ow what they call the Iraq War). Op-ed columnist Niall Ferguson warns that unless America carries out a preemptive military strike, there may be a full-scale nuclear war in the Middle East by August 2007 ( Los Angeles Times, 1/16/06). Presidential hopeful, John McCain, has made his bid to be the neoconservatives’ puppet in 2008, by proclaiming, “There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran.” And, of course—the obligatory Hitler comparison:

• “If Iran gets safely and unmolested to nuclear status, it will be a threshold moment in the history of the world, up there with the Bolshevik Revolution and the coming of Hitler.” --Times Online, 1/27/06

I don’t think I’ve heard so many threatening predictions since the Bush Administration was selling the Iraq War. They were lying then, and there is even less reason to believe them now. To be fair, though, I did a little research into what Iran is doing and how it threatens world peace. To my surprise, I found that Iran is a real threat to America, but it has nothing to do with nuclear weapons.

Iran is not doing anything the other thirty-some nations with nuclear power are not already doing. In fact they are doing much less than most countries:

• “Iran’s [nuclear] program is in shambles, and the people who read all the intelligence know that. If anybody blows up Bushehr [reactor], they are wasting their money.” --Amin Tarzi, Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterrey Institute in California, Christian Science Monitor, 2/21/02

• “Iran offers no ‘nuclear threat’. There is not the slightest evidence that it has the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has repeatedly said his inspectors have found nothing to support American and Israeli claims.” --John Pilger, New Statesman, 2/13/06

Once again, the Bush Administration and our state-controlled media are lying to the American people, in an effort to make another war seem necessary and inevitable. The Bush Administration knows very well that there is nothing to fear from an Iranian bomb. What they really fear is an Iranian Bourse.

Bourse? What is a Bourse, and why is the most powerful nation on earth afraid of it?

A Bourse is simply a European-type stock exchange. To understand how a stock exchange in Iran can possibly be a threat to world peace, we have to go back a few years.

In the early 1970’s, after it became clear that the U.S. Government did not have enough gold to back all the dollars it had printed, our government made a deal with the ruling family in Saudi Arabia . The U.S. Government promised to support the House of Saud’s power, if Saudi Arabia agreed to accept only U.S. dollars for its oil—the rest of OPEC was to do the same.

Everything was great, as long as U.S. dollars were the only acceptable payment for oil. Other nations would need more and more U.S. dollars as their need for oil increased; and the dollar would remain the dominant currency in the world.

In 2000, Saddam Hussein defied the U.S. and demanded euros in payment for Iraq’s oil. Suddenly, Iraq was a danger to world peace, and the U.S. had to come to the rescue. Two months after the invasion, Iraqi oil was once again being sold for U.S. dollars, and Bush declared, “Mission Accomplished”.

The Iraq War was meant to send a message to anyone who even thought about selling oil for anything but U.S. dollars. The neoconservatives believed “if we get Iraq right, we won’t have to worry about Iran” . In case you haven’t been keeping up with the news; we didn’t get Iraq right. Since President Bush declared, “Mission Accomplished”, over 2100 Americans have been killed in Iraq.

In June 2004, Iran announced its intention to create an Iranian oil Bourse, which would trade oil for euros, rather than U.S. dollars. It is tentatively scheduled to begin in March 2006. By doing this, Iran will be in direct competition with London’s International Petroleum Exchange and the New York Mercantile Exchange—both of which are owned by U.S. corporations.

If Iran’s Oil Bourse is successful, economist Krassimir Petrov from Ohio State University predicts:

• Europeans will be able to use their own currency to buy oil, instead of U.S. dollars. “[This] will provide the European currency with a reserve status that will benefit the European at the expense of the Americans.”

• “[It] will allow [China and Japan] to drastically lower their enormous dollar reserves and diversify with Euros, thus protecting themselves against the depreciation of the dollar.”

• Russia will gladly adopt the Euro, since the bulk of their trade is with Europe and the oil exporting countries. “…and if embracing the Euro will stab the Americans, they will gladly do it and smugly watch the Americans bleed.”

• “The Arab oil-exporting countries will eagerly adopt the Euro as a means of diversifying against rising mountains of depreciating dollars….not to mention their jihad against the Infidel Enemy.”

Mr. Petrov also presented a number of ways America might deal with this problem—ranging from “Negotiating Acceptable Terms & Limitations” to “Unilateral Total War”. Since the Bush Administration has already squandered its military resources in its unnecessary war in Iraq, total war is out of the question; but I’m sure we can depend on the Bush Administration to do something stupid—they always do.

You can forget about “negotiating”. President Bush says he wants to settle the Iranian “crisis” diplomatically; but the U.S. has refused to even participate in the talks with Iran, concerning its “nuclear ambitions”.

• “The neocons say negotiations are a bad deal. And the only thing the Iranians understand is pressure. And that they also need to be whacked.” --Seymour Hersh, quoting a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency, The New Yorker, 1/24/06

There is nothing Iran can do to prevent the Bush Administration from coming up with some excuse to attack it. The real question is whether there is anything we (the people) can do to prevent another unnecessary war. How many more lives are we going to let the Bush Administration sacrifice, to prop up its Enron-style economic policies?

Now is the time to contact your Senators and Representatives in Congress. Tell them to stand up, speak out, and stop the Bush Administration before it starts another war.

There is a rouge nation, headed by a dangerous madman, threatening the world with nuclear weapons; but it is not Iran. It is the United States of George Bush. We must not let him start another war.

Authors Bio: Mick Youther is an American citizen, an independent voter, a veteran, a parent, a Christian, a scientist, a writer, and all-around nice guy who has been aroused from a comfortable apathy by the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Administration.