Video- ‘US uses UN as a tool to wage wars’

A US push to isolate Iran has reached epic proportions with the latest US allegations that Iran had planned to assassinate a Saudi ambassador on American soil.

From the onset, critics from both within the US and outside have concluded this to be a baseless charge against Iran.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Sara Flounders, co-director of International Action Center from New York, to ask her why the US has made this claim and whether legally the US should be held responsible for making false accusations or not.

Below is the script of the interview:

Press TV: The US has waged two wars in the past decade. The wars have been on lies. Millions of people have been killed; many millions more have been displaced as the result of these wars. And this has happened while the UN has been mum on these crimes. Why so much silence on the side of the UN?

Flounders: First of all, these charges are absolute outrage and fabrication and have absolutely no basis in fact whatsoever. The very fact that the US on the basis of these which even in the media no one has taken seriously and yet they have gone to every country in the world; the state department directed US ambassadors to meet with heads state of every country; they have gone to the UN about this.

And of course the UN has done nothing about ten years of war in Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq, the war in Libya, the drone attacks, how about US assassination policy against Pakistani, Yemeni, Sudan, and Somalia in villages and in neighborhoods, their attacks again and again, even the US citizens targeted for assassination in Yemen, one attack after another. So how do they divert attention from this? By suddenly trying to turn it into an attack on Iran and I think while it has no basis in fact, it is an extremely dangerous example and it does show that there is a ramping up of new threats to follow on Iran.

It is a very important time in the US to stand up at a time when tens and hundreds of thousands of people are in the streets. This Saturday was an international ‘Day of Rage’ and in all of these events, there were people who brought signs and banners saying, ‘Stop the war threats on Iran’, ‘Occupy Wall Street, not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not Libya’ and so on.

So this is an important time to challenge these fabricated charges but at the same time to take them seriously because clearly the US has major problems internationally and domestically and is looking for a way to divert attentions from their own problems and their own crises which are extremely serious and growing.

The very coming – what they say will be a new even more – dramatic economic downturn, the anger in the US which is really escalating at the worsening conditions of life are absolutely of totally failed policy in their past wars but it is also what makes them at this point so very dangerous.

Press TV: How is this going to backfire on the United States? Is there a possibility in this case and point looking at the critics of this allegation – the latest one on Iran – which has been both domestically not only from the US’s ex-apparatus in terms of lieutenant colonels who served in the US army all the way critics from all around the world which just a search on the internet will show that for the common general public out in the world. So how will this backfire on the US?

Flounders: It already is backfiring but there it comes in the midst of such a host of utterly failed policies of one war after another where they cannot prevail and absolutely brutal wars where more than a million people have died just considering Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet it is the military corporations and oil corporations and banking corporations all interlinked that decide US policy and also have continued to give unending military, economic, political, diplomatic aid to Israel as their attack dog, as their pit bull for wars and instability in the region and yet none of these is succeeding.

That is the important problem and so it makes the same war criminals, in every sense of the word, more and more anxious and also in a genuine way more ridiculous. It was so interesting that almost none of the media has even taken these charges seriously because they are so absolutely wild. The Mexican drug cartels used car salesman who was totally unstable, assassinations in Washington.

It is ridiculous on every face of it and yet that has been the basis also of past US wars, completely unsubstantiated charges. So we have to take it seriously because this is a war machine that is dangerous and by their power are able again and again to use the United Nations as a tool.

Iran has – in every sense and in a very calm way – stood up to these charges and attacks; in the past has answered fact with wild fabrications from the US and that has been their response so far. But the ability to use these charges again and again has less traction here at home.

This is at the time when the overwhelming majority of the population here is against all US wars and where the average person is making the links between deteriorating conditions right here at home, loss of jobs, loss of homes, the youths having no future and the war policies abroad. So in a certain sense, they are reaching in more and more ridiculous ways but it is not just a case of calling it ridiculous.

I think there is an obligation on the movement right here in the US to challenge these charges and say, ‘No, not another war, not anymore sanctions and threats against one country after another’.

Just in this past week – on the very day that there were threats on Iran – there were US troops sent to Uganda with also an opening to be used in Sudan and Somalia along with the drone attacks in Somalia and a whole series of new drone attacks into Pakistan.

So this is a more and more aggressive use of the military, more and more dangerous and a more and more crisis-ridden administration unable to stand up to the military and unable to solve the problems right here and the most important thing – I think – is it is coming at a time of hundreds and thousands of people being in the streets throughout the US and not just for a day but for a month nonstop. That is unprecedented and I think it gives us a great optimism in the midst of the crisis.