IRAN: US Regime Change Project is Immoral and Illegal
David William Pear
We’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” US General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO
Contemptuous of international law, the US makes no secret of its plots to overthrow the leaders of internationally recognized governments that reject the neoliberal New World Order. Iran is at the top of the US enemies list. The US has been at it since the 1979 Iran Revolution, when the Iranian people overthrew the US’s “our boy”, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah had become the US’s “our boy” as CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt referred to him in 1953, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower overthrew the popular democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Overthrowing governments is illegal according to US law and international law. It is also immoral if one believes in democracy, self-determination, and the sovereignty of nations, respect for human life, and the rule of law.
The Weaponization of Human Rights
The crushing economic sanctions now unilaterally imposed by the US on Iran are causing massive suffering and the deaths of thousands of Iranian civilians. The US response is glee that the sanctions are “working”. This is nothing short of barbaric siege warfare to starve the Iranians out. Under international law the Iran sanctions may be illegal, since they are not authorized by the United Nations. The collective punishment of economic warfare is immoral, economic terrorism and a weapon of mass destruction. Secondary sanctions that impose sanctions on non-US and non-Iranian financial institutions that transact business with Iran amounts to blackmail, especially since it is the US that violated the Iran Nuclear Deal, and not Iran.
Weaponizing human rights is a most cynical tool of US imperialism, especially since the US has a very poor record on human rights at home. While holding itself out in biblical terms as a “city on a hill” (Matthew 5:14-16), the US is not a model of John Winthrop’s Christian Charity, as politicians such as Ronald Reagan have opined. The US is the only developed country that does not consider healthcare a universal human right, and it has been steadily cutting FDR’s New Deal social benefits, while the rich get richer from tax cuts. In 2008 the US bailed out the banks, while millions of homeowners lost their homes. Over 20% of US children live in poverty. Basic human services that are the responsibility of government have been turned into cash machines by privatizing.
George H. W. Bush’s New World Order neoliberals and neocons despise any country that closes its doors to US corporate exploitation, and instead uses its own natural resources for the benefit of its own people. The US uses “human rights” to attack countries such as Venezuela, Libya, and Iran that consider economic freedom from need a human right.
One of the main reasons that Iran’s moderate President Hassan Rouhani negotiated the Iran Nuclear Deal was so that the lifting of UN Security Council economic sanctions would give Iran the much needed ability to increase social spending for the Iranian people. Instead, the imposition of even harsher US unilateral sanctions by the Trump neocon stacked administration has dashed Rouhani’s hopes, and makes the economic situation direr for the Iranian people. The nefarious purpose of sanctions is to make the Iranian people suffer so that they will become disgruntled and rebellious.
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) is a right wing neocon funded and infested think tank that has been particular rapacious in attacking Iran. FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz has been previously hailed as “the architect of many of the Iran sanctions”, as reported by The Nation magazine, How the Anti-Iran Lobby Machine Dominates Capitol Hill.
As Robert Fantina has written in Counterpunch, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy is intensively lobbying for the US to sanction Iran’s “The Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order” (EIKO). One of EIKO’s subsidiaries is the Barakat Foundation, which is a charitable foundation that is concerned with social programs for the people. The Ayatollah Khomeini has described it by saying,
I’m concerned about solving problems of the deprived classes of the society. For instance, solve problems of 1000 villages completely. How good would it be if 1000 points of the country are solved or 1000 schools are built in the country.”The Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order
Targeting human rights organization to “promote human rights” is a cruel oxymoron. It is weaponizing human rights at its worst, and attacks the most vulnerable people in a society.
Liberals often consider economic sanctions an acceptable, even humane, alternative to force. Nothing could be further from the truth, and progressive people everywhere need to recognize it. Economic sanctions are violence. The Geneva Conventions recognize that siege warfare and collective punishment against civilians are war crimes. How could something that is illegal in wartime be legal in peacetime? The International Committee of the Red Cross has often raised concerns about economic sanctions, including UN authorized economic sanctions.
The United States of “Amnesia”
Gore Vidal was one of the great American intellectuals, writers, commentators and critics of US foreign policy, domestic politics and society. He coined a phrase to describe the US’s memory loss of inconvenient truths: “The United States of Amnesia”. Most Americans are illiterate about US history. They cannot even remember recent events that happened in their lifetime. Today people barely remember what happened prior to the current 24 hour news cycle.
Now that the destruction of Iran is at the top of the to-do list, the people of the “United States of Amnesia” have forgotten all the countries that the US has destroyed in just the past quarter of a century. It has gone down the memory hole. Anything that happened in the 70’s, 80, and 90’s has been completely lost in the fog of amnesia. US victims are not so forgetful.
Afghanistan during the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan,
before US intervention in the 1970’s. [Photo source]
Afghanistan
The US is still deconstructing Afghanistan, after using it as a pawn in the Cold War. The evil masterminds of the invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970’s were Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jimmy “Mr. Human Rights” Carter. Together they snuffed out Afghanistan’s budding development and women’s emancipation, which was developing nicely under a communist government. Using Afghanistan’s development as a weapon, the US recruited the fanatical mujahideen to overthrow the communist government. Brzezinski and Carter where elated when the Soviets intervened to help their neighbor. It was Brzezinski’s plan, and the Afghan people, especially the women, paid the price. Millions of Afghans have died, and become widowed and orphaned, thanks to President Carter, and his successors.
In 2001 Bush’s re-invasion of Afghanistan was planned by the neocons of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) even before the attacks of September 11, 2001. The casus belli was oil and gas pipelines, and not terrorism. The Afghanistan Taliban government was told that they could either accept Union Oil of California’s proposed “peace” pipeline with a “carpet of gold”, or else the US would give them a “carpet of bombs”. Osama bin Laden was not a priority.
The Taliban had offered before and after 9/11 to present Osama bin Laden for trial, but the US rejected the offer. They had no evidence against him. Once the Taliban government was ousted, then Bush became bored with Afghanistan. According to Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq”.
Iraq
Bombing a country because it “has good targets” is an obvious war crime, and those responsible for doing it are insane war criminals. The Bush administration lied the US into the Iraq War with lies that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear bomb program. The mainstream propaganda media spread the lie, and cheered for war as it always does. It did not make any difference that the UN weapons inspectors could find no nuclear weapons. Of course it is impossible to prove a negative, that is, that one has no nuclear weapons, which should be a lesson for Iran and North Korea about trusting a deal with the US.
After the US invaded Iraq in 2003, 1625 weapons inspectors spent 2 years and $1 billion trying unsuccessfully to find weapons of mass destruction. Still up to half of the American people still believe that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s, which goes to show how indelibly propaganda once learned sticks to the brain.
According to the IAEA and the US intelligence agencies, Iran has not had a nuclear program to develop nuclear weapons since 2003, but try convincing the mainstream media and the American people of that. It is another lesson for Iran and North Korea to remember.
Hillary Clinton, “We came, we saw, he died…hahaha”
[Photo, from the sleuthjournal.com]
Libya
Libya’s people used to enjoy a high standard of living with food, shelter, education, employment and healthcare considered a human right. Now Libya is destroyed and in chaos and it will never return to its previous prosperity. It is all because Obama lied that Muammar Al Gaddafi was committing genocide against Libya’s “Arab Spring” in 2011. We now know that there was no genocide. Obama lied the US into another war of aggression. Here is what he said on March 28, 2011:
Of course, there is no question that Libya -– and the world –- would be better off with Qaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake. The task that I assigned our forces –to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger and to establish a no-fly zone -– carries with it a U.N. mandate and international support.”
Of course it would be a “mistake” to broaden the military mission to a regime change, but that is what it was from the start. The alleged genocide was a lie being pushed by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, along with Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice and former United Nations Ambassador Samantha “R2P” Power.
Instead of being a no-fly zone, the Libya mission carried out over 5,800 bombing sorties and 309 cruise missiles strikes. That is not a no-fly zone. The US and its coalition were the air force for terrorists bent on destroying Libya’s secular government.
Just like what would later happen in Syria, the “Arab Spring” that the US said it was protecting were terrorists that belonged to Ansar al-Shariah, Abu Obayda bin al-Jarah Brigade, Malik Brigade and The 17 February Brigade, which are all al Qaeda-type terrorist groups. They are the ones that later had a dispute with the CIA, and attacked their outpost in Benghazi, killing US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three CIA operatives, on September 11, 2012. What was the CIA doing in Benghazi, anyway?
Obama regime change projects: Honduras, Libya, Ukraine and Syria.
Syria
Having turned the once prosperous Libya into a chaotic hell, the U.S. raided Qaddafi’s arsenal of weapons and sent them via a CIA rat line that went through Turkey, and on to the Syrian anti-Assad “rebels”.
Who are the so-called rebels in Syria? According to a Congressional Research report “Armed Conflict in Syria: Overview and U.S. Response” (July 15, 2015) there were an estimated 1,500 different rebel groups in Syria, with as estimated 115,000 members total. The report concedes that if the Assad regime should collapse it would likely lead to chaos with rebel forces fighting for control among themselves.
In other words, the Congressional Research Report is saying that Syria would become another Libya. The Bashar al-Assad government is one of the last secular governments in the Middle East. There are no democratic moderates waiting in the wings to govern Syria if Assad should fall.
US President Dwight Eisenhower with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran.
The 1953 coup, which deposed a democratically elected PM and installed the
Shah as ruler of Iran, was orchestrated by the US and UK. [Photo NPR]
Iran
As General Wesley Clark told us, the coming war with Iran is part of a single plot from the 1990’s by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). In the 1990’s President Bill Clinton cautiously embraced the neocon vision. Bush was fully on board with the PNAC philosophy, and in 2001 he filled his administration with its members, such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
Regardless of the legality or not of economic sanctions, like those now being imposed by the US unilaterally on Iran, economic sanction are immoral weapons of mass destruction. The Clinton economic sanctions of the 1990’s killed over 500,000 Iraqi children. According to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the Clinton administration thought it was “worth it”.
The U.S. is now killing hundreds of thousands of Iranian children for the same nefarious reason that Iraqi children died. The U.S. has unilaterally reimposed sanctions of mass destruction against Iran, after the U.N. had lifted sanctions with Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015).
The resolution endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) (i.e. the Iran Nuclear Deal) of July 14, 2015. It was agreed to by all the permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States; as well as the High Representative of the European Union, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The UN vote on the resolution was 15 to 0. Basically the Iran Deal was an agreement that Iran would restrict its nuclear enrichment program, allow the IAEA extensive inspections, and lift U.N. imposed economic sanctions.
While U.N. Security Council resolutions are binding on all member states, Resolution 2231 (2015) had enough loopholes that gave the U.S. technical grounds to virtually walk away from it. Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, China and anyone else doing business with the U.S. should always remember that the US can not be trusted to keep its word.
The US maintains that Iran has violated the spirit of the JCPOA on several grounds, although none of those issues were part of the JCPOA. According to the Trump administration the Iran Deal is “the worst deal ever” because it does not prevent Iran from testing ballistic missiles, supposedly Iran is the “number one” sponsor of state terrorism, and the US complains about Iran’s alleged abuse of human rights. The real reason the US violated the Iran Nuclear Deal is that the US will be satisfied with nothing less than “taking out” Iran. That is what the US has wanted to do since 1979, even before PNAC came along.
Let’s review the US accusations against Iran
Firstly, it is not against international law for a country to have ballistic missiles, much to the contrary of all the chest pounding by the US. If ballistic missiles were against international law then there should be economic sanctions against dozens of countries, including the US and Israel. Every country has an inalienable right to self-defense, including having ballistic missiles.
Iran has a right to prepare to defend itself. It is surrounded by hostile countries and constantly being threatened by the US and Israel. For years the US has threatened Iran overtly and covertly. Repeatedly the US says that “all options are on the table”. It is against international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the US, a nuclear power, to threaten a non-nuclear power. It encourages proliferation. Iran has a legal basis for withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and acquiring nuclear weapons to protect itself from the threats of the US, if it so chose. That is what North Korea did, but Iran has not chosen to do so yet.
Secondly, as for Iran being the “number one” sponsor of state terrorism, the accusation is ridiculous. The US and its coconspirators such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are by far the number one state sponsors of terrorism.
Since the end of the Second World War the US has used proxy armies to terrorize dozens of countries on all the corners of the planet, in Asia, Africa and South America. The US supported and encouraged radicalizing Islamic sects in order to combat ‘atheist’ communism during the Cold War, and now it arms and uses them to overthrow non-compliant resource rich countries.
It is the US that sponsored death squads throughout South America in the 1980’s to back right wing dictators. The US created the Contras in Nicaragua after the Nicaraguan people had overthrown the hated US backed right wing dictator Anastasio Somoza. In 1986 Nicaragua even won a court case in the UN’s International Court of Justice, Nicaragua vs. the United States. The US thumbed its nose at the ICJ.
In 2002 the US was openly exposed in its unsuccessful coup against democratically elected President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. In 2009 the US supported the military coup in Honduras that overthrew a democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Afterward Honduras became the murder capital of the world for journalists. Indigenous native people are still being terrorized, and driven off their traditional land in favor of large corporate landowners.
The history of US terrorism is too long to even summarize in this short essay. Afghanistan was already mentioned above. The CIA backed and Saudi financed mujahideen have become a plague that has spread throughout South and South-west Asia, as well as Russia and China. The Saudis have provided much of the financing for US sponsored terrorists.
The US is openly backing the terrorist group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) to infiltrate and terrorize Iran. The MEK was on the US State Department’s list of designated terrorist organization until 2012, when Hillary Clinton had them removed. The MEK has killed Americans, “bombing the facilities of numerous U.S. companies and are killing innocent Iranians”, according to an article in Politico. The MEK has committed acts of terrorism in Europe too.
Trump has openly bragged that the US is sponsoring MEK terrorists in Albania to infiltrate Iran. John McCain, who has never seen a US regime change project he did not like, has praised the MEK. John Bolton, Newt Gingrich, and Mitch McConnell among many others regularly show up as highly paid speakers at MEK events. The MEK is a weird and dangerous cult of personalities run by husband and wife Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. They are “responsible for bombings, attempted plane hijackings, political assassinations, and indiscriminate killings of men, women and children”, according to an article in Politico.
Thirdly, as for human rights in Iran, the US has no moral authority left to judge anyone else on human rights. The US backs Saudi Arabia which is the most repressive regime in the world. The US is fully supporting from the rear the Saudi bombing of Yemen and the blockading of food, medicine and even water, putting 22 million people at dire risk. It is the worst humanitarian crisis in history.
It was Saudi Arabia that financed 9/11 and most of the hijackers were Saudis. Retired Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) who was the Co-Chair of the Joint Congressional Committee investigating 9/11 has called Saudi Arabia a coconspirator of the attacks of 9/11.
Israel is the US’s “cat’s paw” in the Middle East. The US supports Israel 100%. Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and the building of illegal settlements deprive millions of Palestinians their civil, legal and human rights. Israel has turned Gaza into an unlivable concentration death camp for 2 million people. They have been deprived of basic services such as clean drinking water, electricity and medicine. When Gazans have peacefully protested, Israeli snippers have gunned them down by the hundreds during the “Great March of Return”.
Israel has now launched a massive attack on Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister Lieberman has said that Palestinian civilians will “pay the price”, and that the price will be “more painful than Operation Protective Edge”. The US taxpayers will be supplying the bombs, ammunitions, and money as they always do. The US is not hypocritical about human rights, it just doesn’t care and lies that it does when it serves US foreign policy purposes. US foreign policy serves US corporate interests, not the interests of people.
The US has killed millions of human beings, just in the 21st century, in its wars of aggression. Its drones vaporize wedding parties and funerals. The US abducts people arbitrarily and tortures them in black sites. The US backs 73% of the world’s fascistic dictators. With 5% of the world’s population the US holds 25% of the world’s prisoners in conditions that are for-profit and inhumane. The US is continuing its long history on the Southern border of locking non-white children in cages. The disgraceful Guantanamo Bay is still open despite Obama’s 2008 promise to close it.
In conclusion, when somebody on the inside of the establishment like General Wesley Clark says, as he did in 2007, that the US had planned in 2001 to take out 7 countries in 5 years, then we should take them seriously. The US has invaded and attempted to take out most of the 7 countries on Clark’s list. Stop believing the US lies every time the US decides to take out a regime based on nebulous humanitarian reasons, or because they are a so-called axis of evil.
The US is militarily the most powerful country the world has ever seen. It is ridiculous when the US claims that its national security and the safety of the American people are being threatened by tiny countries like Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea. Iran poses no national security threat to the US or to its proxy Israel. Iran’s aging air force is not a challenge to the US or the region, which is the reason that Iran has an interest in developing missile defense. Missiles are a less costly alternative for defense than maintaining a modern air force. The US objects to Iran’s missiles, because it wants to keep Iran defenseless against US and Israeli aggression. Not because the US fears Iranian aggression.
The US military-industrial-banking-media monopolies want to keep the American people afraid. Iran has been made into a boogeyman, because it is an oil-rich nation that has closed its doors to neoliberal US corporate exploitation. The American people are being robbed of their economic security, universal healthcare, inexpensive higher education and badly needed infrastructure, because of constant warmongering.
Article originally published at The Real News
David William Pear is a progressive columnist writing on economic, political and social issues. His articles have been published by OpEdNews, The Greanville Post, The Real News Network, Truth Out, Consortium News, Global Research, and many other publications. David is active in social issues relating to peace, race relations and religious freedom, homelessness and equal justice. David is a member of Veterans for Peace, Saint Pete for Peace, CodePink, and International Solidarity Movement.
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
Concerning Brzezinski, Wikipedia notes:
“Brzezinski argued against the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was outspoken in the then-unpopular opinion that the invasion would be a mistake. As recalled by David Ignatius, “Brzezinski paid a cost in the insular, self-reinforcing world of Washington foreign policy opinion, until it became clear to nearly everyone that he … had been right.
“He later called President George W. Bush’s foreign policy “catastrophic”. Brzezinski was a leading critic of the George W. Bush Administration’s conduct of the War on Terror. In 2004, Brzezinski wrote The Choice, which expanded upon his earlier work,The Grand Chessboard (1997), and sharply criticized George W. Bush’s foreign policy. In 2007, in a column in The Washington Post, Brzezinski excoriated the Bush administration, arguing that their post-9/11 actions had damaged the reputation of the United States “infinitely more than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks” and destroyed any chance of uniting the world to defeat extremism and terrorism.
“He later stated that he had “visceral contempt” for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who supported Bush’s actions in Iraq”.
Well, I reckon nobody who woke up in 2003 and used terminology like that could be all bad, even if he did get swept away earlier by the usual morally reprehensible corporate Pentagonites in Washington.
Thank you wardropper,
See Washington Post op-ed August 18, 2002: “Brzezinski: Bush Foreign Policy ‘Reckless,’ War Not Conducted Because of ‘Personal Peeve’”:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/08/18/if-we-must-fight/2c5bd4ce-6d36-45e1-8e68-e719c848ecda/?utm_term=.124ef876f971
Brzezinski was not at all impressed with the way that Bush was taking the US into war. He was recommending a “smarter” approach. I do not currently have any other Brzezinski sources before the US invasion of Iraq. I welcome any others may have.
Regards,
Thank you too David. I cancelled my Washington Post subscription years ago and never read it now, so I was unaware of that op-ed. I note that Brzezinski did add the caveat, “If it has to be war…”, and he didn’t seem entirely convinced that it had to be war at all in such a flammable part of the world, but my intention certainly isn’t to whitewash him. He did enough harm in his time, as few high-ranking US military advisors in recent memory have not done…
I still find it astonishing that human beings actually seek such high office, when the most basic education must surely tell them that they are stepping into a very deep cesspool. I’m assuming the reason is simply that it pays well.
Thank you also for your excellent summary of so much that is wrong with the thoughts and deeds of our most prominent western ‘representatives’ today.
I must add that however far-sighted Brzezinski might have been (and his 1970 book, ‘Between Two Ages – America’s Role in the Technetronic Era’, shows that he foresaw our present condition pretty accurately), his solution to the problems of our current time seems to have been, ‘more of the same’… ‘more Europe’, ‘more internationalization of the elites’, with the resultant ‘less participation of the public. In other words no solution at all, he being, himself, one of the elites. The aim has been a “United States of Europe” since Winston Churchill’s time and even earlier, and regime change will be attempted wherever necessary to accomplish this.
Reality check on Uncle $cam’s Policy, by WF Engdahl. Immoral, illegal, fattening (for some) — and suicidal:
“Fully 75% of federal spending is economically non-productive including military, debt service, social security. Unlike during the 1930s Great Depression when levels of Federal debt were almost nil, today the debt is 105% of GDP and rising. Spending on national economic infrastructure [under FD Roosevelt] including the Tennessee Valley Authority and a network of federally-build dams and other infrastructure resulted in the great economic boom of the 1950s. Spending $1.5 trillion [under Obombast and Trumpety] on a dysfunctional F-35 all-purpose fighter jet program won’t do it.
Into this precarious situation Washington is doing its very best to antagonize the very countries that it needs to finance these deficits and buy the US debt—China, Russia and even Japan. As financial investors demand more interest to invest in US debt, the higher rates will trigger a default avalanche, Moody’s warns. This is the real backdrop to the dangerous US foreign policy actions of the recent period. No one in Washington seems to care and that’s the alarming fact.”
F. William Engdahl is a strategic risk consultant
You say…”The US has been at it since the 1979 Iran Revolution, when the Iranian people overthrew the US’s “our boy”, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah had become the US’s “our boy” as CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt referred to him in 1953, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower overthrew the popular democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.”
I may be wrong, but did the USA not engineer the 1979 ‘revolution’ because the Shah was asserting his independence from them? I’m sure I remember the USA thinking (as they always do) that the Ayatollah would do their bidding, but he ran rings round them and once in place was obviously far less western-minded than the guy the USA just displaced? Stands as a perfect example of USA arrogance and stupidity.
Greetings,
Yes, I have read too that the US-CIA may have helped install Ayatollah Khomeini, but I do not have any sources that I would use as authoritative. There are a lot of speculative theories. Everything started going down hill and the Shah left rather quickly and unexpectedly. Supposedly the Shah had been on anti-cancer drugs for several years. Others say that the Shah did not get sick until he was “treated” at a New York hospital. The revolution seized the US Embassy supposedly because Jimmy Carter admitted the Shah to the US and refused to turn him over to Iran for trial. Rumors have it that the CIA identified “communists” for Khomeini so that he could purge them. Foreign relations are quite different than “human relationships”. In FP enemies often help their enemies and stab their friends in the back. The US does not spend much time thinking about the outcome of their covert and military activities. There is a lot of trail and error, with the attitude that if it doesn’t work out, they can always try, try again. We get a tremendous amount of blowback from failed US operations, and it doesn’t seem that the US learns from them or even wants to learn from them.
Thank you for your comment.
Regards,
P.S. Comments are just chit chat. I try very hard not to put anything in my articles that I do not feel that I can comfortably attribute a reliable source to. That doe not mean that I think I never make a mistake, but I diligently try not to.
Go and live a month in each and after talk sense. Also how many Israeli mass shooters/bombers in Totonto, London or Mumbai?
How many Israeli mass shooters and bombers are there in Palestine? Reap what you sow. Here is Palestine before the Zionist takeover. Looks a pretty nice place to live. Notice how many of the women adopted western styles of dress. We betrayed them!
Sorry – forgot the link.
Antonyl is a ‘good Zionist’. Killing Palestinian ‘two-legged animals’ is no crime. Just, perhaps, ‘misuse of a weapon’-possibly. a misdemeanour, nothing more.
Reality check from Suria BTL SyrPer:
“US squandered 5 Trillion on Iraq, they would need 50 trillion against Iran.
China and Russia would be laughing.
By the way, the Centrla Bank of Russia has already dumped their U$ Dollar bonds; and China state companies are offloading US properties and other investments in the US like a fire sale.
What is the better option to hold 5 billion in US toilet paper securities, or to build new Crimea road-railway bridge for the same amount. Russian state realized the better math.
There are more than enough Israeli mass shooters, bombers, assassins and torturers in Occupied Palestine. These murderers have often inflicted terror and death on Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, too.
Quite a few. Your Zionist buddies killed 3,000 on 9/11 alone.
This 100% corrupt, Inverted-Totalitarian, Police-State Government is oppressing, impoverishing, and murdering it’s citizens, but citizens of the world. It should be eradicated byguerilla warfare, for the survival of humanity. But, if humanity is going to keep on allowing it to manifest when it can eradicate it, then humanity is equally to blame.
That headline about U$ policy reminds me of the Lady in the Cartoon: “Everything I Like is either Immoral, Illegal or Fattening”.
I’m not in favour of the US (sponsored by Israel) abandoning the treaty with Iran whatsoever, nor the sanctions and sabre rattling, however, I equally don’t have any sympathy for the Ayatollas nor their Republican Guard. The rest of the Iranians, very decent and educated people, are going to be caught up in this completely unnecessary “Mother of all Battles”. Let’s hope the Russia can help to avoid disaster. It also appears that NATO Turkey may also be key as they’ve just refused to implement Trump’s oil sanctions.
There will not be any war with Iran in the conventional sense it will just be a hastening of the demise of the US$ as th urgent need to survive by de-dollarisation becomes evident to all.
Lets face it, the Elite in the West are fundamentally thick ! Theresa May & her Billionaire hubby are prime examples.
Their greed took them on to another lonely planet doomed for extinction & they won’t know until its too late.
Arguably the point of no return may have passed ?
Greetings Leruscino:
As far as Iran is concerned the US is already at “war” with them, it is just that the US is not suffering any of the direct casualties. Economic sanctions is violence and war. The target country suffers massive casualties, as I noted 500,000 dead Iraqi children. If that is not war then what is?
Modern warfare is not just conducted on the battlefield. Others have broken down the intensity as : 1. Military action, 2. Economic sanctions, embargos and blockades, 3. Diplomatic encounters and isolation, 4. Propaganda and psychological warfare. I consider all of these methods to be violence, because they do have deadly consequences, and often against non-combatants.
Regards,
I think that the suppressive nature of the Iranian Government is a direct result of previous USA interventions in Iranian governance. By replacing the elected Nationalist Government by with repressive Pavlavi dictator the USA not only gave us an understanding of the falsity of the US claims to export democracy it also created the conditions for a government that was constantly fearing more interference from the West. When the USA provided Iraq with poisoned gas weapons and military helicopters to drop these weapons it was largely to invade Iran and to allow the USA to control its il reserves and to increase the regional power of Israel. This cemented in place the controlling governance structure that now rules Iran.
Had the West supported the Iranians to map out their own future, Iran would have now been a much more open country that had no aggression to the West. Unfortunately the USA does not want peace it wants control and is prepared or even prefers the use of extreme violence to achieve it.
I agree with your comment 100%, Jim Scott.
IMHO the US only wants peace with anybody on its own terms.
The US uses human rights and what it calls democracy very cynically. It knows that by attacking a country with threats, sanctions, ‘all options on the table’, infiltration of covert operatives, etc. that any government will tighten its security. The choice then becomes more security and less freedom, or more freedom and less security. Look how the US reacted to the suspension of the US Constitution after the attacks of 9/11.
The more the US attacks another country, then the tighter the security. Then the US uses human rights as a propaganda issue. More attacks, more security, more propaganda…
When countries do open up and allow more civil rights, then it is easier for the US to infiltrate subversives. We see how that is done with NGO’s and color revolutions as security was relaxed in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
The bottom line is that the US is not concerned about human rights. If it were, then the US would have it in the Constitution (the way Iran does) that every human being is entitled to healthcare, education, the necessities of life and employment.
I have an article planed on just this subject for the near future.
Regards,
Chilcot was final proof that certain international actors can do more or less as they please without any political figure ever having to suffer the legal consequences of their actions – the odd, shell-shocked front line soldier might be taken down, but politician, not a snow balls chance in hell.
The fundamental lesson from Chilcot is that the establishment is willing to turn a blind eye, no matter how horrific the consequences for those in countries like Iraq or elsewhere.
In other words not even the law can be arsed to punish actors for wrong doing, so of course if there are no meaningful legal consequences (such as jail or huge fines) then any form of constraint is left to the morals of those with a long record of rationalising violence as a means of achieving certain economic and geopolitical goals.
Take the Guardian – it still offers a platform to criminals like Tony Blair or Killary, while at the same time getting their nickers in a twist over media constructed bogeymen like Tommy Robinson.
Now Tommy might be a right wing fruit cake and xenophobe but as far as I know, and unlike Blair or Killary he is not responsible for devastating wars that have claimed at least hundreds of thousands of lives and produced an army of refugees seeking to escape western inspired carnage.
In short the western legal system, media and most of its citizens are onboard with the plan to raze the Middle East with Iran next on the list, and after that presumably Russia?
“The best laid plans …gang oft agley”. — Rabbi Burns
Speaking of Hoax.fake and IIO (Inform and Influence Operations) ..the Bill BROWDER/Magnitsky Act Fraud unfolds…
https://www.sott.net/article/391932-The-most-dangerous-man-in-the-world-How-Bill-Browders-greed-helped-spark-a-new-Cold-War
“The US has been at it since the 1979 Iran Revolution, when the Iranian people overthrew the US’s “our boy”, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.”
Whereupon on the torture and murder front, the “Iranian people” (questionably, true, but as you put it) outdid America’s ever-feckless Shah by a factor of several thousand to one. In the analysis of human affairs, no nuance = no insight.
“The Shah had become the US’s “our boy” as CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt referred to him in 1953, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower overthrew the popular democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.”
The Shah was “the boy” of whoever was in the room with him at the time. You sought an agreement? You got it. You wanted a deal? You got it.
Just don’t nod off or nip out for a piss.
Except in the matter of dealing with anti-royalists or “communists”. Heavenly pre-ordination brooks no disagreement and you can be gone as long as you like – missing you already.
Meanwhile today the two prongs of the empire of deceit amerika’s New York Times and england’s guardian have pulled out all stops trying to discredit Imran Khan’s electoral victory in Pakistan.
Why would those two august journals (chokes back vomit) attack the one Pakistani political movement which isn’t mired in sleazy corruption scandals which go all the way to the top of the Bhutto and Sharif families?
Could it be that USuk are unhappy that Pakistanis have elected a leader who doesn’t believe blowing up rural weddings is a good thing?
Imran has been outspoken in his opposition to the war on terror® and has made it clear that the days of Pakistan just acquiescing to amerika’s murdering ways are over should Imran become Prime Minister.
Don’t expect to read that in the NYT or graun tho. They are too busy running entirely evidence free ‘articles’ which claim that the vote is rigged. The only thing they offer is that since Imran hasn’t been arrested for corruption like the other candidates he must be in the army’s back pocket. How about he hasn’t been arrested because he isn’t corrupt, or even that since his movement has never held national office before it is difficult to imagine the party has had many ‘big offers’?
Now that Imran’s PTI is hammering the crooks, the graun is running with “he needs to form a coalition to be more representative” hoping that if he does the other party will block his efforts to have peace break out in Pakistan. The other hypocrisy is worse. The Graun which agitates for women’s voting rights is now sledging the Pakistan election for letting ‘conservative women’ vote.
The arseholes thought that getting out the wimmin’s vote would save the election and the number of voters has increased by 10 million, many more than the coterie of urban elite women, so now they criticise that.
These caring and sharing imperial media outlets prefer corrupt pols that accept bribes from the west ahead of honest types who dislike conspiring to butcher their people, it is sickening.
If Imran really tries to stop the carnage, the Exceptionals will kill him, or have some military thug do it for them, as their scum-bag, Zia, did with Bhutto pere. But none dare call it ‘interference’ or ‘meddling’.
I don’t understand why people bestow so much ‘perfected power’ on such an inept empire which struggles to stumble from one fuck up to another. Imran is no drongo so unlike Pompeo, and the derps on england’s ‘cobra committee’ he will be careful; to do what he needs to do to stop the killing without overtly offending those crews of rabid stumblebums.
I like the bloke, who doesn’t have too much of the slimy pol about him. He has no particular need or ambition to lead Pakistan other than a desire to do the right thing for his compatriots.
Yeah he could turn into a JAN – just another neolib but I reckon he won’t. He doesn’t need to since he has never been short of public respect or a quid, plus if he was corruptible USuk wouldn’t be running scared from him the way they currently are.
Imran will be smart and will slowly gut the arseholes behind closed doors while he woos Jo/Joe Blow in the west. This is a chap who is charming, with an excellent sense of humour and many women tell me that at 65 they still find him easy on the eye.
He’s no Macron or Trudeau whose air of desperation about themselves makes them set off alarms even amongst the complacent.
It is unlikely he will do it all, especially not straight away, but I reckon he has the smarts and tools (independent wealth and an established history of philanthropy aimed at the poorest Pakistanis) to be the type of deftly moving target the arseholes can never defeat.
We shall see, but only a mug backs USuk’s clumsy wannabe crafty ‘operatives’ against the likes of Imran Khan.
“The Graun which agitates for women’s voting rights is now sledging the Pakistan election for letting ‘conservative women’ vote.”
Don’t you have a copy of the “Guardian and Observer style guide”?
Good news for Pakistan, I think. The name Imran Khan has always come with good vibes in my reading. That two Leading AZC propaganda sheets — one in the U$ and one in the UK — have come out against his victory is a good omen.
Imran Khan = Pakistani military. He is their deep state candidate, their HRC. Wake up!
Not in Israel’s pocket, eh?
When The New Pork-Pie Times and The Fraudian agree that Imran Khan is in the pocket of the Pakistan military, we may take that as given that they can’t accept that Imran Khan might be popular among the rank and file of the Pakistani armed forces, who also vote in the country’s elections.
In other words, Imran Khan is possibly supported by Pakistan’s armed forces in the way Venezuela’s Presidents Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro have been supported by Venezuela’s armed forces: through the people who serve.
Not through a supposed military elite composed of cliques of individuals or families with their own agendas, the way that might operate in the US, the UK or Israel.
A case of projecting one’s sins onto another?
I would think Pakistan’s military is aggrieved that its US-puppet government allows the US to strike the country and people with drones. No soldier signs up to sit back and see his country’s sovereignty lost to a murderous organization like the US government.
In all probability Pakistan’s people feel just the same, but as the US can’t complain that democracy was served by an election they must bitch about military involvement.
As usual Pakistan is totally forgotten. Makes sense: only 120 nuclear explosives on rockets, bombs etc. with mad Mullahs in politics, all minorities like Christians, Shias, Ahmadis, Hindus or Sikhs threatened like endangered species, military running and ruining the place since 1947, exporting terror to both neighbour countries, supplier of most European and North American terror plots / sex rings.
Better focus on Iran with its 1/2 bomb and zero terror in Europa or North America.
A lot like Israel. Hundreds of nukes. Check. Mad Rabbis like Ovadia Yosef in politics. Check. All minorities treated like ‘human dust’. Check. Exporter of terror to its neighbours. Check. Sex trafficking. Check. Experts in torture. Check. Pakistan needs to lift its game in human organ trafficking, on-line gambling, ‘binary options’ rackets, the production of pornography, trafficking in blood diamonds, arms and surveillance trafficking, police training in summary execution etc, pay-day lending etc, to truly emulate Israel, however.
The more one learns about J Christopher Stevens and his role in Benghazi running guns and fighters from Libya and Syria, the more one can’t help but feel that he got his just desserts, even if evidence is eventually found that implicates Hillary Clinton (as the then Secretary of State) in allowing the consulate to be stormed through neglecting to upgrade its security.
Benghazi was also one of the numerous torture centres in the ‘rendition’ archipelago, a little oasis of ‘American values’. Pity their jihadi allies turned nassty. A real pity.
Iran may be hopeful of resolving the latest implementation of US sanctions on Iran through its obligation to utilize the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On the 16 July 2018, Iran lodged a case with the ICJ. Developments in this case are located on this ICJ web-page, which currently includes links to two ICJ press release statements.
In 1957 a United Nations recognized treaty between Iran and USA was entered into force. Clauses in this treaty oblige Iran to lodge a case with the ICJ when the US takes the sanctioning actions that the US commenced on 8 May 2018 and the US intends to fully implement in November 2018.
Iran, in compliance with clauses of the 1957 treaty, lodged this [19 page pdf] case application document dated 16 July 2018 with the ICJ.
One aspect that Iran desires the judgment of the ICJ to include is:
“The USA shall fully compensate Iran for the violation of its international legal obligations in an amount to be determined by the Court at a subsequent stage of the proceedings. Iran reserves the right to submit and present to the Court in due course a precise evaluation of the compensation owed by the USA.”
Updating the above, this 26 July 2018 press release has been added to the ICJ web-site. It states:
The hearings are scheduled from 10am to 1pm on the Monday and Tuesday, and from 10am to 11:30am on the Wednesday and Thursday. The time in The Hague, Netherlands is GMT+2.
If you are interested following these hearings:
Still plenty of time for buying popcorn.
This process will be TOTALLY UNREPORTED by the Western fakestream media sewer-be assured of that. And if the USA loses, it will treat the judgment with its usual arrogant contempt, accompanied by Hosannas and declarations of undying fealty to the ‘Rules-Based International Order’ by every single Austfailian political invertebrate.
The US policy since Nicaragua vs. US is that the US does not accept the jurisdiction of the ICJ unless it wants to.
An overview of the case Nicaragua v. United States of America, Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua, in which the case commenced in 1984 and continued until 1991, is here.
It appears from this case that the US also have a policy of stopping participating part way through an ICJ case…
Thus, in this latest Iran v. USA case, it doesn’t appear that there is any guarantee that USA will participate.
“the US can not be trusted to keep its word”.
I would go much further:
“the US cannot be trusted to keep its word”.
It’s not just that we are able not to trust it: we are not able to trust it.
Thank you. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the correction. (damn that spell/grammar check again!) As Glenn Greenwald used to say in the G, you are my editors.
See:
“US Politics, Russia, China and Europe, Madness and Strategies”: https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/us-politics-russia-china-and-europe-madness-and-strategies/
Regards
Exactly right, Schlüter. The US is still trying to break up Europe, Russia, and China. If they get together, the US will be sidelined.
[The most knowledgable comment sofar on Pepe’s article. BTL Saker Vineyard]
Anonymous on July 24, 2018 · at 8:56 pm EST/EDT
Ah, as usual Pepe shows the point that so many others miss.
Its not Iran that will shut down oil tanker traffic through the Straits of Hormuze. Its the Insurance Companies.
All Iran needs to do is to launch one missile. Then the insurance companies point out to all of their customers that their ships are not covered if they go into a war zone. And that the insurance companies have just declared the whole Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuze to be a war zone due Iran firing off that one missile. Or, as Pepe says, maybe just the threat would be enough. I don’t know how much an oil tanker costs, but I’ve dealt with insurance companies all of my life and I can guarantee that they don’t want to shell out enough money to buy a tanker.
US governments for many decades have paid only lip service to either American law or international law. Even its democratic institutions are thread bare remnants of what they were. Of course, the insouciant American public goes about their daily business, “safe” and satisfied with their willful ignorance!
On our ABC Radio last week there was an interesting example of US elite insanity. A guest, a Professor of Law, would you believe, from a rather famous college, was discussing ‘Treason’ in regard to Trump. After some ranting about ‘Russian meddling’, the ABC hack, somehow, broke Groupthink rules, and mentioned US interference in scores of countries, over the years, ranging, as we know but was unstated, from financing subversives, stooges, Quislings and traitors all the way to military coups, mass repression and invasion. The Professor spluttered and attempted to deny that these had ever happened, then, seemingly impressed by his predicament, simply asserted that none of that US activity was as bad as the Russian ‘meddling’ in the USA!!!??? A Professor of ‘Law’, mind you, and barking mad. That’s your Exceptionals in all their hideous glory.
I have given up completely on the ABC re foreign news. I will read only its reporting of sport and domestic news – and even those are not done well. Its anti-China/anti-Russian articles on at least a weekly basis are becoming tiresome. The only reason to go there is to understand the mindset of the intellectual sheep.
And the USers managed to get a lot of people to believe that Russia invaded Afghanistan, when in reality the Afghan government invited the Soviet Union in to help squash the US-backed militants.
…and then when Russia fell into the US trap, President “Human Rights” Carter feigned outrage, boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Russia and imposes economic sanctions on Russia. Many US athletes had their dreams and 4 years of hard work ruined.
I think we owe the Russians, the Olympics and US athletes an apology and compensation.
The US does not apologize and it does not pay for its crimes.
That was Andrew West Mulga i find him and Tom Switzer worth listening to.
http://www.atimes.com/article/tweet-of-mass-destruction-ratchets-up-tension-on-iran/
Pepe Escobar’s article, complete.