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The Unitarian Church of All Souls • 1157 Lexington Avenue • New York, NY 10021 email: peacetaskforcenyc@yahoo.com
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Film: Iran (Is Not the Problem)
Review by Phoebe Hoss February 8, 2009 On Sunday, February 8, at 1:00, the Peace Task Force presented the documentary film entitled Iran (Is Not the Problem). This film was made by Aaron Newman of the San Francisco Bay Area and featured local activists from a variety of peace organizations: Majid Baradar, Sahar Driver (the narrator), Larry Everest, David Glick, Robert Gould, Jim Haber, Antonia Juhasz, Shahab Layeghi, Mitchel Plotnick, and Michael Veiluva. The film’s aim was to refute the misinformation that our government disseminates, and that is not carefully examined and criticized by the mainstream media. As the journalist I. F. Stone said once, “Governments lie”; ours is no exception. The film focuses on the U.S. government’s lies in connection with Iran – a nation with whom at the time the film was made the Bush Administration seemed bent on fomenting war, as it had with Iraq. The basic issue is oil. Two thirds of the world’s oil and natural gas are in the Middle East, and the great powers have long vied to control it. Hence, the United States has supported dictatorships in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. After 9/11, the Bush Administration aimed to launch a boundless war on terror and, through it, achieve world domination. Iraq was the first step. But that plan boomeranged, weakening the United States, strengthening Iran, and enhancing terrorism around the world. Although the administration has called the Iraq war a “mistake,” it is not: it is a war crime. As would be an attack on Iran. To justify a war with Iran, the Bush Administration promoted the idea that Iran is building or intends to build nuclear weapons. But – according to the International Atomic Energy Agency at the time of the film – there was no evidence that Iran was doing either. To understand the situation, people need to know the basic history of modern Iran. In 1953, the United States, via the C.I.A., overthrew the Iran government, assassinating the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, who had nationalized the oil industry. In his place, they installed the Shah, who allowed the United States -- along with France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands -- to own the oil. The Shah’s repressive government led, in time, to major public protest; ultimately, in 1979, he was overthrown and an Islamic government took over.. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, resulting in eight years of war – a war in which the U.S. played both sides, giving money and arms to Iraq even though it was using chemical weapons. Indeed, Saddam Hussein was our ally until he invaded Kuwait in 1990. Today Iran is a theocracy and doesn’t do the United States’s bidding. The fact that it is a reactionary and repressive government is, however, no excuse for our attacking it. We need to recognize that its president, Mahmoud Ahmenidijab, is a figurehead who loves to be provocative. On the other hand, the Ayatollah Khomeni, who has the real power, has said he would be totally willing to back the Saudi peace plan – a fact seldom mentioned in the mainstream media. Recently, the United States has threatened Iran. But war is entirely unjustified – especially nowadays when the people largely hurt by any war are not the soldiers fighting it but the millions of civilians who get caught in it. As Howard Zinn says, “No flag is large enough to cover innocent people.” Rather than go to war, we need to learn the arts of persuasion and cooperation. We need to stop thinking we’re exceptional and not bound by international law. We need to appreciate other countries’ history. We need to reduce our own weapons, to support international law and justice and the World Court, and to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. We need, in sum, to renounce U.S. imperialism and let the Iranians – and other people – change their own country themselves. Following the film, in the question-and-answer period, some in the audience asked how they could find out what is really going on. The answer lies in the non-mainstream media. Subscribe to The Nation or The New York Review of Books or read them at your library. Also, such websites as TomDispatch.com regularly have illuminating articles. Moreover, the TomDispatch.com website lists a variety of online sources -- such as truthdig.com or the great British newspaper The Guardian -- that provide alternative and reliable news. From both The Nation and the New York Review of Books, I knew, for example, before we went to war with Iraq, that reliable observers seriously doubted the existence of weapons of mass destruction in that country. |