Who, really, is the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, and why is he so supportive of the U.S. and Israeli governments' accusations that Iran's nuclear program is aiming for the bomb? Amano's position is in marked contrast to the previous IAEA director general, Mohammed ElBaradei. ElBaradei was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for confronting false U.S. and U.K. claims that Iraq had a covert nuclear weapons development program in the lead up to the 2003 invasion, as well as his skepticism toward U.S. and Israeli claims of nuclear proliferation in Iran. A Wikileaks cable revealed coordination between the U.S. government and Amano on Iran policy. Robert Parry, an investigative journalist who broke many of the Iran-Contra scandal stories of the 1980s, now warns we may be "Slip-Sliding to War with Iran," despite the lessons that should have been learned from our recent debacle in Iraq -- a very deadly and expensive war that was based on false accusations about secret WMD (weapons of mass destruction) development, including nuclear weaponry.
In a Christmas Eve article entitled "America's Debt to Bradley Manning," Robert Parry reports that the Wikileaks revelations about Amano's close ties to U.S. and even Israeli schemes towards Iran may be just the information needed to avert another false war over non-existent WMDs.