Video- ‘US pro-Zionists behind Iran threats’

Recent calls made at a US presidential debate to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program represent the interests of pro-Zionists, “who dominate the US Congress,” an analyst tells Press TV.

“These words do not represent the majority sentiment of American people,” Cofounder of the American-Iranian Friendship Committee Eleanor Ommani, said in an interview with Press TV.

However, she said the “outrageous [comments] that in any other country would not be acceptable” were only allowed to be made because they came from the “far right, pro Zionists, who dominate the US Congress.”

On Saturday, during a debate among a number of Republican presidential hopefuls, calls ranging from executing covert operations such as terrorism and assassinations to launching a military strike on Iran were made to subvert Tehran’s nuclear program.

Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich openly advocated increased covert terrorism against Iran.

He suggested employing “maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program including taking out their scientists and breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable.”

US Senator Rick Santorum explicitly advocated a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities and said, “We would be working with Israel right now to do what they did in Syria, what they did in Iraq, which is take out that nuclear capability.”

When asked whether he would choose to strike Iran militarily, Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said, “absolutely.”

Washington’s aggressive rhetoric against Iran’s nuclear program is merely a diversion to enhance US officials’ own standing and to reinforce US capitalism, Ommani added.

“It is really a cover. Both Obama, from the Democratic Party, and the Republicans are using Iran for two reasons: To bolster their own careers and at the same time strengthen US capitalism,” she said.

The calls for assassination and terrorist acts come as Iran has lost a number of its scientists, including professors Majid Shahriari on November 29, 2010, and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi in January 2010, to terrorism in recent years.

On Nov. 4, 2011 Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili announced that Tehran has irrefutable evidence that proves the US government was involved in anti-Iran conspiracies as well as in dispatching elements to carry out acts of sabotage and terror in Iran and other regional countries.

The United States, Israel, and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program and have used this pretext to push for the imposition of sanctions on the country as well as to call for an attack on the country.

Iran argues that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, it has the right 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.