With economy 'teetering from the housing crash, the voodoo debt crisis and reduced business-spending' which have plunged America into recession of the worst of its kind in recent history, Mr. Bush sounds buoyant to carry on with his adventurous policies around the globe. The most favourite target of all of his gibberishes is Iran, its nuclear and missile programmes, and its so-called support of insurgency inside Iraq that is bleeding the US army to agonising ruptures in morale and authority.

Iran has remained adamant and committed to its national interests. Brushing aside all threats of aggression inclusive of surprise US aerial strikes inside Iran targeting its vital interests, it has continued with its research and development programme. Resultantly, starting from small arms industry to highly scientific areas such as cloning and space satellites Iran has shown to the world what a determined nation can achieve despite all odds against it.

Last Monday Iran fired a rocket into space opening its first space centre located in the remote desert of western Iran. It was a sounding probe that will be used to launch Iran's first home-produced satellite "Omid" (hope) May this year. Earlier, in October 2005 a Russian-made Iranian satellite (Sina-1) was put into orbit by a Russian rocket, however, ‘Omid’ would be Iran's first domestically manufactured satellite and the first to be launched from Iranian territory as well. 
Iran plans to construct and launch several more satellites over the next three years, which is no less than an achievement in terms of development in science and technology on the part of a developing third world Islamic country.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was rightfully upbeat and declared, ‘We witness today that Iran has taken its first step in space very firmly, precisely and with aware-ness … The evil and dominant system's most important instrument is humiliating people and nations by making them think that they are incapable.’

However, this launch has invited from the US and its dumb, unthinking, gullible allies a storm of resentment, rather outright anger and suspicion, censoring Iran’s peaceful intentions. Since January 2002, when, in his State of the Union address, he had invoked much lampooned ‘an axis of evil’ George W Bush had declared that America "will not allow the world's most dangerous regimes to 
threaten us with the world's most dangerous weapons’ his policies are painfully myopic and wrongly Iran centred. They have ignored all other more important issues of the world. Attack on Afghanis-tan and Iraq is the result of the same myopic Iran centred vision of the region.

With all options at table and refusing to decline the use of force there has been no dearth of the US threats against Iran. One wonders on what planet Mr. Bush is living. The bubble of US army’s invincibility has already burst. Threatening Iran of conventional aerial strikes and getting away with it sounds as lunatic as mad man’s gabble: incomprehensible, illogical and acutely irrational.Except nuclear strikes, the US has no power to neutralise Iran. If such is Mr. Bush’s intention then he or his acolytes have no authority, moral or legal, to 
demand of Iran to stop short of a nuclear bomb.

According to Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are roughly three dozen countries "with civil nuclear power, who have the technologies and understanding to develop nuclear weapons in a short period of time". This unreasonable focus on Iran, that has all along been declaring its peaceful intentions and backing it up with tangible measures, quite 
satisfactory to the IAEA as well, has no, logic justification and sense in it.

Mr. Bush must have understood by now that nuclear bomb has not helped America so far and it, in the present changing times, will not help any other country either.

At a times when even CNN assesses that American currency is ‘sinking like a rock’ American attack of any kind on Iran will tantamount to disaster for not only the whole region of ground zero, the ensuing chaos will engulf the whole of Europe and Asia. Iran’s closing of Strait of Hormuz via attacks on tankers, as well as upheaval inside Iraq and Afghanistan where Iran has substantial backing, will have ripple effect on the whole globe.

With missile having range of 2000 km and substantially damaging load, Iran sure is on different ground regarding its preparedness as it was ten years ago. If some humanity is still left in the war mongering team of Capitol Hill, than the colossal human losses should be good enough reason to talk sense towards improving relations with Iran to reduce the suffering of Iraqi nation. Being not able to subdue Iraqi insurgency, the US army chief, finds it convenient to point fingers at Iran; the ugliness of laboured arguments against Iran the US Gene-rals in Iraq have forwarded is too obvious to go unnoticed.

With the change in the argument against Iran changes the strategy: how to woo American nation for aerial strikes against Iran as the Nuclear argument has not work. The whole world, except a few European toadies, understand the nuclear issue is a political ruse made under the influence of Zionist-Jewish-Fanatic Christian lobbies at home, and that Iran has no appetite for militarising its nuclear programme. The American nation also has notbought it.

Now to exploit American nation’s sensitivities towards its safety and security of its soldiers being in harm’s way in Iraq Bush and his war mongering team have changed stance against Iran. To be more effective, this time, the propaganda is being spear headed by Genral Paetreas and his team dealing with insurgency in Iraq to give certain amount of veracity to accusations against Iran.

The US must understand tat Iraq is the mess that has originally been created by the US itself, and it has become its own responsibility to clean this Aegean Stable. For doing so, its leaders need to be more human in their perception and planning. To combat Al-Qaeda and other violent groups working against the interests of Iraq, the US must engage Iran and Syria. Both countries being Iraq’s friends, want to do everything to stabilise Iraq, which according to the US assessment has marginally improved but in real terms nothing has improved in Iraq though.

The US role so far has been negative in the equation as its objectives regarding Israeli-US suzerainty over the area and the US domineering presence in the region come in direct clash with the national interests of other regional players.

The US must understand that as long as its forces stay in the Gulf, the regional as well as global peace will remain elusive.Learning from his failures so far to woo the world against Iran over its nuclear programme, whose peaceful and civil nature Iran has ever been claiming since beginning; Mr. Bush will do a service to his nation as well as to the world peace by refraining from opening a new front   against Iran.

First time appeared in Pakistan Observer on February 12, 2008