Trump Violates the Iran Nuclear Deal — Ignoring U.S. and Israeli Generals Who Support It

MCP

International
International Member
trump-iran-nuclear-deal-feat-1525805216.jpg



https://theintercept.com/2018/05/08/donald-trump-iran-nuclear-deal-john-bolton/

So he’s finally done it. Having spent the past three years denouncing the Iran nuclear deal as “horrible,” “disastrous,” and “insane,” Donald Trump arrived in the Diplomatic Room of the White House on Tuesday afternoon to formally announce that “the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal” and would “begin reinstituting U.S. nuclear sanctions on the Iranian regime.”


“This will make America much safer,” the president declaimed, jabbing his fingers at the assembled reporters.


Guess who’s celebrating the president’s decision to violate a nuclear nonproliferation agreement signed by the United States less than three years ago? His new national security adviser, John Bolton, a former paid speaker for an Iranian ex-terror group who has long been obsessed with “regime change” in Tehran; the crown prince — and de facto ruler — of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who claims Iran’s supreme leader “makes Hitler look good”; and the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who constantly compares the Islamic Republic to the so-called Islamic State.

Don’t be fooled: This disastrous and unilateral decision by Trump won’t improve U.S. security. Or Israeli security, for that matter. Even card-carrying hawks who hate the Islamic Republic think Trump is mad to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, as the nuclear deal is officially known.


Because guess who won’t be celebrating? The entire U.S. military establishment: Defense Secretary James Mattis, who says he has read the text of the nuclear agreement three times and considers it to be “pretty robust”; Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, who says, “Iran is adhering to its JCPOA obligations” and a U.S. decision to quit the deal “would have an impact on others’ willingness to sign agreements”; the head of U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. John Hyten, who says, “Iran is in compliance with JCPOA” and argues “it’s our job to live up to the terms of that agreement”; and the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Joseph Votel, who says the nuclear deal is “in our interest” because it “addresses one of the principle threats that we deal with from Iran.”


Those are just the generals who are still in uniform. In March, a statement signed by 100 U.S. national security veterans from across the political spectrum said the nuclear agreement “enhances U.S. and regional security” and “ditching it would serve no national security purpose.” Fifty of the 100 signatories were retired U.S. military officers, including leading Republicans such as retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser to George H.W. Bush, and retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who served as director of both the NSA and the CIA under George W. Bush.


Then there’s retired Gen. Colin Powell, national security adviser to Ronald Reagan and secretary of state under George W. Bush, who has called the JCPOA “a pretty good deal.” And Trump’s own former national security adviser, soon-to-be-retired Gen. H.R. McMaster, who was “working closely with two key senators to prevent Trump from destroying the Iran deal” prior to being fired and replaced with Bolton in March.


Guess who else isn’t celebrating? The Israeli security establishment. Netanyahu may claim to possess thousands of “secret nuclear files” that show the JCPOA was “built on lies,” but Israel’s generals and spymasters disagree, including: the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, who says the deal “with all its faults is working”; the chair of the Israeli Space Agency and award-winning military scientist, Isaac Ben-Israel, who says “the agreement is not bad at all, it’s even good for Israel” because “it averts an atom bomb for 15 years”; the former director of the spy agency Mossad, Efraim Halevy, who says the JCPOA provides a “credible answer to the Iranian military threat, at least for a decade, if not longer”; the former chief of domestic security agency Shin Bet, Carmi Gillon, who says the nuclear agreement has helped “make the region, and the world, a safer place”; the former head of Israeli military intelligence, Amos Yadlin, who says “tearing up the deal would create a dangerous void”; and former Israeli prime minister — and the country’s most decorated soldier — Ehud Barak, who says withdrawing from the deal would be a “mistake.”


So let’s be clear: On the one side, we have a dizzying array of serving and retired generals and spy chiefs from both the United States and Israel, none of whom are friends or fans of Iran, yet all of whom agree that the Islamic Republic is complying with the stringent terms of the JCPOA, and that the United States should stay in the deal because it bolsters U.S., regional, and global security.


And on the other side? A former property developer and reality TV star; a chicken hawk who wants to bomb everyone; a 32-year-old Gulf prince who can’t win a war against rebels from the poorest Arab country; and an allegedly corrupt politician who has been claiming Iran is “three to five years” away from a nuclear weapons capability since … 1992.


This isn’t about security or protecting American — or Israeli — cities from Iranian missiles. Trump & Co. aren’t trying to avoid war with Iran. They want war with Iran


 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
EU reiterates support for Iran deal

European Commissioner for Energy and Climate Miguel Arias Canete announced in Tehran Friday the European Union will protect from U.S. sanctions European companies that continue to do business with Iran despite President Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal.

This move comes at the behest of Iran deal signatories France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, which have sought to preserve the deal after American exit.

"We hope [the EU's] efforts materialize," said Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi, because "America's actions ... show that it is not a trustworthy country in international dealings."

Source: CNN, Reuters
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Iran warns Trump against the 'mother of all wars'

"America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace," Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday, "and war with Iran is the mother of all wars." Rouhani issued his warning to the Trump administration at a meeting of Iranian diplomats, arguing that attempts to undermine Tehran among the Iranian public would not be successful. "You are not in a position to incite the Iranian nation against Iran's security and interests," he said. President Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal earlier this year, claiming future negotiations will lead to a better arrangement.

Source: Reuters, The Hill
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Trump is blasting Iran on Twitter; Here’s why:


The theories range from a poorly learned lesson of his North Korea diplomacy to a seriously considered, long-term strategy. So, why Trump is threatening Iran right now? There are three broad theories for why Trump hit send on his bellicose tweet:

The first, as experts Colin Kahl and Vipin Narang hypothesized in the Washington Post, is that the president learned the wrong lesson from his dealings with North Korea. Mainly, Trump thinks talking tough will eventually deescalate tensions and get the opponent to do what America wants.

But Kahl and Narang, both critics of Trump’s foreign policy, don’t think that will work. “A ‘strategy of increasing tension’ is likely to produce just that: increasing tension, kicking off a spiral of pressure, retaliation and military threats,” they wrote in May. If this is actually why Trump pushed back on Rouhani so hard, Trump probably won’t like the result.


The second theory
is Trump wants to distract the public and the media from his poor meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. During the post-meeting press conference on July 16, Trump sided with Putin when the Russian leader denied that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, even though the US intelligence community assessed that it did.

That led to arguably the worst foreign policy week of Trump’s presidency, in which the administration failed to convincingly walk back Trump’s comments and curb the tide of widespread criticism, including from Republican leaders. But if he gets people to focus on Iran — especially GOP members of Congress — then maybe he can make everyone forget about his really bad Russia week.


The third and final explanation, made mostly by Trump’s foreign policy supporters, is that it was actually part of a longer-term plan.

“The administration’s goal is to increase the pressure on Iran in order to force it to the table to renegotiate a better nuclear deal,” Matthew Kroenig, an Iran expert at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, told me. “Better terms will require more pressure, so Trump’s tweet, tougher sanctions, and calling out Iran’s human rights abuses are all part of this broader strategy.”

Trump has said many times he wants a better deal with Iran, one in which Tehran agrees to never have a functioning nuclear program. Trump’s tweet may be a shot across the bow, warning Rouhani and others that Trump would consider some kind of military option should they not comply with his wishes.

Regardless of which theory is correct, the big worry is that
the president’s threat could potentially lead to war.

https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/23/17602978/trump-iran-twitter-threat-us


.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Iran sanctions


The Trump administration is re-imposing sanctions on Iran that were lifted as part of the Obama-era nuclear deal, and it's seriously threatening the country's already wobbly economy.

In early July, when sanctions were still just a threat, the State Department claimed dozens of international firms had already left the country, anticipating the economic fallout. Trump says the sanctions are designed to punish -- not topple -- the Iranian regime for trying to sow terrorism and regional instability. He also said yesterday he'd be willing to meet with Iran's leadership without preconditionsto discuss the situation.

__________________________________
__________________________________

Why does unilaterally (none of our allies agreed with it) canceling the agreement that we had with Iran and imposing sanctions that seriously threaten Iran’s economy look, sound and feel so much like Regime Change ???

Isn’t he really showing us how much he wants to be a “Strong Man” like the ones he has expressed his approval of, i.e., Duterte of the Philippines and Kim of North Korea ???

Is there any wonder why he can’t bring himself to denounce Putin and the Russian interference in U.S. elections ??? Is that because Putin has dirt on him or he REALLY ADMIRES AND WANTS TO BE LIKE STRONGMAN PUTIN ???

Isn’t it a fact that Putin and the Russians helped Trump with Regime Change right here in the USA ???


.
 

MCP

International
International Member
'The difference between America and Israel? There isn't one'

(Moderator’s Note:
This Op-Ed was published:
March 1, 2015)



https://www.independent.co.uk/voice...rica-and-israel-there-isn-t-one-10078658.html

Netanyahu%20and%20wife.jpg

Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sarah left Israel for a 48-hour trip to the US ( Getty )

Uri Avnery is without doubt the most intellectual, philosophical, prescient leftist Israeli seer I have ever met. Like TS Eliot, he has a habit of using the fewest words to tell the greatest truth. Every essay he writes, this reader always says the same thing: Exactly! Yet, for the first time in 40 years, I disagree with the great man.

He has just suggested that Benjamin Netanyahu’s agreement to address the US Congress at the invitation of Republicans tomorrow – two weeks before an Israeli general election – and Barack Obama’s decision not to see the old rogue, has destroyed Israel’s bipartisan support in America. For the first time, says Uri, Democratic politicians are allowed to criticise Israel.


Absolute Tosh.

Congressmen of both parties have grovelled and fainted and shrieked their support for Bibi and his predecessors with more enthusiasm that the Roman hordes in the Colosseum. Last time Bibi turned up on the Hill, he received literally dozens of standing ovations from the sheep-like representatives of the American people, whose uncritical adoration of the Israeli state – and their abject fear of uttering the most faint-hearted criticism lest they be called anti-Semites – suggest that Bibi would be a far more popular US president than Barack. And Bibi’s impeccable American accent doesn’t hurt.

And his aim – to earn votes for himself and to destroy the one foreign policy achievement within Obama’s grasp – will have absolutely no effect at all on Israeli-US relations. When Bibi made himself the laughing stock of the UN Security Council – by producing an infantile cartoon of an Iranian bomb with a red line in the middle, indicating that Iran could build nuclear weapons by the end of 2013 – his charade was treated with indulgence by the American media. These mythical deadlines have been expiring regularly for more than a decade, yet still we are supposed to take them seriously. Obama is struggling to reach an agreement with Iran which would protect the world from any nuclear weapon production by the Islamic Republic.


READ MORE
Bibi wants to destroy this opportunity. He wants more sanctions. He wants to win the Israeli elections on 17 March. He might even bomb Iran – which would bring an immediate military response against the United States. But he’s going to be telling Congress that the entire existence of Israel is at stake. According to Uri, Bibi will be spitting in the face of President Obama. “I don’t think there was ever anything like it,” Uri Avnery wrote this weekend. “The Prime Minister of a small vassal country, dependent on the US for practically everything, comes to the US to openly challenge its President, in effect branding him a cheat and a liar… like Abraham, who was ready to slaughter his son to please God, Netanyahu is ready to sacrifice Israel’s most vital interests for election victory.”

I don’t wish to exonerate Bibi’s cynicism. Even Uri admits that he cannot imagine any more effective election ploy. “Using the Congress of the United States of America as a propaganda prop is a stroke of genius,” he says. But the Prime Minister of Israel knows he can get away with anything in America – with the same confidence that he can support his army when they slaughter hundreds of children in Gaza in the “self-defence” of Israel. Bibi’s speech to Congress will be as disproportionate as his soldiers’ bombardment of the world’s mightiest slum.


Israel-2.jpg

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after an adress to a joint session of Congress in the US

And he’ll do just fine. We’re told the Democrats are upset. We are informed that Obama is very, very – really – very angry. But the Democrat presidentess-in-waiting is no problem for Bibi. It was Hillary, remember, who told us last summer that she wasn’t sure it was “possible to parcel out blame” for the Gaza slaughter “because it’s impossible to know what happens in the fog of war”. The media stories may have obscured what was happening. “I do think oftentimes that the anguish you are privy to because of the coverage, and the women and children and all the rest of that [sic], makes it very difficult to sort through to get to the truth.” So the fewer reporters, the closer to the truth about the dead women and children and “all the rest of that”, we’ll all get. No wonder liberal Zionists, according to The New York Times, are worried that Hillary is getting too close to Bibi.

As for the Republicans, well take a look at ‘ol Jeb Bush, promising that all will be a clean sweep if he becomes the US commander-in-chief. There’ll be no focus, understandably, on “the past” – Daddy George and Big Bro George W. But his probable advisers in a future presidency include Paul Wolfowitz, John Hannah (Cheney’s old “national security adviser”), Michael Hayden (who misled Congress about torture) and Condi Rice, after whom an entire oil tanker was once named and then un-named – in other words, the same mangy crew who produced “weapons of mass destruction”, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, trillions of dollars in debt, torture and that infamous “mushroom cloud” (a real “fog of war”, if ever there was one). Columnist Maureen Dowd says that Jeb Bush should be holding to account those who inflicted “deep scars on America”. But why should he? The only thing unmentioned by Jeb is that in 2003, Israel was also producing the same scams about WMD and Saddam’s links to “world terror”.

Bibi won’t be reminding Congress of this on Tuesday, of course. It will be Iran’s WMD and the Islamic State’s links to “world terror” which will have Congress on its feet. It’s a pity Bibi wasn’t born in New York. Then we could have US President Netanyahu – and stop pretending there’s any difference between the Israeli and American governments.
 

MASTERBAKER

༺ S❤️PER❤️ ᗰOD ༻
Super Moderator
New leak claims Trump scrapped Iran nuclear deal 'to spite Obama'
  • 4 hours ago
Related Topics
_107481864_eb537c22-4817-4c01-9a01-374b57f0b198.jpg
Image copyrightAFP
Donald Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal to spite Barack Obama, according to a leaked memo written by the UK's former ambassador in the US.

Sir Kim Darroch described the move as an act of "diplomatic vandalism", according to the Mail on Sunday.

The paper says the memo was written after the then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson appealed to the US in 2018 to stick with the deal.

The latest leak came despite the Met Police warning against publication.

The first memos criticising President Trump's administration, which emerged a week ago, prompted a furious reaction from the US president and resulted in Sir Kim resigning from his role.

What have we learnt from the latest leak?
The Mail on Sunday reports that Sir Kim wrote to Mr Johnson informing him Republican President Trump appeared to be abandoning the nuclear deal for "personality reasons" - because the pact had been agreed by his Democrat predecessor, Barack Obama.

Under the 2015 deal backed by the US and five other nations, Iran agreed to limit its sensitive nuclear activities in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.


ADVERTISEMENT
However, President Trump said he did not think that the deal went far enough in curtailing Iran's nuclear ambitions and reinstated US sanctions after withdrawing from it in May 2018.

In a tweet from June this year, the president also said he objected to Mr Obama having given Iran £1.8bn (£1.4bn) as part of the deal. Commentators later pointed out this was related to the settlement of an unfulfilled military order from the 1970s.

Tehran recently announced it would break a limit set on uranium enrichment, in breach of the deal's conditions. However the UK, Germany and France say they are still committed to the deal.

The British ambassador's memo is said to have highlighted splits amongst US presidential advisers; he wrote that the White House did not have a strategy of how to proceed following withdrawal from the deal.

_107827882__107796525_trump_darroch.jpg
Image copyrightAFP/PA MEDIA
Image captionMr Trump had said we would "no longer deal with" Sir Kim Darroch
According to the paper, in his memo to Mr Johnson, Sir Kim wrote: "The outcome illustrated the paradox of this White House: you got exceptional access, seeing everyone short of the president; but on the substance, the administration is set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism, seemingly for ideological and personality reasons - it was Obama's deal.

"Moreover, they can't articulate any 'day-after' strategy; and contacts with State Department this morning suggest no sort of plan for reaching out to partners and allies, whether in Europe or the region."

Why did the police warn the media?
Scotland Yard's Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu warned media organisations against publishing leaked government documents, saying it "could be a criminal matter".

His comments came as a criminal investigation was launched into the initial leak of Sir Kim's emails.

The warning prompted a backlash from newspaper editors and MPs on Saturday, defending the freedom of the press.

The Met Police then released a second statement making clear journalists who released further details of the former ambassador's communications could be in breach of the Official Secrets Act, in which case there is no public interest defence in law.

p07gt0ds.jpg


Media captionTrump: 'I wish the British ambassador well'
The Mail on Sunday said it was in the public interest to publish the memos.

The paper argued that the most recently published emails revealed "important information" on the UK's attempts to stop President Trump abandoning the Iran nuclear deal.

A spokesman said: "What could be more in the public interest than a better understanding of how this position was reached, which may have serious consequences for world peace?"

In response, a Foreign Office spokesman called it a "totally unacceptable leak" of "sensitive material" and called for the source of the leak to "face the consequences of their actions".

He added that it was "not news" that the UK and US differ in their approach to preventing Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said she supported the paper's decision to disclose the information, adding "we have a very precious freedom of press legislation here".

What was the fallout from the initial leak?
The first leaked emails saw Sir Kim, the then UK ambassador, refer to the Trump administration as "clumsy and inept".

The US president responded by calling Sir Kim as "a very stupid guy", adding that he would no longer deal with him.

p07gsj95.jpg


Media captionBoris Johnson on Sir Kim Darroch
Sir Kim stepped down as US ambassador on Wednesday, saying it was "impossible" for him to continue in the role.

Tory leadership candidate Boris Johnson faced strong criticism for failing to fully support the former ambassador during a TV debate last week.

The government have also launched an internal Whitehall inquiry into the leak.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Foreign Policy

Trump’s better deal with Iran looks a lot like Obama’s
Trump has repeatedly urged Iran to negotiate, saying that Tehran’s nuclear
ambitions are his chief concern, talking points that experts say echo the 2015 deal.

90

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters after signing additional sanctions
on Iran in June. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo


Politico
By NAHAL TOOSI
July 17, 2019


Donald Trump has long trashed the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement as “the worst deal ever,” a “disaster” that didn’t cover nearly enough of the Islamist-led country’s nefarious behavior.

In recent weeks, however, the president has indicated that the Barack Obama-era deal might not be so bad after all.

Trump has repeatedly urged Iran to engage in negotiations with him, while saying that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions are his chief concern — “A lot of progress has been made. And they'd like to talk,” Trump asserted Tuesday at the White House. His aides and allies, meanwhile, have recently suggested that Iran and other countries should follow the guidelines of a deal
they themselves have shunned as worthless.

At times, analysts and former officials say, it sounds like Trump wants to strike a deal that essentially mirrors the agreement that his White House predecessor inked — even if he’d never be willing to admit it. Iranian officials seem willing to egg him on, saying they’ll talk so long as Trump lifts the sanctions he’s imposed on them and returns to the 2015 Iran deal. And as European ministers warn that the existing deal is nearly extinct, Trump may feel like he is backed into a corner and running out of options.

“Trump got rid of the Iran nuclear deal because
it was Barack Obama’s agreement,”
said Jarrett
Blanc, a former State Department official who
helped oversee the 2015 deal’s implementation.
“If you were to present to Trump the same deal and call
it Trump’s deal, he’d be thrilled.”

The administration’s confusing messaging is a result of warring between two major factions, U.S. officials say, with Trump in his own separate lane. The infighting has been deeply frustrating to those involved in the debate. “In the past, even when I personally disagreed with a policy, I could explain its logic,” a U.S. official said. “Now I can’t even do that.”

Trump quit the nuclear deal in May 2018, reimposing sanctions the U.S. had lifted on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. He said the deal should have tackled Iran’s non-nuclear activities, such as its sponsorship of terrorist groups, and blasted the expiration dates on some of its clauses.

For a year afterward, Iran continued to abide by the deal’s terms, hoping that the other countries involved — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — could offer Tehran the economic relief Trump had taken away. But as that relief has failed to materialize, Iran has begun backing away from its commitments.

Tehran recently breached limits on its enrichment and stockpiling of uranium and has promised more infractions in the coming months. The U.S. has also accused Iran of attacking several international oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, and the Pentagon has sent warships and more troops to the region in response.

As tensions have spiked, one voice pushing for a deal has been Trump.

He’s said he’s “not looking for war,” wants to talk to Iran without preconditions and isn’t interested in regime change. He called off a military strike on Iran over its downing of an unmanned U.S. drone, overriding the advice of several top aides. His main public demand is that Iran not build nuclear weapons. In return, Trump has offered to help revive Iran’s sanctions-battered economy.

To observers, that sounds suspiciously like the 2015 deal.

“They can't have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said Tuesday. “We want to help them. We will be good to them. We will work with them. We will help them in any way we can. But they can't have a nuclear weapon."

Trump occasionally nods to other disputes with Iran, such as its funding of militia groups, ballistic missile testing and Tehran’s support of rebel forces in Yemen, but nuclear weapons dominate his rhetoric.

In June, Jackie Wolcott, the U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency — the body that inspects Iran’s nuclear program under the 2015 agreement — called on Iran to stick to the deal after an IAEA inspection report detailed a disputed potential violation.

“Iran has claimed that it continues to comply with the JCPOA, but it is now reported to be in clear violation of the deal,” Wolcott said, referring to the agreement’s official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “This should be of great concern to all of us. The United States calls on Iran to return to compliance without delay.”

Afterward, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus faced questions about why the U.S. wants Iran to adhere to a deal that it has claimed doesn’t truly constrain its nuclear ambitions.

“I don’t think it’s contradictory in the fact that we have stated very loudly since the beginning of this administration that we do not want the Iranian regime to get a nuclear weapon,” Ortagus said. “We think it would be disastrous for the Middle East. I — we haven’t changed our position.”

In a statement to POLITICO, a State Department official called the JCPOA “a flawed deal because it did not permanently address our concerns with respect to Iran’s nuclear program and destabilizing conduct. The U.S. is seeking a deal with Iran that comprehensively addresses the regime’s destabilizing behavior — not just their nuclear program, but also their missile program, support to terrorism, and malign regional behavior.”

Several European officials express astonishment at the audacity of the Trump administration demanding that Iran adhere to the deal when the U.S. the one who breached the agreement in the first place. Some said they were not surprised that Iran may have taken actions in the Persian Gulf as payback for the U.S. abandonment of the deal.

Europeans “know that the original sin causing the current escalation in the Gulf is the U.S. violation of the Iran nuclear deal,” said Nathalie Tocci, an adviser to European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. “At the same time, they are terribly concerned about the escalation and the threat it poses to the Middle East and to Europe itself.”

U.S. officials and outside observers say there appear to be two main competing factions inside the Trump administration when it comes to Iran policy.

Both camps are convinced that Iran’s Islamist regime is a bad actor in the Middle East. Neither particularly cares for the nuclear deal, either, viewing it as too weak a document.

But one group, led by national security adviser John Bolton, is simply more hardline than the other.

Bolton, who has previously called for regime change in Iran, and his supporters appear determined to kill the deal and heap on sanctions, erasing Iran’s ability to trade beyond its borders. Their version of what the administration calls a “maximum pressure campaign” seems to aim for a major reckoning in Iran, though they demure on whether that could involve a U.S.-led ouster of the regime or would simply set the stage for ordinary Iranians to revolt.

The other group appears to not have a visible leader, but it seems willing to allow the nuclear deal to tenuously remain intact, while ramping up economic sanctions that starve the regime of resources. This group, for instance, is hoping for the success of a European financial mechanism built to help Iran more easily obtain non-sanctioned goods, thus possibly helping sustaining the deal in hobbled form. That way, the group argues, Iran can’t race toward a nuclear weapon, but it also will be unable to spend as much funding militias and terrorist groups in the region.

A second U.S. official said one main difference between the two groups is that Bolton-led crew has no desire to make any sort of deal with Iran, while the other side believes that under enough pressure, Iran would be willing to negotiate a new, better agreement than the one in 2015.

"Bolton thinks he’s playing the longer game. That he can’t leave this administration having given an inch on Iran," the official said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is generally believed to be in the camp that wants a deal, but he’s also laid out a set of 12 conditions on Iran that are so broad they may be damaging the odds of talks. A third U.S. official who confirmed the outlines of the internal debate said Pompeo may be worried about his future in the Republican Party and whether engaging in any sort of negotiation with Iran could damage it.

The result is a cacophony of voices speaking for the administration, including some out of sync with Trump.

“We’ve got very different messages because they don’t seem to have the same end goals,” the first U.S. official said of the various Trump aides involved. "We're studiously ignoring 'the deal that shall not be named' in our official talking points, but in the same breath demanding that Iran adhere to conditions that were part of the deal."

Blanc, the Obama administration official, said what Trump seems to want is a grand show, the type that he’s gotten in his one-on-one meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. But there are serious political risks for Iran’s leaders in meeting Trump, especially after the president walked away from a deal that was hard to sell to all of Iran’s competing political factions in the first place.

Trump, Blanc said, “has an instinctive understanding that he’s not going to get that pageant if Iran thinks he’s pursuing a regime change policy.”

Perhaps sensing this, Trump on Tuesday went out of his way to note that he didn’t want to oust the government in Tehran. “We're not looking, by the way, for regime change because some people say [we are] looking for regime change,” he said. “We're not looking for regime change.”

In the meantime, Iran appears determined to exploit the divisions within the Trump administration, as well as the fissures between the U.S. and Europe over the Iran deal.

Iran’s recent calculated breaches of its nuclear pledges are meant to increase pressure on the Europeans to find ways around U.S. sanctions. And Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif even uses Twitter to taunt the Trump team over these disagreements, lambasting the president’s top aides as the “B-Team.”

“As it becomes increasingly clear that there won’t be a better deal, they’re bizarrely urging Iran’s full compliance," Zarif tweeted on July 8. "There’s a way out, but not with #B_Team in charge.”

The way out Zarif mentions?

Presumably a U.S. return to the 2015 nuclear deal.


https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/17/trump-iran-deal-obama-1417801

.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Macron offers Iran bailout to stick with nuclear accord

French President Emmanuel Macron is offering a $15 billion bailout to top Iranian negotiators who arrived in Paris on Monday in exchange for Tehran's commitment to returning to its landmark 2015 nuclear accord. The financial incentive is intended to compensate Iran for oil sales lost because of sanctions imposed by the U.S. since President Trump withdrew from the agreement last year. The $15 billion letter of credit would give Iran the ability to receive hard currency while most of the income from its oil sales is frozen in banks. The money roughly equals half of the revenue Iran would get from oil sales in a year.

Trump administration officials say the bailout would undermine Trump's effort to put "maximum pressure" on Iran.


Source: The New York Times

.
 

MCP

International
International Member
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/...-nuclear-commitments-retaliation-us-sanctions

Iran further downgrades nuclear commitments in retaliation for US sanctions
The Iranian president had said the new measures would be 'peaceful' and 'reversible' if European powers kept their promises
000_1k10zn.jpg

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani (R) on 4 September ordered all limits on nuclear research and development to be lifted, the country's third step in scaling down its commitments to a 2015 deal with world powers (AFP)
By
MEE and agencies
Published date: 6 September 2019 07:05 UTC | Last update: 1 day 10 hours ago

Iran announced on Friday that it had lifted all limitations on its nuclear research and development activities in a new step to scale back its commitments to the 2015 nuclear deal with the world’s most powerful countries, Iranian media said.

The new step comes in response to new US sanctions imposed on Iran and the perceived inaction by European powers to save the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

"Foreign Minister [Mohammad Javad] Zarif, in a letter to EU (European Union) policy chief [Federica Mogherini] announced that Iran has lifted all limitations on its [nuclear] research and development (R&D) activities," Iran's Students News Agency ISNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Moussavi as saying.

The decision violates, among others, the limits imposed on R&D activities on advanced centrifuges, which accelerate the production of fissile material that can be used to make a nuclear bomb.
On Wednesday, Iranian media reported that President Hassan Rouhani had asked the country's Atomic Energy Organisation to resume development of a new generation of centrifuges to speed up uranium enrichment.

On Thursday, the EU urged Tehran to backtrack on the new steps.

"These activities we consider are inconsistent with the JCPOA," said European Commission spokesman Carlos Martin Ruiz de Gordejuela.
"We urge Iran to reverse these steps and refrain from further measures that undermine the nuclear deal."

Washington has imposed a new set of economic sanctions on a network it said helped Iran skirt restrictions on its ability to export oil, a move that came after weeks of heightened tensions over the movements of Iranian oil tankers in the Gulf.
The US Treasury Department on Wednesday accused the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force (IRGC-QF), Iran's elite military unit tasked with missions abroad, of moving hundreds of millions of dollars in oil to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and its ally, Lebanese group Hezbollah.

The IRGC-QF has said the oil originated in Iraq in order to get around restrictions on its sale to Syria, the department said in a statement.

The US State Department also announced that it was seeking information on the IRGC, and the Quds Force, that helps lead to the disruption of the groups' oil sales and financial tools.
The department offered up to $15m for such information through its Rewards for Justice Program.

Washington has undertaken aggressive actions against Iran over the past three weeks, targeting networks tied to Iran's missile programme, oil tankers and a Lebanese bank it accuses of having ties to Tehran.

Relations between Tehran and Washington have soured since the US backed out of the Iran nuclear deal last year and reimposed sanctions on the country.
The nuclear agreement was signed in 2015 by Iran, the US, and five other world powers.

Under the deal, international sanctions against Iran were lifted in exchange for the country curbing its nuclear programme.
The leaders of several European countries remain committed to the deal, but they have struggled to improve relations between Washington and Tehran since the US left the agreement.
 

COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
Bst7rv7CAAAn15W.0.jpg


Since WWI wars fought by the United States have been a Captain America love affairs where we send soldiers in to die and there is no economic interest involved. Prior to WWI, the Civil War (slavery), Mexican-American War, American Revolution (slavery), battles with Native Americans were wars to serve the economic interest of whites and not to help another group.

Without an economic interest and long term settlement interest in the area, these wars are doomed to fail. Germany and Japan fought battles and took that area over to exploit the people or resources. Saddam invasion of Kuwait was going to be annexation of their resources and territory.

You will be 4000 miles away from home and have no interest in the area. The desert land is useless for farming.

Besides $100,000 electric cars, I put forward a number of ideas to reduce millions of barrels of oil that was shunned.
 
Last edited:

COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
First somebody needs to stand up to the oil industry. if you can't meet the U.S. energy domestically without military entanglements, than other sources will have to be used which will reduce demand permanently. This constant pandering and limited help with alternatives needs to stop.

If the U.S. has to fight another war to prevent a country from developing nuclear weapons, their oil will become property of the U.S., it won't be about removing the political leadership and implementing democracy. Their oil will not be available for socialist programs, free this and free that. The U.S. is going old school, putting people on reservations and take their shit for good. There will be permanent U.S. settlements using the oil to attract settlers. There will be towns called New New York, or New Chicago with good paying oil jobs.
 

COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
Many of these 'terrorist' groups want to get the U.S. involved to implement a democratic liberal government. These dictator turn to nuclear weapons to stay in power.

Terrorism could be a ploy to get rid of their government.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
SHOW ME THE MONEY

Iran Demands a $15 Billion Credit Before Resuming Talks With Trump and EU
The Daily Beast
Erin Banco

National Security Reporter
Published 09.22.19




Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Sunday that Iran would not resume talks with President Donald Trump and his administration until a French plan to extend $15 billion of credit to Tehran goes into full effect.

“The credit we are talking about is not a charity. We are a wealthy nation,” Zarif told a group of reporters in New York on Sunday. “The credit is in lieu of the oil [the French] were supposed to buy.” Zarif said Iran is requesting the $15 billion credit be extended until December, at which point in time it would request $3 billion per month.

“That was one way for the French—not just the French but the European Union—in order for them to come back into compliance with the JCPOA,” Zarif said, referring the Iran nuclear deal. He said the U.S. would eventually “lose its leverage” if it continued to block Tehran from selling its oil.

“They are the ones who are dependent on the global market,” Zarif said.

Iran has been in conversations with French President Emmanuel Macron for weeks about the possibility of accessing billions of dollars from either the French central bank or the European Central Bank to compensate for the money Iran lost in oil sales due to American sanctions.


https://www.thedailybeast.com/iran-...ing-talks-with-trump-and-eu?ref=home?ref=home

.
 

MCP

International
International Member
A protester holds an Iraqi flag amid a cloud of smoke from burning tires during ongoing anti-government protests in Najaf, Iraq November 26, 2019. REUTERS/Alaa al-Marjani - RC2ZID9MARY6

A protester holds an Iraqi flag during ongoing anti-government protests in Najaf, Iraq, on Nov. 26, 2019. Photo: Alaa al-Marjani/Reuters
U.S. Sanctions Are Driving Iran to Tighten Its Grip on Iraq


Massive, sustained protests in Baghdad and Tehran that have been met with violent responses from security forces throughout the fall and winter have rapidly altered the political dynamics in both Iraq and Iran. But it is still uncertain whether the grassroots anger that has erupted will lead to significant change in either country — or whether the United States will play a role in shaping the outcome.
In Iraq, the political establishment has been shaken since protests in Baghdad and other cities began in October, when Iraqis took to the streets in anger over systemic corruption, a lack of basic services, and Iranian domination of Iraq’s government. Iraqi security forces have violently cracked down on protestors. In late November, demonstrators brought down the Iranian flag and put up an Iraqi national flag on Iran’s consulate in Najaf before setting the building on fire.
Iraq’s leaders initially balked at the protesters demands for reform. But as the demonstrations continued, Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi finally submitted his resignation on Nov. 30.

Abdul-Mahdi had wavered and nearly quit a month earlier, but in late October, Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani, the powerful head of the elite Quds Force, an arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that operates with impunity throughout Iraq, intervened to bolster Abdul-Mahdi and keep him in power.
Suleimani’s intervention came just before The Intercept and the New York Times reported on leaked Iranian intelligence cables that publicly documented Iran’s perspective on its deep influence in Iraq for the first time. The leaked cables, sent by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security between 2013 to 2015, revealed that many of Iraq’s top political, military, and security officials have had close relationships with Tehran for years. One leaked cable from 2014 identified Abdul-Mahdi, then serving as Iraq’s oil minister, as having a “special relationship with IRI” — the Islamic Republic of Iran.
By the end of November, the pressure on Abdul-Mahdi was so intense that Iran could not protect him any longer. Iraq’s parliament quickly accepted his resignation without any clear successor in sight.
Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi speaks during extraordinary cabinet meeting after he handed his resignation letter to the parliament, in Baghdad, Iraq on November 30, 2019.  (Photo by Prime Ministry of Iraq / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi speaks during a cabinet meeting in Baghdad after handing in his resignation to the parliament on Nov. 30, 2019.
Photo: Prime Ministry of Iraq/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images


Washington was happy to see Abdul-Mahdi go. After initially viewing him as an acceptable compromise candidate when he was named prime minister in 2018, senior U.S. officials say they quickly realized he was unable to stand up to Iran.
“We have had to be extremely cautious about sharing [information and technology] with Iraq, because it could go to Iran,” said one senior U.S. official.

Abdul-Mahdi’s lack of interest in engaging with Donald Trump or his White House didn’t help. One senior U.S. official said that Abdul-Mahdi declined an invitation to meet with Trump when the president visited Iraq last Christmas, opting for a telephone conversation instead. Abdul-Mahdi also declined to meet with Vice President Mike Pence when he traveled to Iraq in November, the official added, again speaking to him by phone. By contrast, the senior official said, Abdul-Mahdi has traveled regularly to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials as prime minister.

But while the Trump administration’s influence has ebbed in Baghdad, Iran is now also facing serious problems at home that could interfere with its Iraq policy. Beginning in November after a big spike in gas prices, large-scale protests have erupted in Tehran and other Iranian cities. Protesters quickly moved beyond demands for economic relief to call for the ouster of the Iranian government.

The demonstrations have been met with murderous fire by Iranian security forces. Accurate figures aren’t available, but a State Department official said in a briefing last week that 1,000 or more protestors have been killed, while at least 7,000 have been arrested.

In Iraq, meanwhile, at least 350 people have been killed in the demonstrations so far, many of them protesters shot dead by security forces. The Iraqi government’s violent efforts to suppress the demonstrations appear to have been aided by pro-Iranian militia units, according to some reports. Last week, protestors were stabbed in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, the hub of the anti-government demonstrations, after large groups of men arrived in the square flying the insignia of an Iranian-backed militia. Protesters were suspicious of the pro-Iranian group, but it couldn’t be conclusively determined whether those militia members were responsible for the stabbings.

Iranian protesters gather around a fire during a demonstration against an increase in gasoline prices in the capital Tehran, on November 16, 2019. - One person was killed and others injured in protests across Iran, hours after a surprise decision to increase petrol prices by 50 percent for the first 60 litres and 300 percent for anything above that each month, and impose rationing. Authorities said the move was aimed at helping needy citizens, and expected to generate 300 trillion rials ($2.55 billion) per annum. (Photo by - / AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

Iranian protesters gather around a fire during a demonstration in Tehran on Nov. 16, 2019, against an increase in gasoline prices.
Photo: AFP via Getty Images


Iran’s dominant position in Iraq and influence over the country’s political leadership may not be well understood by many Americans, but it is the direct result of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein. The invasion was justified by the George W. Bush administration on the grounds of specious claims of ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda and the supposed existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
There was another historically false claim made by the neoconservative ideologues backing the Iraq invasion as well: that ousting Saddam would not benefit Iran. In fact, the neoconservatives argued that one of the benefits of the Iraq invasion would be to curb Iran’s influence in the Middle East. That turned out to be one of the greatest miscalculations in the history of American foreign policy. Rather, Iran was the great beneficiary of the U.S. invasion, which eliminated Iran’s greatest regional adversary by getting rid of Saddam and his Baathist, Sunni-dominated regime. That created the opportunity for Iraq’s Shia majority to gain power in Baghdad.

Suddenly, Iran, which had long been the only major Shia power in the region, had a Shia-dominated neighbor. What’s more, many of the Shia leaders who came to power in Iraq after the U.S. invasion had spent years of exile in Iran.

John Maguire, who was deputy chief of the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group at the time of the 2003 invasion, says that the Bush administration’s decision to disband the Iraqi Army, coupled with a draconian purge of Baath Party members from Iraqi government service, triggered chaos and eventually an insurgency that gave the Iranians an opportunity. “The ensuing anger, resentment and violence opened the door for Iran, led by General Suleimani and his Quds force, to exploit the situation and run circles around” the Americans, Maguire says.

Grappling with a bloody post-invasion insurgency and seeking a short-term fix to stabilize Iraq, the Bush administration brokered a new electoral system for Iraq that made sure that political representation was along sectarian lines. That guaranteed a permanent state of tension between Sunni and Shia; the persecution of the Sunni minority by the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad helped lead to the rise of ISIS in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s efforts to squeeze Iran by imposing more economic sanctions have had an unintended consequence — the sanctions have led Iran to try to tighten its grip on Iraq. Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst now at the American Enterprise Institute, believes that the Iranians have reacted so forcefully to the protests in Baghdad because Iraq is a valuable economic outlet that helps Iran skirt the sanctions. “Iraq’s economy is critical to Iran for things like currency manipulation and smuggling, dealing with the sanctions,” said Pollack.
Trump administration officials agree. “Iran has become increasingly dependent on Iraq and Lebanon as economic release valves,” one senior U.S. official said. But the administration seems to think that’s a good thing — a sign that sanctions are having an impact on Iran. The fact that U.S. sanctions policy has led Iran to intensify its efforts to maintain its influence in Baghdad doesn’t appear to have merited much discussion in Washington.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Iran’s dominant position in Iraq and influence over the country’s political leadership may not be well understood by many Americans, but it is the direct result of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein. The invasion was justified by the George W. Bush administration on the grounds of specious claims of ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda and the supposed existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
There was another historically false claim made by the neoconservative ideologues backing the Iraq invasion as well: that ousting Saddam would not benefit Iran. In fact, the neoconservatives argued that one of the benefits of the Iraq invasion would be to curb Iran’s influence in the Middle East. That turned out to be one of the greatest miscalculations in the history of American foreign policy. Rather, Iran was the great beneficiary of the U.S. invasion, which eliminated Iran’s greatest regional adversary by getting rid of Saddam and his Baathist, Sunni-dominated regime. That created the opportunity for Iraq’s Shia majority to gain power in Baghdad.

Suddenly, Iran, which had long been the only major Shia power in the region, had a Shia-dominated neighbor. What’s more, many of the Shia leaders who came to power in Iraq after the U.S. invasion had spent years of exile in Iran.

John Maguire, who was deputy chief of the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group at the time of the 2003 invasion, says that the Bush administration’s decision to disband the Iraqi Army, coupled with a draconian purge of Baath Party members from Iraqi government service, triggered chaos and eventually an insurgency that gave the Iranians an opportunity. “The ensuing anger, resentment and violence opened the door for Iran, led by General Suleimani and his Quds force, to exploit the situation and run circles around” the Americans, Maguire says.

Iran’s dominant position in Iraq and influence over the country’s political leadership may not be well understood by many Americans, but it is the direct result of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein. The invasion was justified by the George W. Bush administration on the grounds of specious claims of ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda and the supposed existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
There was another historically false claim made by the neoconservative ideologues backing the Iraq invasion as well: that ousting Saddam would not benefit Iran. In fact, the neoconservatives argued that one of the benefits of the Iraq invasion would be to curb Iran’s influence in the Middle East. That turned out to be one of the greatest miscalculations in the history of American foreign policy. Rather, Iran was the great beneficiary of the U.S. invasion, which eliminated Iran’s greatest regional adversary by getting rid of Saddam and his Baathist, Sunni-dominated regime. That created the opportunity for Iraq’s Shia majority to gain power in Baghdad.
Suddenly, Iran, which had long been the only major Shia power in the region, had a Shia-dominated neighbor. What’s more, many of the Shia leaders who came to power in Iraq after the U.S. invasion had spent years of exile in Iran.
John Maguire, who was deputy chief of the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group at the time of the 2003 invasion, says that the Bush administration’s decision to disband the Iraqi Army, coupled with a draconian purge of Baath Party members from Iraqi government service, triggered chaos and eventually an insurgency that gave the Iranians an opportunity. “The ensuing anger, resentment and violence opened the door for Iran, led by General Suleimani and his Quds force, to exploit the situation and run circles around” the Americans, Maguire says.


What was that Pottery Barn line ? ? ? -- If you break it you . . .
 

MCP

International
International Member
New York Times sends a simplistic message on regional uprisings: Blame Iran


Column by Thomas Friedman fails to tackle the complex realities behind ongoing protests in Baghdad, Beirut and Tehran


iraq_funeral_2019_afp.jpg


An Iraqi mourner attends the funeral procession for a prominent civil society activist killed amid anti-government protests in Karbala on 9 December (AFP)



A recent New York Times column by Thomas Friedman offers another useful opportunity to better assess the ongoing protests in the Middle East.
Friedman correctly explains why hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Baghdad, Beirut and Tehran: They wish to “be treated as citizens with rights, and not just members of a sect or tribe with passions to be manipulated” and to be ruled by “noncorrupt institutions”.
Unfortunately, he also seems to draw misconceptions about these events, significantly simplifying - and maybe even involuntarily manipulating - what is happening, especially by portraying the protests as a regional uprising against Iran.
The role of Saudi Arabia

He is right in seeing an anti-sectarian drift in the protests, but it is naive to attribute sectarianism solely to Tehran’s will. Not a word is spent on the predominant role that Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabi strand of Islam has played over the last four decades in promoting a sectarian agenda in the region and elsewhere, nor is there a modicum of empathy for the persecution of Shia in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Iran is portrayed as being “ready to arrest and kill as many democracy demonstrators as needed to retain its grip on Iraq, Syria and Lebanon” and as “the biggest enemy of pluralistic democracy in the region today”.

What Friedman neglects is that in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, a highly imperfect form of pluralistic democracy with a multiparty system is struggling to affirm itself. Of course, it is subject to huge constraints, which also explains the ongoing protests; although the democratic models in these three countries cannot be equated to Scandinavian ones, their differences with some pro-US Arab autocracies remain striking.
Hopefully Friedman is not implying that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt are better pluralistic democracies than Iran, Iraq and Lebanon? Or that if protests were to break out in the streets of Riyadh, Manama and Cairo, they would not be suppressed with the same determination so far deployed in Iran and Iraq?

According to Friedman’s narrative, “Iran has used its Shiite Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and Syria and its Popular Mobilization Forces militia in Iraq to try to snuff out all their bottom-up secular democratic movements”.

The political dynamic between Iran and Hezbollah is much more nuanced; by no means is it a relationship of mere subordination of the second to the first. There is a much more complex reality than often escapes observers not fully aware of the real, and sometimes impenetrable, Shia dynamics.
Regional strategy

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is one of the few external political figures who holds significant influence within the Iranian political galaxy. Far from being a proxy who executes Tehran’s “instructions”, he contributes to elaborating them; it is a two-way relationship. This should not be a hard concept to grasp in Washington; looking at the longstanding US-Israel relationship may help.

Friedman claims that since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, “Iran has never wanted to see a stable, multisectarian, secular democracy emerge in Baghdad”. While this could be true, what is again missed is that Iran’s main priority in Iraq has been the prevention of a new attack of the type it endured during the long and bloody 1980s war.


Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks to parliament in Tehran on 8 December (AFP)

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks to parliament in Tehran on 8 December (AFP)
From Iran’s viewpoint, its regional “destabilisation” strategy is a mix of pre-emptive and preventive moves; a form of forward defence similar to the one Israel has used towards its neighbours for decades. Again, this should not be difficult to understand, although understanding does not imply legitimising.

The bottom line is: If Israel is granted the right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter - a right that is sometimes exercised in questionable ways - other countries may also decide to claim the same right and exercise it in an equally questionable manner.

Friedman correctly urges the US to support pluralism in the region through “creative diplomacy”. Sadly, we have to go back 40 years, to former President Jimmy Carter brokering the Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel, to see creative US diplomacy at work in the region. Since then, Europe and the Middle East have hoped and prayed to see it in action again - but regrettably, with the notable exception of the short-lived Iran nuclear deal, they have gotten only a blind, binary approach that goes between bullying sanctions and the use of force, with a corollary of never-ending wars.
'Revolt and be slaughtered'

Friedman concludes: “But the bad guys at the top won’t go easily, quietly or bloodlessly. And since no outside power will be riding to the rescue, it will take sustained, organized, bottom-up mass movements - in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran in particular - to enable the future to bury the past and topple all those at the top who want to use the past to bury the future.”

Putting wisely aside the debate on who represents the past and the future when Middle Eastern policy is involved, those at the top who must go are in Baghdad, Beirut and Tehran; those in other regional capitals, who live as much in the past, can relax, for the time being.

To the extent that the past is a good guide for the future, Friedman’s conclusion echoes quite well the unfortunate experience of the first Bush presidency in the spring of 1991, when the Kurds and Shia of Iraq were urged to rebel against Saddam Hussein, just dislodged from Kuwait, only to be later abandoned to his brutal and vengeful repression.

Today’s message to the Lebanese, Iraqis and Iranians seems as heartening as it was three decades ago: Revolt and be slaughtered under our watch.
 

MCP

International
International Member
Four Years Ago, Trump Had No Clue Who Iran’s Suleimani Was. Now He May Have Kicked Off WWIII.


US President Donald Trump makes a video call to the troops stationed worldwide at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach Florida, on December 24, 2019. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP) (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump makes a video call to the troops stationed worldwide at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Dec. 24, 2019

In September 2015, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump appeared on the syndicated radio show of conservative media star, Hugh Hewitt, to talk foreign policy.

“Are you familiar with General Suleimani?” Hewitt asked the real estate mogul from Queens.

“Yes,” said Trump, before hesitating. “Go ahead, give me a little … tell me.”

When Hewitt told Trump that Suleimani “runs the Quds Forces,” Trump responded: “I think the Kurds, by the way, have been horribly mistreated by us.”

“No, not the Kurds, the Quds Forces,” Hewitt interjected. “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Quds Forces. The bad guys.”

“I thought you said Kurds,” a sheepish Trump replied.

Got that? Candidate Trump confused the Quds Force, an elite Iranian military unit then led by high-profile Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, with the Kurds, a high-profile ethnic group in the Middle East.

Now fast forward four years and four months to yesterday, when President Trump ordered the assassination of Suleimani from his golf course. In an official statement that misstated the name of the organization that Suleimani was in charge of, the Pentagon said the strike was “aimed at deterring future Iranian retaliation plans.”

This is not a column, however, about the consequences of the U.S. government assassinating the second-most powerful man in Iran (spoiler: they’re going to be dire!). Nor is it a column about the legality of such a deadly strike on a foreign official on foreign soil (spoiler: it’s hard to justify!).

Rather, this is a column that allows me to express my ongoing astonishment that Donald Trump is president of the United States; my ongoing bewilderment with a world in which an unhinged, know-nothing former reality TV star and property developer, with zero background in foreign affairs or national security, may have just kicked off World War III. (From his golf course, no less.)

It’s also a column that allows me to revisit what I have long considered to be the most unforgivable take of the 2016 presidential race: “Donald The Dove, Hillary the Hawk.” That was the ridiculous headline to the New York Times column from Maureen Dowd in April 2016, in which she falsely claimed that Trump had opposed the Iraq War “like Obama,” and then credulously suggested that, in contrast to Clinton, “he would rather do the art of the deal than shock and awe.”

A reminder: Trump pulled out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal less than 18 months after assuming office. He replaced his predecessor’s nuclear diplomacy with a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran, which had pushed the United States and the Islamic Republic to the brink of war even before this latest dangerous escalation.

Dowd was wholly, utterly, and embarrassingly wrong — as some of us tried to explain at the time. But it wasn’t just her. Plenty of other people across the political spectrum foolishly bought into the ludicrous premise that Trump would be some sort of dove, a noninterventionist, an old-fashioned isolationist.

And plenty of my colleagues in the media continue to push this deluded view. Remember: Trump has twice bombed the Assad regime in Syria; reduced Mosul and Raqqa to rubble; vetoed a congressional attempt to end U.S. involvement in the Saudi bombardment of Yemen; and overseen a fivefold increase in drone strikes throughout the region and beyond. Yet on New Year’s Eve, the New York Times still insisted on bizarrely referring to “the president’s reluctance to use force in the Middle East.”

That line, of course, hasn’t aged so well. Less than 72 hours later, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force and the deputy head of the Iran-backed militias in Iraq, are dead. Killed via drone.

The United States has now effectively declared war on Iran. This is no longer a “cold” war or a “shadow” war. It’s a war-war. And here’s what so terrifying about it: The current commander-in-chief of the U.S. military as it readies for open conflict with Tehran is the guy who last week accused Canada’s prime minister of cutting him out of a Canadian TV version of “Home Alone 2″; who regularly retweets QAnon, Pizzagate, and white nationalist accounts on Twitter; who believes that Ukraine is in possession of a nonexistent Democratic National Committee server; who thinks climate change is a Chinese hoax; who wants to use nuclear weapons to stop hurricanes; and who is willing to take a Sharpie to an official government map in order to prove he was right about the weather (when he was, in fact, 100 percent wrong).

Here’s the twist, though: There were two recent amendments to the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, in the House of Representatives that might have prevented this week’s escalation with Iran: Rep. Ro Khanna’s amendment to block funding for any military action against Iran that lacks congressional approval, and Rep. Barbara Lee’s amendment to repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Both of these amendments, however, were stripped from the final NDAA that passed the House and Senate — with the approval of elected Democrats in both chambers.

Shame on those Democrats.

And God help the rest of us.
 

MCP

International
International Member
Oh boy, if you have given anyone an excuse for World War 3, there it is.

Someone mentioned to me today that they think that this attack was to get the public opinion on Trump to deflect from his pending impeachment case. I'm not so sure
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Someone mentioned to me today that they think that this attack was to get the public opinion on Trump to deflect from his pending impeachment case.

Well, it looks a lot like what another Republican President facing impeachment did. In 1973, Nixon placed the nation on DefCon3 (from 5 to 3; 1 is about all-out war).

See:
Nuclear Showdown as Nixon Slept
By Victor Israelian. Victor Israelian is a visiting professor at Pennsylvania State University and is writing a book on the Kremlin and the Yom Kippur War. / November 3, 1993​
TWENTY years ago the world was on the verge of a nuclear confrontation. Late at night on Oct. 24, 1973, American troops all over the world were put on alert. Defcon (or Defense Condition) III, the highest state of armed forces readiness for peacetime conditions, was declared in the name of President Nixon. The US decision to move to Defcon III during the Yom Kippur War is well known.​


And again, the U.S. and the Middle East !
.​
 
  • Like
Reactions: MCP

MCP

International
International Member
Trump’s Iran strike reverberates across Democratic primary

The scramble to confront the president on Iran laid bare how quickly the situation had metastasized into a potentially campaign-altering development.


Bernie Sanders

Sen. Bernie Sanders. | Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
By DAVID SIDERS
01/03/2020 05:51 PM EST
Link
Bernie Sanders opened his town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Friday with a searing rebuke of President Donald Trump’s “dangerous escalation” of the conflict in the Middle East. Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren also spent their days consumed with Iran.

Less than a day after the Trump administration confirmed the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the scramble to confront the Republican president on Iran laid bare how quickly the situation had metastasized into a potentially campaign-altering development.

While nearly universally condemning Soleimani in carefully crafted statements, Democrats sought to draw subtle distinctions between themselves and their party rivals on foreign policy — for better and for worse.

Biden, the former vice president and former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, leaned into his experience on the world stage at his first Iowa event Friday. Buttigieg cited his experience as a former “military intelligence officer on the ground in Afghanistan.”
Sanders reminded Democrats once again of his lonely — and politically prescient — vote against the Iraq war in 2002.

“When I voted against the war in Iraq in 2002, I feared that it would result in greater destabilization in that country and in the entire region,” Sanders said. “At that time, I warned about the deadly so-called ‘unintended consequences’ of a unilateral invasion. Today, 17 years later, that fear has unfortunately turned out to be a truth.”

Sanders, who has positioned himself to the left of the field on foreign policy, was the rare candidate not to go out of his way to assail Soleimani in prepared statements — avoiding a rhetorical two-step that could alienate interventionist-leery Democrats.

Warren failed to recognize that hazard in her initial statement, in which she called Soleimani a “murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans. But this reckless move escalates the situation with Iran and increases the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict. Our priority must be to avoid another costly war.”

Qassem Soleimani

Qassem Soleimani. | Ebrahim Noroozi, File/AP Photo

After progressives criticized her tone, she issued a second, more singularly Trump-focused statement Friday, and referred to the killing as an assassination of a senior foreign military official — language echoing Sanders’ earlier characterization.

The killing suddenly refocused, at least for the moment, public attention on foreign policy, which has played a minor role in a presidential primary dominated by domestic concerns.

“For most candidates, national security is a secondary issue,” said Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way and a veteran of Wesley Clark's 2004 presidential campaign, noting that the moment “does feel familiar” to the political climate at the start of the Iraq war in 2003.

“If this kind of results in Iran shelling some things and doing a cyberattack that screws up somebody’s website for a while, then it won’t have any impact [on the 2020 primary],” he said. “But if Iran responds with serious force in some way — and it’s impossible to speculate what that could look like — then I think it could raise real questions about the ability of the various Democratic candidates to credibly claim national security expertise.”

Bennett said it is “blindingly obvious” that a shift in focus to national security would benefit Biden, with his extensive record on foreign policy -- an opinion Biden’s campaign shares. But it will also highlight — as Sanders has — progressives’ discomfort with his 2002 vote in favor of the invasion of Iraq.

The Republican National Committee immediately seized on the Iran strike to lay into Biden. In a prepared statement, it said that if Biden were president, “Osama bin Laden would still be alive, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would still be alive, Soleimani would still be alive, China would be eating our lunch and Iran would be on the path to a nuke.”

Yet for Democrats, the broader concern was the reminder of Trump’s singular ability to dictate the terms of the campaign. Trump speculated repeatedly during Barack Obama’s presidency that Obama would try to exploit Iran for political gain, warning in one of several now-widely circulated tweets he “will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him win the election.”

This week, it was Trump raising the specter of an escalating conflict in the Middle East and opening new battle lines in the 2020 primary.

“On the one hand, this was retaliation of the highest order, against an indisputably brutal actor in Soleimani, which may rally Americans around the commander-in-chief,” said David Axelrod, the former Obama adviser. “On the other, it will almost certainly be interpreted by the Iranians as an act of war, and may fetch serious and far flung consequences which could entangle the U.S. in the Middle East in new and perilous ways.”

In a victory lap Friday, Trump said Soleimani had killed or wounded thousands of Americans and “got caught” while plotting to kill more. For the Republican president, the political message was simple: Before issuing his statement, Trump had simply tweeted an image of the American flag.

“Thus far in the campaign, foreign policy has figured as little more than an afterthought” said Andrew Bacevich, the retired Army colonel and longtime international relations professor. “The crisis with Iran, carrying with it the possibility of war, all but obliges the Democratic candidates to take a stand.

The real issue is not the escalating tit-for-tat violence, but whether or not to continue in the post-9/11 project of using force to impose order on the Greater Middle East. The effort has produced no positive results. Trump promised to call it off. He has obviously failed. Will the Democrats offer something better?”
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/...-nuclear-commitments-retaliation-us-sanctions

Iran further downgrades nuclear commitments in retaliation for US sanctions
The Iranian president had said the new measures would be 'peaceful' and 'reversible' if European powers kept their promises



Iran abandons nuclear deal over slaying of general
The announcement came after another Iranian official said it would consider taking even-harsher steps.

Mourners


Flag draped coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq in a U.S.
drone strike are carried by mourners during a funeral on Sunday. | Alireza Mohammadi/ISNA via AP

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
01/05/2020


TEHRAN, Iran — Iran said Sunday it would no longer abide by any of the limits of its unraveling 2015 nuclear deal with world powers after a U.S. airstrike killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad, abandoning the accord’s key provisions that block Tehran from having enough material to build an atomic weapon.

Iran insisted in a state television broadcast it remained open to negotiations with European partners, who so far have been unable to offer Tehran a way to sell its crude oil abroad despite U.S. sanctions. It also didn’t back off of earlier promises that it wouldn’t seek a nuclear weapon.




.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Iran finalizes plans to leave nuclear deal


Iran announced Sunday it will no longer adhere to any limits set by the 2015 nuclear deal, which multiple European nations had been committed to salvaging after the United States unilaterally backed out of the agreement in 2018.

The decision comes after Washington launched an airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani this week, heightening tensions between the two nations. In a state telivision broadcast, Tehran said it was open to continue negotiations with European countries, and did not indicate they would attempt to build a nuclear weapon, despite scrapping provisions that blocked them from acquiring enough material to do so. Instead, Iran will reportedly continue uranium enrichment based on their "technical needs."


Source: The Associated Press, CNN

.
 

MCP

International
International Member
Soleimani assassination: US airbases in Iraq hit by ballistic missiles in retaliation


People mourn next to the coffins of slain Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Qassem Soleimani during a funeral procession in Najaf, Iraq, 04 January 2020

Iran says the attack was in retaliation for killing the country's top commander Qasem Soleimani


Two airbases housing US troops in Iraq have been hit by more than a dozen ballistic missiles, according to the US Department of Defence.
Iranian state TV says the attack is a retaliation after the country's top commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in a drone strike in Baghdad, on the orders of US President Donald Trump.

The Pentagon says at least two sites were attacked, in Irbil and Al-Asad.

It is unclear if there have been any casualties.

"We are aware of the reports of attacks on US facilities in Iraq. The president has been briefed and is monitoring the situation closely and consulting with his national security team," White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard said the attack was in retaliation for the death of Soleimani on Friday.

"We are warning all American allies, who gave their bases to its terrorist army, that any territory that is the starting point of aggressive acts against Iran will be targeted," it said via a statement carried by Iran's state-run IRNA news agency.

Map showing US military bases in Iraq
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Two airbases housing US troops in Iraq have been hit by more than a dozen ballistic missiles, according to the US Department of Defence.

And — at this hour, there are no “known” casualties and some speculation that the Iranians may have have purposely missed.

What Trump says and does next could be key to where this goes.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Trump Broke It. Now He Owns It.
The president withdrew from a flawed deal with Iran, but had no realistic alternative. With that choice comes responsibility for what ensued.

JANUARY 10, 2020
David Frum
Staff writer at The Atlantic


There’s a big question the Trump administration does not want to talk about: Why has the United States escalated its conflict with Iran?

Donald Trump and his supporters would prefer to focus on the smaller and more convenient question of direct culpability for the shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752.

By now, it seems near-certain that the Iranian authorities shot down the Ukrainian airliner and 176 people because they mistook the civilian airliner for a U.S. warplane. The Iranians were in a jumpy state because of a cycle of retaliation over the past 10 days. They themselves had started the most recent cycle when their proxies attacked U.S. bases in northern Iraq, killing an American contractor and wounding four U.S. service members. They had fired the most recent round of retaliation too, a barrage of missiles from Iranian territory against bases in Iraq. That barrage took no lives, but the Iranians might not have immediately appreciated that fact. They had cause to fear that the U.S. might well hit them back hard.

Tom Nichols: Iran’s smart strategy
The Iranian authorities fired; the Iranian authorities killed. Iran behaved recklessly in many ways, including allowing the airliner to take off into airspace ripped by missiles. Civilians died in consequence.

But the chain of causation did not begin on the night of the shoot-down, or even on the night of December 27, when the Iranians set the latest spasm of U.S.-Iran violence into motion. The chain of causation began when President Trump, at the very beginning of his administration, pushed the two countries toward more intense conflict.

The Trump administration and its supporters want to focus on direct culpability. Are you saying it’s President Trump’s fault that Iran shot down a civilian aircraft? How dare you!
When I pointed to the wider context yesterday, my article was seized upon by Fox News as Exhibit A in the case for pro-Trump self-pity.​
Focusing on the smaller question of direct culpability allows Trump supporters to pivot from something they hate doing—asking the president to provide rational and truthful explanations of his actions—to something they love doing: complaining and feeling sorry for themselves.
But that wider context matters.




.
 
Top