Heather Wokusch is in the process of finishing her book, “Progressive Primer, 100 easy ways to make a difference now.” She explained that she is writing the book to, “cut through the haze of propaganda surrounding U.S. politics these days.”

Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment, I’m Dori Smith. Heather Wokusch is our guest this time. You may have seen her diverse writing in Common Dreams and other publications such as Truthout.org Heather Wokusch is presently working on a book for progressives. Her web site is HeatherWokusch.com

In Today’s interview we take a look at her February 19th 2006 piece WWIII or Bust, Implications of a U.S. Attack on Iran

Dori Smith: Heather talk about the meaning of your title, “WWIII or Bust,” this implies a comic tragedy about worst case scenarios.

Heather Wokusch: I don’t intend to say that we immediately are going to go into WWIII next month or something; however, I really do believe that the policies that are in place now are both highly destructive and their destructive potential is intensifying very quickly. And especially given what is going on in Iran or potentially could be going on, that could really prove a lightening rod and so that was my intention in writing the article: One to talk about some of the ulterior motives behind the Bush Administration’s desire, you could say, to attack Iran, and mainly also to talk about some of the repercussions if that actually did happen, to get people thinking about it and talking about it.

Dori Smith: Well they certainly are talking about it, I understand you have had quite a response to this piece. Talk about that and what kinds of things people are saying as they contact you.

Heather Wokusch: This piece has been interesting because it has appeared on more web sites than I believe any of my articles ever have in the past. You mentioned Common Dreams, also Truthout, and Global Research, and Citizens for Legitimate Government, Information Clearing House, on and on, across the board. And the reactions that I have gotten, I’ve gotten perhaps a couple of hundred emails per day; I’ll put it that way, from all over the world. From so-called “conservatives” to so-called “liberals” across the board and people are saying, (laughs) quote, I have gotten the same quote many times, “your article scared the crap out of me.”

–This I’ve heard more than once. I’ve gotten two main reactions. One denial, primarily people from the United States saying, no no, this is impossible, because as I mention in the article, I will just read one sentence, “Under orders from Vice President Cheney’s office, the Pentagon has developed “last resort” aerial-assault plans using long-distance B2 bombers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles with both conventional and nuclear weapons.” –And that’s the thing, a lot of people are saying, no no no, our country doesn’t have nuclear weapons and it isn’t legal for us to use them anyway. And the other reaction I’ve gotten is from people who say oh my goodness this is just horrible but I feel very disempowered, I don’t know what to do, and so those have been the two main reactions.

Dori Smith: Talk about the difference in the two descriptions; that Iran could develop a bomb and Iran is developing a bomb and will have it soon.

Heather Wokusch: For example, the U.S. intelligence agencies basically believe that Iran is between three and ten years away from being able to manufacture a nuclear weapon. So this is not something that is urgent right now. This is something that is in the future and arguably there are better ways of dealing with it than through some military attack.

If we look at the history of what is going on here. In late 2003 the U.S. said that Tehran was seeking to build nuclear weapons OK? And then in November 2004, Iran said, “OK, voluntarily, we will have a temporary halt to our uranium enrichment program. But they didn’t really get any carrots; they got a lot of sticks. So in August 2005 they said OK we are going to resume our enrichment program.

The interesting thing now is that Iran actually is not in noncompliance with the non-proliferation treaty. The media is leading us to believe otherwise but it is not in noncompliance. What this whole international atomic energy agency decision was, this month (February 2006) was that they have decided that the Director General Mohammed El Baradei will report to the Security Council about transparency measures for Iran. Now these are over and above the normal NPT obligations. So it’s really important to keep in mind that they haven’t actually done anything wrong as far as the NPT yet and to keep this in mind when the media kind of makes it a gray area.

Update: the BBC reported on February 4th 2006 that Iran has been reported to the Security Council.

Dori Smith: We’ve seen a lot of warnings about Iran and developments along these lines over the past year with some analysts warning that the pressure and rhetoric from the U.S. is actually having a negative impact on Iran and decisions about security that are being made by people like Ahmadinejad. Just talk about the climate in Iran and how the rhetoric from America might impact events there.

Heather Wokusch: As part of your question also one might need to ask is that actually the plan to kind of inflame tensions and to get conflict brewing. Is that an accident or is that the plan? There is a very important part of this that we need to look at and that is that in March, next month, Iran has made the announcement that it is going to open a petro-euro oil trading market. And what that means is that Iran can trade oil in Euros instead of dollars. If this happens this would also allow the OPEC countries to do the same thing and this is something that could be extremely dangerous for the U.S. economy. So many analysts believe that this whole thing about nuclear weapons is just a facade and the real goal is to be sure that Iran does not open this Bourse.

If we think back to Iraq, for example, in late 2000 Saddam Hussein announced that he wanted Euros for his oil and he also converted his ten billion dollar reserve fund at the UN into Euros. Many people speculated that in fact one of the major reasons that the US invaded Iraq was because of trying to change oil trading into Euros. And so we’ve got this coming up next month in Iran. And that’s really highly significant. You know another thing we’ve got coming up next month is the Israeli elections. On March 28th I believe they will be deciding the 17th Knesset and of course the whole issue of Iran is also very big in Israel. So there’s just yet another piece of the puzzle.

Dori Smith: Heather when we look at financial issues for America, and in fact we see an AP Wire story coming out just today February 22, 2006, that Japan will provide the U.S. with funds so that it might remove its troops from their country. This implies again a level of desperation. What kind of an impression is this climate of potential economic disaster for America impacting the world, actually, what kind of an impression is this making do you think globally? I mean it seems this could open up all sorts of situations where people now have to change their contingency plans, change their alliances.

Heather Wokusch: Oh indeed and also you can imagine that people aren’t that terribly excited about holding on to a lot of dollars either. But you know we can look at some numbers as I mention in the article. The U.S. trade deficit reached a record high of $725.8 billion in 2005, yet the Bush Administration’s budget proposes increases deficits by $192 billion over the next five years. So we are not exactly tightening our belts.

As I recall you said that you are coming out of the University of Connecticut. Well there’s something for students and anybody involved in education to consider also. Currently, the United States is spending almost $7 billion, $7 billion dollars a month on military operations only in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now combine that with the fact that discretionary spending on education for the fiscal year 2007 budget is only going to be around $55 billion dollars.

What this means basically is that in fiscal year 2007 the Administration is proposing to spend $30 billion more dollars on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq than for all of the discretionary spending education funds in the United States. Now you’ve got to ask, where are our priorities? And you know another thing that I should mention that is going to happen next month in relation to your questions is that it is expected that the United States will hit its debt ceiling of a little bit over $8 trillion dollars next month. That’s an absolute record debt ceiling already and that means they are going to have to just increase that and so it really looks as if we are heading towards a different kind of Armageddon you could say, economically, and we need to really look at this as a country and we need to have some sound economic policies in place and its just not happening.

Dori Smith: It seems as if there has never been a time when trust in a U.S. leader has been this low. So when we look at that aspect it makes it all the worse to think that this is an administration now dealing with a sense of desperation about our economy.

Heather Wokusch: Yes and in fact I started the article saying that witnessing the Bush Administration’s drive for an attack on Iran is like being a passenger in a car with a raving drunk at the wheel. That’s really how it feels. It’s like oh my goodness it’s like this white knuckle ride and we really don’t know what we are doing. Another element of what you just said is that it’s not only, of course, the Bush Administration, but we have individuals such as Dick Cheney and also Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.

He just released the Pentagon Defense Review that they do every four years and he is calling for this infinite long war and our military should operate around the globe. You really get the sense that this guy is not interested very much in pursuing anything relating to peace. And it for me just is screaming irony about this whole thing is that one of the four big goals, apparently, in Rumsfeld’s plan, is to get countries such as Russia and China, well China specifically, to not be antagonistic towards us.

Yet, absolutely everything that we are doing is making them antagonistic. Speaking of this whole WWIII thing I was thinking in terms of new alliances that have developed globally. For example, Iran, OK, Russia, China, and Iran, are very tight and they have just gotten closer and developed more military ties, more trade ties, more who knows what over the past year. In a way our policies have really pushed these people together. You could say together against the United States, and this is not very helpful certainly long term.

It’s really interesting that just recently Russia announced that China would be the third partner in the Russia, Iran, nuclear talks. Well right after that the U.S. announced that it is going to hold massive war games, the biggest naval exercises in the Asia Pacific this summer and they said, “Because they wanted to provide a deterrent for anyone who would wish us ill.” I mean they are talking about China. -So we just keep pushing this belligerent card when we really need to be looking at something more focused on diplomacy in my opinion.

Dori Smith: We are talking with Heather Wokusch about her February 19, 2006 piece, WWIII or Bust; Implications of a U.S. Attack on Iran. Let’s turn to your discussion on Khuzestan Province bordering Iraq which has 90% of Iran’s oil as well as the Strait of Hormuz. Talk about what you mean where you discuss these two regions.

Heather Wokusch: These would be one of the big prizes in an attack on Iran. One, of course it would be to stop this oil trading market that would trade in euros, but presumably, given the individuals that we have in office they also would be interested in getting control over Iran’s oil. And of course if they could do that then they could influence the whole petro-euro market. So this is just my assumption that that would be one huge priority, to somehow get control over that province. But then as you mentioned there also is the issue of the Strait of Hormuz, and that’s a little stretch of ocean that borders Iran and basically that is the shipping route for a huge proportion of the oil that comes into the world from the Gulf area. And it really would not be that difficult just to block that area and then really threaten the global oil supply. My assumption also is that they would want to somehow secure the Strait of Hormuz so that it could not be used against the United States and to raise energy prices.

Dori Smith: I know a lot of people listening to this program frequently read the internet. There has been a story on the internet that mentions CIA Director Porter Goss and an article in the German newspaper Der Spiegel which according to you “Goss told the Turkish Government it would be informed of any possible air strikes against Iran a few hours before they happened.” Talk about the implications of Turkey and other allies of the United States in this region.

Heather Wokusch: Well Turkey is in just a very special position as it was in the first attack on Iraq that the Bush Administration did, primarily just because of where it’s located. Turkey shares a border with Iran. And according to Noam Chomsky, Turkey is very heavily supported by the U.S. domestic Israeli lobby and actually, according to Chomsky, 12% of the Israeli air and tank force is stationed in Turkey. So clearly the United States wants to get Turkey on its side and needs those bases, basically, in order to conduct some kind of attack on Iran. But Turkey is also interested in joining the European Union. It’s between a rock and a hard place as far as what it does. What we do know is that there has been a massive increase in the number of high level U.S. visitors to Turkey recently. We can perhaps surmise that it has something to do with Iran.

Dori Smith: Headlines in America right now are about the President who has said that he will make sure that America sells major U.S. ports to a company from Dubai. Is it possible that the Bush Administration will start to engage in a kind of quid pro quo to collect allies in this region of the world?

Heather Wokusch: I guess that’s possible but I don’t know if the port issue is directly in relation to Iran. I would think that perhaps there are other economic and who knows what issues going on there. Personally, I think it doesn’t really make sense because sets him up for a lot of controversy to say the least domestically. But the issues regarding what you are saying is the U.S. foreign policy, how can we get friends, you know, and so far at least in the Middle East it seems to be a lot is invested in propaganda. -You know Karen Hughes and her disastrous little adventures over in the Middle East. And most recently Secretary of State Rice requested $75 million dollars on top of $10 million dollars solely for propaganda, for a propaganda campaign against the Tehran Government.

The problem is that U.S. propaganda campaigns in many parts of the world are just so ham handed that they end up making the States, one look silly, and two, makes people even more suspicious about what’s going on, what the U.S. intentions are. And so it seems at this point we want to bribe people or scare them militarily or perhaps use propaganda. But long term, clearly this is not the best approach.

Dori Smith: Let’s talk about what you have said about the stakes and some of the “what ifs” you have described and just go through your piece about a possible U.S. Military action against Iran. First, let’s take a look at what kinds of attitudes and reactions would immediately appear in both Iraq and Iran, and other countries. Heather Wokusch: I mean clearly Tehran would not just sit there. Well you know another thing you have to ask is under what circumstances would an attack take place? I mean the U.S. Government would have to be absolutely insane to go ahead and attack Iran. However, if Israel were to go and bomb what they would consider to be a nuclear weapons plant and then Iran retaliated against Israel, well then most likely the U.S. would protect Israel. So we have many different scenarios potentially leading to a conflict here.

Tehran would, well they have already promised a quote “crushing response”. And we talked before about the fact that they could block the Strait of Hormuz. They could use long range missiles and try to perhaps hit Israel.

Of course we’ve got Shiite Muslim populations. They are a potent force, they are powerful in Saudi Arabia, largely control the Governments of Iran and Iraq, and this would clearly incite more activity if not violence. I said in the article it would also activate perhaps the Lebanese Hezbollah, and so we could be looking at an increase in global terrorism and certainly this would further endanger U.S. soldiers on the ground in Iraq. This is certainly not a helpful thing. And then also, we talked before about how it is pushing Russia, China, Iran, and Muslim countries, into each other’s arms because they would see us as just so out of control. They would presumably think that some kind of new coalition needs to be created just to stop the U.S.

We also have to think about if the States actually did use some kind of quote “tactical” nuclear weapon in the process that would be in violation of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. So what on earth motivation would other countries have to abide by global disarmament agreements and that’s yet another Pandora’s Box that we would be opening in this process.

We also have to keep in mind that even if we don’t use nuclear weapons in the process, just by bombing some of these nuclear reactions that would send a radioactive cloud out that could be extremely devastating. In fact, the Oxford Research Group predicted that up to 10,000 people would die if the U.S. bombed Iran’s nuclear sites.

So the stakes are just so incredibly high that I mean clearly calm heads are required right now. And I do believe that each of us, on a very individual level, does have the power to make a difference in this, to stop this train. And I think one thing that’s very important is that we acknowledge that this current talk about using a tactical nuclear weapon in Iran, in fact, is not something random that just popped up out of the blue. It’s very important to realize that there has been a concerted effort from day one on the part of the Bush Administration to make the use of nuclear weapons more feasible.

For example, January 2001, we had something called the rationale and requirements for U.S. nuclear forces and arms control. This served as the basis for the nuclear posture review and it talked about, for example, “it’s necessary to use nuclear weapons in certain cases.” -Then we had the Nuclear Posture Review delivered to Congress in 2001, which stated directly, “nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack.”

Now this was radically different, this concept of using nuclear weapons. Then we had December 11th, 2002, the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Again, saying that the U.S. can potentially use nuclear weapons. -We have something in May, 2004, “nuclear weapons deployment authorization Presidential direction.” This authorizes the Military to continue the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, OK? But then it gets really interesting. We’ve got something called, “Con Plan 8022-02,” this is November 2003, and this again lays out even more clearly that this global strike plan holds the nuclear option.

What I find just fascinating is that we have got this Executive Order 13292 issued in March 2003, mind you; this is the same order that granted Cheney the ability to classify documents. But this order made the items quote “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and “Defense against Transnational Terrorism,” classified. Now what this means is that this nuclear weapons build up can occur and the American people don’t need to be told about it, and we can see very clearly how there has been this desire to somehow legitimate the use of a nuclear weapon. And so we really do not have the right at this point in time to be surprised that they are thinking about actually potentially using one in Iran.

Dori Smith: We have seen today news of a horrible attack in Iraq where violence has been increasing. We’ve seen an attack on a major Shiite holy site, a Mosque. This is going to have repercussions in the region, but it does bring to mind the risk that Christian fundamentalists in the West and Islamic fundamentalists in the East and in the Middle East will start to see events now proceeding towards a Holy War and what has been referred to as the ultimate holy war, Armageddon.

Heather Wokusch: Yes, and what I found fascinating actually in researching this, I didn’t know before that Iran’s new Shiite Islam President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, subscribes to the Shiite Islam form of the Messianic return. And so we have the end time’s folks in the States waiting for the rapture, but then there is also a Messianic return version of Shiite Islam in which the skies turn to flames and blood flows, in Baghdad by the way, and then the hidden Imam returns and then creates world peace by establishing Islam as the global religion.

One could arguably say look at what did happen in Baghdad; we’re just one step closer to this happening. We also have the Temple Mount individuals wanting to create the Jewish Temple on the site in Jerusalem, so one could hope that this is not the majority of individuals seeking a holy war but clearly it is many of the people in power actually do subscribe to belief systems that doesn’t make it seem like such a bad thing if there were to be some kind of nuclear blow out in the Middle East. And quite frankly for me that makes it even more frightening.

Dori Smith: And now that we have frightened ourselves and our audience, and I’m sure that people have already been thinking about all of these potentials, and it is healthy to talk about them; let’s talk about what can be done about the situation in America, in Europe, where we are talking with you now.

Heather Wokusch: That’s the good thing because there are steps to positive action that we can take every day and I would highly suggest that your listeners visit the web site CampaignIran.org. They’ve got some really good ideas there. They have a “what you can do” page for example, calling radio talk shows, or writing letters in opinion pages, or things like that. -There was a really interesting article on AntiWar.com it’s called How to Stop the Planned Nuking of Iran by Jorge Hirsch.

What he says is that as it exists now the full authority for the use of nuclear weapons, the full authority, rests with the President, rests with Bush. And he also has the ability to use nuclear weapons preemptively. In and of itself that must change. And so what Mr. Hirsch recommends is that we change this law, making it at minimum that he must get permission from Congress in order to consider using a nuclear weapon.

Jorge Hirsch says a possible bill on this could say, “purpose, to affirm the Congress’s authority under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 14, of the U.S. Constitution, to make rules for the Government and regulation of the armed forces and apply such authority to the United States use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states.” What he is saying is that he wants the Constitution to say that Congress must be informed and given authority to approve the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. At the very minimum I believe this is what we should do.

Dori Smith: Heather Wokusch thank you so much for joining us today.

Heather Wokusch: Thank you so much for having me I appreciate it.

Dori Smith: Heather Wokusch is author of a February 19, 2006 piece that has created a stir on the internet, “WWIII or Bust: Implications of a U.S. Attack on Iran,” is the title. Heather Wokusch is currently working on a book for progressives. Her web site is HeatherWokusch.com.

I’m Dori Smith for Talk Nation Radio, produced in the studios of WHUS Storrs, Radio for the People at Uconn, visit WHUS.org to listen live Wed. at 5 PM.