U.S. Dirty War on Iran

 Last week Iran announced that it had brought down a US drone-- by the Iranian Army’s electronic warfare unit-- with insignificant damage. The aircraft was apparently flying over the northeastern city of Kashmar, about 140 miles from the border with Afghanistan.

The U.S. was silent at first, and later admitted that it has lost control of its drone. American officials have denied that Iran brought down the plane, saying that a technical failure was responsible for the loss of the UAV. Operated by the C.I.A., the drone which carries state of the art technology, was based in neighboring Afghanistan. Iran believes that the unmanned plane was on a reconnaissance mission spying on Iranian military and non-military facilities. The New York Times reported yesterday that, “American officials have said the aircraft was part of an intensified effort to monitor suspect nuclear sites in Iran.”
 

In order to remove any doubt about the existence of the U.S. spy plane in Iran, Iranian television showed the captured drone which seemed intact. Afterwards, Iranian military officials said they were extracting intelligence data from the drone and would reverse-engineer it to learn how it works. Iran also formally protested to the U.N. Security Council and the United States-- through Swiss Ambassador to Tehran-- about the drone incursion into its airspace. Iran also lodged complaints with Afghanistan for allowing the Americans to use that country as a surveillance base.
 

Cognizant of the fact that besides Iranians, the Russians and Chinese are very much interested in getting hold of the drone's technology, and worried about the possible compromise of its intelligence, the U.S. has requested that Iran return the drone. On Monday, President Obama said, “We have asked for it back — we’ll see how the Iranians respond.” And the response from Tehran was swift. Iran’s Defense Minister said on Tuesday that the drone “will remain in the country’s possession as part of its assets.”
 

Knowing that the drone was spying on Iran and thus the obvious negative response from Iran to the U.S. request, the question is why did Obama raise this matter in the first place? Why did the U.S. ask Iran to return the drone to the U.S. while its action was in clear violation of international law and there has not been any apology for that? And why did the American president raise such a request while he did not bother to say whether the U.S. was prepared to give back billions of dollars of Iranian money and assets which are in U.S. hands? Apparently, the U.S. president had some domestic considerations related to next year’s presidential elections in mind when he made his request.
 

The U.S. spying on Iran is part of the continuous covert war against this country. Launching the Stuxnet worm attack against Iran's nuclear program, assassinating nuclear scientists, inflicting damages on military installations through sabotage and covert and overt action against the Iranian economy through the imposition of sanctions are all parts of the same scenario to undermine Iran's sovereignty and to put pressure on Iran to forego its nuclear rights.
 

Is the current hostile atmosphere in the region going to trigger an actual war? Miscalculations have, throughout history, contributed to the initiation of wars. Wise men must prevent warmongers from succeeding in their efforts to impose a catastrophe on the people in the entire region. Only through dialog-- and not pressure and intimidation-- can one hope to find solutions to the current problems.