From: jeffrey E. <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, August 8, 2015 7:06 PM To: ehud barak Subject: Fwd: Re: thought you might find amusing Forwarded messa e From: Noam Chomsky Date: Fri, Aug 7, 2015 a : = Subject: RE: Re: To: "jeffrey E." <[email protected]> Neat indeed. I'm writing about the Iran de=l. So far have only sent a form paragraph in response to requests.=C2 Below. Noam =/u> On Iran, as usual, I=E2 m a gloomy contrarian. I'm glad the treaty was signe=, and it's kind of fun to watch the Republican lunatics shrieking =ysterically as they try to kill it (as they may). And Israeli hypocr=sy has gone well beyond being comical. But in fact the whole thing is f=rcical, in my opinon. In the US, Iran is "the greatest threa= to world peace", intoned constantly from on high, in the media, ererywhere. There is also such a thing as world opinion, as measured by such ultra-radicals as Gallup. It turns out that the gre=test threat to world peace is the US, by a very wide margin, no one else e=en close, and Iran barely mentioned. The American population is prot=cted from these unwanted facts by the Free Press: not reported. There is an organization called US intelligence= They brief Congress regularly on the international security situati=n, all quite public. On Iran, they point out that it has very limite= military power, even by regional standards (a small fraction of Saudi Arabia, for example). Its strategic doctrine=is defensive. If — a big If — it has plans for nucle=r weapons, that would be part of its deterrent strategy. Now who wou=d be opposed to Iran having a deterrent strategy? Answer is clear: the rogue states that rampage violently in the region and don't wa=t any impediment: the US and Israel, also lesser ones like UK and France.=C2 One simple way to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons would be to e=tablish a nuclear-weapons free zone in the region, as has been done elsewhere (over US objections). That's been=advo