The following letter was read by Leila Zand at this past weekend's UNAC conference:

To all the wonderful peacemakers in national peace conference

To all of our brothers and sisters in the beautiful world

We are sending you the message of peace and friendship from Iran, the land of love and poetry, friendship and roses. Iran, a country that has not initiated any violence on another nation in the past 200 years, but unfortunately has been the subject of such violations many times in her recent history.

On the anniversary of Shock and Awe in Iraq, it’s time to stop the next war now: Take the Iran Pledge of Resistance

The Iran Pledge of Resistance (IPOR) is a coordinated grassroots campaign to build an emergency response network capable of preempting any escalated U.S. intervention in Iran or the Middle East.

Over the past few months there has been escalating talk about the possibility of a U.S. war with Iran. Israel, the U.S.’s closest ally in the region, is threatening attacks which could pull us into war. President Obama and the Republican presidential candidates are saying that “all options are on the table” to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. This is despite the fact that top U.S. intelligence officials have made consistent statements that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program nor is there proof they intend to establish one.

Let’s stop this war before it starts.   

by Larry Everest 

2012 has brought a flood of twar talk and aggressive preparations for war on Iran. Indeed, war looms more ominously week by week.

The U.S., Israel, and the European Union have intensified their economic, political, and diplomatic assault on Iran. They claim it's needed to force Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment program, which they say is actually aimed at giving Iran the ability to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says its program is peaceful and is simply for generating nuclear power. Sanctions have been imposed aimed at crippling its economy and devastating the lives of millions of Iranians. Several Iranian scientists have been assassinated in the streets of Tehran.

March 22, Thursday, 7pm
Revolution Books NYC
146 W. 26th Street (between 6th & 7th Ave.)

by Nima Shirazi

In 2006, after Palestinians democratically elected Hamas to the shock and chagrin of both Israel and the United States (who had insisted on the elections in the first place), a devastating economic siege was imposed on the 1.5 million residents of Gaza by Israel as punishment for the crime of Palestinian self-determination. As Dov Weisglass, adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said with a chuckle, "It's like an appointment with a dietitian. The Palestinians in Gaza will get a lot thinner, but won't die."

What's so obviously funny about Weisglass' statement is that, due to the brutal blockade that has deliberately strangled Gaza for six years, at least 61% of Palestinians in the territory are "food insecure," of which "65% are children under 18 years;" the level of anemia in infants is as high as 65.5%, about 70% of Palestinians in Gaza live on less than $1 a day, over 80% rely on food aid, and 60% have no daily access to water, 95% of which is undrinkable anyway.

And now, apparently, Israeli officials are hoping the West will duplicate this hilarity by similarly depriving Iranians of their own means to survive.

by Larry Everest 

2012 has brought a flood of war talk and aggressive preparations for war on Iran. Indeed, war looms more ominously week by week.

The U.S., Israel, and the European Union have intensified their economic, political, and diplomatic assault on Iran. They claim it's needed to force Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment program, which they say is actually aimed at giving Iran the ability to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says its program is peaceful and is simply for generating nuclear power.

Video by Dennis Trainor, Jr.:

A 2009 anti-nuclear demonstration in Tel Aviv.

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

Would you please help us put an ad in the New York Times, Washington Post (or maybe also Ha’aretz and Yediot in Israel, and other media, depending on how much money we can raise) to put public pressure on President Obama to NOT agree to overtly or covertly approve an Israeli preemptive strike on sites where Iran is developing its nuclear capacities?

Click HERE to see the ad and hopefully make a donation.

As of now, Iran does not have those capacities, and though Israeli leaders are arguing that they must strike now before it becomes impossible to block the development of nuclear weapons, U.S. intelligence sources said on Friday, Feb. 24th, that Iran had not made any decision to go forward with developing nuclear weapons. You can view a sample version of the ad below(though when it is layed out beautifully on a full page in the NY Times and Washington Post, it will not look as wordy as it looks now, and there will be room for the names of some who have signed and donated to it). These ads are expensive, but they’ve been effective for the political Right and we need to help make more visible the peace-oriented majority of Americans who don’t support another war. We need to move quickly because high-level decisions on this are being made soon.

by Debra Sweet

Aggressive war, against a country that has not attacked the aggressor country, is the supreme war crime.  We said it on February 4 across the nation.  I talked about it outside the US Mission to the UN (see video).

We won't stop saying it.  Here's another chance:

Sunday March 4 in Washington, D.C., when President Obama speaks at the 2012 Convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, we'll be there, with a visible anti-war protest, along with Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and the Occupy movement.

11:00am – 2:00pm: Rally at the Convention Center, All Out for NO WAR ON IRAN  Click here for more details (corner of Massachusetts and 9th)

Others are speaking out:

A recently released Gallup poll asked Americans which nation they considered to be their country’s greatest enemy. Iran was first on the list, thought to be public enemy number one by 32% of respondents. It was followed by China, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, Pakistan, the United States itself, Japan and Saudi Arabia in order of magnitude on the scale of perceived evil.

The poll results are an indicator not of the level of danger posed to the American people, but of the degree of propaganda spewed by the media and the White House. It would be all but impossible for any other nation to loom so large in the American mind at this time. We are told that Iran is poised to develop nuclear weapons, kill all Israelis, launch terror attacks in the United States and perhaps create bad weather too.