John Chuckman

COMMENT TO A REPORT THAT THE BRITISH NAVY IS RUSHING A NUCLEAR SUBMARINE TO THE PERSIAN GULF AMID GROWING TENSIONS WITH IRAN

This is a very stupid step taken by Britain, sending a nuclear attack submarine to the Gulf. It adds only risk and uncertainty to a dangerous situation, one for which Britain has herself to blame.

Britain’s act of hijacking an Iranian tanker near Spain earlier served no legitimate purpose and represented lawlessness trying to pass for law enforcement.

According to solid information, that act was undertaken at the request of the United States. Nothing like committing piracy at the request of a friend, now, is there? High principles indeed, but such are the times in which we live.

And such a friend! One who ripped up a valid working legal contract – the Iranian international nuclear agreement – which involved the direct interests of seven other nations as signatories, all of whom were just swept aside as though they didn’t matter.

That act of vandalism was followed by the laying on of harsh economic sanctions, pretty much undeclared and illegal acts of war intended to cripple a major economy and hurt its tens of millions of people.

Then we have whole fleets of warships and bombers sent to a place where there is no war, their sole purpose being to intimidate. And during all these hostile acts, we have a series of truly vicious threats coming from a President who freely uses words like “obliterate.”

Well, the British pirating of an Iranian tanker near Spain was yet another log tossed on the flames. Yet when we hear the British government talk about the situation, it’s the Iranians who act badly.

Of course, this all suggests the possibility that the United States may be seeking to provoke Iran into doing something that could be used as a casus belli.

One desperately hopes not. Our Western news sources and politicians continue to minimize the seriousness of starting a war with Iran. Apart from the very real moral and ethical considerations of starting a war against law-abiding people just because you are prejudiced against them, it would be very wise to remember this is no push-over country, as are so many of those the United States chooses to bully and threaten and overthrow. And it has important and powerful friends in Russia and China.

This is a country with a population about the size of Germany’s, a country which has experienced something unlike anything the United States has experienced. It was battle-hardened in a vicious, eight year-long war during the 1980s.

The bloodiness of that war was comparable to parts of WWII in Europe, but the Iranians endured. That was a war the United States secretly encouraged. It even assisted Saddam’s Iraq with intelligence and war materiel.

Saddam used chemical weapons extensively, on an immensely greater scale than the inaccurate claims made about Syria recently, weapons the United States and its allies saw to it that he receive.  They wanted Iran bled.

Because of the awful experience of the Iran-Iraq War and the open and unceasing hostility of the United States for decades, Iran has prepared itself militarily, creating many formidable conventional weapons, including a whole range of missiles.

It has anti-ship missiles lining parts of its shores, and what prize targets a couple of aircraft carriers would make.

We saw the effectiveness of Iran’s anti-aircraft missiles with the downing of America’s largest and most sophisticated drone, a thing the size of an airliner, packed with electronic gear, flying high at night with signals turned off.

We saw the accuracy of Iran’s ground-to-ground missiles a while back when they hit some terrorist mercenaries in Iraq without touching nearby American forces.

What utter insanity it would be to start a war. I feel confident that if it were only up to Iran, there could be no war. It has started no hostilities in its entire modern history, despite being threatened many times and openly attacked more than once. It completely met its obligations under the international nuclear agreement Trump wantonly tore-up.

But it is not just Iran involved, represented as it is by impressive and highly rational figures such as President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif, it is the likes of Bolton and Pompeo and Haspel and Trump and Netanyahu who are involved – violence-prone and dishonest people every one of them.

Elements of the British government, at the time of the piracy near Spain were enmeshed in a political battle for the succession to Theresa May as Prime Minister, and some may have considered it a good show to put on for influencing Conservative Party opinion.

Belligerence is always big in such circles. Just look at Trump. Belligerence is the only act he has in his repertoire.

I don’t blame the Iranians in the least for the actions they’ve taken. They were all in response to things done first to them, and they were all measured and proportionate.

Indeed, in every step responding to American threats, the Iranians have shown admirable restraint. They do just enough to make the United States, and now Britain, understand that they cannot act arbitrarily without consequences.

And doing a tit-for-tat by capturing the British oil tanker in the Strait, an action involving no harm or violence, was about as reasonable as can be expected when someone is dealing with unreasonable people, people who claim higher authority and legitimacy for their acts on no basis whatsoever.

The only thing needed to restore peace in the Gulf is for the United States to withdraw its threatening forces and let the local people go on about their business.

Then, if it really wants to talk to Iran, as it claims it does, it might restore the solemn contract it destroyed, so that Iran feels it comes to the table as an equal national state, not as Czechoslovakia being terrorized by the Third Reich in the Munich Crisis of 1938.

That might just restore some credibility to the United States, too. I don’t know how anyone expects to reach any future agreements with anyone after proving its past word was worthless.

Iran’s Rouhani has hinted at a possible swap of the seized tankers. That sure makes a lot more sense to me than sending a nuclear attack submarine. It points towards where reason is to be found in these matters.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DANIEL LARISON IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

 

“Trump’s “Maximum Pressure” Blows Up in His Droopy Face

“If Iranians are ever going to talk to the US again they have to restore their leverage first”

 

Yes, who negotiates with a gun to his head? Only someone who is defenseless, but that certainly does not characterize Iran.

By what degradation of language are such proposals as America’s even called “negotiation”?

What we see is an effort to conduct international relations along the lines of the age-old Mafia protection racket: pay-up or something really bad is going to happen to you. That is world leadership in the twenty-first century?

It sets a terrible precedent, just as Trump’s tearing-up a valid, working treaty did. A treaty which involved the interests of a number of other states, none of whom agreed with Trump. The interests of five permanent members of the Security Council plus those of Germany and the EU are involved.

Yet Trump felt entitled just to ride roughshod over all of them?

Imagine a businessman suddenly ripping-up a written, multi-party contract, one already in force and operating smoothly for about four years? Here we see precisely that situation, except the international sphere lacks the courts and law enforcement which protect contracts in any advanced country.

Who can trust the United States? What is its word worth? Very little apparently, which of course only compounds the current situation with Iran, just as it does the one with North Korea. Ultimately, the question arises, who will want to do business with the United States? Given America’s relative economic decline in the world, that is just the opposite of what it should communicate to the world’s people to foster investment and trade.

The attitude which should prevail is the one, ironically, we see in Russia: open for business, reasonable, “right this way, partners.” I say “ironically” because not all that many years ago, Russia was a country understood as understanding none of those things.

Now, it very much is the United States of Donald Trump which understands none of those things.

The author’s points are valid, but there are yet more.

The mob running the White House wants Iran to “throw the kitchen sink” into a new deal. What was a clear nuclear-upgrading treaty should become a “and a number of other things” treaty.

At the very least, they want Iran’s missile technology degraded or removed.

A ridiculous expectation in today’s world of missile defense and satellite launching and ultimately all kinds of important projects in space. Much of future scientific work and even manufacturing will be done in space.

Iran has a lot of smart young educated people who want to pursue careers in science or technology and build companies. Why should they be arbitrarily excluded?

Of course, all the grotesque pressure comes ultimately from Israel, by way of American oligarchs who make massive campaign contributions when their terms are met, and through the dedicated efforts of government-service apparatchiks like Bolton and Pompeo.

Israel has worked tirelessly to hurt Iran as a rival for influence in the region. It has nothing to do with genuine security, as Israel pretends. Non-nuclear countries do not attack nuclear ones, and Iran has committed no aggression of any kind in its modern history.

The only kind of security involved is Israel’s sense of security in doing whatever it pleases to anyone anywhere in the region without effective objection, a miniature replica of America’s global behavior.

In a bitter irony, the invasion and destruction of Iraq, done largely at the behest of Israel (Ariel Sharon was a long and fervent advocate) in a terribly bloody war with at least a million deaths, actually increased Iran’s relative influence in the region. So much for the foresight of those who play with the lives of others as though they were game pieces.

What a way for America to run a country and try running the world – almost rabid efforts at destroying someone’s economy accompanied by grotesque threats and terrible displays of war machines, all reflecting no more worthy purpose than securing campaign contributions and political allies back home. And it comes at the same time America conducts a massive trade war with China and a huge campaign of vilifying Russia and hurting its interests. Then there are the smaller destructive works underway such as those in Venezuela. And all the vast and impetuous mass of sanctions and tariffs involved affect everyone else of consequence too.

The whole crisis further highlights America’s relative decline. The country’s leadership – and it’s not just Trump, although he is by far the loudest and most uncouth – has become openly arbitrary and demanding in efforts to counteract its decline, and no one responds well to that. Iran will certainly resist, assisted, hopefully, by such powerful associates as China and Russia and even India.

But Europe, too, is feeling the unwarranted pressure and the unfairness, the effort to skew the entire planet’s affairs in America’s favor. It is undoubtedly thinking hard about future relations with the United States.

If Trump’s efforts do not lead to war, they may very well lead to international economic collapse with all the tariffs and sanctions and reduced volumes of trade plus the threat to oil transport. But if, somehow, we avoid either of those outcomes, I think there can be no question this impossibly arrogant and ignorant President has effectively “greased the rails” for the emerging multi-polar world, one which effectively will end America’s privileged and much-abused authority.

Trump’s legacy will not have been to “make America great again,” whatever that slogan is supposed to mean, but to speed the very changes in the world to which the slogan was a response