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 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. I my Reflections entitled “Obama’s
Speech in Cairo”, “A Swipe Waiting to Happen”, and “The Opinion of an Expert” 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 million
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; and 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.
September
10, 2010.