Iran and the G20 meeting: Creating a crisis to cover divisions

By Sara Flounders

The G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh gathered the finance ministers, top bankers and political leaders of the world’s largest economies, ostensibly to take up the most serious economic collapse of capitalism in three generations. Instead, they attacked Iran.

Without proposing measures to ameliorate the suffering of the hundreds of millions of workers who have lost their jobs, without announcing jobs programs or infrastructure construction, U.S., British and French imperialism joined together with bombast to threaten Iran on totally fabricated charges. They have demanded that the United Nations Security Council and members of the G-20 collaborate on a new round of sanctions against Iran.

Emergency economic proposals were not even on the agenda.

In a theatrical press conference on Sept. 25, flanked by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel delayed but on her way, President Barack Obama declared that Iran was threatening the stability and security of the region and the world. Refusal to “come clean,” he said, “is going to lead to confrontation.”

Sarkozy and Brown denounced Iran and explicitly demanded harder sanctions.

They threatened a military strike, saying that “all options are on the table with regard to Iran.”

This whole scenario shows that these bankers, finance ministers and politicians have no solutions for the crisis wracking the globe. They used the summit to justify the bailout of the banks and to give vague assurances of future economic recovery. The trillions of dollars handed over to the banks is the greatest redistribution of national treasuries in human history.

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