possible, and the Pentagon is fully aware of the perspective. US military planners warned the White House that the consequences of a military campaign against Iran can prove unpredictable, and B. Obama, who has permanently looked exhausted recently, decided to take time and, within several weeks, to consult with the US allies. The forecast at the moment is that Washington will not go beyond pushing for tighter sanctions against Iran, but chances are the US is simply trying to cause Tehran to lose vigilance.
The pro-Zionist global media provide extensive coverage of the potential plans for an attack on Iran, throwing in pieces of disinformation or attempting to intimidate the country. At the end of a long process of forging evidence of Iran’s making dirty bombs and bacteriological warfare in secret laboratories, the Western intelligence agencies may have started to believe in what they preached and now take seriously Tehran’s pledges of a crushing retaliatory strike. From Chavez’s perspectives, neither the US nor Israel can be trusted, Iran has serious reasons for concern, and provocations can take place any moment. Iran’s foes have no shortage of prefabricated scenarios, and some of the Western analysts in fact suggested using tactical nuclear weapons to inflict maximal damage on the Iranian military infrastructure. This may be the reason why Chavez had to stress that no government has the right to resort to nuclear weapons as no nations, including their own, would stay unharmed, and the radioactivity would put life on Earth as a whole in jeopardy.
In September, 2011, Venezuelan foreign minister Nicolás Maduro delivered a message on behalf of Chavez to the 66th session of the UN General Assembly. The sense of concern behind the talk resonated with the audience as Maduro said: “an unprecedented, imperialist and permanent war had begun”. The Venezuelan envoy maintained that the unlimited power of the military and financial oligarchy which, to boost its own revenues, is destroying the world and de facto runs a large group of countries, leads the world to a global catastrophe. He further stressed that war has to be a way of life for the financial capital as, destroying societies, wars help the chosen few to amass unbelievable riches. In the nearest future the world will be confronted with the threat of a new series of colonial wars being unleashed, with Libya as the starting point, to revitalize the global capitalist system now trapped in a deep structural crisis.
It is clear that the escalation around Iran and Syria, least the launch of military campaigns against the two countries, would cast a long shadow over the relations between Moscow and Washington. For Moscow, the independence and sovereignty of Iran and Syria are important from the standpoint of geopolitical stability along Russia’s southern frontier, and the Kremlin becomes increasingly vocal about this aspect of the situation. So far, there is no impression that Washington and Tel Aviv, eager to make another step towards global dominance, are ready to take Moscow’s position into account.
Discussing ways of taming the US and NATO, Chavez constantly invokes the themes of the multipolar world, alternative centers of power, and the cooperation between such countries as China, Russia, India, and Brazil in the name of peace. So far, however, their leaders appear to be lacking the will needed to put an end to the rising neocolonialism and unabashed international banditry.
