EU ban on Press Tv a pre-war plan: Analyst

A political expert says the European Union’s decision to block Iranian broadcasting is essentially a declaration of war against the Islamic Republic, Press TV reports.

“They want to silence Press TV and they want to silence any voice from Iran,” Ralph Schoenman, a political commentator from Berkeley, told Press TV in an exclusive interview on Tuesday.

“We have to understand that this is part of essentially a declaration of economic and overall war against the population and the nation of Iran by the American imperialism and by the NATO countries,” Schoenman stated.

The expert referred to a recent debate between US presidential hopefuls, where incumbent President Barack Obama bragged about his administration’s unprecedented restrictions against Iran while his Republican rival Mitt Romney called for yet tougher sanctions.

“That is the context to which the European Union is imposing, as a part of those sanctions, a ban through Eutelsat on transmissions by Press TV. It is part of this economic and military and overall imperial war against Iran,” he pointed out.

Scoffing decoration of Obama and the EU with the Nobel Peace Prize, Schoenman denounced the West’s hypocrisy in seeking a war against Iran under the pretext of concerns over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.

“Iran has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty whereas Israel has refused to sign it. Iran has allowed the IAEA’s – International Atomic Energy Agency – inspections, whereas Israel refuses anything of the kind,” he stressed.

The analyst further denounced the US and Israel for their threats of war against the Islamic Republic that come in line with their “long record of illegal wars of aggression throughout the region.”

Schoenman referred to the three-week joint US-Israeli war game launched a week ago to test Israel’s integrated anti-missile system and reiterated that the ban on Iranian broadcasting, along with the West’s efforts to strangle Iran’s economy, is part of “US-Israeli preparations for war against Iran.”

“Silencing the voice of Press TV is silencing the people of Iran from responding to this threat of war and this strangulation of their economy in which NATO, the imperial countries, and of course the United States and Israel play essentially the leading role,” he concluded.