thought you m=ght find amusing Forwarded me=sage From: Noam Chomsky Date: Fri, Aug 7, 201= at 11:57 PM Subject: RE: Re: To: "jeffrey E." <[email protected]> Neat indeed. I'm writing about the Iran deal= So far have only sent a form paragraph in response to requests. = Below. Noam <1=> On Iran, as usual, IQ=80Qm a gloomy contrarian. I'm glad the treaty was signed, a=d it's kind of fun to watch the Republican lunatics shrieking hyste=ically as they try to kill it (as they may). And Israeli hypocrisy has gone well beyond being comical. But in fact the whole thing is fa=cical, in my opinon. In the US, Iran is "the greatest threat t= world peace", intoned constantly from on high, in the media, every=here. There is also such a thing as world opinion, as measured by such ultra-radicals as Gallup. It turns out that the grea=est threat to world peace is the US, by a very wide margin, no one else eve= close, and Iran barely mentioned. The American population is protect=d from these unwanted facts by the Free Press: not reported. There is an organization called US intelligence.=nbsp; They brief Congress regularly on the international security situation= all quite public. On Iran, they point out that it has very limited m=litary power, even by regional standards (a small fraction of Saudi Arabia, for example). Its strategic doctrine i= defensive. If — a big If — it has plans for nuclear w=apons, that would be part of its deterrent strategy. Now who would be=opposed to Iran having a deterrent strategy? Answer is clear: the rogue states that rampage violently in the region and don't wan= any impediment: the US and Israel, also lesser ones like UK and France.&nb=p; One simple way to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons would be to estab=ish a nuclear-weapons free zone in the region, as has been done elsewhere (over US objections). That's been a=vocated by the Arab states for 20 years, with very wide global support, inc=uding Iran. It comes up regularly at the 5-year review meetings of th= Nonproliferation Treaty, at the UN, again a few months ago, when, again, it was blocked by the US to protect its Israel= client, which has a huge nuclear weapons arsenal and wants to keep it.&nbs=; Again, the population is protected from such facts by the Free Press (tho=gh in this case there are some fringe exceptions, and of course the Arms Control literature). Same with the=rest of the litany. Reading the US and UK press is like living in som= lunatic asylum. I'm wondering whether to write about it Q=93 again; have done so repeatedly. It's like talking to a wall. Iran has an awful government, though by the standards of such=US allies as Saudi Arabia, it's practically heaven. =/u> Nevertheless, better to=have the treaty than not to, given the nature of the asylum.<=span> 2 EFTA_R1_01357624 EFTA02363966