Iran Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA) – Radio Free https://www.radiofree.org Independent Media for People, Not Profits. Sat, 05 Jul 2025 13:32:07 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.radiofree.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/cropped-Radio-Free-Social-Icon-2-32x32.png Iran Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA) – Radio Free https://www.radiofree.org 32 32 141331581 I Remember It, Well…. https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/05/i-remember-it-well/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/05/i-remember-it-well/#respond Sat, 05 Jul 2025 13:32:07 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=159668 Fame is fleeting. We may be a Facebook celebrity today with ‘likes’ in the six digits, only to find as time goes by that the balance is shifting daily as we fade into the oblivion from which we emerged. Pretty much the same phenomenon is discernible in regard to the attention paid historical events. Images […]

The post I Remember It, Well…. first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> Fame is fleeting. We may be a Facebook celebrity today with ‘likes’ in the six digits, only to find as time goes by that the balance is shifting daily as we fade into the oblivion from which we emerged. Pretty much the same phenomenon is discernible in regard to the attention paid historical events. Images blur, and then most slip out of consciousness. It seems especially pronounced these days. Forgetfulness, whether due to a studied attempt to suppress the past or the kicking-in of self-defense instincts on a mass scale, reminds us of George Orwell’s “memory hole’ in 1984. As Orwell understood when he created the “memory hole” concept, the erasure or sublimation of memory makes it easier to shape the present by controlling or editing history. Doing so also serves to preserve a mythic version of a country’s identity. Most broadly, a memory hole is any psychological mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing past events. Orwell’s Ministry of Truth made sure that its manipulations were complete and irreversible. What we experience today is something less draconian and directed. Memories do survive, but they usually are vague and distorted. They are prone to be blended into benign fable.

These thoughts about the transitory nature of things arose while perusing a collection of old clippings. Let’s consider some of them.

Image: ASCF News

1. Quemoy & Matsu. For those youthful readers, they are two tiny islands lying just off the coast of China but occupied by the Nationalists ensconced on Taiwan under our protection. In the late 1950s, they were a hot topic. The issue of whether and how to defend them figured prominently in the Kennedy-Nixon debates – right up there with the ‘missile gap’ (paranoid fiction) and Nixon’s 5 o’clock shadow. Pundits concluded that the debates, along with Richard Daley’s creative arithmetic in tabulating the Cook County vote, put JFK in the White House. At the time, there was widespread fear that the dispute could be the flashpoint for war with Beijing issuing 1,500 or so ‘final warnings’ that we had better turn them over to the PRC – or else. Mention the words Quemoy and Matsu these days, and the only response would be a request for the newly opened restaurant’s address.

Quemoy & Matsu yesterday; the Spratleys today.

In 1958, the PRC was an enemy. Nowadays, it is a competitor – at worst. However, too many in Washington’s corridors of power ‘need’ an enemy – for strategic, material or emotional reasons. Russia and/or Iran do not suffice. For China’s uniqueness lies in its potential – based on its very success – to challenge Americans’ atavistic article of faith that the United States is destined to serve as the world’s paramount power and leading light. America must beat the Chinese in order to confirm that foundational truth.

2. Crucial breakthroughs in anti-submarine technology – by the Soviets. As the “balance-of-terror” became institutionalized with the appurtenances of MAD, mental space opened for a fresh source of worry. Since the Pentagon & friends cannot tolerate a threat vacuum, anonymous reports started to appear which noted with alarm that the critical pillar of the deterrent triad composed of nuclear submarines carrying MIRVED missiles was in danger of being menaced by the Russkis’ development of diabolically capable attack submarines. The Cassandras claimed that their deployments gave Moscow an incentive to launch a first strike at a time of crisis.

Outcome? Nothing consequential. Sober analysis showed that the risk was inflated, our 20,000+ warhead arsenal was kept intact, and then the USSR disappeared from the strategic map. Now, of course, Putin is taken to be the avatar of Khrushchev, Russia’s hypersonic missiles are reason/excuse to accelerate our own $1 trillion upgrade, and nobody talks about submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) – much less their fanciful vulnerability. Yet, they are the ultimate factor ensuring the credibility of Mutual Assured Destruction.

There is no such thing as “nuclear superiority” between the great powers. The present ‘race’ to develop more refined missile delivery systems (which the Russian are ‘winning’) will not change that basic truth. For 75 years, military planners and analysts have bandied about a variety of ideas for ‘operationalizing’ nuclear weapons.

Fortunately, they never have been activated (TNWs a partial exception). No leader of a nuclear state has placed a hovering finger over the ‘button.’ Sanity ruled their thinking/emotions. That may now have changed given that sanity is no longer a requisite for being commander-in-chief of a nuclear power.

The one state that conceivably could use a nuclear explosive as a weapon of war is rabidly, fanatical Israel.

3. Fulda Gap. For decades, anyone with the slightest claim to expertise about national security and NATO was on intimate terms with the ‘Fulda gap.’ It refers to that portion of the North German plain that represented the shortest route for the Red Army to take on its way to the Channel. The term can have a strategic as well as a territorial definition. For the ‘gap’ also was the dividing line between the bulk of the American forces in Germany who were deployed south of it and the allied forces deployed mainly to the north of it. Hence, double vulnerability. Nightmare visions of 40 Soviet armored divisions pouring through the Fulda gap spawned several innovative ‘solutions.’ They included the deployment of thousands of tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) in Western European available to staunch an otherwise irresistible Soviet advance overwhelming outnumbered, conventionally armed NATO troops. That was a Kennedy/McNamara initiative. The TNWs were deployed; some are still in place. Fortunately, the notion that this first-use resort to n-weapons could be operationalized without setting off massive strategic exchanges was never tested. Of course, we now know that the Kremlin never contemplated such a suicidal assault – as did a few sane heads back then.

Little has been learned, though. These days, the Pentagon and NATO routinely sound the alarm that Putin’s truncated Russia poses a similar threat – despite the loss of all its Warsaw Pact allies and its Eastern European bases, despite NATO’s advance deployments to the Russian borders with Poland, the Baltics, and Finland — despite the inconvenient geographical fact that Russia’s army is 1,000 kilometers farther away from the Fulda gap. That army took three years to gain a decisive advantage over NATO’s Ukrainian auxiliaries. Moreover, there is no conceivable motive for such a crackpot move. For Russians to reach the Fulda Gap these days, they depend on tour coaches. Nobody uses the term ‘Fulda Gap’ in Washington. It’s too awkward for our war planners, but the mentality survives and thrives. History can repeat itself: first as drama, then as farce.

4. Fantasy Provocations. In 1846, many American eyed enviously the Mexican territories North and West of the Rio Grande and Baja. Texans, who were still digesting the large morsel of real estate they had torn from Santa Ana, where among them – out of pure greed, and to gain ‘strategic depth’ I suppose. President James Polk, egged on by other hawkish empire-builders among the country’s political elite, was gung-ho for conquest. He was just looking for an excuse. There being none: he fabricated one. After Texas’ accession to the Union, a crisis was created by the Texans’ demand that the border be moved south from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande (lebensraum). When Mexican President Herrera balked, Polk ordered General (later President) Zachary Taylor to invade the disputed zone. Months later, the Mexicans dared to defend their territory. Polk raged that Mexico had “invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil” – and sent to Congress an already drafted declaration of war.

Public opinion was divided (among the vocal opponents was Congressman Abraham Lincoln), but the motto Manifest Destiny and the willful Washington government triumphed. We invaded Mexico, defeated them, occupied Mexico City and forced them to hand over the vast territory that ran to the Pacific. Probably the biggest land grab in history. Hence, Hollywood, Santa Fe, and Los Vegas.

Greenland’s Destiny is now Manifest — in the eyes of the American Presidency. So, too, Canada.

In 1898, a vigorous America feeling its oats began flexing its muscles – in Central America, in the Caribbean, in the Pacific Basin. McKinley was President. Expansionists fixed a covetous eye on the residual Spanish possessions of Cuba, Puerto Rico and – farther afield – the Philippine Islands. Spain was a decaying state whose tattered bits of empire scattered around the globe it could not defend. All that the United States needed to take them over was an excuse. As in 1848, they manufactured one. Many of us still “remember the Maine” – the U.S. flagged ship that blew up in Havana Harbor. The U.S. accused the colonial authorities there of deliberately destroying the ship. There was no plausible reason for them to do so – but it wasn’t reason that prevailed. Historians have established beyond a doubt that the Maine was sunk by an explosion that was caused by a spontaneous combustion of grain stored in its hull. No more than there was reason to believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 or the aluminum tubes were the crucial ingredients of his non-existence nuclear weapons program. The outcome of the Spanish-American War: we got the dubious places we prized. We suppressed a 6-year Philippino resistance to our occupation that left about 400,000 ‘natives’ dead and devastated the country, and 40 years later, we were gone. Teddy Roosevelt rode his fame as leader of the ‘Rough Riders’ into the White House.

In Panama, too, they speak Spanish.

In 1958, we embarked on an uncannily similar performance in Indochina. That gruesome story has many chapters, punctuated in the end by humiliation and failure. The most notable repeat element was the artful fabrication of an incident that was exploited as an excuse for war: the infamous Tonkin Gulf encounter. The short version is simple. Senior Washington officials, led by Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy, were pressing very hard for a massive escalation of the American military intervention. JFK resisted the pressure and documentary evidence now suggests that he indeed reached the tentative conclusion to begin a withdrawal after the 1964 election. LBJ was also hesitant, but more ambivalent and in a weaker political position. McNamara and Bundy in fact sent Johnson a written ultimatum: either take the measures we are advocating, or we will denounce you as a weakling on national security during the upcoming campaign. It was a proposal that he could not refuse. So, the hunt for an excuse that would sway public opinion and justify a major war in Asia was on. It was found in a naval incident off the coast of North Vietnam. The official story was that an American vessel had been fired on by a Vietnamese gunboat. That was beefed-up as the casus belli for the disproportionate American retaliation which produced millions of casualties (mostly civilian) in all of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and among American forces (58,000 killed). The rest is a matter of record.

So, keep a gimlet eye on the Persian Gulf. Then again, recent events tell us that these days we don’t need a contrived excuse to attack a sovereign country on the other side of the world that poses no threat to the United States.

6. 50 METRICS
In November-December 2009, President Obama found himself in a dilemma. It was the failure of the American project to foster a friendly, democratic Afghanistan. The enormous investment of military forces, cash and political advice had not paid the expected dividends. The Kabul government was incompetent, corrupt and riddled by warlord rivalry. The Taliban insurgency, spurred back to life by the ham-handed occupation, was thriving. The counter-insurgency was stymied in a stalemate. Obama’s instincts pointed him towards a lowering of the United States’ profile in acceptance that our goals were unreachable. However, no one in the administration’s national security team shared this sentiment – except for Vice-President Biden.

Under the guidance of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the resisters formed a cabal to prevent Obama from acting on his instincts. It included Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullin, CIA Director David Petraeus, our newly appointed commander in Afghanistan Stanley McCrystal and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She was selected to act as the ‘frontman’ for political reasons that included her personal standing with the President. They pressed hard for a different strategy that entailed an expansion of the residual reduced force in country by some 35,000 and a doubling down on our commitment to pre-existing objectives. Obama set aside his misgivings and yielded to the pressure. To cover himself, he took three exceptional steps. One, he lowered the size of the escalation. Two, he composed an elaborate, quasi-legal document that spelled out the terms and conditions of the strategy. It stipulated the sequence of actions and set deadlines. All of the main protagonists were obliged to sign what was a strange sort of pre-nuptial contract. Finally, Obama included 50 metrics by which to measure progress/success in the strategy’s implementation. That was done in order to avoid the fudging of future assessments and serve as benchmarks for later decisions. The punditry and the media made much of the 50 metrics which were broadly viewed as a sign of the President’s diligence and rigorous, lawyerly mind. That lasted for about 10 days. The metrics never again were to be mentioned in any public setting – or, as far as we know – in any private setting either.

11 years and 3 administrations later, the war went on. Trump talked about a withdrawal – sort of. We didn’t leave. Desultory ‘peace’ talks between the Taliban and the debile Kabul government (complicated by the intrusion of ISIS fighters) meandered. So, were back to Richard Holbrooke’s definition of success: “We’ll know it when we see it.” For the Pentagon, ‘success’ was primarily a matter of ensuring that history doesn’t place an ‘L’ in the U.S. military’s record book. In the last weeks of his first administration, Trump conceded defeat. The chaotic withdrawal, totally mismanaged by the Pentagon, took pace under Biden. He was blamed.

Digits and statistics and equations and algorithms are the last (or first) refuge of somebody either trying to pull the wool over your eyes – or really not knowing the subject he is talking about.

The ignominious flight from the 19-year Afghan debacle put paid to the COIN/Nation Building/Democracy Promotion phase of the post-Cold War strategy for maximizing American global influence. It had been a three-pronged project now reduced to what always had been the two main elements: coercive force, and covert operations. The ‘best-of-intentions’ cover that the former provided continued to serve as propaganda tool for cudgeling hostile states on human rights grounds. However, the ranks of the true believers were reduced to a few naïve idealists.

Outright coercion has been employed with growing audacity: Syria, Libya, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon (where it succeeded) as well as Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen (where it failed). Covert operations are employed with the same audacity spanning the globe – producing similar mixed results: Ukraine, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Pakistan (successful); Venezuela, Georgia, Belarus, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Mali (where it failed). This propensity for trying to dictate the political leadership of other countries now has reached its logical extremity in the outright voiding of election results that displease Washington: Romania being the outstanding example. This last is not as incongruent as it might seem; after all, this is what 50% of Americans, a majority of the ruling party, and a slice of the federal judiciary approve of/countenance when it comes to the violent insurrection of January 6.

7. The JCPOA Deal With Iran. Within hours of signing the historic, laboriously constructed agreement, President Obama said:

With respect to Iran, it is a great civilization, but it also has an authoritarian theocracy in charge that is anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, sponsors terrorism, and there are a whole host of real profound differences that we [have with them].

Later:

Questions have been raised about whether we have sufficient options for dealing with Iranian violations of the deal. In fact, we have a wide range of unilateral and multilateral responses that we can employ should Iran fail to meet its commitments. First and foremost, as you are aware, the snap back provision we secured in the UN Security Council is unprecedented. If at any time the United States believes Iran has failed to meet its commitments, no other state can block our ability to snap back those multilateral sanctions. Second, we and our European partners can snap our own sanctions back into place at any time should Iran fail to meet its commitments. This gives us, as well as our European partners, enormous leverage in holding Iran to its commitments under the JCPOA. Third, we also enjoy a range of other, more incremental options. These include re-imposing certain US. sanctions, and working with our European partners to do the same, as we have done in the past. Fourth, we can employ our leverage in the mechanisms agreed to with our negotiating partners, such as through the Joint Commission’s role in the procurement channel established in the JCPOA this is a mechanism Iran must use under the deal for the procurement of any materials designed for a peaceful nuclear program and in which we have the ability to block approval. Ultimately, it is essential that we retain the flexibility to decide what responsive measures we and our allies deem appropriate for any non-compliance. Telegraphing in advance to Iran the expected any potential infractions would be counterproductive, potentially lessening the deterrent effect.

— Letter to Representative Nadler

Obama was echoed by Secretary of State John Kerry:

Through these steps and others, we will maintain international pressure on Iran. United States sanctions imposed because of Tehran’s support for terrorism and its human rights record – those will remain in place, as will our sanctions aimed at preventing the proliferation of ballistic missiles and transfer of conventional arms. The UN Security Council prohibitions on shipping weapons to Hizballah, the Shiite militias in Iraq, the Houthi rebels in Yemen – all of those will remain as well….

Have no doubt. The United States will oppose Iran’s destabilizing policies with every national security tool available. And disregard the myth. The Iran agreement is based on proof, not trust. And in a letter that I am sending to all the members of Congress today, I make clear the Administration’s willingness to work with them on legislation to address shared concerns about regional security consistent with the agreement that we have worked out with our international partners.

Reply: “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, [said] Washington sought Iran’s “surrender”. “The [arrogant] Americans say they stopped Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” Khamenei said. “They know it’s not true. We had a fatwa (religious ruling), declaring nuclear weapons to be religiously forbidden under Islamic law. It had nothing to do with the nuclear talks.”

Neither Obama nor Trump complied with the JCPOA’s provisions calling for the lifting of economic sanctions including release of Iranian financial assets frozen in American banks. Iran did comply with its treaty commitments vis the IAEA (which predictably passed on the information to American Intelligence and military planners — a practice that continued to last week). This pattern is reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s reneging on the deal with North Korea in the 1990s.

This depiction of Iran has had two profound effects. First, it closed off the possibility of pursuing a wider détente with Iran that could permit diplomatic resolution of outstanding regional conflicts. Second, this characterization was grist for the mill for all those opposed to any normalization of relations between Washington and Tehran. Thereby, it created political circumstances that encouraged Trump’s withdrawal from the treaty and then led President Biden to take a hardline approach to a restoration of our participation. By insisting on the same, unacceptable preconditions that his predecessor demanded, Biden in effect followed the course laid down by Trump – as enabled by Obama.

Now we suffer the inevitable denouement.

Why Memory?

Each of these episodes in collective forgetfulness has its singular features, as do the lessons to be drawn from them. If we were to indulge ourselves in generalization, they could be summarized this way:

1. The erasure or blurring of past events is common and easily accomplished.
2. Doing so often is a matter of political convenience.
3. The lessons we draw from them are normally self-serving, selective and partial.
4. Retrieving with accuracy memories of those past events is technically quite simple; psychologically, it takes great willpower
The failure of collective memory can exact a very heavy penalty.

The post I Remember It, Well…. first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michael Brenner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/05/i-remember-it-well/feed/ 0 542990 Tulsi Gabbard: Another Lesser Evilist Offering https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/24/tulsi-gabbard-another-lesser-evilist-offering/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/24/tulsi-gabbard-another-lesser-evilist-offering/#respond Tue, 24 Jun 2025 18:04:12 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=159337 On 20 June 2025, Galloway spoke about his dream team for the next presidential race: "Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson, president and vice president of the United States of America."

He advised Gabbard to "resign if Trump joins the war and should make plain that she intends to run for president." She hasn't.

Given the public rebukes of her by Donald Trump, speculation had emerged of her doing just that: resigning. However, Gabbard has instead attempted to win her way back into Trump's good book.

The post Tulsi Gabbard: Another Lesser Evilist Offering first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> On 20 June 2025, Galloway spoke about his dream team for the next presidential race: “Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson, president and vice president of the United States of America.”

He advised Gabbard to “resign if Trump joins the war and should make plain that she intends to run for president.” She hasn’t.

Given the public rebukes of her by Donald Trump, speculation had emerged of her doing just that: resigning. However, Gabbard has instead attempted to win her way back into Trump’s good book.

Two years ago, George Galloway, who served five-terms as a UK MP, and now hosts the popular Mother of all Talk Shows came across as a Gabbard fanboy,

I have come to the view that the best possible president for the United States in 2024 is Tulsi Gabbard. I think she’s got the looks. I think she’s got style. I think she’s got the eloquence. And most of her politics, but by no means all, are as good as you’re going to get from anyone with a chance of winning the presidency of the United states. So there’s quite a few hedges and qualifications in there, but I have come to the view that Tulsi Gabbard for president is our best bet.

Horrors that looks, sartorial, and eloquence should be enounced as foremost considerations — or even being considerations at all — for a political leader. A consideration not mentioned by Galloway was intelligence.

When one scrutinizes Gabbard on her record, support for her would again be an appeal to lesser evilism. She may, however, be one of the best among so many regressivist politicians.

Gabbard, in particular, comes to the fore on militarism and foreign affairs. What is part of her record here?

Gabbard is regressivist on Palestine and Israel

Gabbard seems not to realize that Palestine is state, unrecognized as such by the United States, that is under siege, occupation, theft of resources, and an ongoing genocide (sped up greatly since 7 October 2023). Moreover, Gabbard does not call what Israel has been carrying out since 7 October as a genocide.

She focuses her ire on Hamas’s “evil” actions. In a 10 October 2023 interview on Fox News Tonight (hosted by Brian Kilmeade filling in for Tucker Carlson), Gabbard stated: “Israel has not only the right but the responsibility to defend itself against these terrorists who slaughtered innocent civilians.”

On 10 October 2023, Gabbard posted on X: “Hamas is responsible for this war. They could end it now by surrendering, releasing hostages, and laying down their arms.” In other words, Gabbard denies Palestinians the inalienable right to resist occupation, an occupation that is rooted in killing, racism, humiliation, and brutality.

Gabbard also rejected calls for a ceasefire, implying that she backs the continued Israeli military operations in Gaza. (The Tulsi Gabbard Show, Ep. 45)

While Gabbard has never referred to Israel’s genocidal actions, she does make this accusation of Hamas. In an X post on 10 October 2023, she stated: “Hamas is a genocidal terrorist group. They must be defeated.”

Gabbard took aim at those Democrats who are

accusing Israel of committing a genocide. It it is the height of hypocrisy because they’re apologists and supporters of these Islamist Hamas terrorists who are calling for a genocide the extermination of all Jews not just in Israel but around the world and we’re seeing this being carried out by these violent mobs and threats and other things that are happening against Jewish people literally uh around the world.

By Gabbard’s logic, she could be criticized as an apologist and supporter of these Israeli Zionist terrorists.

Gabbard also opines, “This is not a ‘resistance’ movement. Hamas is a jihadist terrorist group funded by Iran, whose goal is the destruction of Israel.” (The Tulsi Gabbard Show, Ep. 45)

She accuses Hamas of using human shields, but she does not criticize Israel using Palestinian children as human shields. Even the Zionist friendly BBC reports this.(“Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, knowing Israel will retaliate. They provoke war, then exploit the suffering for propaganda.” Cited by Deepseek as “Tulsi Gabbard on Israel-Palestine Conflict,” CNN, 7 May 2019.)

Gabbard criticizes the ICERD Genocide Case (2024): “South Africa’s case at the ICJ is a propaganda stunt. Hamas is the real war criminal here.” (Twitter/X)

Gabbard is regressivist on Iran

Gabbard has called for regime change in Iran: “The Iranian people deserve freedom from this oppressive, theocratic dictatorship.” (Fox News, 2023)

She was also against Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal: “The JCPOA gave Iran billions while allowing them to keep terror networks intact.” (CNN, 2019)

Of course, all the talk about Iran and its purported nuclear weapons program has now had a wrench thrown into the works as the US launched an illegal and unannounced war on Iran. Gabbard fell into line behind Trump on this illegal attack (contrary to the UN Charter and without Congressional approval). The repercussions from that US attack will become clearer as time passes.

Galloway’s Lesser Evilism

Back to Galloway. Is this really, as Galloway claims about a future Tulsi Gabbard presidential candidacy: “As good as it is going to get”? Have pity on the world, if that is true.

Can Gabbard represent the conscience of a nation? Surely there are better progressivist choices.

Right away a courageous woman of integrity such as Medea Benjamin comes to mind.

The post Tulsi Gabbard: Another Lesser Evilist Offering first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/24/tulsi-gabbard-another-lesser-evilist-offering/feed/ 0 540874 The Ignorance That Pervades Us https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/15/the-ignorance-that-pervades-us/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/15/the-ignorance-that-pervades-us/#respond Sun, 15 Jun 2025 15:29:49 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=159096 The uncalled for attack on Iran by the most insane group of people who ever inhabited this planet is expected; what do the insane do, they do the insane. Not expected is that recognized people do not recognize the insanity of the action. Put in simple. Iranians are not eager to have a nuclear bomb. […]

The post The Ignorance That Pervades Us first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]>

The uncalled for attack on Iran by the most insane group of people who ever inhabited this planet is expected; what do the insane do, they do the insane. Not expected is that recognized people do not recognize the insanity of the action. Put in simple. Iranians are not eager to have a nuclear bomb. Why would they when knowing Israel cannot be attacked with a weapon that will release radioactivity in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, and they will be labelled as international killers. An attempt to nuke anyone will be retaliated by a devastation that will erase their ancestral Persian land and its inhabitants from the Earth. It is obvious to their educated minds. Why isn’t it obvious to the rest of the world?

The only reason that the Islamic Republic might pursue a nuclear weapon is for the same reason the U.S. and the Soviet Union rattled against one another, for deterrence. Only Iran stands in the way of genocidal Israel’s constant attacks on humanity. If Iran stalls Israel’s belligerent efforts, assuredly, Israel, who has shown contempt for the entire human race, and would even use the atomic bomb against the United States, will drop “Big Boy” on the Islamic Republic, but only if the Mullahs do not have a reprisal weapon.

Unlike media portrayals, history shows that Iran has never been and is not now a threat to any nation. Iran has not attacked another nation and has built only defensive positions. Compared to the United States and Israel, who have started several wars and slaughtered millions of innocents throughout the globe, Iran is a cherub.

Israel did not attack Iran to prevent Iran from developing a bomb it could never use and whose progress in attainment was at a time when Iran was years away from having something workable, tested, and mated to a workable and tested delivery system. Israel attacked Iran because it knew it had the military power to subdue Iran and could get away with the nefarious deed by reciting the usual, “we were ready to be attacked by anti-Semites and had to defend ourselves.” Now, Israel can carry on with the genocide of the Palestinians, seize the oilfields of the Gaza coast, take over the Haram al-Sharif, push the Palestinians out of the West Bank and all the way to Amman while it takes the East Bank of the Jordan River, move its checkerboard boundaries to the Litany River in Lebanon, and close to Damascus in Syria, and seize all the remaining aquifers in the Levant.

Summarizing the previous paragraphs — Iran cannot use atomic weapons for an offensive purpose and might need them as a defensive measure to deter a nuclear attack by Israel. Israel has no defensive need for atomic weapons and has developed them for offensive tactics.

Not realizing that Israel has attacked a sovereign nation that has not posed a threat to its people and has continued on its merciless onslaught against the civilized world emphasizes the ignorance that pervades us. No call for a Security Council meeting to defend a nation’s sovereignty. Instead we have an American president gloating over his deception, telling ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl, “I think it’s been excellent.” We gave them a chance and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come, a lot more.”

What chance did Trump give Iran; the same chance he took away from the Islamic Republic when he terminated United States participation in the JCPOA, a treaty that already prevented Iran from enriching Uranium and would be renegotiated, but could not after Trump had unilaterally terminated it. Trump’s termination of the JCPOA initiated the havoc, another mindless scheme from an unstable derelict.

Added to the distress is media interpretation of the attack, with nobody, from what I have read, attributing the purpose to Israel knowing it had the military power to subdue Iran, could get away with the nefarious deed, and then accelerate its war against civilization.

As an example, New York Times columnist, Bret Stephens, headlines an article with “Israel Had the Courage to Do What Needed to Be Done,” and continues with “All the other options have run their course.” His closing paragraph,

But for those who worry about a future in which one of the world’s most awful regimes takes advantage of international irresolution to gain possession of the most dangerous weapons, Israel’s strike is a display of clarity and courage for which we may all one day be grateful.

Reworded for clarity and reality,

Now we must worry about a future in which the world’s most awful regime, Israel, takes advantage of international ignorance to maintain unique possession of the most dangerous weapons. Israel’s strike is a display of scheming madness for which we should all be fearful and will one day regret.

Not knowing where this madness will lead, except to know the madness will not be calmed and will lead into more madness, I will calm myself by closing Word and playing a game of online scrabble.

The post The Ignorance That Pervades Us first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/15/the-ignorance-that-pervades-us/feed/ 0 539027 The Non-explosive Iranian Bomb https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/05/the-non-explosive-iranian-bomb/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/05/the-non-explosive-iranian-bomb/#respond Mon, 05 May 2025 15:00:22 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=157964 The non-existent Iranian bomb has lesser importance to the existing bombs that threaten the world. United States (US) demands that Iran promise to halt pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile developments distract from the real intent of US actions — deter other nations from establishing more friendly relations with Iran and prevent them from […]

The post The Non-explosive Iranian Bomb first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]>

The non-existent Iranian bomb has lesser importance to the existing bombs that threaten the world. United States (US) demands that Iran promise to halt pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile developments distract from the real intent of US actions — deter other nations from establishing more friendly relations with Iran and prevent them from gaining a correct perspective on the causes of the Middle East crises.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) created a potential for extensive political, economic, and social engagements of the international community with Iran. The investments would lead to attachments, friendships, and alliances and initiate a revitalized, prosperous, and stronger Iran. A new perspective of Iran could yield a revised perspective of a violent, unstable, and disturbed Middle East. Israel and Saudi Arabia would finally receive attention as participants in bringing chaos to the Arab region. Economies committed to Iran’s progress and allied with its interests could bring pressure on Israel and Saudi Arabia to change their destructive behaviors.

Because arguments with Iran could have been approached in a less provocative and insinuating manner, the previous demands were meant to provoke and insinuate. Assuredly, the US wants Iran to eschew nuclear and ballistic weapons, but the provocative approach indicated other purposes — alienate Iran, destroy its military capability, and bring Tehran to collapse and submission. For what reasons? Accomplishing the far-reaching goals will not affect the average American, lessen US defense needs, or diminish the continuous battering of the helpless faces of the Middle East. The strategy mostly pleased Israel and Saudi Arabia, who engineered it, share major responsibility for the Middle East turmoil, and consistently try to use mighty America to subdue the principal antagonist to their malicious activities. During the 2016 presidential campaign, contender Donald Trump said, “Many nations, including allies, ripped off the US.” President Donald Trump has verified that statement.

Noting the history of US promises to leaders of other nations – give up your aggressive attitudes and you will benefit – the US promises make the Ayatollahs skeptical. The US reneged on the JCPOA, sent Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to the World Court and eventual death (although his personal compromises were the key to the Dayton Accords that ended the Yugoslavian conflict), directly assisted NATO in the overthrow of subdued Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, pulverized Iraq after sanctions could not drive that nation to total ruin, rejected the Iranian pledge of $560 million worth of assistance to Afghanistan at the Tokyo donors’ conference in January 2002, and, according to the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Dobbins, disregarded Iran’s “decisive role in persuading the Northern Alliance delegation to compromise its demands of wanting 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government.” Tehran has always sensed it is in a no-win situation. Regardless of its decisions and directions, the U.S. intends to pulverize the centuries old Persian lands.

If the US honestly wants to have Iran promise never to pursue nuclear and ballistic missile weapons, it will approach the issues with a simple question, “What will it take for you (Iran) never to pursue these weapons?” Assuredly, the response will include provisions for the US to withdraw support from a despotic Saudi Kingdom in its oppression of minorities and opposition and propose that the US eliminate financial, military and cooperative support to Israel’s theft of Palestinian lands, oppressive conditions imposed on Palestinians, daily killings of Palestinian people, and expansionist plans. The correct question soliciting a formative response and leading to decisive US actions resolves two situations and benefits the US — fear of Iran developing weapons of mass destruction is relieved and the Middle East is pointed in a direction that achieves justice, peace, and stability for its peoples.

Despite the August 2018 report from Trump’s U.S. Department of State’s Iran Action group, which “chronicle Iran’s destructive activities,” and consists of everything from most minor to most major, from unsubstantiated to retaliatory, from the present time to before the discovery of dirt, Iranians will not rebel in sufficient numbers against their own repressive state until they note the end of hypocritical support by western powers of other repressive states. Halting international terrorism, ameliorating the Middle East violence, and preventing any nation from establishing hegemony in the Arab world starts with Trump confronting Israel and Saudi Arabia, two nations whose records of injustice, aggression, oppression, and violation of human rights exceed that of the oppressive Iran regime.

Otherwise, it will occur on a Sunday morning; always occurs in the early hours on the day of rest. It will come with a roar greater than the sum of all shrieks and screams ever uttered by humankind, rip across fields and cities, and burn through the flesh of a part of the world’s population.

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This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/05/the-non-explosive-iranian-bomb/feed/ 0 531169 Iran Can Save the Tumbling Trump https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/30/iran-can-save-the-tumbling-trump/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/30/iran-can-save-the-tumbling-trump/#respond Wed, 30 Apr 2025 14:55:15 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=157837 The man who behaves as if he is saving the world cannot save himself. He is tumbling fast, but, if he seizes the moment, he can recreate himself and gain an exalted place in history — Trump triumphant, if Iran permits. In his first term, Trump left the White House with the country in a […]

The post Iran Can Save the Tumbling Trump first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> The man who behaves as if he is saving the world cannot save himself. He is tumbling fast, but, if he seizes the moment, he can recreate himself and gain an exalted place in history — Trump triumphant, if Iran permits.

In his first term, Trump left the White House with the country in a state of physical, mental, social, political, and economic shock — a COVID-19 epidemic, economy in shambles, nation divided, an insurrection impeded, and two congressional attempts at having him removed from office. With this enviable record, maybe not all his fault, he asserted he had made the destroyed America “Great again.” Historians disagree.

The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey surveyed 525 historians and political science scholars. Abraham Lincoln topped the list, with Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Washington, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson rounding out the top five.

The results of a poll released on Presidents Day weekend rank Biden as the 14th greatest president in American history, coming in ahead of the likes of Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and Ulysses S. Grant. His predecessor and likely Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, found himself in dead last at 45th on the list.

Donald Trump rates lowest (10.92), behind James Buchanan (16.71), Andrew Johnson (21.56), Franklin Pierce (24.6), William Henry Harrison (26.01), and Warren Harding (27.76). Barack Obama has risen nine places (from #16 to #7), as has Ulysses S. Grant (from #26 to #17), while Andrew Jackson has fallen 12 places (from #9 to #21) and Calvin Coolidge has dropped 7 spots (from #27 to #34).

After successor and predecessor Joe Biden managed to end the COVID-19 epidemic and revive the economy, while keeping the country divided, the dead last Trump entered his second term by announcing he is going to make the United States greater. Tariffs, which many prominent economists and Wall Street analysts say will cause a RECESSION, will revive the industrial base. Peace and stability will return to the Slavic nations and to the peoples of the Middle East. The dead last man is quoted as having said, “But it (Ukraine/Russian conflict) is a very easy negotiation to take place. I will have it solved within one day, a peace between them.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio now suggests “the U.S. might soon back away from negotiations altogether without more progress.”

The most grievous faux pas in Trump’s jumbled policies is his repudiation of The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement promoted by the Obama administration, which limited the Iranian nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other provisions. The agreement was finalized on 14 July 2015, between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council together with the European Union.

For 13 years, Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges.

For 15 years, Iran agreed to enrich uranium only up to 3.67% and not to build heavy-water facilities.

For 10 years, uranium enrichment would be limited to a single facility using first-generation centrifuges. Other facilities would be converted to avoid proliferation risks. IAEA would have regular access to all Iranian nuclear facilities to monitor compliance. In return for verifiably abiding by those provisions, Iran would receive relief from U.S., European Union, and United Nations S.C. nuclear-related sanctions.

To President Donald J. Trump “the Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States ever entered.” He inaugurated the PROTECTING AMERICA FROM A BAD DEAL, terminating the United States’ participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and re-imposing sanctions lifted under the deal. Misinformation, exaggerations, and wild predictions steered America from A GREAT DEAL into a BAD FUTURE.

  • President Trump is terminating United States participation in the JCPOA, as it failed to protect America’s national security interests.
  • The JCPOA enriched the Iranian regime and enabled its malign behavior, while at best delaying its ability to pursue nuclear weapons and allowing it to preserve nuclear research and development.
  • The re-imposed sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy, such as its energy, petrochemical, and financial sectors.
  • United States withdrawal from the JCPOA will pressure the Iranian regime to alter its course of malign activities and ensure that Iranian bad acts are no longer rewarded. As a result, both Iran and its regional proxies will be put on notice. As importantly, this step will help ensure global funds stop flowing towards illicit terrorist and nuclear activities.
  • Intelligence recently released by Israel provides compelling details about Iran’s past secret efforts to develop nuclear weapons, which it lied about for years.
  • The intelligence further demonstrates that the Iranian regime did not come clean about its nuclear weapons activity, and that it entered the JCPOA in bad faith.
  • The JCPOA failed to deal with the threat of Iran’s missile program and did not include a strong enough mechanism for inspections and verification.
  • The JCPOA foolishly gave the Iranian regime a windfall of cash and access to the international financial system for trade and investment.
  • *Instead of using the money from the JCPOA to support the Iranian people at home, the regime has instead funded a military buildup and continues to fund its terrorist proxies, such as Hizballah and Hamas.

Because of Trump’s decision to leave the JCPOA, everything the JCPOA managed to prevent has been encouraged. The Islamic State has ballistic missiles, drones, anti-ballistic missiles, and uranium stock at 60 percent enrichment, close to having material for a nuclear bomb.

WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Iran could make enough fissile for one nuclear bomb in “about 12 days,” a top U.S. Defense Department official said on Tuesday, down from the estimated one year it would have taken while the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was in effect.

Trump’s efforts have been counterproductive and his fast fall into oblivion might be hastened in the renewed nuclear discussions, except, wait, he can be resurrected. By playing his cards right, not the way he told Ukraine President Zelensky is playing the cards, he can rise faster than a SpaceX starship and vault himself into a page of glorious history ─ Trump can rid the world of the nuclear menace ─ Iran can help Trump to achieve nuclear disarmament. Unlikely, but doable.

The only reason for Iran having a nuclear weapons program is to neutralize Israel’s nuclear armaments. The Ayatollahs will definitely halt their program if assured Israel surrenders its weapons, that is, if Israel has deliverable weapons to surrender. This is a fair trade and one that Trump, who covets a Nobel Prize, might entertain. Think of it, and he will ─ Donald J. Trump, 45th and 47th presidents of the United States was responsible for halting nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and for eventually reducing the nuclear threat throughout the world. Much to deliberate, much to cajole, much to administrate, and much to admire. What is the alternative — much to bomb, much to kill, much to destroy, and much for history to scorn.

Israel will not approve, and will kick, squirm, and threaten. Without the United States support and an entire world from Tierra del Fuego to Siberia allied with the proposition, Israel will receive an offer it cannot refuse. The bitter man will smile again. His hateful disposition hid the real Trump, the man who wants to be loved by all.

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This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/30/iran-can-save-the-tumbling-trump/feed/ 0 530339 Iran: How to Circumvent Sanctions Now and in the Future https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/22/iran-how-to-circumvent-sanctions-now-and-in-the-future/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/22/iran-how-to-circumvent-sanctions-now-and-in-the-future/#respond Tue, 22 Mar 2022 05:41:09 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=127945 Background Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi says the first priority of his administration during the Persian New Year is boosting employment and creating new jobs. He made the remarks in his New Year message aired live from the Grand Mosque of the southwestern Iranian port city of Khorramshahr on Sunday evening, March 20. “My first Nowruz […]

The post Iran: How to Circumvent Sanctions Now and in the Future first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> Background

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi says the first priority of his administration during the Persian New Year is boosting employment and creating new jobs.

He made the remarks in his New Year message aired live from the Grand Mosque of the southwestern Iranian port city of Khorramshahr on Sunday evening, March 20.

“My first Nowruz message as the servant of the public is the message of round-the-clock and incessant work to build a powerful and advanced Iran,” he said.

“No nation and no country has achieved anything without intensive work and the maximum use of human and natural resources. The New Year and the new century should be the beginning of a new era of productive, useful, fruitful, and progressive work for all of us,” the president added.

“During the current year, God willing, the issue of employment will be our first and foremost issue,” Iran’s president said, adding that unemployment is the root cause of all economic and social plights. As a result, he noted, supporting domestic production is at the top of his administration’s agenda.

Raeisi noted that during the seven-month lapsed since his administration was inaugurated, it has proven it is determined to do what it says.

“We said that with the help of God and people, we would contain the coronavirus [pandemic], [and] thanks God, it was done,” Iran’s president said.

He added, “We said that the country and the economy would not be left in limbo pending [the conclusion] of the JCPOA [Iran’s deal with world powers]. Everybody saw that while engaging in negotiations [with other parties to the JCPOA] and taking advantage of political and legal means to dealing with the crime of sanctions, we also put our focus on thwarting sanctions.”1

He pointed to the emerging signs of economic growth and stability as well as a significant increase in the volume of foreign trade and non-oil exports under his administration, saying, “We increased trade with our neighbors for the benefit of the people.”

“We said that we will set the production wheel in motion, [and] official statistics, released up to the end of the third quarter even show that economic growth has reached above 5%,” Iran’s chief executive said.

“We said that we will not trade the interests and security of the people with anything, [and] everyone saw that we gave priority to boosting the country’s defense, missile, and space capabilities, because the country’s security is a priority,” he added.

Raeisi also said the balance in the country’s foreign policy has been restored through an active diplomacy pursued under his leadership.

According to the president, the greatest foreign policy achievement of the country in recent years has been the disgraceful failure of the United States’ maximum pressure policy in the face of the Iranian people’s resistance.2

Back in 2018, the administration of the former US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the 2015 Iran deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and re-imposed the anti-Iran sanctions that were lifted under the accord while piling on with new ones. He said he was adopting a “maximum pressure” policy to force Tehran to negotiate a new deal.

In spite of his fierce criticisms of the “failed maximum pressure” campaign pursued by his predecessor, Biden has not only kept all the sanctions imposed under Trump but has also added new ones as well.

“We began running the country in the right direction. We do not see the fate of the nation in the hands of foreigners,” Raeisi stressed.

He noted that his administration did away with polarization, which he said undermines the nation’s strength, and instead demonstrated that the power of the [operations in the military] field is in line and parallel to the power of diplomacy.

“We used foreign relations in the service of [the country’s] economy, and that is the meaning of a transform-seeking and justice-oriented administration,” he added.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Iranian president wished for the new Iranian year to be the end of the coronavirus pandemic around the world and also an end to wars in every corner of the world.

PressTV Interview with Peter Koenig

PressTV:  What would be possible ways to neutralize sanctions, regardless of the result of negotiations in Vienna [IAEA Nuclear Negotiations – ongoing]?

Peter Koenig:  Thank you.  Please let me begin, if I may, with a quote from President Ebrahim Raeisi, after referring to Iran’s spectacular 5% growth, when he said: “that we will not trade the interests and security of the people with anything, [and] everyone saw that we gave priority to boosting the country’s defense, missile, and space capabilities, because the country’s security is a priority.”

This is crucial. Iran’s Security must be a priority. This refers not just to military and geopolitical security, but also to economic security.

To neutralize sanctions current and potential future ones, it is important that Iran fully orient herself towards the east, towards China and Russia; in essence, towards the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, of which Iran is now a full-fledged member, and away from the west.

Remember, I have said this before – the SCO comprises about half of the world population — in other words, a huge market — and controls about 30% or more of the world’s GDP.

There is no need to continue depending on the west, the US and her allies or better, her vassals, the Europeans. They will always do what the Anglo-American empire dictates because they are afraid themselves of sanctions.

The current case – the war between Ukraine and Russia – speaks for itself. The US dictates the sanctions for Russia and the European Union has to follow suit – or else. What is the result?

It’s a kind of economic suicide for the west; more for the Europeans than for the US. But also, the US suffers more from their imposed sanctions than does Russia. Because, Russia has gradually detached herself from the dollar-euro economy, and oriented her trade and geopolitical relations towards the east, China and the SCO.

This is true, despite of the contrary the western Russia phobic media want you to believe.

Of course, unplugging one’s economy from the west, from the dollar-euro hegemony, is a process – it doesn’t happen from one day to the next.

But Iran has already begun. In my opinion, it has to be continued immediately and fervently and carried out persistently. In that sense, in achieving economic independence – Russia may be an example. The current US-EU sanction regime hurt Europa and the US more than they hurt Russia, especially in what energy supply is concerned.

PressTV:  Also, considering the energy crisis in Europe, there may be possibilities for Iran to supply natural gas to Europe.

PK:  Of course, there may be possibilities. But knowing what we know about Europe, the US and sanctions, my recommendation is to abstain from supplying Europe with energy. There will be the day when they are told that now Iran needs to be sanctioned, and all the contracts you, Iran, sign now, would be cancelled, or simply disregarded, invalidated. And, as you know, this is not new for Iran, the cancellation of contracts due to sanctions.

There is no reliance on Europe, nor, of course, as you know, on the US.

A good example is the Russia-Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is practically finished. Yet, Germany is being told not to buy Russian gas. However, Germany depends to about 50% of Russian hydrocarbons. Now what will happen – of course, they go begging around the world, to fill the gap, possibly at much higher prices than the gas supply from Russia.

The Saudis have already said they would rather sell to China in Yuan. And they have categorically refused President Biden’s request to increase their oil production.

One must add, the Russian gas supply has always been reliable. Whatever the geopolitical differences, so far Russia has always maintained her contractual agreements and obligations.

Under the circumstances, Russia has already successfully diverted the supplies destined for Germany to China.

Another important factor is the currency in which such contracts would be established, either in US dollars or in euros, the little brother of the dollar.

To the extent possible, Iran may want to stay away from these fiat currencies. These are also the currencies with which sanctions are dished out. So, its not a good idea to deal with these currencies. The Chinese Yuan – which will be rolled out still this year as a digital international payment mode, is much-much safer. –

The Yuan is backed by a solid Chinese economy. The US-dollar and the Euro are backed by nothing – literally by nothing – not even by trust.

PressTV:  And finally, the possibilities of developing relations with countries that they themselves are already under US sanctions?

PK:  Like what countries?  If you are thinking of the East bloc, like the members of the SCO, like China and Russia, yes, of course. They soon will have their own international payment system – actually it already functions between some countries; for example, between China and India it’s already established – and that is SANCTION-FREE!!!

So, again, to stay away as much as possible from US sanctions:

  • do not trade in US-dollars or in Euros
  • stay away from dealing with the US and Europe.
  • Also do NOT keep your reserves in western countries – see what happened to Russia?

Half of Russia’s reserves, stored in London and NYC and possibly some other western countries, have been confiscated – in other words: stolen.

Keep you reserves in your own treasury or in an SCO country where they are not accessible to the west – where they are safe from western sanctions.

• Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion:  An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis (Clarity Press, November 1, 2020).  Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), and he is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

  1. See:  Washington says its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran has been an abject failure.”
  2. See:  Nation’s maximum resistance defeated US maximum pressure, Iranian president says.
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This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Press TV.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/22/iran-how-to-circumvent-sanctions-now-and-in-the-future/feed/ 0 283833 Make the Whole World Know that the South Also Exists https://www.radiofree.org/2022/01/27/make-the-whole-world-know-that-the-south-also-exists/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/01/27/make-the-whole-world-know-that-the-south-also-exists/#respond Thu, 27 Jan 2022 18:26:19 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=125875 Shefa Salem (Libya), Life, 2019. On 19 January 2022, US President Joe Biden held a press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. The discussion ranged from Biden’s failure to pass a $1.75 trillion investment bill (the result of the defection of two Democrats) to the increased tensions between the […]

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Shefa Salem (Libya), Life, 2019.

On 19 January 2022, US President Joe Biden held a press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. The discussion ranged from Biden’s failure to pass a $1.75 trillion investment bill (the result of the defection of two Democrats) to the increased tensions between the United States and Russia. According to a recent NBC poll, 54% of adults in the United States disapprove of his presidency and 71% feel that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

The political and cultural divisions that widened during the Trump years continue to inflict a heavy toll on US society, including over the government’s ability to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Basic protocols to avoid infections are not universally followed. Misinformation related to COVID-19 has spread as rapidly as the virus in the United States, where large numbers of people believe sensational claims: for example, that pregnant women should not take the vaccine, that the vaccine promotes infertility, and that the government is hiding the data on deaths caused by the vaccines.

Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguay), Entoldado (La Feria) (‘Canopy [The Fair]’), 1917.

Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguay), Entoldado (La Feria) (‘Canopy [The Fair]’), 1917.

At the press conference, Biden made a candid remark regarding the Monroe Doctrine (1823), which treats the American hemisphere as the ‘backyard’ of the United States. ‘It’s not America’s backyard’, Biden said. ‘Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard’. The United States continues to think of the entire hemisphere, from Cape Horn to the Rio Grande, not as sovereign territory, but, in one way or the other, as its ‘yard’. It meant little that Biden followed this up by saying, ‘we’re equal people,’ since the metaphor he used – the yard – indicated the proprietary attitude with which the United States operates in the Americas and in the rest of the world. It is this proprietary attitude that inflames conflict not only in the Americas (with epicentres in Cuba and Venezuela), but also in Eurasia.

Talks have been ongoing in Geneva and Vienna to dial down the conflict imposed by the United States and its allies against Iran and Russia. The US’ attempts to re-enter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regarding Iran’s nuclear programme and to dominate eastern Europe have thus far not borne fruit. The talks persist, but both are hindered by the US government’s continued adoption of a narrative about the world that is premised on its hegemony and a rejection of the multipolar dispensation that has begun to appear.

Ramin Haerizadeh (Iran), He Came, He Left, He Left, He Came, 2010.

Ramin Haerizadeh (Iran), He Came, He Left, He Left, He Came, 2010.

Early indications in the eighth round of the JCPOA talks in Vienna, which opened on 27 December 2021, suggested that there would be little forward movement. The United States arrived with the attitude that Iran could not be trusted, when in fact it was the United States that exited the JCPOA in 2018 (after it certified twice in 2017 that Iran had in fact followed the letter of the agreement). This attitude came alongside a false sense of urgency from the Biden administration to rush the process forward.

The US wants Iran to make further concessions, despite the fact that the initial deal had been negotiated over twenty long months and despite the fact that none of the other parties are willing to reopen the agreement to satisfy the United States and its outside partner, Israel. The Russian negotiator Mikhail Ulyanov said that there is no need for ‘artificial deadlines’, an indicator of the growing closeness between Iran and Russia. Ties between the two states have been strengthened by their shared opposition to the failed attempt by the Gulf Arab states, Turkey, and the West to overthrow the Syrian government, particularly since the Russian military intervention into Syria in 2015.

Aneta Kajzer (Germany), I’ve Got No Brain Baby, 2017.

Aneta Kajzer (Germany), I’ve Got No Brain Baby, 2017.

Even more dangerous than the US’ hostile attitude towards Iran is its policy towards Russia and Ukraine, where troops are at the ready and the rhetoric of war has become more strident. The heart of this conflict is around the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) towards the Russian border, in violation of the deal struck between the United States and the Soviet Union that NATO would not go beyond Germany’s eastern border. Ukraine is the epicentre of the conflict, although even here the debate is unclear. Germany and France have said that they would not welcome the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO, and since NATO membership requires universal consent, it is impossible for Ukraine to join NATO at present. The nub of the disagreement is over how these various parties understand the situation in Ukraine.

The Russians contend that the US fomented a coup in 2014 and brought right-wing nationalists – including pro-fascist elements – into power, and that these sections are part of a Western ploy to threaten Russia with NATO weapons systems and with NATO country forces inside Ukraine, while the West contends that Russia wishes to annex eastern Ukraine. The Russians have asked NATO to provide a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be allowed to join the military alliance as a precondition for further talks; NATO has demurred.

When the German navy chief and vice admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach said in Delhi that Russia’s Vladimir Putin deserves ‘respect’ from Western leaders, he had to resign. It made no difference that Schönbach’s comments were premised on the notion that the West needed Russia to combat China – only disrespect and subordination of Russia are acceptable. That’s the Western view in the Geneva talks, which will continue but are unlikely to bear fruit as long as the United States and its allies believe that other powers should surrender their sovereignty to a US-led world order.

Olga Chernysheva (Russia), Kind People, 2004.

Olga Chernysheva (Russia), Kind People, 2004.

The movement of history suggests that the days of the US-dominated world system are nearing their end. That is why we called our dossier no. 36 (January 2021) Twilight: The Erosion of US Control and the Multipolar Future. In We Will Build the Future: A Plan to Save the Planet (January 2022), produced alongside 26 research institutes from around the world, we laid out the following ten points for a restructured, more democratic world system:

  1. Affirm the importance of the United Nations Charter (1945).
  2. Insist that member states of the United Nations adhere to the Charter, including to its specific requirements around the use of sanctions and force (chapters VI and VII).
  3. Reconsider the monopoly power exercised by the UN Security Council over decisions that impact a large section of the multilateral system; engage the UN General Assembly in a serious dialogue over democracy inside the global order.
  4. Insist that multilateral bodies – such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) – formulate polices in accord with the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948); forbid any policy that increases poverty, hunger, homelessness, and illiteracy.
  5. Affirm the centrality of the multilateral system over the key areas of security, trade policy, and financial regulations, recognising that regional bodies such as NATO and parochial institutions such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have supplanted the United Nations and its agencies (such as the UN Conference on Trade and Development) in the formulation of these policies.
  6. Formulate policies to strengthen regional mechanisms and deepen the integration of developing countries.
  7. Prevent the use of the security paradigm – notably, counterterrorism and counternarcotics – to address the world’s social challenges.
  8. Cap spending on arms and militarism; ensure that outer space is demilitarised.
  9. Convert the resources spent on arms production to fund socially beneficial production.
  10. Ensure that all rights are available to all peoples, not just those who are citizens of a state; these rights must apply to all hitherto marginalised communities such as women, indigenous peoples, people of colour, migrants, undocumented people, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, oppressed castes, and the impoverished.

Adherence to these ten points would aid in the resolution of these crises in Iran and Ukraine.

Failure to move forward is a result of Washington’s arrogant attitude towards the world. During Biden’s press conference, he lectured Putin on the dangers of a nuclear war, saying that Putin is ‘not in a very good position to dominate the world’. Only the United States, he implied, is in a good position to do that. Then, Biden said, ‘you have to be concerned when you have, you know, a nuclear power invade… if he invades – [which] hasn’t happened since World War Two’. A nuclear power invading a country hasn’t happened since World War Two? The United States is a nuclear power and has continually invaded countries across the globe, from Vietnam to Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq – an illegal war which Biden voted for. It is this arrogant approach to the world and to the UN Charter that puts our world in peril.

Listening to Biden, I was reminded of Mario Benedetti’s 1985 poem, El sur también existe (‘The South Also Exists’), a favourite of Hugo Chávez. Here are two of its verses:

With its worship of steel
its giant chimneys
its clandestine sages
its siren song
its neon skies
its Christmas sales
its cults of God the Father
and military epaulettes

with its keys to the kingdom
the North is the one who commands

…

but here underneath the underneath
close to the roots
is where memory
forgets nothing
and there are people living
and dying doing their utmost
and so between them they achieve
what was believed to be impossible

to make the whole world know
that the South also exists.

The post Make the Whole World Know that the South Also Exists first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/01/27/make-the-whole-world-know-that-the-south-also-exists/feed/ 0 269137 After a Year of Biden, Why Do We Still Have Trump’s Foreign Policy? https://www.radiofree.org/2022/01/23/after-a-year-of-biden-why-do-we-still-have-trumps-foreign-policy-4/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/01/23/after-a-year-of-biden-why-do-we-still-have-trumps-foreign-policy-4/#respond Sun, 23 Jan 2022 03:46:01 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=125707 Getty Images President Biden and the Democrats were highly critical of President Trump’s foreign policy, so it was reasonable to expect that Biden would quickly remedy its worst impacts. As a senior member of the Obama administration, Biden surely needed no schooling on Obama’s diplomatic agreements with Cuba and Iran, both of which began to […]

The post After a Year of Biden, Why Do We Still Have Trump’s Foreign Policy? first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> Getty Images

President Biden and the Democrats were highly critical of President Trump’s foreign policy, so it was reasonable to expect that Biden would quickly remedy its worst impacts. As a senior member of the Obama administration, Biden surely needed no schooling on Obama’s diplomatic agreements with Cuba and Iran, both of which began to resolve long-standing foreign policy problems and provided models for the renewed emphasis on diplomacy that Biden was promising.

Tragically for America and the world, Biden has failed to restore Obama’s progressive initiatives, and has instead doubled down on many of Trump’s most dangerous and destabilizing policies. It is especially ironic and sad that a president who ran so stridently on being different from Trump has been so reluctant to reverse his regressive policies. Now the Democrats’ failure to deliver on their promises with respect to both domestic and foreign policy is undermining their prospects in November’s midterm election.

Here is our assessment of Biden’s handling of ten critical foreign policy issues:

  1. Prolonging the agony of the people of Afghanistan. It is perhaps symptomatic of Biden’s foreign policy problems that the signal achievement of his first year in office was an initiative launched by Trump, to withdraw the United States from its 20-year war in Afghanistan. But Biden’s implementation of this policy was tainted by the same failure to understand Afghanistan that doomed and dogged at least three prior administrations and the U.S.’s hostile military occupation for 20 years, leading to the speedy restoration of the Taliban government and the televised chaos of the U.S. withdrawal.

Now, instead of helping the Afghan people recover from two decades of U.S.-inflicted destruction, Biden has seized $9.4 billion in Afghan foreign currency reserves, while the people of Afghanistan suffer through a desperate humanitarian crisis. It is hard to imagine how even Donald Trump could be more cruel or vindictive.

  1. Provoking a crisis with Russia over Ukraine. Biden’s first year in office is ending with a dangerous escalation of tensions at the Russia/Ukraine border, a situation that threatens to devolve into a military conflict between the world’s two most heavily armed nuclear states–the United States and Russia. The United States bears much responsibility for this crisis by supporting the violent overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine in 2014, backing NATO expansion right up to Russia’s border, and arming and training Ukrainian forces.

Biden’s failure to acknowledge Russia’s legitimate security concerns has led to the present impasse, and Cold Warriors within his administration are threatening Russia instead of proposing concrete measures to de-escalate the situation.

  1. Escalating Cold War tensions and a dangerous arms race with China. President Trump launched a tariff war with China that economically damaged both countries, and reignited a dangerous Cold War and arms race with China and Russia to justify an ever-increasing U.S. military budget.

After a decade of unprecedented U.S. military spending and aggressive military expansion under Bush II and Obama, the U.S. “pivot to Asia” militarily encircled China, forcing it to invest in more robust defense forces and advanced weapons. Trump, in turn, used China’s strengthened defenses as a pretext for further increases in U.S. military spending, launching a new arms race that has raised the existential risk of nuclear war to a new level.

Biden has only exacerbated these dangerous international tensions. Alongside the risk of war, his aggressive policies toward China have led to an ominous rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, and created obstacles to much-needed cooperation with China to address climate change, the pandemic and other global problems.

  1. Abandoning Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran. After President Obama’s sanctions against Iran utterly failed to force it to halt its civilian nuclear program, he finally took a progressive, diplomatic approach, which led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement in 2015. Iran scrupulously met all its obligations under the treaty, but Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in 2018. Trump’s withdrawal was vigorously condemned by Democrats, including candidate Biden, and Senator Sanders promised to rejoin the JCPOA on his first day in office if he became president.

Instead of immediately rejoining an agreement that worked for all parties, the Biden administration thought it could pressure Iran to negotiate a “better deal.” Exasperated Iranians instead elected a more conservative government and Iran moved forward on enhancing its nuclear program.

A year later, and after eight rounds of shuttle diplomacy in Vienna, Biden has still not rejoined the agreement. Ending his first year in the White House with the threat of another Middle East war is enough to give Biden an “F” in diplomacy.

  1. Backing Big Pharma over a People’s Vaccine. Biden took office as the first Covid vaccines were being approved and rolled out across the United States and the world. Severe inequities in global vaccine distribution between rich and poor countries were immediately apparent and became known as “vaccine apartheid.”

Instead of manufacturing and distributing vaccines on a non-profit basis to tackle the pandemic as the global public health crisis that it is, the United States and other Western countries chose to maintain the neoliberal regime of patents and corporate monopolies on vaccine manufacture and distribution. The failure to open up the manufacture and distribution of vaccines to poorer countries gave the Covid virus free rein to spread and mutate, leading to new global waves of infection and death from the Delta and Omicron variants

Biden belatedly agreed to support a patent waiver for Covid vaccines under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, but with no real plan for a “People’s Vaccine,” Biden’s concession has made no impact on millions of preventable deaths.

  1. Ensuring catastrophic global warming at COP26 in Glasgow. After Trump stubbornly ignored the climate crisis for four years, environmentalists were encouraged when Biden used his first days in office to rejoin the Paris climate accord and cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline.

But by the time Biden got to Glasgow, he had let the centerpiece of his own climate plan, the Clean Energy Performance Program (CEPP), be stripped out of the Build Back Better bill in Congress at the behest of fossil-fuel industry sock-puppet Joe Manchin, turning the U.S. pledge of a 50% cut from 2005 emissions by 2030 into an empty promise.

Biden’s speech in Glasgow highlighted China and Russia’s failures, neglecting to mention that the United States has higher emissions per capita than either of them. Even as COP26 was taking place, the Biden administration infuriated activists by putting oil and gas leases up for auction for 730,000 acres of the American West and 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. At the one-year mark, Biden has talked the talk, but when it comes to confronting Big Oil, he is not walking the walk, and the whole world is paying the price.

  1. Political prosecutions of Julian Assange, Daniel Hale and Guantanamo torture victims. Under President Biden, the United States remains a country where the systematic killing of civilians and other war crimes go unpunished, while whistleblowers who muster the courage to expose these horrific crimes to the public are prosecuted and jailed as political prisoners.

In July 2021, former drone pilot Daniel Hale was sentenced to 45 months in prison for exposing the killing of civilians in America’s drone wars. WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange still languishes in Belmarsh Prison in England, after 11 years fighting extradition to the United States for exposing U.S. war crimes.

Twenty years after it set up an illegal concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to imprison 779 mostly innocent people kidnapped around the world, 39 prisoners remain there in illegal, extrajudicial detention. Despite promises to close this sordid chapter of U.S. history, the prison is still functioning and Biden is allowing the Pentagon to actually build a new, closed courtroom at Guantanamo to more easily keep the workings of this gulag hidden from public scrutiny.

  1. Economic siege warfare against the people of Cuba, Venezuela and other countries. Trump unilaterally rolled back Obama’s reforms on Cuba and recognized unelected Juan Guaidó as the “president” of Venezuela, as the United States tightened the screws on its economy with “maximum pressure” sanctions.

Biden has continued Trump’s failed economic siege warfare against countries that resist U.S. imperial dictates, inflicting endless pain on their people without seriously imperiling, let alone bringing down, their governments. Brutal U.S. sanctions and efforts at regime change have universally failed for decades, serving mainly to undermine the United States’s own democratic and human rights credentials.

Juan Guaidó is now the least popular opposition figure in Venezuela, and genuine grassroots movements opposed to U.S. intervention are bringing popular democratic and socialist governments to power across Latin America, in Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Honduras – and maybe Brazil in 2022.

  1. Still supporting Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen and its repressive ruler. Under Trump, Democrats and a minority of Republicans in Congress gradually built a bipartisan majority that voted to withdraw from the Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen and stop sending arms to Saudi Arabia. Trump vetoed their efforts, but the Democratic election victory in 2020 should have led to an end to the war and humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

Instead, Biden only issued an order to stop selling “offensive” weapons to Saudi Arabia, without clearly defining that term, and went on to okay a $650 million weapons sale. The United States still supports the Saudi war, even as the resulting humanitarian crisis kills thousands of Yemeni children. And despite Biden’s pledge to treat the Saudis’ cruel leader, MBS, as a pariah, Biden refused to even sanction MBS for his barbaric murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

  1. Still complicit in illegal Israeli occupation, settlements and war crimes. The United States is Israel’s largest arms supplier, and Israel is the world’s largest recipient of U.S. military aid (approximately $4 billion annually), despite its illegal occupation of Palestine, widely condemned war crimes in Gaza and illegal settlement building. U.S. military aid and arms sales to Israel clearly violate the U.S. Leahy Laws and Arms Export Control Act.

Donald Trump was flagrant in his disdain for Palestinian rights, including tranferring the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to a property in Jerusalem that is only partly within Israel’s internationally recognized border, a move that infuriated Palestinians and drew international condemnation.

But nothing has changed under Biden. The U.S. position on Israel and Palestine is as illegitimate and contradictory as ever, and the U.S. Embassy to Israel remains on illegally occupied land. In May, Biden supported the latest Israeli assault on Gaza, which killed 256 Palestinians, half of them civilians, including 66 children.

Conclusion

Each part of this foreign policy fiasco costs human lives and creates regional–even global–instability. In every case, progressive alternative policies are readily available. The only thing lacking is political will and independence from corrupt vested interests.

The United States has squandered unprecedented wealth, global goodwill and a historic position of international leadership to pursue unattainable imperial ambitions, using military force and other forms of violence and coercion in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and international law.

Candidate Biden promised to restore America’s position of global leadership, but has instead doubled down on the policies through which the United States lost that position in the first place, under a succession of Republican and Democratic administrations. Trump was only the latest iteration in America’s race to the bottom.

Biden has wasted a vital year doubling down on Trump’s failed policies. In the coming year, we hope that the public will remind Biden of its deep-seated aversion to war and that he will respond—albeit reluctantly—by adopting more dovish and rational ways.

The post After a Year of Biden, Why Do We Still Have Trump’s Foreign Policy? first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/01/23/after-a-year-of-biden-why-do-we-still-have-trumps-foreign-policy-4/feed/ 0 267938 Israel Pushes Hardline in Iran Nuclear Talks https://www.radiofree.org/2021/12/10/israel-pushes-hardline-in-iran-nuclear-talks/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/12/10/israel-pushes-hardline-in-iran-nuclear-talks/#respond Fri, 10 Dec 2021 23:25:47 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=124384 After a 5-month hiatus, indirect negotiations between the U.S. and Iran resumed last week in Vienna in an attempt to revise the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA). The outlook isn’t good. Less than a week into negotiations, Britain, France, and Germany accused Iran of  “walking […]

The post Israel Pushes Hardline in Iran Nuclear Talks first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> After a 5-month hiatus, indirect negotiations between the U.S. and Iran resumed last week in Vienna in an attempt to revise the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA). The outlook isn’t good.

Less than a week into negotiations, Britain, France, and Germany accused Iran of  “walking back almost all of the difficult compromises” achieved during the first round of negotiations before Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, was sworn into office. While such actions by Iran certainly aren’t helping the negotiations succeed, there is another country — one that is not even a party to the agreement that was ripped up in 2018 by then President Donald Trump —whose hardline position is creating obstacles to successful negotiations: Israel.

On Sunday, amid reports that the talks might collapse, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called on the countries in Vienna to “take a strong line” against Iran. According to Channel 12 news in Israel, Israeli officials are urging the US to take military action against Iran, either by striking Iran directly or by hitting an Iranian base in Yemen. Regardless of the outcome of the negotiations, Israel says that it reserves the right to take military action against Iran.

Israeli threats aren’t just bluster. Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated, presumably by Israel. In July 2020, a fire, attributed to an Israeli bomb, caused significant damage to Iran’s Natanz nuclear site. In November 2020, shortly after Joe Biden won the presidential election, Israeli operatives used remote control machine guns to assassinate Iran’s top nuclear scientist. Had Iran retaliated proportionately, the US might have backed up Israel, with the conflict spiraling into a full-blown US-Middle East war.

In April 2021, as diplomatic efforts were underway between the Biden administration and Iran, sabotage attributed to Israel caused a blackout at the Natanz. Iran described the action as “nuclear terrorism.”

Ironically described as Iran’s Build Back Better plan, after each of Israel’s nuclear facility sabotage actions, Iranians have quickly gotten their facilities back online and even installed newer machines to more rapidly enrich uranium. As a result, American officials recently warned their Israeli counterparts that the attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities are counterproductive. But Israel replied that it has no intention of letting up.

As the clock runs out to reseal the JCPOA, Israel is sending its top-level officials out to make its case. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid was in London and Paris last week asking them not to support US intentions to return to the deal. This week, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Israeli Mossad chief David Barnea are in Washington for meetings with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and CIA officials. According to the Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Barnea brought “updated intelligence on Tehran’s efforts” to become a nuclear country.

Along with verbal appeals, Israel is preparing militarily. They have allocated $1.5 billion for a potential strike against Iran. Throughout October and November, they held large-scale military exercises in preparation for strikes against Iran and this spring they plan to hold one of their largest strike simulation drills ever, using dozens of aircraft, including Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet.

The U.S. is also readying for the possibility of violence. A week prior to the negotiations resuming in Vienna, the US’s top commander in the Middle East, General Kenneth McKenzie, announced that his forces were on standby for potential military actions should the negotiations collapse. Yesterday, it was reported that Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s meeting with Lloyd Austin would include discussing possible joint US-Israeli military drills simulating the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Stakes are high for the talks to succeed. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed this month that Iran is now enriching uranium up to 20 percent purity at its underground facility at Fordo, a site where the JCPOA forbids enrichment. According to the IAEA, since Trump pulled the US out of the JCPOA, Iran has furthered its uranium enrichment to 60 percent purity (compared with 3.67% under the deal), steadily moving closer to the 90 percent needed for a nuclear weapon. In September, the Institute for Science and International Security issued a report that, under the “worst-case breakout estimate,” within a month Iran could produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

The U.S. exit from the JCPOA has not only led to the nightmarish prospect of another Middle East country becoming a nuclear state (Israel reportedly has between 80 and 400 nuclear weapons), but it has already inflicted enormous damage on the Iranian people. The “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign — originally Trump’s but now under the ownership of Joe Biden — has plagued Iranians with runaway inflation, skyrocketing food, rent, and medicine prices, and a crippled healthcare sector. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, US sanctions were preventing Iran from importing necessary medicines to treat such illnesses as leukemia and epilepsy. In January 2021, the United Nations released a report stating that U.S. sanctions on Iran were contributing to an “inadequate and opaque” response to COVID-19. With more than 130,000 officially registered deaths so far, Iran has the highest number of recorded coronavirus deaths in the Middle East. And officials say that real numbers are likely even higher.

If the U.S. and Iran are not able to reach an agreement, the worst-case scenario will be a new U.S.-Middle East war. Reflecting on the abject failures and destruction wrecked by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, a war with Iran would be catastrophic. One would think that Israel, which receives $3.8 billion annually from the U.S., would feel obligated not to drag the U.S. and their own people into such a disaster. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Though teetering on the brink of collapse, talks resumed again this week. Iran, now under a hard-line government that U.S. sanctions helped bring into power, has shown that it isn’t going to be an acquiescent negotiator and Israel is hell-bent on sabotaging the talks. This means it’s going to take bold diplomacy and a willingness to compromise from the Biden administration to get the deal resealed. Let’s hope Biden and his negotiators have the will and courage to do that.

• First published in Jacobin

The post Israel Pushes Hardline in Iran Nuclear Talks first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ariel Gold and Medea Benjamin.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/12/10/israel-pushes-hardline-in-iran-nuclear-talks/feed/ 0 256750 The Rise of Iran Poses Both Opportunities and Dangers https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/02/the-rise-of-iran-poses-both-opportunities-and-dangers/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/02/the-rise-of-iran-poses-both-opportunities-and-dangers/#respond Tue, 02 Nov 2021 12:39:56 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=122857 In 2015 the Obama administration signed what is popularly referred to is the Iranian nuclear deal, under which Iran pledged not to acquire nuclear weapons. In exchange, the punitive sanctions on Iran were to be lifted. The Trump administration cancelled United States participation in the deal, which in any case had not resulted in the […]

The post The Rise of Iran Poses Both Opportunities and Dangers first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> In 2015 the Obama administration signed what is popularly referred to is the Iranian nuclear deal, under which Iran pledged not to acquire nuclear weapons. In exchange, the punitive sanctions on Iran were to be lifted. The Trump administration cancelled United States participation in the deal, which in any case had not resulted in the lifting of United States sanctions.

The new Biden administration had made promises during the United States presidential campaign that it would re-join the deal. In the event, the new Biden administration not only made no attempt to return to the deal, but in fact inserted new demands that Iran should cease development of modern conventional weapons.

In this endeavour, the United States was strongly urged by Israel for whom intransigence towards Iran is part of its DNA. In all the discussions about Iran becoming or not becoming a nuclear power, the western media entirely overlooks the fact that Israel is in fact a nuclear armed state. Its consistent refusal to admit the fact, or to join any treaty aimed at limiting the spread of nuclear weapons does not remove this singular fact from the equation. It is therefore the height of hypocrisy by Israel to be making demands about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

The Israeli antipathy to Iran goes much further however than supporting any attempts to limit Iran’s nuclear development. That development, the Iranians insist, consists only in the development of peaceful energy projects.  Although the Islamic Republic did have a policy of developing a nuclear weapons capability at the time of its confrontation with Iraq in the 1980s, there is actually no evidence at all that such a program has been developed this century. This has not stopped the Israelis who for at least the past 30 years have been warning of the dangers supposedly attached to Iran ever acquiring a nuclear weapons facility.

What motivates this Israeli hostility is not entirely clear. While there is certainly no love lost between Israel and Iran, the latter has never directly threatened Israel, nor made any serious attempt to limit Israel’s influence in the region, with the exception of supporting Syria which is constantly under attack by the Israeli air force. That this latter fact also escapes the criticism of western nations is yet another pointer to the charmed existence that Israel enjoys in the region.

Iranian self-restraint is also significant when one considers that Iran and its forces have been the object of overt hostility by the Israelis. In this, the Israelis have been supported by the United States which never finds within itself the capacity to criticise Israel’s clearly illegal military attacks upon its neighbours. These attacks include the assassination of key Iranian scientists.  It was however, the United States that carried out the assassination of top Iranians general Qasem Soleimani in January 2001, a fact that United States president Donald Trump actually boasted about. He has not been held accountable for this blatant murder.

It Is unlikely that this relatively low level of warfare against Iran will cease any time soon. The big question among many commentators however, is whether this will escalate to a full-blown attack. There are some signs that this is being planned by the Israelis.  In this they have the undoubted support of the United States.

There are however, some strong signs that such an attack will not happen. Those signs can be detected and inferred from some recent developments in Iran’s situation. The first is that Iran has very recently become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, becoming its ninth full member. This organisation contains, inter alia, Russia and China as members. Interestingly, Saudi Arabia has also recently upgraded its status within the SCO and is now an associate member. There has been a notable thawing of the Saudi-Iran relationships this year, with the two countries having a number of bilateral meetings.

A second major factor has been the progressive movement of Iran’s economic interests away from Europe and towards the Asian market. Asian countries have generally been more tolerant of Iran and reluctant to join the United States sanctions, unlike their European counterparts. Although major European countries were signatories to the JCPOA in 2015, their actions towards the Iranian government remain at best rather chilly.

The third factor is the role of China, long a supporter of Iran which was nonetheless constrained by its obligations under the 2015 JCPOA, a deal to which it was a signatory. The transition period envisaged by the JCPOA has not expired, and member states of the United Nations are free to develop closer ties with Iran.

Of those countries, the charge has been led by China, represented most substantially by a $400 billion deal signed between Iran and China in Beijing in 2020. This deal will have an enormous impact on the Iranian economy. It is undoubtedly a harbinger of further future deals between the two countries. It marks a significant shift in Iran’s exports to the Asian market.

The Russians have also been active in the Iranian market. In the past two weeks there have been separate visits in Moscow by Iran’s defence minister General Mohamad Bagheri, the foreign minister Hossein Annerababdallahian, and the Parliamentary speaker Bagher Ghalibaf. The talks between the top Iranian officials and their Moscow counterparts are expected to lead to major arms purchases by the Iranians. Although there is no doubting the bravery and competence of the Iranians armed forces, they have had to deal with often antiquated equipment, of which the air force is the worst example.

This combination of an upgraded military, plus the political and economic support of the two Eurasian superpowers make Iran a formidable opponent. If the United States and the Israelis are stupid enough to directly attack Iran, they risk a war that could quickly escalate out of control. As disappointing as the Biden administration has been in their foreign policy options, it is unlikely that they are so stupid as to risk a war with Iran in the modern geopolitical and military situation in which the country is rapidly developing.

Unfortunately, it is not always the wisest heads that prevail in the United States. This is especially so when they are at one with the Israelis who often give the impression of being prepared to fight to the last American. One sincerely hopes that wiser heads will prevail, but given the recent history it would be a brave person who would bet on continued United States and Israeli restraint.

The post The Rise of Iran Poses Both Opportunities and Dangers first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by James O'Neill.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/02/the-rise-of-iran-poses-both-opportunities-and-dangers/feed/ 0 246246 Afghanistan War Outcome: Hope for Sovereign Nations Fighting the Scourge of Neocolonial Imperialism https://www.radiofree.org/2021/07/21/afghanistan-war-outcome-hope-for-sovereign-nations-fighting-the-scourge-of-neocolonial-imperialism/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/07/21/afghanistan-war-outcome-hope-for-sovereign-nations-fighting-the-scourge-of-neocolonial-imperialism/#respond Wed, 21 Jul 2021 04:47:18 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=118990 Photo credit from the archives of Newsonline Exits of Netanyahu and Trump: chance to dial down Mideast tensions The Iraqi geopolitical analyst, Ali Fahim, recently said in an interview with The Tehran Times: “The arrival of [newly elected Iranian President] Ebrahim Raisi at the helm of power gives a great moral impetus to the resistance […]

The post Afghanistan War Outcome: Hope for Sovereign Nations Fighting the Scourge of Neocolonial Imperialism first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> Photo credit from the archives of Newsonline

Exits of Netanyahu and Trump: chance to dial down Mideast tensions

The Iraqi geopolitical analyst, Ali Fahim, recently said in an interview with The Tehran Times: “The arrival of [newly elected Iranian President] Ebrahim Raisi at the helm of power gives a great moral impetus to the resistance axis.” Further, with new administrations in the United States, Israel, and Iran, another opportunity presents itself to reinstate fully the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, as well as completely lift the US economic sanctions from Iran.

Let us wait and see after Raisi is in power in August 2021. It is a fact that, since the Trump administration pulled out of the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal, tensions have been on the rise. One can legitimately suspect that the Trump pull-out had as its real intentions: first, to provoke Tehran; second to undo one of the only foreign policy achievements of the Obama administration, which was negotiated by John Kerry for the US. The Trump administration also used unfair economic sanctions on Iran as a squeeze for regime-change purposes. This was a complete fiasco: the Islamic Republic of Iran suffered but held together.

As far as military tensions in the region, there are many countries besides Syria where conflicts between Iran-supported groups and US-supported proxies are simmering, or full blown. The US does its work, not only via Israel in the entire region, but also Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen, and presently Turkey in Syria. Right now conflicts are active in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine, but something could ignite in Lebanon at any time.

Photo credit from the archives of Newsonline

Iran views itself as the lead supporter of the resistance movement, not only through its support for regional allies like Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad, but also beyond the Middle-East, for Maduro in Venezuela. The upcoming Iranian administration does not hide its international ambition. For better or worse, Iran sees itself as a global leader of smaller nonaligned countries that are resisting US imperialism, be it Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, or Venezuela. Even though Iran is completely different ideologically, it has replaced the leadership of Yugoslavia’s Tito or Cuba’s Castro. Both were not only Marxists but also leaders of the nonaligned movement during the Cold War, when the US and the USSR were competing to split the world in two. Now the dynamics have shifted because of China’s rising global influence, and the Iran Islamic Republic thinks it has a card to play in this complex geopolitical imbroglio.

Photo credit from the archives of Newsonline

In the US, Europe and Gulf States, Raisi has been categorized as a hardliner cleric and judge, but this gives Raisi more power than he will have as president. In Iran, major foreign policy issues are not merely up to the president to decide but a consensus process involving many. In the end such critical decisions are always signed off by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Khamenei has already indicated that he supports going back to the 2015 nuclear deal. During his electoral campaign, Raisi, who is close to Khamenei despite previous opposition, said that if elected he would uphold the 2015 landmark nuclear agreement.

Photo Credit:  Gilbert Mercier

Ottoman empire revival under Erdogan

Turkey’s President, Recep Erdogan, often behaves as a modern day Sultan. He is shrewd and extremely ambitious. He fancies himself to be the global leader, politically and militarily, of Sunny Islam. Under Erdogan, Turkey has flexed its military muscles, either directly or through Syrian proxies, not only in Syria, but also in Libya, as well as in Turkey’s support for Qatar in the small Gulf State’s recent skirmish with Saudi Arabia. Erdogan thinks he now has a card to play in Afghanistan. More immediately and strategically, the serious issue on Erdogan’s plate is called Idlib.

Photo credit from the archives of Newsonline

The problem of the pocket of Idlib has to be resolved, and unfortunately, for all the civilian population that has been and will be in the crossfire, it can only be solved by a full-on military operation, with troops from Bashar al-Assad and Russia. Turkey is, of course, adamant about keeping a military presence and influence within Syria to prevent a complete Assad victory. Time will tell, but the war of attrition has to end. For this to happen, Russia has to commit to face Turkey from a military standpoint. If Russia is ready for a direct confrontation with Turkey, then Bashar al-Assad’s troops, and Russian forces bringing mainly logistic and air support, should prevail.

What should make this easier is the fact Erdogan has overplayed his hand for quite some time. This includes his tense relationships with his supposed NATO allies, many of whom, including France, Greece and even Germany, would not mind having him out of NATO altogether.

There are important factors that explain, not only why Erdogan is quite popular with Turks, but also why his position could become precarious. Erdogan is playing on the Turkish nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire.

From one Empire to two others: the Sykes-Picot agreement

To understand better this imperial dynamic, we must go back to the middle of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire was allied with Germany. In 1916, the Sykes-Picot secret agreement effectively sealed the fate of post World War I Middle-East. This British-French agreement, in expectation of a final victory, was a de-facto split of the Ottoman Empire. In the resulting colonial or imperial zones of influence, a euphemism for an Anglo-French control of the region, the British would get Palestine, Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf area, while France would take control of Syria and Lebanon. More than 100 years later, the misery created by this imperialist deal lingers in the entire region, from Palestine, with the 1948 English-blessed creation of the Zionist state of Israel, to Iraq. France put in place two protectorates in Syria and Lebanon, in which the respective populations did not fare much better. Even today, French governments still act as if they have a say in Lebanese affairs.

Photo Credit from the archive Magharebia

The weight of history and the nostalgia of 600 years of rule in the Middle-East are why some Turks — especially Erdogan — feel entitled to an intrusive role in the region. The unfortunate story of the Middle-East has been to go from one imperialism to another. With the American empire taking over in the mid-1950s, the only competition during the Cold War became the USSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US had carte blanche. It became more blunt about the exploitation of resources, regime-change policies and its role as the eternal champion of the sacred state of Israel. Quickly, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar became the US’ best friends in the Arab world. I have called this alliance between the West, Israel and the oil-rich Gulf states an unholy alliance. It is still at play, mainly against Iran.

Photo Credit: David Stanley

Since the collapse of the USSR, the US empire has tried to assert a worldwide hegemony by mainly two different approaches: support of autocratic regimes like those in the Gulf States, or pursuit of regime change policies to get rid of sovereign nations. This is what I have identified as engineering failed states: a doctrine at play in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Often, Islam soldiers of fortune — called at first freedom fighters as in Afghanistan, or the so-called Free Syrian Army — have mutated down the line into ISIS terrorists. Once the mercenaries developed independent ambitions, they served a dual purpose: firstly, as tools of proxy wars; secondly as a justification for direct military interventions by the empire and its vassals. Since the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq the bottom line results have been the same: death and destruction. Tabula rasa of Iraq, Libya and Syria, with countries left in ruins, millions killed, and millions of others turned into refugees and scattered to the winds. The numbers are mind boggling in the sheer horrors they reflect. According to the remarkable non-partisan Brown University Costs of War project, since the start of the US-led so-called war on terror, post September 11, 2001, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere the direct cost in people killed has been over 801,000. So far, the financial burden for US taxpayers has been $6.4 trillion.

Photo credit from the archives of Newsonline

Does Erdogan think he can do better than Alexander the Great with Afghans?

Apparently Erdogan’s imperial ambitions reach as far as the land of the Pashtuns. The Taliban already control about 85 percent of Afghanistan. While most NATO troops have either left or are in the process of doing so, Erdogan has volunteered Turkish troops to secure Kabul’s airport. Some in the Middle-East speculate, rightly or wrongly, that Erdogan plans to send to Afghanistan some of his available Syrian mercenaries, like those he has used in Libya. Even if this is rubber stamped by regional powers like Pakistan or Iran, which it won’t be, such a direct or proxy occupation will fail. If Turkish or Syrian mercenaries, or any other foreign proxies for that matter, try to get in the way of the Taliban, they will be shredded to bits.

Does Erdogan think he is a modern day version of Alexander the Great? This is plainly laughable! The Taliban are resuming control of Afghanistan, and that is the reality. Something Afghans agree upon is that they want all occupying foreigners out. This will include Turkish and Syrian mercenaries.

Photo Credit:  Gilbert Mercier

Post Netanyahu Israel: more of the same for Palestinians?

For the Palestinians living either in Gaza or in the occupied territories, one element that has changed in Israel is that Netanyahu is no longer in power. It would be naive to think that the new Israeli administration will be less Zionist in its support for Jewish settlers expanding their occupation of Palestinian land, but we might see a small shift, more like a pause in Israel’s bellicose behavior.

Lebanon on the brink: opportunity for Israel to attack Hezbollah?

Despite Lebanon’s dreadful political and economic situation, Israel would be ill advised to consider any military action. Hezbollah is a formidable fighting force of 70,000 men, who have been battle hardened for almost a decade in Syria. Vis a vis Iran, a direct aggression of Israel is even less likely. With Trump gone, it seems that Israel’s hawks have missed out on that opportunity. Furthermore, it would be borderline suicidal for the Jewish state to open up many potential fronts at once against Hezbollah, Hamas, and Bashar al-Assad’s army. All of them would have the backing and logistic support of Iran.

Once the 2015 nuclear agreement is in force again, with the Biden administration, the tensions in the region should significantly decrease. It is probable that in the new negotiations, Iran will request that all the US economic sanctions, which were put in place by the Trump administration, be lifted.

Photo credit from Resolute Support Media archive

Neocolonial imperialism: a scourge that can be defeated

One thing about US administrations that has remained constant pretty much since the end of World War II is an almost absolute continuity in foreign policy. From Bush to Obama, Obama to Trump, and now Trump to Biden, it hardly matters if the US president is a Democrat or Republican. The cornerstone of foreign policy is to maintain, and preferably increase, US hegemony by any means necessary. This assertion of US imperial domination, with help from its NATO vassals, can be blunt like it was with Trump, or more hypocritical with a pseudo humanitarian narrative as during the Obama era.

The imperatives of military and economic dominance have been at the core of US policies, and it is doubtful that this could easily change. Mohammed bin-Salman‘s war in Yemen is part of this scenario. Some naively thought MBS would be pushed aside by the Biden administration. The clout of the Saudis remained intact, however, despite the CIA report on the gruesome assassination of a Washington Post journalist in Turkey. All evidence pointed to bin-Salman, but he was not pushed aside by his father. Under Biden, MBS is still Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, and de-facto autocratic ruler. The Saudis’ oil and money still have considerable influence in Washington.

The Saudis understand very well that, since the 1970s, their real geopolitical power has resided in the way they can impact global oil prices. They can still make the barrel price go up or down to serve specific geopolitical interests. For example, recently the Saudis tried to help the US regime change policy in Venezuela by flooding the global market to make oil prices crash. Saudi Arabia and its United Arab Emirates ally have used the black gold as an economic weapon countless times, and very effectively.

The great appetite of the Saudis for expensive weapons systems is another reason why they have a lot of weight in Washington and elsewhere. How can one oppose the will of a major client of the corporate merchants of death of the military-industrial complex?

Photo Credit from archive of DVIDSHUB

History will eventually record the 20-year Afghanistan war as a defeat and perhaps the beginning of the end for the US empire that established its global dominance aspiration in 1945. People from countries like Yemen, Palestine, as well as Mali, Kashmir, and even Haiti, who are fighting against an occupation of their lands, respectively, by the imperial little helpers Saudi Arabia, Israel, France, India and the United Nations, should find hope in what is going on in Afghanistan. My News Junkie Post partner Dady Chery has explained the mechanics of it brilliantly in her book, We Have Dared to Be Free. Yes, occupiers of all stripes can be defeated! No, small sovereign nations or tribes should not despair! The 20-year US-NATO folly in Afghanistan is about to end. The real outcome is a victory of the Pashtuns-Taliban that is entirely against all odds. It is a victory against the most powerful military alliance ever assembled in history. Yemenites, Palestinians, Tuaregs, Kashmiris, Haitians and other proud people, fighting from different form of neocolonial occupations, should find inspiration from it. It can be done!

Photo Credit from the archive of Antonio Marin Segovia

The post Afghanistan War Outcome: Hope for Sovereign Nations Fighting the Scourge of Neocolonial Imperialism first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Gilbert Mercier.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/07/21/afghanistan-war-outcome-hope-for-sovereign-nations-fighting-the-scourge-of-neocolonial-imperialism/feed/ 0 219902 How Biden Helped Hardliner Raisi Win Iran Election https://www.radiofree.org/2021/06/24/how-biden-helped-hardliner-raisi-win-iran-election/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/06/24/how-biden-helped-hardliner-raisi-win-iran-election/#respond Thu, 24 Jun 2021 16:19:42 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=118008 Woman votes in Iranian election (Photo Credit: Reuters) It was common knowledge that a U.S. failure to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal (known as the JCPOA) before Iran’s June presidential election would help conservative hard-liners to win the election. Indeed, on Saturday, June 19, the conservative Ebrahim Raisi was elected as the new President of […]

The post How Biden Helped Hardliner Raisi Win Iran Election first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> Woman votes in Iranian election (Photo Credit: Reuters)

It was common knowledge that a U.S. failure to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal (known as the JCPOA) before Iran’s June presidential election would help conservative hard-liners to win the election. Indeed, on Saturday, June 19, the conservative Ebrahim Raisi was elected as the new President of Iran.

Raisi has a record of brutally cracking down on government opponents and his election is a severe blow to Iranians struggling for a more liberal, open society. He also has a history of anti-Western sentiment and says he would refuse to meet with President Biden. And while current President Rouhani, considered a moderate, held out the possibility of broader talks after the U.S. returned to the nuclear deal, Raisi will almost certainly reject broader negotiations with the United States.

Could Raisi’s victory have been averted if President Biden had rejoined the Iran deal right after coming into the White House and enabled Rouhani and the moderates in Iran to take credit for the removal of U.S. sanctions before the election? Now we will never know.

Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement drew near-universal condemnation from Democrats and arguably violated international law. But Biden’s failure to quickly rejoin the deal has left Trump’s policy in place, including the cruel “maximum pressure” sanctions that are destroying Iran’s middle class, throwing millions of people into poverty, and preventing imports of medicine and other essentials, even during a pandemic.

U.S. sanctions have provoked retaliatory measures from Iran, including suspending limits on its uranium enrichment and reducing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Trump’s, and now Biden’s, policy has simply reconstructed the problems that preceded the JCPOA in 2015, displaying the widely recognized madness of repeating something that didn’t work and expecting a different result.

If actions speak louder than words, the U.S. seizure of 27 Iranian and Yemeni international news websites on June 22nd, based on the illegal, unilateral U.S. sanctions that are among the most contentious topics of the Vienna negotiations, suggests that the same madness still holds sway over U.S. policy.

Since Biden took office, the critical underlying question is whether he and his administration are really committed to the JCPOA or not. As a presidential candidate, Senator Sanders promised to simply rejoin the JCPOA on his first day as president, and Iran always said it was ready to comply with the agreement as soon as the United States rejoined it.

Biden has been in office for five months, but the negotiations in Vienna did not begin until April 6th. His failure to rejoin the agreement on taking office reflected a desire to appease hawkish advisers and politicians who claimed he could use Trump’s withdrawal and the threat of continued sanctions as “leverage” to extract more concessions from Iran over its ballistic missiles, regional activities and other questions.

Far from extracting more concessions, Biden’s foot-dragging only provoked further retaliatory action by Iran, especially after the assassination of an Iranian scientist and sabotage at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, both probably committed by Israel.

Without a great deal of help, and some pressure, from America’s European allies, it is unclear how long it would have taken Biden to get around to opening negotiations with Iran. The shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna is the result of painstaking negotiations with both sides by former European Parliament President Josep Borrell, who is now the European Union’s foreign policy chief.

The sixth round of shuttle diplomacy has now concluded in Vienna without an agreement. President-elect Raisi says he supports the negotiations in Vienna, but would not allow the United States to drag them out for a long time.

An unnamed U.S. official raised hopes for an agreement before Raisi takes office on August 3, noting that it would be more difficult to reach an agreement after that. But a State Department spokesman said talks would continue when the new government takes office, implying that an agreement was unlikely before then.

Even if Biden had rejoined the JCPOA, Iran’s moderates might still have lost this tightly managed election. But a restored JCPOA and the end of U.S. sanctions would have left the moderates in a stronger position, and set Iran’s relations with the United States and its allies on a path of normalization that would have helped to weather more difficult relations with Raisi and his government in the coming years.

If Biden fails to rejoin the JCPOA, and if the United States or Israel ends up at war with Iran, this lost opportunity to quickly rejoin the JCPOA during his first months in office will loom large over future events and Biden’s legacy as president.

If the United States does not rejoin the JCPOA before Raisi takes office, Iran’s hard-liners will point to Rouhani’s diplomacy with the West as a failed pipe-dream, and their own policies as pragmatic and realistic by contrast. In the United States and Israel, the hawks who have lured Biden into this slow-motion train-wreck will be popping champagne corks to celebrate Raisi’s inauguration, as they move in to kill the JCPOA for good, smearing it as a deal with a mass murderer.

If Biden rejoins the JCPOA after Raisi’s inauguration, Iran’s hard-liners will claim that they succeeded where Rouhani and the moderates failed, and take credit for the economic recovery that will follow the removal of U.S. sanctions.

On the other hand, if Biden follows hawkish advice and tries to play it tough, and Raisi then pulls the plug on the negotiations, both leaders will score points with their own hard-liners at the expense of majorities of their people who want peace, and the United States will be back on a path of confrontation with Iran.

While that would be the worst outcome of all, it would allow Biden to have it both ways domestically, appeasing the hawks while telling liberals that he was committed to the nuclear deal until Iran rejected it. Such a cynical path of least resistance would very likely be a path to war.

On all these counts, it is vital that Biden and the Democrats conclude an agreement with the Rouhani government and rejoin the JCPOA. Rejoining it after Raisi takes office would be better than letting the negotiations fail altogether, but this entire slow-motion train-wreck has been characterized by diminishing returns with every delay, from the day Biden took office.

Neither the people of Iran nor the people of the United States have been well served by Biden’s willingness to accept Trump’s Iran policy as an acceptable alternative to Obama’s, even as a temporary political expedient. To allow Trump’s abandonment of Obama’s agreement to stand as a long-term U.S. policy would be an even greater betrayal of the goodwill and good faith of people on all sides, Americans, allies and enemies alike.

Biden and his advisers must now confront the consequences of the position their wishful thinking and dithering has landed them in, and must make a genuine and serious political decision to rejoin the JCPOA within days or weeks.

The post How Biden Helped Hardliner Raisi Win Iran Election first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/06/24/how-biden-helped-hardliner-raisi-win-iran-election/feed/ 0 213563 Biden’s Appeasement of Hawks and Neocons is Crippling His Diplomacy https://www.radiofree.org/2021/04/22/bidens-appeasement-of-hawks-and-neocons-is-crippling-his-diplomacy-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/04/22/bidens-appeasement-of-hawks-and-neocons-is-crippling-his-diplomacy-2/#respond Thu, 22 Apr 2021 21:35:05 +0000 https://www.radiofree.org/?p=189679 by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies / April 22nd, 2021

Biden with NATO’s Stoltenberg (Photo credit: haramjedder.blogspot.com)

President Biden took office promising a new era of American international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war.

Biden’s failure to quickly recommit to the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, as Senator Sanders promised to do on his first day as president, provided a critical delay that has been used by opponents to undermine the difficult shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna to restore the agreement.

The attempts to derail talks range from the introduction of the Maximum Pressure Act on April 21 to codify the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran to Israel’s cyberattack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. Biden’s procrastination has only strengthened the influence of the hawkish Washington foreign policy “blob,” Republicans and Democratic hawks in Congress and foreign allies like Netanyahu in Israel.

In Afghanistan, Biden has won praise for his decision to withdraw U.S. troops by September 11, but his refusal to abide by the May 1 deadline for withdrawal as negotiated under the Trump administration has led the Taliban to back out of the planned UN-led peace conference in Istanbul. A member of the Taliban military commission told the Daily Beast that “the U.S. has shattered the Taliban’s trust.”

Now active and retired Pentagon officials are regaling the New York Times with accounts of how they plan to prolong the U.S. war without “boots on the ground” after September, undoubtedly further infuriating the Taliban and making a ceasefire and peace talks all the more difficult.

In Ukraine, the government has launched a new offensive in its civil war against the ethnically Russian provinces in the eastern Donbass region, which declared unilateral independence after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014. On April 1, Ukraine’s military chief of staff said publicly that “the participation of NATO allies is envisaged” in the government offensive, prompting warnings from Moscow that Russia could intervene to protect Russians in Donbass.

Sticking to their usual tired script, U.S. and NATO officials are pretending that Russia is the aggressor for conducting military exercises and troop movements within its own borders in response to Kiev’s escalation. But even the BBC is challenging this false narrative, explaining that Russia is acting competently and effectively to deter an escalation of the Ukrainian offensive and U.S. and NATO threats. The U.S has turned around two U.S. guided-missile destroyers that were steaming toward the Black Sea, where they would only have been sitting ducks for Russia’s advanced missile defenses.

Tensions have escalated with China, as the U.S. Navy and Marines stalk Chinese ships in the South China Sea, well inside the island chains China uses for self defense. The Pentagon is hoping to drag NATO allies into participating in these operations, and the U.S. Air Force plans to shift more bombers to new bases in Asia and the Pacific, supported by existing larger bases in Guam, Japan, Australia and South Korea.

Meanwhile, despite a promising initial pause and policy review, Biden has decided to keep selling tens of billion dollars worth of weapons to authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Persian Gulf sheikdoms, even as they keep bombing and blockading famine-stricken Yemen. Biden’s unconditional support for the most brutal authoritarian dictators on Earth lays bare the bankruptcy of the Democrats’ attempts to frame America’s regurgitated Cold War on Russia and China as a struggle between “democracy” and “authoritarianism.”

In all these international crises (along with Cuba, Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, Palestine, Syria and Venezuela, which are bedevilled by the same U.S. unilateralism), President Biden and the hawks egging him on are pursuing unilateral policies that ignore solemn commitments in international agreements and treaties, riding roughshod over the good faith of America’s allies and negotiating partners.

As the Russian foreign ministry bluntly put it when it announced its countermeasures to the latest round of U.S. sanctions, “Washington is unwilling to accept that there is no room for unilateral dictates in the new geopolitical reality.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping echoed the same multipolar perspective on April 20th at the annual Boao Asian international business forum. “The destiny and future of the world should be decided by all nations, and rules set up just by one or several countries should not be imposed on others,” Xi said. “The whole world should not be led by unilateralism of individual countries.”

The near-universal failure of Biden’s diplomacy in his first months in office reflects how badly he and those who have his ear are failing to accurately read the limits of American power and predict the consequences of his unilateral decisions.

Unilateral, irresponsible decision-making has been endemic in U.S. foreign policy for decades, but America’s economic and military dominance created an international environment that was extraordinarily forgiving of American “mistakes,” even as they ruined the lives of millions of people in the countries directly affected. Now America no longer dominates the world, and it is critical for U.S. officials to more accurately assess the relative power and positions of the United States and the countries and people it is confronting or negotiating with.

Under Trump, Defense Secretary Mattis launched negotiations to persuade Vietnam to host U.S. missiles aimed at China. The negotiations went on for three years, but they were based entirely on wishful thinking and misreadings of Vietnam’s responses by U.S. officials and Rand Corp contractors. Experts agree that Vietnam would never violate a formal, declared policy of neutrality it has held and repeatedly reiterated since 1998.

As Gareth Porter summarized this silly saga:

The story of the Pentagon’s pursuit of Vietnam as a potential military partner against China reveals an extraordinary degree of self-deception surrounding the entire endeavor. And it adds further detail to the already well-established picture of a muddled and desperate bureaucracy seizing on any vehicle possible to enable it to claim that U.S. power in the Pacific can still prevail in a war with China.

Unlike Trump, Biden has been at the heart of American politics and foreign policy since the 1970s. So the degree to which he too is out of touch with today’s international reality is a measure of how much and how quickly that reality has changed and continues to change. But the habits of empire die hard. The tragic irony of Biden’s ascent to power in 2020 is that his lifetime of service to a triumphalist American empire has left him ill-equipped to craft a more constructive and cooperative brand of American diplomacy for today’s multipolar world

Amid the American triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War, the neocons developed a simplistic ideology to persuade America’s leaders that they need no longer be constrained in their use of military power by domestic opposition, peer competitors or international law. They claimed that America had virtually unlimited military freedom of action and a responsibility to use it aggressively, because, as Biden parroted them recently, “the world doesn’t organize itself.”

The international violence and chaos Biden has inherited in 2021 is a measure of the failure of the neocons’ ambitions. But there is one place that they conquered, occupied and still rule to this day, and that is Washington D.C.

The dangerous disconnect at the heart of Biden’s foreign policy is the result of this dichotomy between the neocons’ conquest of Washington and their abject failure to conquer the rest of the world.

For most of Biden’s career, the politically safe path on foreign policy for corporate Democrats has been to talk a good game about human rights and diplomacy, but not to deviate too far from hawkish, neoconservative policies on war, military spending, and support for often repressive and corrupt allies throughout America’s neocolonial empire.

The tragedy of such compromises by Democratic Party leaders is that they perpetuate the suffering of millions of people affected by the real-world problems they fail to fix. But the Democrats’ subservience to simplistic neoconservative ideas also fails to satisfy the hawks they are trying to appease, who only smell more political blood in the water at every display of moral weakness by the Democrats.

In his first three months in office, Biden’s weakness in resisting the bullying of hawks and neocons has led him to betray the most significant diplomatic achievements of each of his predecessors, Obama and Trump, in the JCPOA with Iran and the May 1 withdrawal agreement with the Taliban respectively, while perpetuating the violence and chaos the neocons unleashed on the world.

For a president who promised a new era of American diplomacy, this has been a dreadful start. We hope he and his advisers are not too blinded by anachronistic imperial thinking or too intimidated by the neocons to make a fresh start and engage with the world as it actually exists in 2021.

This article was posted on Thursday, April 22nd, 2021 at 2:35pm and is filed under Afghanistan, Benjamin Netanyahu, China, Democrats, Diplomacy, Donald Trump, Europe, Exploitation, Imperialism, Iran, Iran Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA), Israel, Joe Biden, Media, Militarism, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South China Sea, Taliban, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, US Defence Department, US Foreign Policy, US Hegemony, US Military, US War Crimes, Viet Nam, War Industry, Xi Jinping, Yemen.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/04/22/bidens-appeasement-of-hawks-and-neocons-is-crippling-his-diplomacy-2/feed/ 0 189679 Ten Problems With Biden’s Foreign Policy and One Solution https://www.radiofree.org/2021/03/13/ten-problems-with-bidens-foreign-policy-and-one-solution/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/03/13/ten-problems-with-bidens-foreign-policy-and-one-solution/#respond Sat, 13 Mar 2021 05:34:16 +0000 https://www.radiofree.org/?p=173462 by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies / March 12th, 2021

The Biden presidency is still in its early days, but it’s not too early to point to areas in the foreign policy realm where we, as progressives, have been disappointed — or even infuriated.

There are one or two positive developments, such as the renewal of Obama’s New START Treaty with Russia and Secretary of State Blinken’s initiative for a UN-led peace process in Afghanistan, where the United States is finally turning to peace as a last resort, after 20 years lost in the graveyard of empires.

By and large, though, Biden’s foreign policy already seems stuck in the militarist quagmire of the past twenty years, a far cry from his campaign promise to reinvigorate diplomacy as the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy.

In this respect, Biden is following in the footsteps of Obama and Trump, who both promised fresh approaches to foreign policy but for the most part delivered more endless war.

By the end of his second term, Obama did have two significant diplomatic achievements with the signing of the Iran nuclear deal and normalization of relations with Cuba. So progressive Americans who voted for Biden had some grounds to hope that his experience as Obama’s vice-president would lead him to quickly restore and build on Obama’s achievements with Iran and Cuba as a foundation for the broader diplomacy he promised.

Instead, the Biden administration seems firmly entrenched behind the walls of hostility Trump built between America and our neighbors, from his renewed Cold War against China and Russia to his brutal sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria and dozens of countries around the world, and there is still no word on cuts to a military budget that has grown by 15% since FY2015 (inflation-adjusted).

Despite endless Democratic condemnations of Trump, Biden’s foreign policy so far shows no substantive change from the policies of the past four years. Here are ten of the lowlights:

  1. Failing to quickly rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement. The Biden administration’s failure to immediately rejoin the JCPOA, as Bernie Sanders promised to do on his first day as president, has turned an easy win for Biden’s promised commitment to diplomacy into an entirely avoidable diplomatic crisis.

Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and imposition of brutal “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran were broadly condemned by Democrats and U.S. allies alike. But now Biden is making new demands on Iran to appease hawks who opposed the agreement all along, risking an outcome in which he will fail to reinstate the JCPOA and Trump’s policy will effectively become his policy. The Biden administration should re-enter the deal immediately, without preconditions.

  1. U.S. Bombing Wars Rage On – Now In Secret. Also following in Trump’s footsteps, Biden has escalated tensions with Iran and Iraq by attacking and killing Iranian-backed Iraqi forces who play a critical role in the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Biden’s February 25 U.S. airstrike predictably failed to end rocket attacks on deeply unpopular U.S. bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi National Assembly passed a resolution to close over a year ago.

The U.S. attack in Syria has been condemned as illegal by members of Biden’s own party, reinvigorating efforts to repeal the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force that presidents have misused for 20 years. Other airstrikes the Biden administration is conducting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are shrouded in secrecy, since it has not resumed publishing the monthly Airpower Summaries that every other administration has published since 2004, but which Trump discontinued a year ago.

  1. Refusing to hold MBS accountable for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khasssoghi. Human rights activists were grateful that President Biden released the intelligence report on the gruesome murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi that confirmed what we already knew: that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) approved the murder. Yet, when it came to holding MBS accountable, Biden choked.

At the very least, the administration should have imposed the same sanctions on MBS, including asset freezes and travel bans, that the U.S. imposed on lower-level figures involved in the murder. Instead, like Trump, Biden is wedded to the Saudi dictatorship and its diabolical Crown Prince.

  1. Clinging to Trump’s absurdist policy of recognizing Juan Guaidó as President of Venezuela. The Biden administration missed an opportunity to establish a new approach towards Venezuela when it decided to continue to recognize Juan Guaidó as “interim president”, ruled out talks with the Maduro government and appears to be freezing out the moderate opposition that participates in elections.

The administration also said it was in “no rush” to lift the Trump sanctions despite a recent study from the Government Accountability Office detailing their negative impact on the economy, and a scathing preliminary report by a UN Special Rapporteur, who noted their “devastating effect on the whole population of Venezuela.” The lack of dialogue with all political actors in Venezuela risks entrenching a policy of regime change and economic warfare for years to come, similar to the failed U.S. policy towards Cuba that has lasted for 60 years.

  1. Following Trump on Cuba instead of Obama. The Trump administration overturned all the progress towards normal relations achieved by President Obama, sanctioning Cuba’s tourism and energy industries, blocking coronavirus aid shipments, restricting remittances to family members, putting Cuba on a list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” and sabotaging Cuba’s international medical missions, which were a major source of revenue for its health system.

We expected Biden to immediately start unraveling Trump’s confrontational policies, but catering to Cuban exiles in Florida for domestic political gain apparently takes precedence over a humane and rational policy towards Cuba, for Biden as for Trump.

Biden should instead start working with the Cuban government to allow the return of diplomats to their respective embassies, lift all restrictions on remittances, make travel easier, and work with the Cuban health system in the fight against COVID-19, among other measures.

  1. Ramping up the Cold War with China. Biden seems committed to Trump’s self-defeating Cold War and arms race with China, talking tough and ratcheting up tensions that have led to racist hate crimes against East Asian people in the United States. But it is the United States that is militarily surrounding and threatening China, not the other way round. As former President Jimmy Carter patiently explained to Trump, while the United States has been at war for 20 years, China has instead invested in 21st century infrastructure and in its own people, lifting 800 million of them out of poverty.

The greatest danger of this moment in history, short of all-out nuclear war, is that this aggressive U.S. military posture not only justifies unlimited U.S. military budgets, but will gradually force China to convert its economic success into military power and follow the United States down the tragic path of military imperialism.

  1. Failing to lift painful, illegal sanctions during a pandemic. One of the legacies of the Trump administration is the devastating use of U.S. sanctions on countries around the world, including Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and Syria. UN special rapporteurs have condemned them as crimes against humanity and compared them to medieval sieges. Since most of these sanctions were imposed by executive order, President Biden could easily lift them. Even before taking power, his team announced a thorough review, but, three months later, it has yet to make a move.

Unilateral sanctions that affect entire populations are an illegal form of coercion, like military intervention, coups and covert operations, that have no place in a legitimate foreign policy based on diplomacy, the rule of law and the peaceful resolution of disputes. They are especially cruel and deadly during a pandemic and the Biden administration should take immediate action by lifting broad sectoral sanctions to ensure every country can adequately respond to the pandemic.

  1. Not doing enough to support peace and humanitarian aid for Yemen. Biden appeared to partially fulfill his promise to stop U.S. support for the war in Yemen when he announced that the U.S. would stop selling “offensive” weapons to the Saudis. But he has yet to explain what that means. Which weapons sales has he cancelled?

We think he should stop ALL weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, enforcing the Leahy Law that prohibits military assistance to forces that commit gross human rights violations, and the Arms Export Control Act, under which imported U.S. weapons may be used only for legitimate self defense. There should be no exceptions to these U.S. laws for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, Egypt or other U.S. allies around the world.

The U.S. should also accept its share of responsibility for what many have called the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today, and provide Yemen with funding to feed its people, restore its health care system and rebuild its devastated country. A recent donor conference netted just $1.7 billion in pledges, less than half the $3.85 billion needed. Biden should restore and expand USAID funding and U.S. financial support to the UN, WHO and World Food Program relief operations in Yemen. He should also press the Saudis to reopen the air and seaports, and throw U.S. diplomatic weight behind the efforts of U.N. Special Envoy Martin Griffiths to negotiate a ceasefire.

  1. Failing to back President Moon Jae-in’s diplomacy with North Korea. Trump’s failure to provide sanctions relief and explicit security guarantees to North Korea doomed his diplomacy and became an obstacle to the diplomatic process under way between Korean presidents Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, who is himself the child of North Korean refugees. So far, Biden has continued this policy of Draconian sanctions and threats.

The Biden administration should revive the diplomatic process with confidence-building measures such as opening liaison offices, easing sanctions, facilitating reunions between Korean-American and North Korean families, permitting U.S. humanitarian organizations to resume their work when COVID conditions permit, and halting U.S.-South Korea military exercises and B-2 nuclear bomb flights.

Negotiations must involve concrete commitments to non-aggression from the U.S. side and a commitment to negotiating a peace agreement to formally end the Korean War. This would pave the way for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and the reconciliation that so many Koreans desire — and deserve.

  1. No initiative to reduce U.S. military spending. At the end of the Cold War, former senior Pentagon officials told the Senate Budget Committee that U.S. military spending could safely be cut by half over the next 10 years. That goal was never achieved, and instead of a post-Cold War “peace dividend,” the military-industrial complex exploited the crimes of September 11, 2001 to justify an extraordinary one-sided arms race. Between 2003 and 2011, the U.S. accounted for 45% of global military spending, far outstripping its own peak Cold War military spending.

Now the military-industrial complex is counting on Biden to escalate a renewed Cold War with Russia and China as the only plausible pretext for further record military budgets that are setting the stage for World War III.

Biden must dial back U.S. conflicts with China and Russia, and instead begin the critical task of moving money from the Pentagon to urgent domestic needs. He should start with at least the 10 percent cut that 93 Representatives and 23 Senators already voted for. In the longer term, Biden should look for deeper cuts in Pentagon spending, as in Rep. Barbara Lee’s bill to cut $350 billion per year from the U.S. military budget, to free up resources we sorely need to invest in health care, education, clean energy and modern infrastructure.

A Progressive Way Forward

These policies, common to Democratic and Republican administrations, not only inflict pain and suffering on millions of our neighbors in other countries, but also deliberately cause instability that can at any time escalate into war, plunge a formerly functioning state into chaos or spawn a secondary crisis whose human consequences will be even worse than the original one.

All these policies involve deliberate efforts to unilaterally impose the political will of U.S. leaders on other people and countries, by methods that consistently only cause more pain and suffering to the people they claim – or pretend – they want to help.

Biden should jettison the worst of Obama’s and Trump’s policies, and instead pick the best of them. Trump, recognizing the unpopular nature of U.S. military interventions, began the process of bringing U.S troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, which Biden should follow through on.

Obama’s diplomatic successes with Cuba, Iran and Russia demonstrated that negotiating with U.S. enemies to make peace, improve relations and make the world a safer place is a perfectly viable alternative to trying to force them to do what the United States wants by bombing, starving and besieging their people. This is, in fact, the core principle of the United Nations Charter, and it should be the core principle of Biden’s foreign policy

This article was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2021 at 9:34pm and is filed under Afghanistan, Barack Obama, China, Cold War, Cuba, Diplomacy, Donald Trump, Iran, Iran Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA), Iraq, Joe Biden, Juan Guaidó, Korea, Militarism, North Korea, President Nicolas Maduro, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Terrorism (state and retail), The Pentagon, United Arab Emirates, US Congress, US Foreign Policy, US Military, US War Crimes, Venezuela, Yemen.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/03/13/ten-problems-with-bidens-foreign-policy-and-one-solution/feed/ 0 173462 Is Biden Committing Diplomatic Suicide Over the Iran Nuclear Agreement? https://www.radiofree.org/2021/02/15/is-biden-committing-diplomatic-suicide-over-the-iran-nuclear-agreement-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/02/15/is-biden-committing-diplomatic-suicide-over-the-iran-nuclear-agreement-2/#respond Mon, 15 Feb 2021 21:10:43 +0000 https://www.radiofree.org/?p=162765 by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies / February 15th, 2021

Photo Credit:  CODEPINK

As Congress still struggles to pass a COVID relief bill, the rest of the world is nervously reserving judgment on America’s new president and his foreign policy, after successive U.S. administrations have delivered unexpected and damaging shocks to the world and the international system.

Cautious international optimism toward President Biden is very much based on his commitment to Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement, the JCPOA or nuclear agreement with Iran. Biden and the Democrats excoriated Trump for withdrawing from it and promised to promptly rejoin the deal if elected. But Biden now appears to be hedging his position in a way that risks turning what should be an easy win for the new administration into an avoidable and tragic diplomatic failure.

While it was the United States under Trump that withdrew from the nuclear agreement, Biden is taking the position that the U.S. will not rejoin the agreement or drop its unilateral sanctions until Iran first comes back into compliance. After withdrawing from the agreement, the United States is in no position to make such demands, and Foreign Minister Zarif has clearly and eloquently rejected them, reiterating Iran’s firm commitment that it will return to full compliance as soon as the United States does so.

Biden should have announced U.S. re-entry as one of his first executive orders. It did not require renegotiation or debate. On the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders, Biden’s main competitor for the Democratic nomination, simply promised, “I would re-enter the agreement on the first day of my presidency.”

Then-candidate Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said during the Democratic primary, “We need to rejoin our allies in returning to the agreement, provided Iran agrees to comply with the agreement and take steps to reverse its breaches …” Gillibrand said that Iran must “agree” to take those steps, not that it must take them first, presciently anticipating and implicitly rejecting Biden’s self-defeating position that Iran must fully return to compliance with the JCPOA before the United States will rejoin.

If Biden just rejoins the JCPOA, all of the provisions of the agreement will be back in force and work exactly as they did before Trump opted out. Iran will be subject to the same IAEA inspections and reports as before. Whether Iran is in compliance or not will be determined by the IAEA, not unilaterally by the United States. That is how the agreement works, as all the signatories agreed: China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the United Kingdom, the European Union – and the United States.

So why is Biden not eagerly pocketing this easy first win for his stated commitment to diplomacy? A December 2020 letter supporting the JCPOA, signed by 150 House Democrats, should have reassured Biden that he has overwhelming support to stand up to hawks in both parties.

But instead Biden seems to be listening to opponents of the JCPOA telling him that Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement has given him “leverage” to negotiate new concessions from Iran before rejoining. Rather than giving Biden leverage over Iran, which has no reason to make further concessions, this has given opponents of the JCPOA leverage over Biden, turning him into the football, instead of the quarterback, in this diplomatic Super Bowl

American neocons and hawks, including those inside his own administration, appear to be flexing their muscles to kill Biden’s commitment to diplomacy at birth, and his own hawkish foreign policy views make him dangerously susceptible to their arguments. This is also a test of his previously subservient relationship with Israel, whose government vehemently opposes the JCPOA and whose officials have even threatened to launch a military attack on Iran if the U.S. rejoins it, a flagrantly illegal threat that Biden has yet to publicly condemn.

In a more rational world, the call for nuclear disarmament in the Middle East would focus on Israel, not Iran. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in the Guardian on December 31, 2020, Israel’s own possession of dozens – or maybe hundreds – of nuclear weapons is the worst kept secret in the world. Tutu’s article was an open letter to Biden, asking him to publicly acknowledge what the whole world already knows and to respond as required under U.S. law to the actual proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

Instead of tackling the danger of Israel’s real nuclear weapons, successive U.S. administrations have chosen to cry “Wolf!” over non-existent nuclear weapons in Iraq and Iran to justify besieging their governments, imposing deadly sanctions on their people, invading Iraq and threatening Iran. A skeptical world is watching to see whether President Biden has the integrity and political will to break this insidious pattern.

The CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC), which stokes Americans’ fears of imaginary Iranian nuclear weapons and feeds endless allegations about them to the IAEA, is the same entity that produced the lies that drove America to war on Iraq in 2003. On that occasion, WINPAC’s director, Alan Foley, told his staff, “If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so” – even as he privately admitted to his retired CIA colleague Melvin Goodman that U.S. forces searching for WMDs in Iraq would find, “not much, if anything.”

What makes Biden’s stalling to appease Netanyahu and the neocons diplomatically suicidal at this moment in time is that in November the Iranian parliament passed a law that forces its government to halt nuclear inspections and boost uranium enrichment if U.S. sanctions are not eased by February 21.

To complicate matters further, Iran is holding its own presidential election on June 18, 2021, and election season — when this issue will be hotly debated — begins after the Iranian New Year on March 21. The winner is expected to be a hawkish hardliner. Trump’s failed policy, which Biden is now continuing by default, has discredited the diplomatic efforts of President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif, confirming for many Iranians that negotiating with America is a fool’s errand.

If Biden does not rejoin the JCPOA soon, time will be too short to restore full compliance by both Iran and the U.S.— including lifting relevant sanctions — before Iran’s election. Each day that goes by reduces the time available for Iranians to see benefits from the removal of sanctions, leaving little chance that they will vote for a new government that supports diplomacy with the United States.

The timetable around the JCPOA was known and predictable, so this avoidable crisis seems to be the result of a deliberate decision by Biden to try to appease neocons and warmongers, domestic and foreign, by bullying Iran, a partner in an international agreement he claims to support, to make additional concessions that are not part of the agreement.

During his election campaign, President Biden promised to “elevate diplomacy as the premier tool of our global engagement.” If Biden fails this first test of his promised diplomacy, people around the world will conclude that, despite his trademark smile and affable personality, Biden represents no more of a genuine recommitment to American partnership in a cooperative “rules-based world” than Trump or Obama did.

That will confirm the steadily growing international perception that, behind the Republicans’ and Democrats’ good cop-bad cop routine, the overall direction of U.S. foreign policy remains fundamentally aggressive, coercive and destructive. People and governments around the world will continue to downgrade relations with the United States, as they did under Trump, and even traditional U.S. allies will chart an increasingly independent course in a multipolar world where the U.S. is no longer a reliable partner and certainly not a leader.

So much is hanging in the balance, for the people of Iran suffering and dying under the impact of U.S. sanctions, for Americans yearning for more peaceful relations with our neighbors around the world, and for people everywhere who long for a more humane and equitable international order to confront the massive problems facing us all in this century. Can Biden’s America be part of the solution? After only three weeks in office, surely it can’t be too late. But the ball is in his court, and the whole world is watching.

This article was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2021 at 1:10pm and is filed under Diplomacy, Iran, Iran Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA), Joe Biden, US Foreign Policy.

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