Representative Press Blog

Talking about Israel and Iran in 2004

" ... first of all Iran is under attack by the world's superpower, with embargoes, this that and the other thing; it's surrounded by states either occupied by its superpower enemy, or having nuclear weapons. A little way down the road, is the regional superpower, which has hundreds of nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction and is, essentially, an offshore US military base, and has the biggest air force, and technologically most advanced air force in NATO, more than any NATO power (outside the United States), and in the past year, has been supplied by the global superpower with a hundred advanced jet bombers, openly advertised as able to fly to Iran and back to bomb it; and also provided (I'm talking about Israel) [laughter from crowd] with what the Hebrew press calls "special weaponry". Well, nobody knows what that means, but if if you're an Iranian intelligence analyst, you're going to give a worst case analysis of it, of course; and has actually been publicly provided with smart bombs and deep penetration weapons and so on." - Chomsky on Iran