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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 9/16/10

We Are Living Through an Exceptional Moment in Human History

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Message Fidel Castro
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.

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Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) is a Cuban politician, one of the primary leaders of the Cuban Revolution, the Prime Minister of Cuba from February 1959 to December 1976, and then the President of the Council of State of Cuba until (more...)
 
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