The whole World Supports Iran

On Wednesday night, in a vote of 86 to 13, the U.S. Senate passed a
historic nuclear deal with that will allow the United States to trade
with India in nuclear equipment and technology, and to supply India
with nuclear fuel for its power reactors. The deal is considered
hugely consequential by its supporters and opponents alike -- and a
significant victory for the Bush administration.

Last month, Subrata Ghoshroy, a researcher in the Science, Technology
and Global Security Working Group at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, met with Noam Chomsky in his office at MIT, where he is
the institute professor of linguistics. "Before we started our
discussion," Ghoshroy writes, "Professor Chomsky asked me to give him
a little background information. I told him that I was researching
missile defense, space weapons and the U.S.-India nuclear deal."
Ghoshroy is a longtime critic of the U.S. missile defense program and
a former analyst at the Government Accountability Office who in 2006
blew the whistle on the failure -- and attempted cover-up -- of a key
component of the program: a $26 billion weapon system that was the
"centerpiece" of the Bush administration's antimissile plan.

Ghoshroy and Chomsky discussed the then-pending nuclear deal, which
would sanction trade hitherto prohibited by U.S. and international
laws because of India's refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty and the nuclear tests it conducted in 1998. Ghoshroy has
written several articles criticizing the U.S.-India deal as a triumph
of the business lobby -- an assessment Chomsky agreed with. He said
that Condoleezza Rice is actually on record admitting what is truly
behind this deal, which he characterized as a "non-proliferation
disaster."

Ghoshroy's subsequent conversation with Chomsky touched on a number of
interweaving topics, including: India and the importance of the
non-aligned movement; the myths of free trade and the so-called
"success" of neoliberalism; Washington's historic opposition to
promote new world economic and information orders; Latin America's
growing independence; the West's hypocrisy over Iran's nuclear program
-- and MIT's ironic role in it during the shah's regime; and, finally,
U.S. elections and the prospects for change.

The result is a two-part interview, the second of which will run on
AlterNet tomorrow. Part One begins with India, the Non-Aligned
Movement, and why a "majority of the world supports Iran." (The
Non-Aligned Movement, which consists of some 115 or more
representatives of "developing countries," originated at the
Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, which was
convened mainly by newly independent former colonies from Africa and
Asia to develop joint policies in international relations. Jawaharlal
Nehru, then India's prime minister, led the conference. There, "Third
World" leaders shared their similar problems of resisting the
pressures of the major powers, maintaining their independence and
opposing colonialism and neo-colonialism, especially Western
domination. India continued its vigorous participation and leadership
role in NAM until the end of the Cold War. For further reading, visit
the NAM Web site.)