We Are Living Through an Exceptional Moment
in Human History.
The deadlines established by
the United Nations Security Council
for
Iran to yield to the demands imposed by the United States regarding
nuclear research and uranium enrichment for medical purposes and to
generate electricity will be expiring in these days.
This is the only nuclear use that has been documented in Iran.
The fear that Iran is looking forward to producing nuclear weapons is
only based on an assumption.
With regard to this delicate issue, the United States and its western
allies, among them two of the five nuclear powers with veto power -
France and the United Kingdom - supported by the richest and most
developed capitalist powers of the world, have promoted an increasing
number of sanctions against Iran, a rich, oil-producing Muslim country.
Today, the measures adopted include the inspection of Iran’s merchant
vessels and severe economic sanctions aimed at suffocating its economy.
I have been following very closely the grave dangers that may result
from that situation, because if a war breaks out in that region, it
could very quickly go nuclear, and this will have lethal consequences
for the rest of the planet.
In referring to such danger I was not looking for publicity or
sensationalism. I just wanted to warn the world public opinion hoping
that, being advised of such grave danger it could contribute to avoid
it.
At least we have managed to draw attention to a problem that was hardly
mentioned by the big world media.
This has made me use part of the time scheduled for the launching of
this book, on which we worked diligently. I did not want this to
coincide with the dates of September 7 and 9.
September 7 marks the end
of the 90 days term established by the Security Council to know whether
Iran complied or not with the requirement of authorizing the inspection
of its merchant vessels. September 9 marks the expiration of the three
months term fixed by the Resolution adopted on June 9. Quite possibly
the establishment of this last term was what the Security Council
intended to do originally.
So far we have only had the weird statement made by the Director General
of the
IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), the Japanese
Yukiya
Amano, a man who serves the interests of the Yankees. He added all the
fuel to the flames and then, like Pontius Pilate, he washed his hands of
the issue.
A spokesperson from the Foreign Ministry of Iran commented his
statements with a well earned contempt.
According to a news report
published by EFE, Amano’s assertion that,
“‘our friends should not worry,
because we don’t believe our region is in the position to engage in new
military adventures’ and that ‘Iran was fully prepared to respond to any
military invasion’ was an obvious reference to the Cuban leader Fidel
Castro, ‘who warned about a possible Israeli nuclear attack against Iran
with the support of the United States’”.
News on this topic are pouring and get mixed with others of remarkable
repercussion.
The journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine, already known
by our people, has been publishing some excerpts of the long interview
he made with me.
He has been discussing some interesting
aspects of it before he finally writes a future and long article.
“There were many odd things about my
recent Havana stopover, [...]“, he wrote, but one of the most
unusual was Fidel Castro’s level of self-reflection [...] but it
seemed truly striking that Castro was willing to admit that he
misplayed his hand at a crucial moment in the Cuban Missile Crisis
[...] that he regrets asking Khrushchev to nuke the U.S.”
It is true that he addressed the topic and
he asked me that question.
Literally, as he wrote in the first part of
his report, his words were the following:
“I asked him: At a certain point it
seemed logical for you to recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S.
Does what you recommended still seem logical now?”
He answered:
“After I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and knowing what I know now, it
wasn’t worth it all.”
I had thoroughly explained to him - and there
is written evidence of that - the content of that message:
“…if the United States invades Cuba, a
country with Russian nuclear weapons, under such circumstances
Russia should not allow to be dealt the first strike, as the one
dealt against the USSR on June 22, 1941, when the German army and
all European forces attacked the USSR.”
As can be observed from that brief reference
to the issue, from the second part of his report to the audience on that
news, readers could not realize that,
“if the United States invaded
Cuba, a country with Russian nuclear weapons”, under such circumstances,
my recommendation was to prevent the enemy from launching the first
strike; nor the profound irony embedded in my response - “…and knowing
what I know now…”,
...which was an obvious reference to the betrayal by one
Russian President who saturated himself with some ethylic substance and
revealed to the United States the most important military secrets of
that country.
Further on Goldberg wrote about another moment of our conversation:
“I asked him if he believed the Cuban
model was still something worth exporting.”
Obviously, that question implicitly
suggested the theory that Cuba exported the Revolution.
So I responded:
“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for
us anymore”.
I said this to him without any bitterness or
concern.
And now I laugh at the way he literally
interpreted what I said and how, according to him, he consulted it with
Julia Sweig, a
CFR analyst who accompanied him and worked out the theory
he described. But the truth is that the meaning of my response was
exactly the opposite of the interpretation made by both American
journalists of the Cuban model.
My idea, as everybody knows, is that the capitalist system does not work
anymore either for the United States or the world, which jumps from one
crisis into the next, and these are ever more serious, global and
frequent and there is no way the world could escape from them.
How could
such a system work for a socialist country like Cuba?
Many Arab friends worried when they knew I had met with Goldberg, and
sent some messages describing him as “the staunchest advocate of
Zionism.”
From all of these we can infer the big confusion that exists in the
world. Therefore I hope that what I am telling you about my thoughts
could be useful.
The ideas I expressed are contained in 333 Reflections - see what a
coincidence. The last 26 refer exclusively to the problems affecting the
environment and the imminent danger of a nuclear war.
And now I should very briefly add something.
I have always condemned
the Holocaust.
In my Reflections entitled
...I expressed this very clearly.
I have never been an enemy of the Jewish people, which I admire for
having resisted dispersion and persecution during two thousand years.
Many of the most brilliant talents, such as Karl Marx and Albert
Einstein, were Jews, because that was a nation where the most
intelligent managed to survive by virtue of a natural law.
In our
country and in the whole world they were persecuted and slandered. But
this is just pat of the ideas I defend.
They were not the only one who were persecuted and slandered for their
beliefs. Muslims were attacked and persecuted for their beliefs by the
European Christians for much more than 12 centuries, just as the first
Christians were in ancient Rome before Christianity became an official
religion of that empire. History should be accepted and remembered just
the way it happened, with all its tragic realities and its fierce wars.
I have spoken about that and that is why I
have all the more reason to explain the dangers jeopardizing humankind
today, when wars have become the biggest suicide risk for our fragile
species.
If we add to this a war against Iran, even if it were of a conventional
nature, the United States would rather turn off the light and say
goodbye. How could the US put up with a war against 1.5 billion Muslims?
For any true revolutionary, defending peace does not mean to renounce to
the principles of justice, without which human life and society would be
meaningless.
I still believe that Goldberg is an excellent journalist who is able to
set out, in an enjoyable way and masterly way, his views, which promotes
debate. He does not invent phrases; he transfers them and interprets
them.
I will not refer to the content of many others aspects of our
conversation. I will respect the secrecy of the issues we discussed and
I eagerly await his future long article.
The current news that have started to pour from all sources make me to
complement his presentation with these words whose essence is contained
in the book “La contraofensiva estratégica” (The Strategic
Counteroffensive), which I have just presented.
I believe that all peoples have the right to peace and enjoy all the
goods and natural resources of the planet. What is currently going on
with peoples in many countries of Africa, where there are millions of
emaciated children, women and men out of lack of food, water and
medicines is a shame.
We feel astonished by,
-
the images we see from the Middle
East, where Palestinians are deprived from their lands, their
homes are demolished by gigantic equipment, and men, women and
children are bombed with white phosphorus and other
extermination means
-
the Dantesque scenes of families
exterminated by the bombs dropped over Afghan and Pakistani
towns by drones
-
the Iraqis who are dying after years
of war
-
the more than one million lives lost
in that conflict imposed by a US President
The last we could expect to see were the
news about the expulsion of the French gypsies, who are victims of a new
sort of racial Holocaust.
The strong protest by the French is only
logical. At the same time, the millionaires restrict French citizens’
rights to retirement while reducing the possibilities to get a job.
From the US we have heard the news of a pastor in Florida that intends
to burn the Holy Book of the Quran in its own church. Even the Yankee
and military chiefs engaged in punitive war missions were disturbed by
the news which they believed would put their soldiers in jeopardy.
Walter Martínez, the prestigious journalist who conducts the Venezuelan
TV program Dossier, was amazed at such madness.
Yesterday, Thursday 9th in the evening, some news asserted that the
pastor had relinquished his idea. It might be necessary to know what the
FBI agents who visited him told him to “persuade him”. That was a
colossal media show, a chaos.
Those are things proper of an empire that
is sinking.
I thank all of you for your attention.
