[PatrickHenry]

The Iran War is on the Front Burner

The war that Dick Cheney has been planning against Iran, has moved from the back burner to the front, and those who do not see this are either blind or complicit. Military deployments are in place, as laid out in detail in a Sept. 16 feature by Michel Chossudovsky in Global Research, while the statements of intent to wage war, issued by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, have been hyped in British and American news outlets. The fact that war is high on the agenda, was denounced by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. Mohammad ElBaradei, who made a dramatic exit from an ongoing meeting of the IAEA board of governors on Sept. 11, in protest against the manifest intent of the U.S. and U.K. delegations, as well as the rotating EU presidency representative, to proceed to military aggression. ElBaradei, who was so furious that he initially refused to talk to the press, had clearly stated, in his Sept. 10 report to the body, that the course chosen by the IAEA, to proceed with diplomacy and inspections, was succeeding in providing the necessary clarifications of outstanding questions about Iran's nuclear energy program. <snip> Due to the fact that the war party did not succeed in Vienna, to corral the IAEA members into endorsing punitive measures against Iran, the Bush-Cheney Administration announced that it would hold a meeting on Sept. 21, to discuss "broadening UN sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend nuclear activity,'' as State Department spokesman Sean McCormack put it. The meeting is to bring together the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, the so-called 5+1. At the same time, the drumbeat for war became louder. Over the Sept. 15-16 weekend, the British press worked overtime to promote the cause of war in Southwest Asia. From the {Sunday Observer}, to the {Telegraph} and Sunday {Times}, the message delivered was unequivocal: "Bush Setting Up for War With Iran,'' announced the {Telegraph}, while the {Observer} headlined, "Time Is Running Out To Avoid War With Iran.'' The {Telegraph} retailed the line that the Pentagon had a list of 2,000 targets in Iran, adding that Cheney was committed to deploying nuclear bunker-buster bombs against presumed Iranian nuclear sites. The press also referenced the provocative Israeli strikes over Syria, as part of the regional war process. Then, on Sept. 16, a bombshell was dropped from Paris. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner (notorious for his endorsement of military interventions on ``humanitarian grounds''), issued a blunt statement that France must be prepared for a war with Iran. Although Prime Minister François Fillon later tried to water down the remarks, the message was clear. And no one could forget President Nicholas Sarkozy's recent visit with the Bushes at Kennebunkport. Following his return to Paris, Sarkozy, according to source reports, started sending notes to various European capitals, that the message he had received from Bush was that war with Iran was inevitable.