John Chuckman

COMMENT ON IRAN’S ADMISSION THAT IT ACCIDENTALLY DESTROYED A UKRAINIAN AIRLINER

 

Iran has apologized for its terrible error, and it did so promptly. And in judging, everyone should keep in mind the terrifying pressure Iran has been put under by the United States (see footnote).

Has America apologized for any of the pain and death and destruction it has inflicted on the Middle East in recent years?

America’s Neocon Wars in the Middle East (2003 – present) have killed something like two million people, destroyed many treasured historic and religious sites, reduced millions to primitive living conditions (eg, to this day, much of Iraq’s electricity, deliberately destroyed by America in its 2003 invasion, still has not been restored), and created so many desperate refugees that Europe’s stability was threatened.

Going back before the Neocon Wars, we have the Iraq-Iran War (1980-88), an extremely bloody war facilitated by the United States to hurt Iran’s revolutionary government of 1979. In that war, America shot down an Iranian civilian airliner (Iran Air Flight 655), killing 290 people.

A United States warship, the USS Vincennes, was in Iranian waters of the Strait of Hormuz and fired missiles at the plane, claiming to mistake the airliner, flying a well-established route, for a hostile plane.

The Captain of the American warship was later actually awarded a medal, the Legion of Merit.

The United States absolutely refused to apologize or pay damages for its obvious destruction of a civilian airliner.

It wasn’t until the late 1990s, as the result of a lawsuit, that the United States properly acknowledged what it had done and paid damages to survivors.

 

WHAT IRAN FACED AT THE TIME OF ITS MISTAKEN DOWNING OF AN AIRLINER – INDEED WHAT IT FACES STILL

 

Iran has been under constant threat by the Trump White House, and for no good reason since Iran has started no wars in its modern history and is recognized as complying with its treaty obligations.

Trump started by suddenly ripping-up a valid international nuclear agreement, one which had been scrupulously kept for four years. He followed that by imposing war-like sanctions which seriously hurt millions of ordinary people. Iranian assets abroad have been seized, and every effort has been made to disrupt Iran’s economy.

Trump sent fleets of warships and nuclear-capable bombers to intimidate the country. He made many public threats, including the barbaric threat to destroy Iran’s national heritage sites. Trump even once bellowed he would “obliterate” Iran’s eighty million people.

Just before the airliner’s destruction, Trump had committed a set of murders in neighboring Iraq, including the murder of an Iranian national hero, General Qasem Soleimani. Iran had been put on the highest war alert.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOE LAURIA IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“Fear of a Major Mideast War

“Fears of a major war in the Middle East exploded Thursday night with the U.S. assassination of arguably the second most powerful man in Iran” [General Qassem Soleimani] 

 

It appears Trump has given Israel control of some portion of the American military in addition to major parts of Palestine.

This is classic Israeli extrajudicial killing, an Israeli practice for over seventy years (a recent book claimed Israel is responsible for more than 2,700 of them), but now America takes responsibility on its behalf.

Just as with the Neocon Wars, all for Israel’s benefit and all done so that Israel does not have to take direct blame for the immense violence it generates in the region.

Hard to know what Trump’s thinking here is. War before an election does not seem a good idea, especially if you are a candidate who has failed so far to achieve anything of substance around past promises to reduce America’s involvement in Mideast wars.

Remember that a crucial slice of the votes that put the man into office was not from his prime political base, the “pick-up truck and Jesus” set, but from those concerned with peace and better relations with Russia.

But prodding Iran to attack could allow Trump to play commander-in-chief defending the country. And Americans just instinctively support even the worst possible presidents at war. You might call it the George Bush Effect. The frightened puppy grabbing the nearest pantleg after a loud noise.

Of course, now when it comes to campaign contributions from American Oligarchs whose chief political concern is what Israel wants, Trump’s coffers will be overflowing.

I suspect Iran will take its time and carefully plan a response, and that response may not be clear and unambiguous, and it might be multi-faceted and done over time.

The men running Iran are careful men, none of them impetuous. Chess players. The United States has more than forty years of bellowing, open hostility towards the country, and we have not seen Iran’s leaders act foolishly in all that time despite many provocations.

I do not believe Iran will be driven to war – that would be playing the Israeli-American game with Israeli-American rules.

Clandestine and hybrid efforts, that is what Iran is best at. They have serious capabilities these days, and the United States, with all its bases abroad, has great vulnerabilities.

Of course, there’s also the option of Iran’s just leaving the nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) that Trump idiotically tore-up and proceeding quietly with weapons development. Iran, despite Israel’s dishonest claims, never has pursued weapons development, only efficient use of nuclear power and legitimate scientific research. Perhaps it is time to reconsider that policy

Iran has substantial deposits of uranium, and the enriched-uranium bomb is simpler to build than the plutonium bomb. Maybe there is some possibility for covert assistance from North Korea, another country treated like crap by Trump’s Washington Braintrust?

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MURRAY BREWSTER ON CBC NEWS

 

“Can allies trust an administration that boasts of using military power to pillage other nations’ resources?”

 

Trump has used his remarks about “liking to steal oil” as a lame-joke way to hide his real purpose. He thinks the poor joke is more acceptable to the world than the truth.

The Syrian war has never been about oil. It has been about destabilizing or toppling a government the United States and its regional friends dislike because it is independent-minded and does not embrace America’s vision for the region. It refuses to take the Pledge of Allegiance.

And Syria has always refused to relinquish the territory Israel has occupied since the 1967 War, the Golan Heights, a territory Israel claims to have annexed against all international law.

With the help of Syria’s allies, the main war, a vicious proxy war using recruited outsiders such as al Nusra and ISIS and others, is now largely over, and the United States did not win.

The effort in Syria’s northeast with the American occupation of the country’s oil fields is about claiming a consolation prize for the larger loss, effectively crippling the Assad government’s future efforts at rebuilding the war-torn country.

Trump, I believe, at one point genuinely wanted to leave Syria altogether, knowing the main war was lost.

But powerful pressure groups in Washington immediately opposed withdrawal. The consolation prize of hurting Syria was demanded. And Trump, focused insanely on getting himself re-elected and on the need for heavy-duty campaign donations, gave them what they wanted. He’s never had any problem with reversing himself on policy if there’s a personal benefit.

The United States is using the notion of keeping the oil from ISIS as an explanation. But it is a feeble explanation because ISIS is not strong in that region, and the unpleasant truth is that the United States has never genuinely fought terror inside Syria.

Not at all. It is ultimately responsible for the terror being there, a responsibility it shares with Israel and Saudi Arabia, originally Turkey, and a few other regional friends. Although I suppose America’s ideal outcome would see the terror groups having achieved their goals in Syria and then be disbanded or destroyed. They are trash to be temporarily used, not allies for the future. Geo-political toilet paper.

The United States has had some conflicts with ISIS, as you’d expect when dealing with such unholy thugs, but the focus of the terrorist groups has always remained toppling or hurting the Syrian state, which just happens to be the aim of America and its close regional friends. They have never attacked the interests that true jihadi types would attack, Israel and the corrupt Saudi Royals.

Over the years, the United States has used the presence of ISIS and others as a convenient excuse to keep troops in various locations and to bomb things in Syria it wanted to bomb. The terrorists have proved quite handy that way.

It has been a very dirty war.

______________________

Just an additional note on the causes of the Syrian War.

The names of the Middle East countries destroyed in a series of wars now often called the Neocon Wars were long ago on an official American government list of seven countries to be toppled over future years. The list was part of a secret Pentagon document.

The list was seen by former General Wesley Clark at the Pentagon not long after 9/11. He has spoken of seeing it several times.

And, remember, Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, spoke of hearing the “birth pangs of a new Middle East” at the time of the invasion of Iraq. America, essentially, has long had a secret plan for a kind of vast and bloody urban-renewal project surrounding Israel.

The list was assembled under leading American Neocon Paul Wolfowitz, one of the Pentagon’s highest officials then. Syria was on the list, as was Iran.

Just as the invasion of Iraq was not really about oil, so the hybrid proxy war in Syria was not. By using covert means and proxy forces, Washington avoided another costly invasion like Iraq, something that had created a lot of adverse reaction in the world.

The open and extremely violent invasion of Iraq violated international law, and it offended many, even in friendly nations. So, the approach would not be repeated for other nations on the list.

Iran, with its now demonstrated impressive military capabilities under renewed American belligerence, may just have avoided the fate of the other countries on the Pentagon’s list.  The range and accuracy of Iran’s many missile and other systems have been impressive.

Iran began developing new capabilities as a national project after the long and bloody Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s, a war the United States encouraged and supported, even going so far as supplying Iraq’s Saddam Hussein with deadly chemical weapons to adjust the odds against the forces of Iran’s much greater population. Huge numbers of Iranian soldiers were gassed.

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ROGER PUMPER IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

 

“‘Guess That’s It for Us,’ Islamist Terrorists Say

“They all give up now”

 

https://www.checkpointasia.net/guess-thats-it-for-us-islamist-terrorists-say/

 

Crap propaganda, very thinly disguised as satire.

As long as the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Israel are willing to sign paychecks and supply goods, “Islamic terrorists” in the Middle East will be around.

They have served many useful purposes for the states supporting them.

Oh sure, “Islamic terrorists,” but you never saw any of them once attack Israeli interests of the interests of the fat corrupt princes of Saudi Arabia or indeed any Americans hanging around – all the obvious natural targets for any genuine “Islamic terrorists.”

They all busied themselves attacking what America and Israel wanted attacked, such as the government of Syria.

Gee, I wonder why that would be?

“You don’t bite the hand that feeds you” is the old cliché.

Al-Baghdadi was an American/Israeli asset from the start.

If he is dead, which I tend to doubt, it’s only because the states destroying so much of the Middle East had some change of plans. Such men are always regarded as expendable when they are no longer useful or there is some possibility for embarrassing revelations.

Even on the home front, look at Mossad asset Jeffrey Epstein’s fate when his usefulness ended and threats existed through new legal proceedings for some truth being revealed.

Look at the doubtful death back in 1991, of British media tycoon, Robert Maxwell, a man acknowledged in Israel to be one of the country’s most important spies ever. And, by the way, his daughter, Ghislaine, was long-time companion and helper to Epstein.

Indeed, getting rid of a man like al-Baghdadi, or pretending to do so, gives idiotic Trump something to crow about.

Cui bono?

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DANIEL LARRISON IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

 

‘Trump with a Plan to Divorce Syria’s Kurds but Not Her Oil

‘Trump: “I don’t want to leave troops” in Syria except to “secure the oil”’

 

https://www.checkpointasia.net/trump-with-a-plan-to-divorce-syrias-kurds-but-not-her-oil/

 

This is not really about oil.

The notion of leaving two hundred American special forces in Syria and perhaps interfering with Syria’s access to its own oil represents a hastily, and badly, conceived scheme to placate Netanyahu and the Israel lobby in the United States for the de facto loss of a long and costly proxy war.

Trump essentially has no foreign policy, policy implying a well-thought out set of goals and strategies. Trump takes whatever steps he thinks will secure his re-election, even when the next step seems to contradict the previous one. That’s all the Syria withdrawal was ever about.

Indeed, it is what drives all his efforts abroad, efforts which may be characterized as being consistent only in their inconsistency.

He isn’t a sound pragmatist and strong logical thinker like Putin. Although you might regard his bending every situation towards his own re-election as a kind of pragmatism, it really is not.

It is chaotic because it depends on Trump’s own faulty and fickle judgment, and it involves no other, larger considerations at all. He sacrifices basic principles in his various lurches and drives, principles such as always respecting allies and always acting so that the world regards America as consistent, stable, and dependable.

He needed a “withdrawal” to try re-securing the support of that portion of 2016 voters who have been alienated from him, the anti-war voters who do not necessarily agree with any of his other belly-over-the belt attitudes, such as the importance of building a costly, cumbersome wall on America’s southern border or the benefits of starting international trade wars.

His natural political base is simply not quite large enough to elect him. He must draw a bit of additional support from somewhere, and the anti-war crowd represents his best possibility.

The Democrats have made no effort to offer the anti-war constituency anything. The few who have are treated as pariahs by members of their own party in a shabby public name-calling spectacle, and they will be prevented from winning the nomination.

After all, the Democratic Party in 2016 displayed to the world just how willing it is to manipulate democratic contests for a pre-determined end, in that case for the nomination of Hillary Clinton over a firebrand challenger.

Interestingly enough, the Democratic Party’s anti-democratic efforts in 2016 ended by getting Trump elected. Sanders would have defeated him handily at that time. Hillary is not a well-liked or trusted figure and has always been a cheerleader for war. She provided Trump with just the opportunity he needed.

If they prevent a thoughtful, articulate anti-war candidate like Tulsi Gabbard from getting the nomination, which they almost certainly will, they will repeat history. Trump will win. That’s why they are becoming serious about impeaching him. As I’ve explained before, impeachment in America always is a political act. It would only be otherwise if a President were caught committing a serious felony or a treasonous act, both quite unlikely.

The withdrawal from Syria deeply conflicts with Netanyahu’s fervently declared wishes. Trump undoubtedly thought he had done enough for Israel in the form of lavish giveaways and favors that he wouldn’t hear any complaints over his relatively minor Syria withdrawal.

But he was wrong. There has been noise and pressure. Netanyahu’s capacity to ask for more of almost anything is virtually limitless.

America’s entire set of efforts in Syria – both covert in supporting jihadi-looking mercenaries and overt in occupying certain areas and doing plenty of bombing while pretending to fight ISIS – has had from the beginning nothing directly to do with oil. Syrian oil only came into play as a way to finance some of the terrorist activity and as something valuable of which to deprive Syria’s government.

American efforts have always been about destabilizing or destroying a government that does not toe its foreign policy line, which of course, would involve Syria’s paying homage to Israel, America’s Middle Eastern privileged special-status colony, as the dominant regional power, just as Saudi Arabia, under its usurper Crown Prince, has now effectively done.

Israel has had a tremendous interest in seeing Syria incapacitated because it wanted not only to secure and legitimize its occupation of the Golan Heights, but even perhaps to grab another slice of Syria, a “buffer zone,” in all the chaos of the long proxy war.

Israel has always hated Assad, again for his independent-mindedness, a leadership characteristic which the long series of Neocon Wars, starting with Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, was intended to uproot throughout the Middle East. Or as the worst American imperialists like to put it, in order to make all the killing and destruction sound wholesome, inducing “the birth of a new Middle East.”

So, Israel is working away on Trump to get what it can out of the general defeat in Syria, and that includes any annoyance and irritation that can possibly be achieved in northeastern Syria.

But the notion of a couple of hundred American special forces hanging around to control Syria’s oil for any period of time seems very far-fetched. Maybe it’s a good measure of just how disillusioned and desperate the people who created seven years of terrible war in Syria are.

There’s no way that Putin, after all his immense effort, is going to watch a reunited Syria be reduced by having its natural resources stripped from it. One way or another, this “plan” will fail, even though it may provide difficulties in the meantime.

John Chuckman

COMMENT ON STILL MORE LEAKS FROM FORMER BRITISH AMBASSADOR KIM DARROCH’S CONFIDENTIAL NOTES TO HIS GOVERNMENT

 

We have today yet more revelations in leaked documents written as advisory notes to the British government by Sir Kim Darroch, its recent former Ambassador to the United States.

Darroch called Trump’s tearing-up of the Iran nuclear agreement an act of “diplomatic vandalism.” Now, that is a characterization completely on the mark. It is difficult to see what anyone would even find objectionable in it, beyond the fact of its being leaked by someone unknown.

After all, every government in Western Europe and other major states like Russia and China and major world organizations publicly expressed their opposition to Trump’s rash action. All agreed that Iran had kept to its commitments and that the agreement had worked well for about four years.

Darroch went on to explain that tearing up the agreement was done to spite his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Yes, there is no question Trump has been out to destroy or undo everything that he can that was ever done by Barack Obama. He literally hates the man. We’ve seen that in a number of matters, including Obamacare.

But there is another reason for Trump’s dangerous blundering in Iran, a far more powerful one, one completely ignored by Darroch. I’ll come back to it after a few more words about Trump’s loathing for Obama.

I do believe Trump’s hatred for Obama is deeply tinged with racism. I can see no other explanation for it. There simply are no genuine liberal qualities in Obama for anyone on the political right to dislike, but there is the glaring fact of his being the first black president.

No one, examining the record of Obama’s eight years as president, can sensibly accuse him of being a liberal. In anything, except in the occasional vacuous and soon forgotten political speech. I know the Alt-right press regards Obama as a liberal, one of the most hated ever, but it’s a silly accusation from some extreme people. And that crowd, if you read through their stuff on the Internet, oozes with racism.

Obama led eight years of ugly American colonial wars, from invading Libya to getting the endless horrors of Syria going. From secretly supporting a coup to overthrow Egypt’s first-ever democratic government, one to which Israel had taken serious objection, to staging a coup against an elected government in Ukraine and pitching that country into turmoil, including civil war, all for the sake of intimidating Russia. From increasing ugly pressures on Venezuela to starting the tanks rolling up against Russia’s borders, there is no liberalism to be found in Obama’s activities abroad.

At home, we find the same thing. How can a man be regarded as liberal who passed no significant social legislation? And he did absolutely nothing to help his own people, the people to whom he appealed in the rhythms of a black preacher reciting the slogan, “Yes, we can!” He did nothing for the squalid, broken-down realities of vast stretches of urban America. His Obamacare legislation was a nasty, confusing, corporate-serving piece of work that a liberal can find just as hateful as a right-winger.

Further, Obama also did almost nothing to reform a financial system badly in need of reform, a system that had created a disastrous world-affecting financial crash. He signed off on all major military and security legislation. He actually started the shameful American system of extrajudicial killing abroad by hi-tech drone. And it was under Obama that the secretive NSA began expanding into an information-sucking monstrosity with its new constellation of secret buildings packed with super-computers and spying on literally everyone and everything.

Trump’s activities in Iran are about Israel’s interests, as they are communicated and pressed through the many channels of the American Israel lobby. Trump felt afraid and vulnerable about the future of his office at one period, and he turned to some extremely wealthy American oligarchs for support and money. These were men whose most burning concern is Israel, and several of them are on intimate terms with Netanyahu.

I am sure Trump got the support he sought, but all such support comes at a price. Trump’s price is readily seen in a whole series of acts, from putting the American Embassy into Jerusalem to recognizing Israel’s illegal annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights. From appointing a series of extremely ideologically committed men, genuinely fanatical men, like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to important posts to slashing support for a number of organizations whose work in any way supported the Palestinians.

It’s been a dramatic wave of events over a short period, and they reflect no authentic interests of the United States, and they certainly have nothing to do with Obama. They all increase tensions and hostilities and commit the United States to ignoring the rule of law. Matters in Iran are part and parcel of that activity.

Netanyahu has made years of insane claims about Iran and the security of Israel, all of them groundless, none of them supported by any evidence, and, indeed, in a number of cases, being directly contradicted by solid evidence. But he just continues his harangues and crusade against a country that has started absolutely no conflicts in its modern era, a fact, as it happens, totally the opposite of Israel’s own record of close-to continuous war.

Netanyahu has long wanted Iran to be hurt or reduced for the temerity of having some influence in the Middle East. Israel wants all of that influence with no one around to in any way oppose or question it. Netanyahu was intensely busy in just the same way during Obama’s time, but Obama ignored him, which is the only way he ever achieved the nuclear agreement.

Netanyahu also, like Trump, has a deep dislike for Obama. He showed this openly a number of times, coming close to expressions of public contempt. I assume his hatred is based on Obama’s ignoring him over Iran largely, although racism, too, could well play a role. Netanyahu’s Israel has been extremely hostile to black Jews from Africa and to black refugee claims. Netanyahu actually had a scheme to bribe some distant African states to take refugees off Israel’s hands.

At any rate, the shared distaste for Obama only makes the same years-old job of selling the threat Iran is supposed to represent, and there’s no need to sell it to those American oligarchs to whom Trump desperately turned for political help. They are onboard with about every outrageous claim Netanyahu ever made.

We should note that that nuclear agreement was signed by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and the United States – plus Germany and the European Union. They all still strongly support it, except, of course, for Donald Trump’s United States. Everyone, except Netanyahu’s Israel and Trump’s United States, agrees that it is a solid agreement and that Iran has conscientiously followed its obligations. All international technical experts and inspectors support that view too.

But along comes Trump suddenly to toss the agreement to the wind, ignoring everyone else. The only people with input and support for his rash behavior are Netanyahu and Trump’s American oligarch political supporters, close friends of Netanyahu.

Essentially, what we have is a man, Trump, who, in the interest of his campaign war chest for the 2020 election or against any attempt at his impeachment before that, is putting the entire world at risk of a serious war. He is threatening and economically crushing a law-abiding nation of more than eighty million souls for no other reason. Millions of ordinary Iranians are hurt by his severe and unwarranted sanctions. As is always the case with sanctions, they hurt mainly ordinary people. They are a blunt instrument, much like massive bombing.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY RICHARD HALL IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“Inside the hunt for Iraq’s looted treasures

“Decades of war and instability made Iraq a thief’s paradise”

 

I wish Wafaa Hassan the very best in her efforts to reclaim stolen antiquities. She seems extremely able and dedicated.

I do think, though, the writer’s sentence about “decades of war,” whether intended to do so or not, softens responsibility for what happened. It was right in the wake of the American invasion that the worst savageries swept Iraqi museums.

It was a time when normal Iraqi society and supervision of institutions had been scattered to the winds. Remember how the Pentagon promised that it would produce, “shock and awe” in Iraq? And it did, with no provision made to protect one of the world’s greatest collections of irreplaceable ancient treasures.

The mindless looting and destruction of Iraq’s antiquities was a highly disturbing addition to the invasion.

One of the things Saddam had been quite good at doing was preserving Iraq’s archeology and art. He made a huge state effort, and many wondrous ancient things were in Iraq’s museums and at its many preserved and restored ancient sites.

Iraq was one of the great early centers of human civilization, one just as important as ancient Egypt.

All of its surviving archeology and art had been cared for and organized to foster study and scholarship.

It was simply disgraceful the way the invaders allowed so many important things to be destroyed and stolen.

While the stolen items may be recovered eventually through the work being done in Iraq, the large amount of material wantonly destroyed cannot be. It truly smacked of “the barbarians at the gates.”

But then what can one say about an illegal invasion which ended up killing at least a million people and reduced what was in many ways the Arab world’s most advanced society to piteous ruins, ruins where clean water and electricity and employment would disappear for years.

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“Jared Kushner’s Palestine ‘Peace’ Plan Is the Lie of the Century”

 

Hanan Ashrawi’s comment about the “peace plan” has it right.

In summary form, she said: Lift the siege, quit stealing our resources, allow Palestinians freedom of movement and control of their borders and airspace and waters, and then watch them build a vibrant, prosperous economy as a free people.

And never to be forgotten are Kushner’s earlier words about Palestinians not being ready to govern themselves.

He displayed a totally colonial attitude, resembling something from the heyday of 19^th century imperialism. Arrogant and patronizing.

But, in a sense, Kushner’s ugly words were fitting, too, because, in so many ways, Israel is a colony of the United States, a very special one with extraordinary privileges, but still a colony.

Floated by huge subsidies to serve as America’s pied-a-terre in the Middle East.

And the locals are not really welcome, except when serving as low-cost household help.

_____________________________

Response to a comment about how creepy Kushner looks:

Jared Kushner is indeed a rather creepy type, cold, generally unsmiling.

And definitely effete-looking. Almost elfin in some photos.

But what other kind of person could be married to Ivanka?

She’s a character right out of Dostoevsky, a madwoman who has no sense of her own madness, and she just keeps imposing it on others as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

A woman with the abilities and attitudes of a small store clerk who believes she should be listened to by some of the world’s leading intellectual and political figures and frequently butts-in on their deliberations just to tell them so.

And someone who looks in a mirror every few minutes because there is no one else she so admires.

That last being a quality very much shared with her disturbed and disturbing father.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK LAWRENCE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“Regrouping the Nuclear Dealmakers

“There are three good reasons for Iran to go back to the table”

 

I couldn’t agree less.

Go back to the table? That reads like mainstream corporate output.

Iran has done nothing, except lawfully abide by its nuclear agreement for four years, something affirmed by every expert and major country on earth.

The United States arbitrarily ripped up a valid, working international agreement, and did so consulting no one beforehand. Its own major allies do not even accept its action.

The United States also has severely attacked Iran’s economy with sanctions. Severely.

Such sanctions, used frequently now by the United States, are nothing more than coercive efforts to apply American law universally, ignoring local and international laws. It is America ignoring the rule of law, simply the West’s most important civilising principle.

On top of those destructive acts, the United States now has clearly threatened war. The threat, whether intended to actually be carried out or not, is totally in violation of international law.

How does anyone “negotiate” with people who have taken such steps?

What is the meaning of “negotiation” under dire threat?

It’s really an exact repeat of behavior seen in the late 1930s from Germany against states such as Czechoslovakia. Hitler would suddenly throw terrifying rages during talks with high officials and scream the gravest threats, trying to set them completely off balance, to get his way. Sound familiar?

No one should validate that approach to international affairs. It is the very opposite of what the world requires for peace and security and stability. After four years of faithfully abiding by an international agreement, Iran, suddenly, should enter new negotiations, facing new and unrelated demands from an impulsive and dangerous man whose only real motivation, as we shall see, is his own domestic political situation?

What Trump did to create this situation is simple and sleazy. In serious fear of impeachment and other threats to his security in office, he approached some exceedingly wealthy people in the United States for support and reassurance, people whose chief concerns are with other matters.

He received money and support for his re-election in 2020 and for any possible attempt at his impeachment, undoubtedly. Seriously big money.

But he was required to pay a price. That price included ripping-up a valid, working international agreement, appointing frighteningly dangerous men like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to important offices, and being seen as very solicitous of Israel’s views about a country that it has always deeply resented as a competitor for regional influence, Iran.

This is a country that has never represented any real threat to Israel – ever hear of a non-nuclear country attacking a nuclear one? – although Israel has made many threats against it, even once spending a small fortune during Obama’s time planning and preparing for a large surprise (non-nuclear) attack, and Israel has carried out, over the years, a number of murderous dark ops against Iran.

So, the whole world must now pay in fear and apprehension for Trump’s becoming comfortably tucked into office? That really is what America’s ghastly behavior towards Iran represents. The Congress, of course, will not interfere in any matter touching Israel – every successful member of Congress being either already beholden to Israel’s lobby or deeply fearful of offending it – so, it just quietly stands back, allowing Trump his own way, literally, a madman in charge.

And a law-abiding country, one that has never attacked anyone in its entire modern history, Iran, is supposed to validate the vicious prejudices and demands of a country, Israel, that has been almost continuously at war for seventy years? One that has attacked every neighbor that it has, some more than once? One which holds at least five million people as desperate captives and has held them for almost an entire lifetime? One that has an illicit nuclear arsenal and substantial stocks of poison gas? A country that refuses to cooperate with any international arms control and one that stands in violation of dozens of United Nations’ Resolutions and international laws?

Makes sense to me.