To use a tired cliché, is the asylum run by the inmates? Is it possible that Congress will yet again fall for Netanyahu’s cries of wolf? Mind you, Iran’s last big shot, Ahmadinejad, did Iran no favors. By questioning the Holocaust and suggesting that Israel could disappear from the pages of history, he gave the neocons and the Likudists in Israel the greatest gift that warmongers could hope for. It was all for internal consumption, as he was never popular with Iran’s people, but it was manna from heaven for the neocons. The new president, Rouhani, has not only turned down the rhetoric a notch, his brother pledged 400,000 big ones for a Jewish hospital in Tehran. (There were an estimated 80,000 Jews in Iran during the Shah’s rule, and now there are 20,000. Minorities in Iran may be called second-rate citizens by the Sunni paymasters of Al Jazeera and some Western media, but in reality they are treated as well, or as badly, as all Iranians.)

Iran offered help immediately following 9/11, and US troops would never have overthrown the Taliban as swiftly as they did without Iranian help and information. But the Bushies squandered the opportunity for dialogue by naming Iran as a part of the Axis of Evil. Go figure, as they say. Iran accepted the American invasion in its backyard, helped Uncle Sam, and was rewarded by the neocon label of evil.

Let’s just look at the map: Iran has a neighbor to the west and another to the east who were both invaded by Uncle Sam over the past 11 years. Also to the east is Pakistan, a nuclear power that can sell its nuclear secrets to their fellow Sunnis in Saudi Arabia. Israel has 400 or more nuclear bombs that could turn Tehran into a desert in a second. Iranians know this better than the Saudis know how to mistreat foreign workers. Is it possible that the neocons and AIPAC can convince the US Congress that the real threat to world peace is Iran? Is it possible that the Likudists can yet again induce an American president to use force or boycotts against an ancient country that hasn”€™t invaded another in more than 2,000 years? Call your Congressman.