American warmongers lying about Iran: Ex-US official

A former attorney at the US Department of Justice says hawkish politicians in the United States are attempting to deceive the American public about Iran’s nuclear energy program to repeat an Iraq-style war scenario.

In an article titled “The Dogs of War Are Barking,” published on the website of the Huffington Post, Jeremiah Goulka referred to how incumbent US President Barack Obama and his Republican presidential rival, Mitt Romney, have attempted to “sell” a potential war on Iran by distorting facts about Iran’s nuclear activities.

Goulka argued that Obama has sought to deceive the American public with, inter alia, the US-engineered sanctions and “covert and cyber warfare” against the Islamic Republic.

Likewise, Romney has surrounded himself with hawkish advisers, “the same people who brought us the Global War on Terror and the Iraq War,” the American analyst further said. “Along with their colleagues in hawkish think-tanks, they have spent years priming the public to believe that Iran has an ongoing nuclear weapons programme,… getting ever shriller each time credible officials and analysts disagree.”

“Republican-friendly media have joined the game, running blustery TV segments on the subject and cooking the books,” to further mislead the US public, he wrote.

In order to show how the anti-Iran publicity campaign by the hawkish politicians in the US has been misleading the Americans, Goulka then pointed to the viewpoint held by the US National Intelligence Council that the Islamic Republic is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The American columnist also cited the fatwa against nuclear weapons by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

On February 22, Ayatollah Khamenei said the Islamic Republic considers the pursuit and possession of nuclear weapons “a grave sin” from every logical, religious and theoretical standpoint.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran rejects the allegations, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it is entitled to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that any such measure could result in a war that would spread beyond the Middle East.

“War with Iran is an incredibly bad idea,” Goulka wrote, concluding that, “Even talk of a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities is delusional, … and it would be an act of war that Iran wouldn’t absorb with a smile.”