Don't Attack Iran! 24 November day of action

From the Stop the War website:

As Bush and Brown continue to threaten Iran with war, the Stop the War Coalition has called a national day of action to say 'Don't attack Iran'.

Across the country Stop the War groups will be holding rallies, die-ins and other activities.

An attack on Iran would destabilise the Middle East further. Far from the promised surgical strike, an attack on Iran could kill thousands if innocent people. We are asking people to pledge to take action in the event of an attack.

Hackney will be holding a 'die-in' and Portsmouth Stop the War have called a rally in the centre of town. If you would like to organise an event in your town, or need to find out what's happening in your area, get in touch with Stop the War today.

In Universities and Colleges across the country, students will be taking action on Thursday 22 November.

Banner painting, die-ins and demonstrations are the order of the day on campuses, and the pledge wil be important in building support for action in the event of an attack.

Students from Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan Universities will march throught the city, whilst students in London will co-ordinate a 'die-in' to bring home the horrific realities of war.

Stop the War conference

Around 500 delegates and observers from 118 different groups attended Stop the War's annual Conference on Saturday. Conference launched a day of action against an attack on Iran on November 24th (November 22nd in the colleges), and a major mobilisation for the World Against War International Peace Conference in London on December 1st.

Speaker's included Annas Al Takriti from the British Muslim Iinitiative, the Guardian's Seumas Milne and Lawyer of the Year Phil Shiner. Somaye Zadeh spoke on behalf of Campaign Iran. See a video of the speech below:



plus John Rees, Seumus Milne and Abbas Edalat below:

Model motion for trade unions

This model motion for British trade unionists opposing sanctions and war on Iran has been formulated by Campaign Iran and CASMII. This is to be circulated amongst trade unionists inside Stop The War and CND with a view to getting trade union branches and/or conferences to take a stand against war and sanctions on Iran.

We would urge all trade union members who are against an attack on Iran to take this to their trade union branches. For those who would like it to be submitted to their trade union conferences, please check deadlines for submissions as these may well be months before the conferences actually take place.

For further advice please contact us on 07729 464497. We are pleased that a similar motion was passed at BECTU conference in 2006 (see second motion on the page) so the precedent has already been set.

Model Resolution on Sanctions and War on Iran

This Branch/Conference notes that:

1) There are indications that a military attack on Iran has been planned and could be executed before George Bush leaves office in 2008 and that this military attack would target Iranian military, economic and civilian infrastructure and might include the use of tactical nuclear strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

2) The IAEA has found no evidence of a weaponisation programme in Iran and the US intelligence agency, The National Intelligence Estimate, has estimated that Iran would be at least 10 years away from obtaining a nuclear weapon should it decide to follow this path. However the US, supported by the UK and France, are persisting that Iran cease uranium enrichment or face more sanctions, with the military option kept ominously open.

3) Over a million people died as a result of sanctions on Iraq.

4) All the completely discredited accusations of supporting terrorism, links to AlQaida and clandestine WMD programme, used to make the case for war on Iraq, are now being used against Iran.

5) As the nuclear accusations are losing credibility, in a shift of focus, the US has been systematically attempting to implicate Iran in Iraq, to justify an extension of the war across the border into Iran.

This Branch/Conference believes:

1) As tragically evidenced in Iraq, sanctions against Iran hurt ordinary people, damage their economic and civil institutions and are prelude to war.

2) Iran’s nuclear issue should be returned from the Security Council to the IAEA and resolved through continued negotiations and not sanctions or war.

3) Sanctions, foreign state interference, destabilization programme and any military intervention or its threat are greatly harmful to the cause of human rights, democratic rights and the civil society organisations in Iran and have therefore been opposed by the leaders of the vibrant democracy movement inside the country.

This Branch/Conference resolves:

1) to demand from the Brown government to:
i) support the IAEA-Iran work plan and allow it time to work
ii) to withdraw British troops from the Iranian border and publicly oppose the military
option against Iran.
iii) to end its support for any new security council sanctions and EU sanctions against Iran.

This Branch/Conference also calls on the TUC to publicly oppose sanctions and war on Iran

Notes to the proposer (Oct 2007)

George Bush’s speech on 28th August, authorizing the American military to “confront Tehran’s murderous activities”, and the deployment of British troops to the Iranian border to guard against Iran’s “proxy war” in Iraq, signify a qualitative shift towards war by the US and a systematic building towards a casus belli for another illegal pre-emptive war.

Currently, IAEA and Iran are engaged on a work plan with strict time limit until November 07 to clarify all the ambiguities over Iran’s nuclear programme which the West purports as the basis of its suspicions of a weaponisation programme in Iran The first findings of the work plan announced the clearance of Iran’s plutonium experiments – labeled by the US as evidence of weaponisation - and verified non-diversion to weaponisation and peaceful use of all declared nuclear activities in Iran. However the US, supported by the UK and France, is persisting with its demand that Iran must cease uranium enrichment or face another round of sanctions whilst the threat of military strike remains ominously present.

Thousands march despite ban

by Somaye Zadeh (Campaign Iran)

Last Monday's Stop The War demonstration was a landmark day. Around 5,000 people turned up on a weekday to demonstrate to bring the troops home from Iraq and to march down to parliament in what we all thought would be a protest in defiance of the police, who had banned us from marching to parliament square. However at the eleventh hour the ban was lifted and the demonstration turned into a celebration of people power, exemplified by the chant "Whose streets? Our streets!"

Campaign Iran was well represented: Our banner was carried by students from SOAS at the head of the 200 strong student feeder march (the first student feeder march there has been since 2003) and our chant of "Gordon Brown here we come, Don't you dare attack Iran" put the issue squarely at the centre of the demonstration.

Various speakers at the rally in Trafalgar Square also warned Gordon Brown against attacking Iran. Our own Mehri Holliday drove the issue home when she spoke from the platform warning against both war and sanctions on Iran: "Sanctions are a prolonged war and cause severe suffering, and rage ultimately, giving way to political violence." she said "Sadly we don’t need to imagine this, we have witnessed it happen in Iraq . Half a million children died in Iraq as result of sanctions, and sanctions on Iran would certainly contribute to a long-term destruction of grass roots civil society. Mr. Brown, abandon the US’s discourse of ‘we want to liberate you, but we have to bomb you first’, it is much more sophisticated to be on the side of global peace and regional stability in the Middle East, you must abandon the expansionist and barbaric policies of the neoconservatives in the United States."

We marched down to parliament square with those thoughts in our heads, handing out over 1500 Campaign Iran postcards to equally concerned demonstrators, but safe in the knowledge that our parliamentarians will not be able to escape the fury of the British population in the case of an attack on Iran by banning us from the streets.

Demonstrate Monday Oct 8th!

ALL TROOPS OUT NOW
OUR RIGHT TO PROTEST

Assemble 1pm Trafalgar Square For Rally

Speakers include Tony Benn, Brian Eno, Mark Thomas, Walter Wolfgang, George Galloway MP and Ben Griffin (ex SAS trooper)

MARCH TO PARLIAMENT

We will be marching to Parliament on Monday 8 October, despite the government insisting that our protest is banned. Human rights group Liberty says our march is legal and we will be exercising democratic right to protest peacefully on the day Gordon Brown makes his long awaited speech on Iraq to the House of Commons.

Stop the War has been flooded with messages of support and a commitment to join our protest, including from Shami Chakrabarti (Liberty), Tony Benn, Walter Wolfgang (Labour Party NEC, Bob Wareing MP, musician Brian Eno, comedian Mark Thomas, author Iain Banks, poet Benjamin Zephaniah and playwright David Edgar.

We urge everyone who has opposed the British government's support for George Bush's war, and who agrees that our right to peaceful protest must be defended, to join us on Monday.

WHY YOU SHOULD JOIN US:

In the run up to this much anticipated general election, the leaders of each major political party have claimed to champion our civil liberties. No doubt they will now unite to ensure that this peaceful demonstration takes place.
SHAMI CHAKRABARTI, Director of Liberty

The authority for this march derives from our ancient right to free speech and assembly enshrined in our history. It is only fair to tell you that the march will go ahead, in any case, and I will be among those marching.
TONY BENN, in letter to the Home Secretary

A protest demanding all the troops out now is of national significance. To try and stop that protest is a major interference with free speech. The march should go ahead whether it is formally permitted or not.
WALTER WOLFGANG, Labour Party NEC

The government want to bury the issue of their disastrous war. They will not succeed. We will be marching in our thousands on Monday.
LINDSEY GERMAN, Convenor Stop the War Coalition

Stop the War Coalition

US prepares for war on Iran

by Naz Massoumi / Source: Socialist Worker

The drums of war against Iran were beating stronger and faster this week.

The neocons around George Bush want to escalate the war in the Middle East in an attempt to extricate the US from the Iraq quagmire – and see an attack on Iran as the best way to do this.

The justification for such an attack has shifted of late – from stopping Iran’s nuclear programme to retaliation for Iran’s alleged support of resistance movements in Iraq and Lebanon.

And the targets have also broadened, with US warmongers talking about a general attack on Iran’s infrastructure as opposed to “surgical strikes” directed at nuclear facilities.

Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the US this week and was met by a feverish wave of jingoistic hysteria. “The Evil Has Landed” read the New York Daily News front page. The New York Post described him as a “madman”.

This follows a week of steadily building hostility towards Iran coming from the US administration and its allies.

On Friday of last week the US state department hosted a meeting with British, French, German, Russian and Chinese officials to try and agree increased sanctions against Iran.

The US also wants other countries to agree to blacklist Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Last month Bush designated the Revolutionary Guards a “terrorist organisation” – a move widely seen as preparing the legal justification for a military attack on Iran.

Meanwhile France’s new foreign minister Bernard Kouchner – one of the few French politicians to back the US-led attack on Iraq in 2003 – warned that the French should “prepare ourselves for the worst”, adding that “the worst is war” against Iran.

The warmongering comes as the occupation of Iraq becomes ever more unpopular in the US.
As veteran anti-war radical Noam Chomsky puts it, “They’re desperate. Everything they touch is in ruins. Under these circumstances, they’re unpredictable. They might go for broke, and hope they can salvage something from the wreckage.”

An attack on Iran would be catastrophic for the people of Iran and the wider Middle East region. It threatens to plunge the world into flames. But this is a price Bush’s neocons are willing to pay in their pursuit of imperial power.

None of this makes war inevitable – but it does mean the global anti-war movement must redouble its efforts to end the US-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and bring all the troops home.

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Considering a war with Iran

The consequences of entering a war with Iran will be catastrophic regionally and globally. Their political and environmental impact, and the human suffering and loss of lives and displacement, are not a matter of prophesy. Rather, they are are fully predictable and, moreover, avoidable. Any such attack on Iran would add exponentially to the horrifying developments and experiences of the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.

In a comprehensive and detailed analysis, Dr Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher make clear the gravity of the state of affairs with regard to any form of military attack on Iran. As the authors put it:

"This study uses open source analysis to outline what the military option might involve if it were picked up off the table and put into action. The study demonstrates that an attack can be massive and launched with surprise rather than merely a contingency plan needing months if not years of preparation."

This document is essential reading and can be found on the following site.
http://www.rawstory.com/images/other/IranStudy082807a.pdf