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Category: iran

  • Iran Says US Responsible For Halt In Vienna Nuclear Talks

    On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that the United States is responsible for the halt in Vienna talks aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

    Iran has transmitted its “clear” message to the United States through Enrique Mora, the European Union coordinator for the Vienna talks, but no new response has been received from them yet.

    The post Iran Says US Responsible For Halt In Vienna Nuclear Talks appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iran: How to Circumvent Sanctions Now and in the Future

    Background

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    PressTV Interview with Peter Koenig

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    1. See:  Washington says its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran has been an abject failure.”
    2. See:  Nation’s maximum resistance defeated US maximum pressure, Iranian president says.
    The post Iran: How to Circumvent Sanctions Now and in the Future first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Australian man, 83, dies in Iranian prison after being denied healthcare

    Amnesty says Australian-Iranian Shokrollah Jebeli was subjected to ‘more than two years of torture’

    An Australian-Iranian man in his eighties jailed over a financial dispute has died in prison in Iran, Amnesty International said, accusing Tehran of subjecting him to torture by denying urgent medical care.

    Shokrollah Jebeli,83, who had been incarcerated in Tehran’s Evin prison since January 2020, died on Sunday after being taken from prison to hospital the previous day, Amnesty said.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Oil, tanks, and a 2am tweet: what the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe affair tells us

    Six years after it started, the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe affair has come to a close. Sort of. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual-citizen of Iran and Britain, was first arrested in April 2016. Since then she has spent periods both in jail and under house arrest accused of espionage by the Iranian authorities. She denied the charges.

    Insiders have long claimed that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment was less about espionage and more about debt. Specifically a long-running row between the British and Iranian governments about an arms deal for British tanks dating back to the 70s.

    Richard Ratcliffe, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, fought a long public campaign for her release. On 16 March 2022 she was finally released and flown home alongside another released prisoner, Anoosheh Ashoori.

    The current foreign secretary Liz Truss was on hand for a photo opportunity. Perhaps tellingly, the image was tweeted from her account at 2.16am. Hardly ‘Prime Time’ – but then the Tories have a lot to hide when it comes to this case:

    Foreign Office

    It’s not clear if the Ratcliffe’s will meet the prime minister Boris Johnson too. Any such gathering would likely be emotionally charged. The Tories – and the Foreign Office in particular – have good reason to avoid too much scrutiny. It was, after all, during the prime minister’s stint as foreign secretary that Johnson made Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s situation much worse.

    In 2017, Johnson made comments that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been in Tehran training journalists. A suggestion which the Iranians claimed supported their view that she was a spy.

    It was suggested, including by her husband, that Johnson’s comments directly compounded her predicament. During his hunger strike outside the Foreign Office in 2021, Richard Ratcliffe told the press that Johnson’s words were used by Iran to propagandise against his jailed wife.

    Debt

    Context matters here. The images of the Ratcliffe’s reunited are heartwarming. But there have to be questions about timing. For one thing, it appears the UK has finally paid its debt to Iran. The Guardian reports that £394m was paid on Monday

    The debt related to a £650m order for Chieftain tanks and support vehicles by the Shah of Iran ahead of the 1979 revolution. These were never delivered. According to the Commons Library the UK recognised the debt was owed:

    The UK Government accepts liability for an estimated £400 million debt owed to Iran. The debt is for undelivered armoured vehicles and tanks, originally ordered by the Shah but cancelled by the UK in response to his overthrow in the Iranian revolution of 1979.

    But, they rejected the claim that the detention of Zaghari-Ratcliffe was linked to the deal:

    However, the Government argues this is a separate issue to the detention of British-Iranian dual nationals and also rejects any link between detainees and the nuclear talks.

    Now it seems that the UK has accepted that without payment, its highest profile detainees were going nowhere.

    A danger to us all

    Richard Ratcliffe himself wrote last year that Britain’s highly unaccountable arms trade is a danger to all citizens. He told Declassified UK in May 2021 that:

    the money withheld by the British government is the reason Nazanin has been detained in Iran since her arrest in 2016 while on a family holiday with our then 22-month old daughter, Gabriella.

    He claims the Iranian authorities themselves said so:

    A few weeks after she was arrested, Nazanin was told by her interrogators from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that while there was “nothing in her case”, she was going to be held for leverage with the UK. Gradually they revealed she was being held to recover a debt.

    That someone can be held for leverage in an arms deal that went sour decades ago should concern us all. And the UK’s arms trading is highly indiscriminate. We sell to virtually anyone: be they authoritarian allies like Saudi Arabia and notional enemies like Russia.

    Oil politics

    Yet payment of the debt is only part of the story. And a glance at the headlines will tell you why. Russian oil is going to be less accessible as sanctions pile up following the Putin regime’s invasion of Ukraine. Other sources must be found. It follows that a thaw between the West and Iran is on the cards.

    Certainly, Iranian politicians seem to think so. A statement published by Al Jazeera Wednesday, and signed by 160 parliamentarians, said due to Ukraine, Iran had the upper hand:

    Now that the Ukraine crisis has increased the West’s need for the Iranian energy sector, the US need for reduced oil prices must not be accommodated without considering Iran’s righteous demands.

    The sense seems to be that Iran is now well positioned to push for, and benefit from, refreshed nuclear talks with the US and others.

    Pawns in a game

    It is heartening to see Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe back home with her family. And her story can tell us much about geopolitics today. Hers is an extreme example of how all ours fates turn on the whims of global capital – in this case, the fossil fuel and arms trades – and of a set of blundering ruling class buffoons, for whom we are all just pawns in a game.

    Featured image via screenshot/On Demand News, cropped to 770×403

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Former Top Pentagon Advisor Col. Doug Macgregor On Russia-Ukraine War

    Former senior advisor the Secretary of Defense Col. Doug Macgregor joins Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate for a candid, live discussion of the Russia-Ukraine war and his time in the Trump administration when an Afghan withdrawal was sabotaged and conflict with Iran and Syria continued.

    The post Former Top Pentagon Advisor Col. Doug Macgregor On Russia-Ukraine War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Sanctions May Sound “Nonviolent,” But They Quietly Hurt the Most Vulnerable

    People line up to withdraw U.S. dollars at a Tinkoff ATM in a supermarket on Tverskaya street in Moscow, Russia, on March 3, 2022. The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military has sent the Russian ruble plummeting, leading uneasy people to line up at banks and ATMs to withdraw U.S. dollars as they worry that their saving would devalue even more in the near future.

    Today, people around the world are demonstrating against the disastrous Russian invasion of Ukraine, and rallying against potential escalation and expansion of the war by other world powers.

    The current invasion is raising a dilemma for progressives in the U.S. who are sympathetic to the plight of the people of Ukraine, who believe that the invasion is abhorrent and unacceptable, and who want to stop Russia’s actions, but who question the notion that the U.S. can intervene in a way that is ultimately good and not harmful.

    In particular, we are faced with the question of whether to support economic sanctions against Russia. Those of us who are grappling with the question are right to be skeptical.

    If there were ever a hope for narrow sanctions targeting President Vladimir Putin and other individuals in the Russian oligarchy that would spare ordinary people of Russia, the possibility of such an approach has quickly evaporated. In the immediate days after the invasion began, the U.S. coordinated with the European Union, Japan and Canada to sanction Russia’s Central Bank and exclude Russia’s banks from SWIFT, the world’s primary inter-bank communication and currency exchange system. The result has been a crash of the Russian ruble. Individuals are lining up at ATMs and banks in Russia’s cities as they lose access to cash and see their savings threatened overnight.

    Of course, those who have the fewest resources to survive in Russia — not the most powerful — will be hurt the most.

    This was entirely predictable. As London-based financier and campaigner against Putin’s government Bill Browder told NPR about blocking Russia from SWIFT, “This is what was done against Iran. And it basically knocks them — any country that’s disconnected — back to the Dark Ages economically.”

    The impact on Iran that Browder so casually refers to has been disastrous. Ostensibly meant to target the country’s regime for nefarious activities, U.S. sanctions have resulted in such isolation for the Iranian economy that the currency has crashed. The sanctions have especially impacted Iranian health care, severely undermining the country’s ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, and producing shortages of medicines and medical supplies, particularly for people with rare illnesses. In other words, it is the most vulnerable who have suffered the most.

    The experience of U.S. sanctions’ impacts around the world is important, especially because Washington and other Western capitals hold up sanctions as an alternative to war. We should understand them instead, however, as a weapon of war. Their devastating impact results in widespread suffering that may be quieter or less visible to most in the U.S. than an invasion or airstrikes are, but that is no less deadly.

    Moreover, the U.S. has tended to combine a policy of sanctions with military operations — particularly in Iraq and Iran. The U.S. invaded Iraq in 1991 and imposed economic sanctions, and then invaded the country again in 2003. The U.S. bombed Iraq intermittently between the invasions while maintaining the sanctions — which led to the malnourishment of hundreds of thousands of children, promoted infectious disease outbreaks and disproportionately impacted people with disabilities in Iraq. And when Donald Trump unleashed his “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran, he did so while stationing aircraft carriers off of Iran’s coast and repeatedly threatening airstrikes.

    The fact is that sanctions against Iraq in the past, Iran today, and perhaps Russia now, were designed to inflict harm on those countries’ populations with the objective of “regime change.” The sanitized term refers to actions of a government to change who is in power in another country. The U.S. uses economic sanctions to produce a level of misery in the places they target in order to foment unrest. Not only is this profoundly anti-democratic, it is also historically ineffective. The U.S. has maintained economic sanctions on Cuba, for example, since 1960 following the 1959 victory of the Revolution in that country. The government that came to power through the Cuban Revolution remains to this day, but generations of Cubans have suffered because of the U.S. embargo.

    It is likely that economic sanctions will punish ordinary people in Russia for the horrendous actions of their leader. But there is an additional danger with a broader and more lasting impact: that the U.S. and its allies will take the opportunity of using sanctions in response to Putin’s invasion to re-legitimize the use of sanctions in general. If the policy of sanctions gets a new lease on life, the U.S. will continue to deploy it against countries — and most will have fewer resources than Russia does to mitigate the effects.

    As those who want a more just world, it makes sense that we may feel pushed to support U.S. sanctions against Russia in the hope that it will force some restraint on Putin’s aggression. Unfortunately, the historic and current examples of U.S. sanctions regimes — and the sorts of sanctions that we are already seeing take shape in Western responses to Moscow’s invasion and their impacts — compel us to take a stance that is fundamentally critical of Washington’s use of sanctions rather than hopeful that they will benefit the people of Ukraine and the cause of peace.

    We are called instead to find and create our own ways of building solidarity with Ukrainians, and be clear in demanding that our sympathies are not manipulated to build up U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) militarism — an outcome that will only produce more hardship. In fact, if we want the U.S. to respond to the situation in Eastern Europe, we should demand the demilitarization of the continent by the U.S. and NATO. There is absolutely no justification for Putin’s actions against Ukraine. But it is the case that the U.S. maintains nuclear weapons across the continent and has been adding to the militarization of Eastern Europe in particular in recent years. This includes the opening of a new naval base in Poland where a NATO missile system will be housed. That militarism escalates tensions. Right now, the people of Ukraine are paying the price.

    As we find our own voice of protest, we can take tremendous inspiration from the outpouring of dissent in Russian cities against the war and in solidarity with Ukrainians. Our challenge is to build protest across borders that stands in solidarity with those facing the violence of war, and is independent — and defiant of — the governments where we reside.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • March 18: International People’s Tribunal On US Imperialism

    March 1, 2022 – Presently, the United States, with the support of the United Nations and European Union, has imposed sanctions and other economic coercive measures on over 30 percent of the global population, mostly located in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Sanctions are one of the key tools of U.S. imperialism, leading to mass starvation and suffering of peoples in the Global South, while opening up markets to U.S. and European corporations.

    The International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades & Economic Coercive Measures will challenge the economic atrocities committed by the United States through the use of the law, highlighting the unlawful, unjust, and colonial nature of economic coercive measures.

    The post March 18: International People’s Tribunal On US Imperialism appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Republicans Are Already Sabotaging Biden’s Fragile Diplomacy With Iran

    House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy waits to speak during a news conference with fellow House Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    The United States and Iran appear to be in the final stages of negotiations to revive a 2015 agreement, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which imposed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities in exchange for lessening the country’s diplomatic and economic isolation. Some reports say a deal could be announced in as soon as two weeks.

    There are still several key sticking points that could derail the negotiations. Iran’s government wants assurances that any agreement won’t be ripped up by a future U.S. president, as Donald Trump did with the first deal. Those assurances aren’t likely to be forthcoming, however, as the Senate is all but guaranteed not to ratify any deal as an official treaty. Instead, it would be an executive agreement, like the first deal, which can be undone by future executive actions. Even if the first deal had been ratified as a treaty, it’s possible Trump could have exited the deal without congressional approval. Iran has also reportedly asked that its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps be removed from a U.S. terrorist watchlist; it’s not clear whether the Biden administration is considering taking that measure.

    Hardliners in both the United States and Iran have long opposed any deal that the other country could agree on. Former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who negotiated and ultimately signed the agreement, has been politically marginalized and targeted by opponents of the deal, some of whom have gone so far as to demand he be prosecuted for treason.

    Opposition to diplomacy is prevalent among elected Republicans in the United States as well. More than 150 Republican members of Congress recently signed a letter promising to oppose any deal between the Biden administration and Iran that wasn’t simultaneously ratified as a treaty and approved by two-thirds of the Senate. The Republicans’ letter to Biden states that if he “forge[s] an agreement with the Supreme Leader of Iran without formal Congressional approval, it will be temporary and non-binding and meet the same fate” as the deal negotiated under President Obama.

    Earlier this month, 33 Republican senators sent their own letter with a similar warning. “Any agreement related to Iran’s nuclear program which is not a treaty ratified by the Senate is subject to being reversed, and indeed will likely be torn up, in the opening days of the next Presidential administration, as early as January 2025,” the senators wrote.

    The original 2015 deal gave Congress a 60-day review period to study the agreement, and Republicans in both chambers were ultimately unsuccessful in derailing it legislatively.

    The practical effect of the threats is limited, as least for the time being. “The reality is that the JCPOA has already been reviewed and voted on in Congress,” Ali Vaez, Iran project director at Crisis Group, recently told Axios. “All the political posturing notwithstanding, there is practically nothing that Congress can do to stop that from happening.”

    Still, the two letters send an unmistakable message to Iran’s leaders that should a Republican win the presidential election in 2024, any diplomatic agreements made by the Biden administration won’t be honored.

    In an interview in the Financial Times, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called on Congress to “issue a political statement announcing their support of the agreement and a return to J.C.P.O.A.” He added, “Iran cannot accept as a guarantee the words of a head of state, let alone the United States, due to the withdrawal of Americans from the JCPOA.”

    Joe Cirincione, a distinguished fellow at the Quincy Institute, tweeted that “the biggest remaining obstacle” to a deal was “the lack of US credibility” due to Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the first deal.

    Trump withdrew from the agreement in May 2018, despite his own administration twice certifying that Iran was in compliance with the deal. The U.S. then imposed harsh sanctions on Iran, driving up energy prices and inflicting significant pain on Iranian citizens. The sanctions also severely limited Iranians’ access to medicine and other health care, despite theoretical exemptions for humanitarian aid. “For ordinary people, sanctions mean unemployment, sanctions mean becoming poor, sanctions mean the scarcity of medicine, the rising price of dollar,” Akbar Shamsodini, an Iranian businessman told The Guardian in 2018. The other signatories to the deal — France, Germany, the U.K., China and Russia — were all forced to determine whether or not they would continue to abide by the agreed-upon terms of the deal.

    Iran has long stated that its nuclear program is only for energy production, and is entirely peaceful. Those claims are supported by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which hasn’t found evidence that Iran is making a nuclear weapon. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently reiterated that his country is only developing its nuclear program for peaceful purposes, specifically to ensure their energy independence.

    Opposition to the deal is nearly uniform in the Republican Party. Signatories to the recent letter to Biden included House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, hardcore Trumpists like Louie Gohmert and Jim Jordan, and “never-Trump” conservative Liz Cheney. Indeed, ever since then-President George W. Bush included Iran in the so-called Axis of Evil in his 2002 State of the Union address, conservatives have found wide-ranging political utility in manufacturing Iran as the world’s great supervillain.

    For as much ink is spilled about the supposed fractures in the Republican Party, the unanimously hawkish approach to Iran is illuminating. Although Trump engaged in more explicitly anti-Muslim, bigoted rhetoric than his fellow primary candidates in 2016, every Republican presidential hopeful promised to rip up the deal, regardless of Iran’s compliance.

    In many ways, the anti-Iran positions help clarify how little daylight there is between the so-called nationalist wing of the party and the more traditional neoconservative wing. Members of the nationalist wing — as epitomized by Trump, his adviser Steve Bannon, and Congresspeople Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert — are more likely to engage in open Islamophobia in staking out their anti-Iran positions. But much of the conservative, anti-Iran rhetoric from the Bush-era onward has relied on racist, Orientalist tropes about Iranians being untrustworthy, sneaky or duplicitous, or else suicidal, irrational and universally consumed by antisemitism. Far too much reporting in the United States has also uncritically advanced the idea that Iran is committed to acquiring nuclear weapons and is on the verge of doing so, regardless of changing conditions in the country.

    Another aspect of the recent House GOP letter deserves attention: The letter highlighted the role Russia is reportedly playing in the negotiations, which have been largely indirect between Iran and the United States. Republicans promised to “investigate any connections” between the Iran talks and the concurrent diplomatic efforts to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine. The letter states: “If your dependency on the Russians to revive the JCPOA is weakening our deterrent posture with the Russians in other areas of the world, the American people deserve to know.”

    As Carl Beijer wrote in reaction, Republicans are “suggest[ing] that if Biden manages to make a deal with Iran, it will be because he pulled his punches in Ukraine and thereby gained Russia’s assistance.” Beijer calls this effort “an absolutely monstrous gambit” and argues that, “[t]he GOP is hoping to peel support off Biden’s supporters among people who are anxious about Russia by promoting a narrative where any deal he cuts with Iran implies a backchannel deal with Putin as well. And where any de-escalation in Ukraine implies the same thing.”

    The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress should forcefully push back against this kind of new Cold War reasoning and continue to pursue diplomacy with Iran, making every effort to de-escalate the looming conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Agitating for open conflict only serves the hardliners and war profiteers in the United States and abroad — and endangers countless lives.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Prominent blogger Seved Hossein Ronaghi Maleki arrested in Iran after critical tweets

    Washington, D.C., February 24, 2022 — Iranian authorities should immediately release blogger Seyed Hossein Ronaghi Maleki and drop any charges against him, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.

    On Wednesday, February 23, the Tehran home of Ronaghi Maleki, a freelance blogger and freedom of expression activist who posts reporting critical of the government on social media, was raided by unidentified security forces who took him to an unknown location, according to news reports and sources familiar with the case who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity due to the fear of reprisal.

    The actions follow a Tuesday Twitter thread by Ronaghi Maleki, posted in both Farsi and English, which condemned the passing of the “User Protection Bill,” a controversial piece of legislation that restricts Iranians’ access to the internet and was ratified by parliament earlier that day.

    Authorities have not officially accepted any responsibility for Ronaghi Maleki’s arrest, no charges have been formally announced, and CPJ was unable to confirm where the blogger is being held, the reasons for his arrest, or which branch of the security forces arrested him.

    “With the arrest of Seyed Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, the Iranian government is seemingly continuing its absurd practice of arbitrarily detaining journalists without charge,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “Authorities must release Ronaghi Maleki immediately or at least reveal his location and any charges against him and allow all Iranians to freely access the internet.”

    At 11 a.m. on February 23, Ronaghi Maleki called his parents to say he was going to work, according to Reza Ronaghi, the blogger’s father, who spoke to the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Farda, adding that his son had received several threatening calls in recent weeks and told his family that he might be arrested again soon.

    When Ronaghi Maleki’s family was unable to get in touch with him, they went to his apartment later that evening where they found the home ransacked and noted that his computer, laptop, hard drives, and several notebooks were missing, according to Hassan Ronaghi, the blogger’s brother, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

    “Hossein’s life is at risk because he suffers from several health conditions including kidney, lungs, blood, and digestive issues and we don’t know if the kidnappers will give him his medicine,” Hassan Ronaghi said, adding that the blogger’s family asked the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence about Ronaghi Maleki’s arrest and status, but they have not received a response yet.

    CPJ emailed the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York requesting comment on Ronaghi Maleki’s arrest but did not receive a response. Ronaghi Maleki, also known as Babak Khoramddin, was previously arrested on December 13, 2009, and sentenced to 15 years in prison after discussing politics in a series of critical blogs that were eventually blocked by the government, according to CPJ research. He suffered multiple health issues, undergoing several kidney surgeries, which eventually led to his unconditional release in 2019.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Fire caught Iran westerns military base, no casualties reported.

    Web desk,

    A fire broke out at a western military base in Iran on Monday, no casualties were reported yet, media affiliated with the country’s Supreme National Security Council reported.

    According to Nour news, “On Monday morning, fire broke out at a warehouse of motor oil and other flammable materials were stored. The military base is one of the support bases of the Revolutionary Guards in the Mahidasht region of Kermanshah province, causing damage to an industrial shed”.

    The fire was extinguished by rescuers, and teams have been dispatched to the support base to investigate the cause of the fire.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Will Iran Strike at Global Oil Supply if Russia Invades Ukraine?

    Following Russia’s troop build-up along Ukraine’s borders portending imminent invasion, Houthi rebels in Yemen backed by Iran, which is Russia’s most dependable regional ally in the decade-long Syrian conflict, have significantly escalated missile strikes on the oil-rich Gulf States with a nod of approval from the Kremlin in order to take pressure off Russia in the Ukraine stand-off by opening a second front in the veritable Achilles’ heel of the energy-dependent industrialized world.

    To buttress the defenses in the Gulf, US F-22 fighter jets arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Saturday, Feb. 12, as part of an American defense response to recent missile attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeting the country. The Raptors landed at Al-Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, which hosts 2,000 US troops. American soldiers there launched Patriot interceptor missiles and briefly had to take shelter after the missiles exploded in the airspace above the military base last month.

    The deployment came after the Houthi rebels launched three attacks targeting Abu Dhabi last month, including one targeting a fuel depot that killed three people and wounded six. The attacks coincided with visits by presidents from South Korea and Israel to the UAE. Though overshadowed by the Ukraine crisis, the missile strikes targeting the Emirates has sparked a major US response. The American military has sent the USS Cole on a mission to Abu Dhabi.

    To return the favor of opening a second front in the Gulf and acknowledging Russia’s steadfast strategic alliance with Iran in the region, the Kremlin issued rare condemnation of recent Israeli airstrikes in Syria as “crude violation” of Syria’s sovereignty on Thursday, Feb. 10, that up until now were tacitly tolerated by the Russian forces based in Syria’s Tartus naval base and Khmeimim airbase southeast of Latakia, and also pledged last month that the Russian Air Force would conduct joint air patrols alongside the Syrian Air Force that would pre-empt the likelihood of further Israeli airstrikes in the future.

    “Israel’s continuing strikes against targets inside Syria cause deep concern,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “They are a crude violation of Syria’s sovereignty and may trigger a sharp escalation of tensions. Also, such actions pose serious risks to international passenger flights.”

    Although Israel claims its air campaign in Syria is meant to target Iran-backed militias, the airstrikes often kill Syrian soldiers. Syrian state media said one soldier was killed and five more were wounded in the latest Israeli attack at Damascus, which occurred Wednesday, Feb. 9.

    Russia has held talks with Israel on Syria, and said last month it would begin joint air patrols with Syria. The patrols will include areas near the Golan Heights in southern Syria bordering Israel, a frequent site of the Israeli airstrikes, and Israel is said to be considering discontinuing the strikes altogether or slowing them down significantly.

    The Times of Israel noted that this marked a momentous change in policy for Russia: “Following the patrol, Ynet reported that Israeli military officials were holding talks with Russian army officers to calm tensions.”

    The report added, “Israeli officials were struggling to understand why Russia, which announced that such joint patrols were expected to be a regular occurrence moving forward, had apparently changed its policy toward Israel.” The report claimed that Israel might limit its air campaign in Syria as a result of Russia’s “mystifying” change in the Syria policy.

    Over the years, Israel has not only provided material support to militant groups battling Damascus – particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force has virtually played the role of the air force of the terrorists and mounted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria during the decade-long conflict.

    In an interview to New York Times in January 2019, Israel’s former Chief of Staff Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot confessed that the Netanyahu government approved his recommendations in January 2017 to step up airstrikes in Syria. Consequently, more than 200 Israeli airstrikes were launched on the Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018, as revealed by the Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz in September 2018.

    In 2018 alone, Israel’s air force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria. The purported rationale of the Israeli airstrikes in Syria has been to degrade Iran’s guided missile technology provided to Damascus and its Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah, which poses an existential threat to Israel’s regional security.

    Nevertheless, Israeli military strategists’ “concerns” aside, it’s worth recalling that a joint American-Israeli program, involving a series of short-of-war clandestine strikes, aimed at taking out the most prominent generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and targeting Iran’s power stations, industrial infrastructure, and missile and nuclear facilities has been going on since early 2020 after the commander of IRGC’s Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in an American airstrike at the Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020.

    As the US presidential race heated up in the election year, the pace and sophistication of the subversive attacks in Iran picked up simultaneously. In the summer of 2020, “mysterious explosions” were reported at a missile and explosives storage facility at Parchin military base on June 26, at power stations in the cities of Shiraz and Ahvaz, a “mysterious fire” at Bushehr port on July 15 destroying seven ships, and a massive explosion at the Natanz nuclear site on July 2, 2020 that reportedly set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least two years.

    Besides wooing the Zionist lobbies in the run-up to the US presidential election, another purpose of the subversive attacks appeared to be to avenge a string of audacious attacks mounted by the Iran-backed forces against the US strategic interests in the Persian Gulf that brought the US and Iran to the brink of a full-scale war in September 2019.

    In addition to planting limpet mines on oil tankers off the coast of UAE in May 2019 and the subsequent downing of the American Global Hawk surveillance drone in the Persian Gulf by Iran, the brazen attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia on September 14, 2019, was the third major attack in the Persian Gulf against the assets of Washington and its regional allies.

    That the UAE had the forewarning of the imminent attacks was proved by the fact that weeks before the attacks, it recalled forces from Yemen battling the Houthi rebels and redeployed them to defend the UAE’s territorial borders.

    The September 14, 2019, attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility in eastern Saudi Arabia was an apocalypse for the global oil industry because it processed five million barrels crude oil per day, almost half of Saudi Arabia’s total oil production.

    The subversive attack sent jitters across the global markets and the oil price surged 15%, the largest spike witnessed in three decades since the First Gulf War after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, though the oil price was eased within weeks after industrialized nations released their strategic oil reserves.

    It bears mentioning that alongside deploying several thousand American troops, additional aircraft squadrons and Patriot missile batteries in Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the Abqaiq attack, several interventionist hawks in Washington invoked the Carter Doctrine of 1980 as a ground for mounting retaliatory strikes against Iran, which states:

    “Let our position be absolutely clear: an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

    Although the Houthi rebels based in Yemen claimed the responsibility for the September 2019 complex attack involving drones and cruise missiles on the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Washington dismissed the possibility. Instead, it accused Tehran of mounting the complex attack from Iran’s territory.

    Nevertheless, puerile pranks like planting limpet mines on oil tankers and downing a $200-million surveillance aircraft can be overlooked but the major provocation of mounting a drone and missile attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility that crippled its oil-processing functions for weeks was nothing short of showing red rag to the bull.

    Unless Iran got the green light to go ahead with the attacks from a major military power that equals Washington’s firepower, such confrontation would have amounted to a suicidal approach.

    Considering such a co-ordinated escalation in the Gulf by Iran and Russia, it seems a forgone conclusion that if the Kremlin decided to invade Ukraine, Iran, too, would mobilize its forces in the critically important volatile region to disrupt the global oil supply and put pressure on the energy-dependent industrialized powers to carefully consider their retaliatory measures against the Russia-Iran military alliance.

    In fact, this was the precise message conveyed to Washington’s military strategists by the last month’s audacious Houthi attacks on targets in UAE, specifically the one targeting al-Dhafra airbase hosting US forces.

    Regardless, the acts of subversion in the Persian Gulf in 2019 culminating in the “sacrilegious assault” on the veritable mecca of the oil production industry in Sept. 2019 should be viewed in the broader backdrop of the New Cold War that has begun following the Ukraine crisis in 2014 after Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula and Washington imposed sanctions on the Kremlin.

    In addition, Russia’s membership in the G8 forum was suspended by the Western powers in March 2014 and Russian President Vladimir Putin was snubbed at international summits by the Western leaders, by then-President Obama in particular, an insult that the Russian strongman took rather personally.

    The Kremlin’s immediate response to the escalation by Washington was that it jumped into the fray in Syria in September 2015, after a clandestine visit to Moscow by General Qassem Soleimani, the slain commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force.

    When Russia deployed its forces and military hardware to Syria in September 2015, the militant proxies of Washington and its regional clients were on the verge of drawing a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite heartland of coastal Latakia, which could have led to the imminent downfall of the Bashar al-Assad government.

    With the help of the Russian air power, the Syrian government has since reclaimed most of Syria’s territory from the insurgents, excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by the Turkish-backed militants and Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus inflicting a humiliating defeat on Washington and its regional allies.

    Finally, a word about the venerated commander of IRGC’s Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani who was assassinated in an American airstrike on a tip-off from the Israeli intelligence at the Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020. Soleimani was the most trusted aide of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and his main liaison for holding consultations with Russia.

    Not only did he convince Kremlin with his diplomatic skills to strike at Washington’s vulnerability in the Syrian conflict but he was also the chief architect of the audacious September 2019 attacks at the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.

    Reportedly, Trump initially rejected the Pentagon’s option to assassinate General Soleimani on December 28, 2019, due to apprehensions over full-scale confrontation with Iran, and authorized airstrikes on Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq instead.

    But after one of frequent rocket attacks at the US embassy in Baghdad claimed by Iran-backed forces, Trump succumbed to pressure from the American deep state, led by the powerful top brass of the Pentagon, which had a score to settle with General Soleimani for giving the global power a bloody nose in Syria’s war.

    The post Will Iran Strike at Global Oil Supply if Russia Invades Ukraine? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Iranian refugees face deportation from Turkey for attending demonstration

    Lawyer says refugees, who were protesting against Turkey leaving Istanbul convention on violence against women, are at risk in Iran

    Three Iranian refugees are facing deportation from Turkey after taking part in a demonstration against Ankara’s withdrawal from the Istanbul convention on violence against women.

    Lily Faraji, Zeinab Sahafi and Ismail Fattahi were arrested after attending a protest in the southern Turkish city of Denizli last March. A fourth Iranian national, Mohammad Pourakbari, was detained with the others, despite not attending the protests, according to Buse Bergamalı, their lawyer.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Biden Administration Restores Sanctions Waiver To Iran

    The Biden administration has restored a sanctions waiver to Iran, a senior State Department official said, as indirect talks between Washington and Tehran on returning to the 2015 nuclear agreement entered the final stretch.

    The waiver, which was rescinded by the Trump administration in May 2020, had allowed Russian, Chinese and European companies to carry out non-proliferation work at Iranian nuclear sites.

    The post Biden Administration Restores Sanctions Waiver To Iran appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Biden Admin Restores Sanctions Waivers Seen as Key to Reviving Iran Nuclear Deal

    State Department spokesman Ned Price speaks during a briefing at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on February 1, 2022.

    Supporters of the Iran nuclear deal welcomed news Friday that the Biden administration restored sanctions waivers seen as key to a mutual return to the agreement.

    “This is excellent news for diplomacy!” tweeted the Friends Committee on National Legislation. The waivers, the group added, “will help facilitate negotiations to bring us back into the Iran nuclear deal, which will reduce the threat of war with Iran, and reduce civilian harm from sanctions.”

    With Iran hawk Mike Pompeo then leading the State Department, the Trump administration rescinded the waivers allowing for international cooperation on Iran’s nuclear sites in 2020. That followed its 2018 move to pull the U.S. out of the Obama-era deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

    According to Agence France-Presse, the waivers allow “other countries and companies to participate in Iran’s civilian nuclear program without triggering U.S. sanctions on them, in the name of promoting safety and non-proliferation.”

    The State Department has notified Congress of the waivers.

    “We are issuing the waiver now for a simple reason,” said a senior State Department official to CNN. “It will enable some of our international partners to have more detailed technical discussions to enable cooperation that we view as being in our non-proliferation interests.”

    The official called such discussions “necessary in the final weeks of JCPOA talks” and said “the waiver itself would be essential to ensuring Iran’s swift compliance with its nuclear commitments.”

    “If talks do not result in a return to the nuclear agreement,” the official said, “such technical discussions could still contribute to achieving our non-proliferation goals.”

    Anti-war group CodePink said the development marked “a step in the right direction” but added: “If only it hadn’t taken Biden a year to do so…”

    In a Friday tweet, State Department spokesperson Ned Price defended the decision from critics, saying that the U.S. “did NOT provide sanctions relief for Iran and WILL NOT until/unless Tehran returns to its commitments under the JCPOA. We did precisely what the last administration did: permit our international partners to address growing nuclear nonproliferation and safety risks in Iran.”

    National Iranian American Council (NIAC) senior research fellow Assal Rad drew attention to the ongoing U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran.

    “As people who pushed Trump’s failed policy start yelling that this is a ‘concession’ to Iran, remember the sanctions crushing its economy are still in place,” she tweeted. “These waivers let other countries work on Iran’s civilian nuclear program, a step that helps bring it back to compliance.”

    NIAC policy director Ryan Costello responded to the development in a statement in which he also drew attention to the continued sanctions.

    “Trump never should have revoked these waivers in the first place, which are in the U.S. interest and benefit nonproliferation efforts,” said Costello. He called Biden’s move to restore them “a positive sign and welcome move” as it’s “in the interest of the United States, as well as the global community, and supports important nonproliferation goals.”

    “The Biden administration is right that these waivers will not entail financial relief to Iran, though there remains a strong case for up front humanitarian relief as it is the people of Iran who have suffered the most under U.S. sanctions,” Costello added. “Hopefully this is a step to a full restoration of the JCPOA and relief for the people of Iran.”

    Iran, meanwhile, has called the Biden move “not sufficient,” with its foreign ministry saying that “good will, in our viewpoint, means that something tangible happens on the ground.”

    Final talks in Vienna on trying to revive the nuclear deal could take place next week.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Latest Saudi atrocity in Yemen highlights the US’s obscene double standards

    As The Canary has extensively reported, the ongoing war in Yemen has seen Saudi-led forces commit atrocity after atrocity. But on 21 January, the Saudi dictatorship appears to have reached a new low in an attack that killed scores of civilians.

    Given that Saudi Arabia is the US’s second biggest ally in the Middle East, its conduct in the war exposes the US’s brazen double standards when it comes to human rights. The war itself, meanwhile, stands as a testament to the US’s shameless use of proxy wars to further its own geostrategic interests.

    Air strike ‘accidentally’ hits detention center

    The air strikes launched by Saudi-led forces destroyed a detention facility in Yemen’s Saada province, which is currently controlled by the opposing Houthi-led forces. The death toll from the attack currently stands at over 90, with many, if not most, of that number comprising civilian casualties. Over a hundred more are believed to have been injured. The attack was denounced by, amongst others, United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres and Save the Children, which says that children are among the dead. The Saudi dictatorship denied it intentionally targeted the complex.

    This latest attack adds to a long list of atrocities committed by the Saudi-led coalition forces, which also includes the United Arab Emirates (UAE), another Middle Eastern US ally. As The Canary has previously reported, this list includes dropping a bomb on a school bus killing 40 children and 11 adults, as well as a similar attack on a wedding that killed at least 20 civilians. In the case of the former, there is strong evidence that the US-made bomb was supplied to Saudi Arabia via a US arms deal.

    Close ally of the US and UK governments in spite of dictatorial nature

    Indeed, both the US and UK governments have been major arms suppliers to Saudi Arabia. During his time in the White House, former president Donald Trump met with the Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman to discuss the two countries’ ongoing partnership. He then vetoed a bill passed by Congress that would have limited US military aid to the oil rich Middle Eastern nation.

    Now, under current US president Joe Biden, the country remains the US’s second staunchest ally in the Middle East after Israel. Indeed, late last year Biden committed to another whopping arms deal, this time worth $650m. This should come as no surprise given that Biden’s presidential campaign received over $500,000 from Raytheon, one of the major profiteers from the war in Yemen.

    The Biden administration now seems to be scrambling to use the war as part of its broader foreign policy in the Middle East. In particular, it appears to be capitalizing on the fact that the opposing Houthi-led side in the conflict is allied with Iran.

    Brazen hypocrisy when compared with treatment of Iran

    As The Canary has reported, Washington has for years singled out Iran for sanctions and other forms of hostility. This includes the assassination (in violation of international law) of the major general of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani. Again, this hostility is not because of concerns over human rights. Though Iran’s human rights record is far from stellar, Noam Chomsky points out that compared with Saudi Arabia, “Iran looks like a civil rights paradise”. Nor does it have anything to do with democratic credentials. After all, Saudi Arabia is not just a dictatorship but one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies.

    Rather, hostility toward Iran is motivated by its lack of obedience to US economic and geostrategic interests. To take one example, whereas Saudi Arabia has been giving US multinational corporations preferential access to its oil reserves, Iran has been less obliging in this regard. Another reason is that the US seeks greater control over the Persian Gulf, a major area of importance for the oil industry that lies in part along Iran’s southern coast.

    Willingness to compromise repaid with even further hostility

    In spite of all this, Iran has been surprisingly willing to compromise with Washington. During the administration of former US president Barack Obama, for example, Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA). Known colloquially as the ‘Iran nuclear deal’, the agreement set limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for an easing of sanctions.

    The agreement was completely hypocritical given that the US has not just turned a blind eye to but actively enabled the only nuclear-armed state in the region, Israel. Indeed, the US itself holds the second largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. There’s even conflicting accounts about whether Iran’s nuclear program is even intended for developing nuclear weapons in the first place. The Iranian government says that it is exclusively for developing nuclear energy generation and currently allows the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor its nuclear program. Nonetheless, Iran voluntarily agreed to the terms in a move supported by most of the US’s major allies, including the UK.

    In 2019, the Trump administration unilaterally pulled the US out of the treaty in a move that was condemned by Washington’s European allies, again including the UK. This meant the reimposition of sanctions including a withdrawal of import permits. These sanctions will, and indeed already have, caused great damage to Iran’s economy. And as is so often the case with sanctions, it’s largely the civilian population, and especially the most vulnerable people, who suffer the most rather than the ostensible targets in the government.

    Instrumentalising war for self-serving ends

    Now, the Biden administration looks poised to seize on the actions of the Iran-aligned Houthi side in the conflict for its own benefit. In recent weeks, Houthi forces have launched a series of successful countermeasures. The Associated Press (AP) reports that this has included “cross-border drone and ballistic-missile strikes”. In response to this, the AP says that “U.S. officials are studying financial measures targeting the Houthis and the group’s top figures”.

    The Biden administration is currently in negotiations with the Iranian government to reestablish the JCPA. US officials earlier indicated that they hope to bring the talks to a conclusion in late January or early February. Just as this unofficial deadline looks like it will pass, Washington seemingly has stumbled upon a useful tool, in the form of the Yemen war, for strengthening its hand in the negotiations.

    As Al-Monitor puts it, “The stepped-up US military support [for the Houthis in Yemen] is not just a sign of the US commitment to the UAE — it’s a signal to Iran”. Clearly, Washington is willing to shamelessly use proxy wars as a bargaining chip to strengthen its geostrategic interests in a broader global context.

    A bipartisan consensus for coercive foreign policy

    What makes all of this even more disconcerting is the fact that the current US president belongs to the purportedly more progressive of the US’s two major parties. But as The Canary has argued before on many occasions, the reality is that when it comes to administering the US’s empire and maintaining its coercive foreign policy, there is essentially a bipartisan consensus in Congress, with the leadership of both parties largely acting in lockstep.

    In the same vein, ignoring and even enabling shocking human rights violations on the part of US allies largely enjoys bipartisan support. As this latest atrocity in Yemen attests to, there is evidently no depth to which Washington won’t sink in its hypocritical pandering to loyal allies or its cynical seizing upon proxy wars to further victimize its enemies.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons – Felton Davis

    By Peter Bolton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Iran’s Economy Reveals Power And Limits Of US Sanctions

    As economists, politicians, and pundits mull the threat of “swift and severe” United States economic sanctions against Russia should the latter invade Ukraine, one country that has long been in Washington’s crosshairs does not have to ponder what such punitive measures can do – Iran.

    The post Iran’s Economy Reveals Power And Limits Of US Sanctions appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Make the Whole World Know that the South Also Exists

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

    The post Make the Whole World Know that the South Also Exists appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Make the Whole World Know that the South Also Exists

    Shefa Salem (Libya), Life, 2019.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Olga Chernysheva (Russia), Kind People, 2004.

    Olga Chernysheva (Russia), Kind People, 2004.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    …

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

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

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

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Imperialists’ and Proxies’ War against Syria

    On 30 August 2021, the United States’ 20-year military occupation of Afghanistan came to an end when the removal of American forces was completed. Although the withdrawal was botched, it was the correct move. The withdrawal is ignominious because it turns out that the much ballyhooed US fighting forces were, in the end, defeated by Afghan peasants. Has the US learned anything from its debacle in Afghanistan? One might gain an insight into that question by observing the debacle still ongoing in Syria.

    Author A.B. Abrams provides an in-depth analysis on the US-led war in Syria in his excellent book World War in Syria: Global Conflict on Middle Eastern Battlefields (Clarity Press, 2021). WW in Syria documents the lead up to war in Syria, the precursors, the ideologies, the tactics, who the combatants are and who is aligned with who at different stages of the war, the battles fought, the impact of sophisticated weaponry, adherence to international law, the media narratives, and the cost of winning and losing the war in Syria for the warring parties. Unequivocally, every side loses in war. People are killed on all sides, and each death is a loss. But a victor is usually declared, and Syria with its allies has been declared as having won this war, albeit at a great price. However, the finality and clarity of the victory is muddled because Turkey and the US are still occupying and pillaging northern areas of Syria where they provide protection for Islamist remnants (or recklessly guard Islamist prisoners; as I write, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and US are fighting to defeat an Islamic State (IS) assault on a prison in northeastern Syria). In addition, apartheid Israel continues to periodically attack war-ravaged Syria.

    Abrams asks why the West and Israel were bent on “regime change” in Syria. As Abrams explains, with several examples, nations that do not put themselves in thrall to the US will be targeted for overthrow of their governments. (chapter 1) “Syria was increasingly portrayed as being under some kind of malign communist influence — the only possible explanation in the minds of the U.S. and its allies for any party to reject what the West perceived as its own benevolence.” (p 10)

    What is happening in Syria must be understood in a historical perspective. (p 55) Abrams details how imperialist information warfare brought about violent overthrows of socialistic governments in Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya. That tested template has now been applied to Syria. (chapter 2)

    Abrams identifies four casus belli for attacking Syria: (1) being outside the Western sphere of influence, (2) to isolate Syria from Hezbollah and Iran, which would appease Israel and the Gulf states, (3) to remove Iran and Russia as suppliers of natural gas to Europe, (4) to isolate Syria geo-politically from China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, and (5) a new base for foisting Islamist (“Islamist” is used to refer to a political ideology rather than the faith of Muslims) groups against Western-designated enemies.

    So Syria found itself beset by a multitude of aggressive foreign actors: key NATO actors Britain, France, the US, and Turkey. Jordan, Cyprus, Turkey, and Israel were staging grounds for attacks. (p 99) The Sunni regimes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates were also arrayed against Syria. At first, the mass protests — given fuel by Bashar Al Assad’s neoliberalism schemes (p 35) — served as a shield for covertly supported military operations. (p 107)

    These state actors supported several Islamist entities. Abrams, who is proficient in Arabic, adroitly elucidates the complex and realigning web of Islamist proxies. Among these groups are Al Qaeda, Fatah Al Asram, Absay Al Ansar, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and IS.

    Syria would not be completely alone as fellow Axis of Resistance members Iran and Hezbollah would come to the aid of Syria. Hezbollah directly joined in the spring of 2013 and it played an important role in the pivotal capture of Al Qusayr. (p 132) Thereafter, Iran would step up its involvement in defense of Syria. (p 134)

    What will be a surprise to most people is the solidarity shown by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) toward its longtime partner Syria. (Albeit this is no surprise to readers of another of A.B. Abram’s excellent books, Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War with American Power. Review.) Gains made by the invading forces would be substantially rolled back with the entry of Russia, an event deplored by some leftists. Among the reasons for a Russian entry was fear of Islamist terrorism approaching its frontier.

    With the advancing tide of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies, Westerners reacted by pressing for the establishment of a no-fly zone in Syria. However, having learned from Western manipulation of such a United Nations Security Council resolution during the war on Libya, in which Russia and China had abstained, Russia and China would veto any such attempt this time.

    The enemies of Syria would engage in manufactured gas attacks abetted by disinformation. This pretext led the US and allied attackers to grant themselves the right to bomb Syria. Abrams responds, “It is hard to find a similar sense of self-righteousness and open willingness to commit illegal acts of aggression anywhere else in the world.” Abrams connected this extremism to “the ideology of western supremacism.” (p 174) Syria would relinquish the deterrence of its chemical weapons in a futile effort to forestall any future opposition-contrived chemical attacks attributed to it.

    Although Hezbollah, Iran, the DPRK, and Russia were invited by the government of Syria, the western nations (without UN approval) were illegally attacking Syria. Among them were Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands, and Middle Eastern actors which included Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. (p 197) Israel was abetting Al Nusra. (p 199) The Syrian borders with Jordan and Turkey were supply conduits for the Islamists. (p 203)

    The US planned to create safe zones in Syria with an eye to dismemberment of Syria. (p 204-207) Russia would up the ante, killing 150 CIA-backed Islamists in airstrikes, which the US criticized. (p 221) In apparent reprisal, an IS terrorist attack would down a civilian airliner over Egypt killing 219 Russian civilians. War is a dirty endeavor. Among their other crimes, Islamists used civilians as shields, poisoned water supplies, and carried out beheadings. American war crimes included using depleted uranium and white phosphorus (p 301).

    With the US and Turkey competing to occupy land from the collapsing IS, the SAA was pressured to advance as quickly as possible in its lands.

    Aside from internecine fighting among the Islamists, there were puzzling complexities described between different combatants. Turkey and the US were sometimes aligned and sometimes at loggerheads; the same complexities existed between Russia and Turkey (“a highly peculiar situation reflecting [Turkey’s] pursuit of both war and rapprochement separately but simultaneously.” p 348), and between Russia and Israel. Of course, given past and current history, any enemy-of-my-enemy alliance between Israeli Jews and Arabs against a fellow Arab country will certainly cause much head shaking.

    Despairingly, the UN was also condemned for bias and being complicit in the western attempt to overthrow the Syrian government. (p 334)

    Abrams criticized the American arrogation of the right to attack. He warned, “This had potentially highly destabilizing consequences for the global order, and by discarding the post-Second World War legal prohibition against crimes of aggression the West was returning the world to a chaotic order that resembled that of the colonial era.” (p 383)

    In toto, Abrams finds, “Even though Syria prevailed, the West was able to achieve its destruction at very little cost to itself … meaning the final outcome of the war still represents a strengthening of the Western position at Dasmascus’ expense.” (p 384)

    Israel’s War

    A book review can only cover so much, and there is much ground covered in WW in Syria. Particularly conspicuous is the annex at the end of the book entitled “Israel’s War.” (p 389-413) This annex leads one to ask why there are no annexes on America’s War, Turkey’s War, Qatar’s War, Saudi Arabia’s War, UAE’s War, NATO’s War, or even the terrorists’ War. Why does Israel stand out? Prior to the recent invasion of Syria, it was only Israel that was occupying Syrian territory: the Golan Heights, annexed following the 1967 War, and recognized as a part of Israel by president Donald Trump in 2019 (quite hypocritical given US denunciations of Crimea’s incorporation into Russia). Syria does not recognize Israel, and it has not reached a peace agreement with Israel. Of Syria’s Middle Eastern allies, Iran does not recognize Israel; Lebanon signed a peace treaty with Israel under Israeli and American pressure, but Lebanon never ratified it. Hezbollah regards Israel as an illegitimate entity. Hezbollah is noted for the first “successful armed resistance on a significant scale to the Western-led order after the Cold War’s end” in 2006. (p 39) Thus, Israel views the arc from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon as a security threat. Since Israel is regarded by some foreign policy wonks in the US as its aircraft carrier in the region, that reason among others secures US “aid” and military support. That Syria will not bend its knees to US Empire is also a source of consternation to imperialists. After Egyptian president Anwar Sadat treacherously broke Arab solidarity, (p 21-26) Syria would find itself increasingly isolated. Given the rapacious nature of imperialism, Israel and its lobby have faced no serious opposition from within the imperialist alliance, allowing the Jewish State to pursue its plan for a greater Israel to which Syria, a country that does not threaten any western nation, is an impediment. Israel, writes Abrams, will continually seek to degrade the military capabilities of countries it designates as enemies. (p 406)

    Closing

    The situation in Syria still simmers. Those who scrupulously read the dispassionate account of WW in Syria will gain a wide-ranging insight into what underlies the simmering. It will also be clear why any attempt by western imperialists and their terrorist or Islamist proxies will not succeed in a coup against the elected Syrian government. Syrians will put up a staunch defense. Hezbollah and Iran will stand in solidarity, as will the DPRK. Having Russia, a first-rate military power, presents a powerful deterrence. In addition, China, no pushover itself, stands steadfast in support of its Russian partner. Thus the western imperialists’/proxies’ main goal has been thwarted; they have been shamelessly reduced to pillagers of oil and wheat and occupiers of small pockets of a sovereign country.

    The post The Imperialists’ and Proxies’ War against Syria first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Veterans For Peace Urges US to Rejoin Iran Deal and Negotiate With North Korea

    Golden Rule anti-nuclear boat sails in San Diego Bay, April 1, 2019.

    January 22 marked one year since the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which the U.S. has refused to sign, became a binding treaty. To commemorate that anniversary and in anticipation of the impending release of the Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, Veterans For Peace (VFP), a non-governmental organization that exposes the costs and consequences of militarism and war and seeks peaceful, effective alternatives, issued its own Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

    The Pentagon’s 2018 NPR says the United States can use nuclear weapons in response to non-nuclear attacks, including cyberattacks, in “extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies and partners.” This would allow the U.S. to engage in the “first use” of nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear activists are pushing Joe Biden to reverse Donald Trump’s policies set forth in the 2018 NPR, including the first-use policy. Moreover, first use of nuclear weapons violates international law. It would also spell disaster for the survival of the planet.

    VFP’s 10-page NPR replaces the goal of “full spectrum dominance” over the globe with “full spectrum cooperation.” It calls on the U.S. to implement a verifiable No First Use policy, take nuclear missiles off hair-trigger alert and remove the sole authority of the president to launch a nuclear war. VFP urges the United States to begin good faith negotiations with the goal to eliminate all nuclear weapons and take immediate measures to decrease the risk of an accidental nuclear war. It also calls on the U.S. to sign the TPNW.

    The TPNW prohibits the transfer, use, or threat to use nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices. States party to the treaty pledge “never under any circumstances” to “develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”

    Eighty-six countries have signed the treaty and 57 have ratified it, which makes them parties to the accord. Once it had 50 parties, the TPMW entered into force on January 22, 2022.

    But the five original nuclear-armed countries — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — boycotted both the treaty negotiations and the vote. North Korea, Israel, Pakistan and India, also nuclear-armed countries, did not participate in the final vote.

    “The danger of a devastating nuclear war is greater than ever,” Gerry Condon, a Vietnam-era veteran and former president of VFP, told Truthout. “We cannot leave the future of the planet in the hands of the generals, the cold warriors and the weapons manufacturers who have brought us one terrible war after another.”

    The U.S. Is Violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

    Although the United States is a party to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it continues to violate the provisions of that treaty. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said in a 2005 release by the Institute for Public Accuracy, “The U.S. government is not adhering to Article VI of the NPT and we show no signs of planning to adhere to its requirements to move forward with the elimination — not reduction, but elimination — of nuclear weapons.”

    In the years since, the United States has actually moved in the opposite direction. The Obama administration advanced a policy, which Donald Trump and Joe Biden continued, to develop leaner and meaner nuclear weapons. The proposed U.S. budget calls for nearly $2 trillion over the next 30 years to build two new bomb factories, planes, missiles, submarines and redesigned warheads.

    The Veterans For Peace Nuclear Posture Review Is Geared Toward Preventing War

    Ken Mayers, a VFP national board member, said in an email to Truthout, “When we considered all the Nuclear Posture Reviews since the first one in 1994, we concluded that they all leaned towards war. We decided that veterans should speak up and push our government to correct that posture by standing up for peace. That is the consistent theme of the VFP Nuclear Posture Review.”

    It urges the Biden administration to take the following steps (which I summarized with some additional explanations below):

    1. Implement a No First Use and No Launch on Warning (“Hair Trigger Alert”) policy that entails separating warheads from delivery vehicles;
    2. Decommission Intercontinental Ballistic Missile silos and weapons because they can only be used as a first strike weapon;
    3. Replace the president’s exclusive authority to launch a nuclear attack with a safer, collective process that is less likely to lead to a rash decision to launch nukes;
    4. End Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (a U.S. anti-ballistic missile defense system to shoot down short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles), as well as other anti-ballistic missile systems;
    5. Sign and ratify the TPNW;
    6. Actively initiate and pursue negotiations with an aim toward reducing international tensions and a goal of effecting a major reduction in nuclear arms and promoting strategic stability;
    7. Summon all of the nuclear-armed countries to the table to negotiate a path toward nuclear disarmament, as required by the NPT;
    8. Join with China and Russia to negotiate space-ban and cyber-ban treaties;
    9. Ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion” anywhere around the globe;
    10. Reimplement the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and eliminate all missile “defense” systems;
    11. Reimplement the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which required the U.S. and the USSR to eliminate and permanently renounce all nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles that had ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers;
    12. Work with U.S. allies to remove U.S. nuclear weapons that are stationed in the following NATO countries: Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands;
    13. Recall to the United States all submarines armed with nuclear weapons, ground the nuclear bombers, and dismantle the missile sites;
    14. End the “nuclear modernization program,” which includes new nuclear weapons research, design, expansion, refurbishment, laboratory testing and sub-critical testing. Pass the Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act (HR 2850), which would redirect the funds to non-carbon, non-nuclear energy systems in order to reduce the impact of climate change and provide benefits to society;
    15. Appropriate adequate funding to clean up nuclear production and testing facilities, uranium mines and mills, and nuclear waste sites in the U.S. and Pacific nuclear test areas. Develop facilities and technologies to handle radioactive materials; and
    16. Create economic conversion plans to assist nuclear industry workers in making a transition to constructive employment.

    VFP Urges Biden to Rejoin Iran Nuclear Deal and Negotiate Peace Treaty With North Korea

    As the United States continues to violate the NPT, it maintains a provocative posture toward North Korea (which has nuclear weapons) and Iran (which doesn’t).

    Veterans For Peace proposes that the Biden administration implement a five-point plan to revive U.S.- DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea) talks to end the expensive “forever” U.S. war against the DPRK. The plan includes: an agreement to implement the U.S.-DPRK Joint Statement from the Singapore Summit; negotiation of a peace treaty to replace the outdated 1953 Korean War Armistice Agreement; an end to all joint exercises between the U.S. and South Korea, Japan and other countries against the DPRK; the lifting of all sanctions against the DPRK; and the cessation of all threats against North Korea and removal of the U.S. missile system from South Korea.

    Meanwhile, VFP is calling on Biden to concretely shift course in relation to Iran. The Trump administration withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal. But one year into his presidency, Biden still has not rejoined the agreement despite his campaign promise to do so. Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran pledged not to enrich uranium above the level that could be used for a bomb, in return for the lifting of U.S. sanctions. After Trump renounced the JCPOA, he reimposed punishing sanctions on Iran. VFP urges Biden to lift the sanctions and re-enter the JCPOA.

    VFP’s Nuclear Posture Review is a critical document, which, if implemented, would go a long way toward protecting the world from a nuclear war. The Biden administration has the power to move effectively toward nuclear disarmament.

    “The U.S. could lead the world to eliminate all nuclear weapons. If we take the first steps, others will follow. That will only happen with a major shift in U.S. foreign policy, however,” Condon said. “We need to push our political leaders to peacefully adjust to a multi-polar world that it no longer dominates. Only then will we have real peace and security.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Iranian Human rights defender Narges Mohammadi sentenced to another 8 years prison and more than 70 lashes

    On 24 January 2022 the prominent rights defender Narges Mohammadi, already serving time at Iran’s notorious Gharchak Prison, has been sentenced to another eight years in prison and more than 70 lashes, according to a tweet by her Paris-based husband. [winner of 5 human rights awards, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/07C20809-99E2-BDC0-FDC3-E217FF91C126]

    Mohammadi’s new conviction was after a 5-minute trial, her husband Taghi Rahmani wrote. He stated she also had a two–year ban on “communication,” but that she has not contacted the family and he did not know the details of the trial or the new sentence.

    The prominent activist’s latest conviction comes as the authorities intensify their efforts to squash growing dissent in Iran by imprisoning activists and human rights attorneys after grossly unfair trials, shooting to kill protesters in the street, imposing death sentences on dissidents and protesters, and causing the death of political prisoners by egregiously neglecting their medical needs. See e.g. https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/06/24/list-of-lawyers-imprisoned-in-iran-for-defending-human-rights/

    “One by one, the Iranian authorities are trying to silence the voices of dissent in Iran, through imprisonment, torture, and even death,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). “The Iranian government fears these brave individuals because they speak truth to power and their voices carry great authority in Iranian society,”

    Outrage at the government’s actions—not only the unjust imprisonments but also the treatment of political prisoners—is growing both inside and outside Iran’s prisons.

    Seven political prisoners in Evin Prison’s Ward 8 went on a hunger strike on January 16, 2022, to protest the death of Baktash Abtin, who died after contracting COVID-19 in Iran’s overcrowded and unhygienic prisons, where even the most rudimentary precautions against the spread of the virus are not followed. They include: Sadegh Omidi, Peyman Pourdad, Moin Hajizadeh, Mehdi Dareyni, Hamid Haj Jafar Kashani, Aliasghar Hassani-Rad, and Mahmoud Alinaghi. The latter three were transferred to an unknown prison on January 23. See: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/01/10/iranian-dissident-poet-baktash-abtin-dies-of-covid-in-arbitrary-detention/

    In solidarity with the hunger strikers, Shakila Monfared began a hunger strike in Gharchak Prison for women on January 17; Sina Beheshti joined the hunger strike on January 17 in the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary; and Mohammad Abdolhassani joined the hunger strike on January 17 in the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary.

    Meanwhile, British-Iranian dual national Anoosheh Ashoori, who is being held in Iran on unsubstantiated spying charges, began a hunger strike in Evin Prison on January 23, to bring “global attention to the plight” of those unfairly held by Iran.

    Outside Iran, In Vienna, journalist Jamshid Barzegar, began a hunger strike on January 18 in solidarity with hunger strikers in Iran, in front of the hotel where the nuclear talks are being held in Vienna. He has been joined by more than a dozen Iranian activists abroad. Former American hostage Barry Rosen was on hunger strike from January 16-24 in Vienna “to demand the release of all hostages being held by Iran.” Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese former hostage in Iran, joined the hunger strikers in Vienna on January 21.

    These names are only part of a larger, rapidly growing group. A list from January 24 was published on Twitter that included names of more than 40 activists hunger-striking outside prison to demonstrate solidarity with the hunger strikers and protest the government’s actions.

    Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh, responding to a question on hunger strikers in Vienna at January 24 press conference in Tehran, said: “These matters are not very important. What’s important is to reach a reliable and stable agreement that satisfies Iran’s interests.”

    Mohammadi has proved to be a particular thorn in the authorities’ side, refusing to be silent either in prison or during her brief periods of release between convictions. She had already been serving a 30-month sentence at Gharchak Prison after she organized a sit-in at Evin Prison’s Women’s Ward to condemn the killing of hundreds of protesters by state security forces during the November 2019 protests, and the unjust execution of wrestler Navid Afkari.

    “Narges Mohammadi is only one of many individuals behind bars in Iran because of their peaceful dissent and the willingness of a judiciary to do the bidding of a brutal and unlawful security state,” Ghaemi added.

    https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-01-25/husband-says-iran-sentenced-activist-wife-to-prison-lashes

    Rights Activist Narges Mohammadi Sentenced to Another Eight Years in Prison

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Pro-Israel Canadians Pressure Ottawa over Iran

    Those Canadians who take their political cues from Israel are obsessively stoking conflict with Iran. In a clear example, former CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre Avi Benlolo has published a half dozen National Post columns critical of that country over the past year.

    In a recent article headlined “As the Doomsday Clock closes in on midnight, the time for action on Iran is now,” Benlolo demanded more belligerence while in August he argued “that Iran is just two months away from a nuclear breakout” in a story headlined “Joe Biden must not support nuclear deal with Iran, Israel’s existence depends on it.” Over the previous year the ardent Zionist also published “Diplomatic rift between Tehran and Ottawa continues to grow” and “U.S. preparing to throw Israel under the bus with Iran nuclear deal.” Benlolo criticized Iran in a series of other columns and released a statement on his site titled, “On One Year Anniversary, Canadians Commemorate Downing of Plane By Iran.”

    Israeli officials are pressing US President Joe Biden for more sanctions and violence against Iran. They want to scuttle the Iran nuclear negotiations and any effort to reduce tensions between Washington and Tehran.

    While Israeli officials have been claiming Iran is on the cusp of acquiring nuclear weapons for decades, they’ve sought to block (with US and Canadian support) any effort to develop a Middle East Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone. Most countries in the region support a nuclear free zone, which exist elsewhere, but Israel wants to maintain its 90 nuclear weapons.

    There is little evidence Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, but even if it did it wouldn’t be an existential threat to Israel despite its claims. It would, however, slightly weaken Israeli hegemony in the region.

    But Canadian Zionists believe a European colonial outpost of 9 million should dominate a region of 450 million so they incessantly demonize Iran. It was recently reported — with no mention he’s a long-time B’nai B’rith lawyer — that David Matas was legal counsel to a former member of the Shah’s brutal secret service facing deportation to Iran. Last month Matas co-authored an op-ed on the Iranian military mistakenly downing Ukraine Airlines flight PS752 to argue that Canada should “designate the IRGC [Iran’s military] as a whole, and not just its foreign division, as a terrorist entity.”

    Yesterday the CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre Michael Levitt article “It’s long past time to hold Iran’s regime to account” was published in the Toronto Star. It argued, “the anniversary of the downing of Flight 752 was a stark reminder of the odious regime leading Iran and its litany of crimes at home and abroad.”

    The Israel lobby has been using the two-year-old tragedy – at least partly Washington’s responsibility for assassinating Iranian General Qasem Soleimani days earlier – to attack Iran. Recently the Washington-based Israel lobby group Foundation for Defence of Democracies pressed the US government to take money Iran collects from international airlines for using its airspace to pay $107 million to six Canadians killed on the flight. To weaken Israel’s rival, Irwin Cotler’s Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights has been campaigning for victims of PS752. Raoul Wallenberg Centre lawyer Yonah Diamond is representing families of PS752 victims and in July 2020 the Centre organized a webinar in which Cotler spoke titled “Pursuing Justice and Accountability: Remedies for those murdered in the bombing of flight PS752.”

    Married to a “close confidant” of Likud founder Menachem Begin and with a daughter recently in Israel’s Knesset, Irwin Cotler has criticized Iran incessantly. Canada’s most influential anti-Palestinian activist is chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Group for Human Rights in Iran and set up Iran Accountability Week in Parliament. Cotler also serves as counsel to imprisoned Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and helped get the Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) removed from the US terrorist list. In recent years Cotler, Stephen Harper and other Canadian Zionists have promoted the MEK, which is a cultish group that backed Iraq in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and, according to US government sources, has teamed up with Israel to assassinate Iranian scientists.

    On its website B’nai B’rith has an email campaign titled “Three Ways for the Government to Combat Iran.” It calls for Ottawa to: “Apply the Magnitsky Act to members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to sanction its human rights abusers; List the IRGC in its entirety as a terrorist entity in Canada; Hold Iran to account for its killing of 57 Canadians on January 2020’s Flight PS572.” In 2020 B’nai Brith sued the federal government for failing to comply with a motion in Parliament to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization.

    The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the official lobbying arm of Canada’s Jewish Federations, also promotes an anti-Iran campaign titled “Maintain diplomatic pressure on the Iranian regime.” CIJA’s five demands echo those of B’nai B’rith.

    In “A story of failed re-engagement: Canada and Iran, 2015–2018,” University of Ottawa professor Thomas Juneau highlighted the Israel lobby’s role in deterring the Trudeau government from re-establishing diplomatic relations with Iran, which they promised to do prior to their election: “Initially, Cabinet and most caucus supported re-engagement. [Then foreign affairs minister Stephane] Dion, who was actively lobbied by Bombardier (whose headquarters were in his riding) and the Montreal Chamber of Commerce, was especially keen. Other senior ministers such as [Chrystia] Freeland (International Trade) and Harjit Sajjan (Defence) also supported. With time, however, opposition within caucus grew. It was led by Michael Levitt, the influential MP for York-Center and chair of the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group, and also included Anthony Housefather (MP for Mount-Royal). These MPs had support from former minister Irwin Cotler, who had long argued for harsher policies towards Iran.”

    Juneau continued, “other interviewees also highlighted the differences in organization among pressure groups. Between the tabling of the motion [to oppose reengaging with Iran] and the vote four days later, groups opposing reengagement, such as the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, rapidly launched an effective campaign to pressure MPs. Groups favoring reengagement, however, such as the Iranian Canadian Congress, were unable to match these lobbying efforts.”

    Zionists in Canada have sought to lay obstacles to renewing diplomatic relations with Iran. An important obstacle is Ottawa listing Iran as a state sponsor of terror and seizing its diplomatic assets. In 2019 Canada seized and sold $28 million worth of Iranian properties in Ottawa and Toronto to compensate individuals in the US who had family members killed in a 2002 Hamas bombing in Israel and others who were held hostage by Hezbollah in 1986 and 1991. The Supreme Court of Canada and federal government sanctioned the seizure under the Harper Conservatives 2012 Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which lifts immunity for countries labeled “state sponsors of terrorism” to allow individuals to claim their non-diplomatic assets. Tehran considers the asset seizure a violation of international law and, as I detailed in “Seizure of Iranian Property to Pay Americans Another Example of Canadian Hypocrisy”, many other victims have far more legitimate claims to seizing diplomatic (US/Israeli) assets. But the asset seizure and state sponsor of terrorism listing are a major hurdle to re-establishing normal relations between Canada and Iran.

    Canadian Zionists sometimes claim the notion of a powerful “Israel lobby” is an anti-Semitic “trope” but their success in disrupting promises made in the Liberal Party election campaign proves its influence.

    The post Pro-Israel Canadians Pressure Ottawa over Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Pro-Israel Canadians Pressure Ottawa over Iran

    Those Canadians who take their political cues from Israel are obsessively stoking conflict with Iran. In a clear example, former CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre Avi Benlolo has published a half dozen National Post columns critical of that country over the past year.

    In a recent article headlined “As the Doomsday Clock closes in on midnight, the time for action on Iran is now,” Benlolo demanded more belligerence while in August he argued “that Iran is just two months away from a nuclear breakout” in a story headlined “Joe Biden must not support nuclear deal with Iran, Israel’s existence depends on it.” Over the previous year the ardent Zionist also published “Diplomatic rift between Tehran and Ottawa continues to grow” and “U.S. preparing to throw Israel under the bus with Iran nuclear deal.” Benlolo criticized Iran in a series of other columns and released a statement on his site titled, “On One Year Anniversary, Canadians Commemorate Downing of Plane By Iran.”

    Israeli officials are pressing US President Joe Biden for more sanctions and violence against Iran. They want to scuttle the Iran nuclear negotiations and any effort to reduce tensions between Washington and Tehran.

    While Israeli officials have been claiming Iran is on the cusp of acquiring nuclear weapons for decades, they’ve sought to block (with US and Canadian support) any effort to develop a Middle East Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone. Most countries in the region support a nuclear free zone, which exist elsewhere, but Israel wants to maintain its 90 nuclear weapons.

    There is little evidence Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, but even if it did it wouldn’t be an existential threat to Israel despite its claims. It would, however, slightly weaken Israeli hegemony in the region.

    But Canadian Zionists believe a European colonial outpost of 9 million should dominate a region of 450 million so they incessantly demonize Iran. It was recently reported — with no mention he’s a long-time B’nai B’rith lawyer — that David Matas was legal counsel to a former member of the Shah’s brutal secret service facing deportation to Iran. Last month Matas co-authored an op-ed on the Iranian military mistakenly downing Ukraine Airlines flight PS752 to argue that Canada should “designate the IRGC [Iran’s military] as a whole, and not just its foreign division, as a terrorist entity.”

    Yesterday the CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre Michael Levitt article “It’s long past time to hold Iran’s regime to account” was published in the Toronto Star. It argued, “the anniversary of the downing of Flight 752 was a stark reminder of the odious regime leading Iran and its litany of crimes at home and abroad.”

    The Israel lobby has been using the two-year-old tragedy – at least partly Washington’s responsibility for assassinating Iranian General Qasem Soleimani days earlier – to attack Iran. Recently the Washington-based Israel lobby group Foundation for Defence of Democracies pressed the US government to take money Iran collects from international airlines for using its airspace to pay $107 million to six Canadians killed on the flight. To weaken Israel’s rival, Irwin Cotler’s Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights has been campaigning for victims of PS752. Raoul Wallenberg Centre lawyer Yonah Diamond is representing families of PS752 victims and in July 2020 the Centre organized a webinar in which Cotler spoke titled “Pursuing Justice and Accountability: Remedies for those murdered in the bombing of flight PS752.”

    Married to a “close confidant” of Likud founder Menachem Begin and with a daughter recently in Israel’s Knesset, Irwin Cotler has criticized Iran incessantly. Canada’s most influential anti-Palestinian activist is chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Group for Human Rights in Iran and set up Iran Accountability Week in Parliament. Cotler also serves as counsel to imprisoned Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and helped get the Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) removed from the US terrorist list. In recent years Cotler, Stephen Harper and other Canadian Zionists have promoted the MEK, which is a cultish group that backed Iraq in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and, according to US government sources, has teamed up with Israel to assassinate Iranian scientists.

    On its website B’nai B’rith has an email campaign titled “Three Ways for the Government to Combat Iran.” It calls for Ottawa to: “Apply the Magnitsky Act to members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to sanction its human rights abusers; List the IRGC in its entirety as a terrorist entity in Canada; Hold Iran to account for its killing of 57 Canadians on January 2020’s Flight PS572.” In 2020 B’nai Brith sued the federal government for failing to comply with a motion in Parliament to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization.

    The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the official lobbying arm of Canada’s Jewish Federations, also promotes an anti-Iran campaign titled “Maintain diplomatic pressure on the Iranian regime.” CIJA’s five demands echo those of B’nai B’rith.

    In “A story of failed re-engagement: Canada and Iran, 2015–2018,” University of Ottawa professor Thomas Juneau highlighted the Israel lobby’s role in deterring the Trudeau government from re-establishing diplomatic relations with Iran, which they promised to do prior to their election: “Initially, Cabinet and most caucus supported re-engagement. [Then foreign affairs minister Stephane] Dion, who was actively lobbied by Bombardier (whose headquarters were in his riding) and the Montreal Chamber of Commerce, was especially keen. Other senior ministers such as [Chrystia] Freeland (International Trade) and Harjit Sajjan (Defence) also supported. With time, however, opposition within caucus grew. It was led by Michael Levitt, the influential MP for York-Center and chair of the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group, and also included Anthony Housefather (MP for Mount-Royal). These MPs had support from former minister Irwin Cotler, who had long argued for harsher policies towards Iran.”

    Juneau continued, “other interviewees also highlighted the differences in organization among pressure groups. Between the tabling of the motion [to oppose reengaging with Iran] and the vote four days later, groups opposing reengagement, such as the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, rapidly launched an effective campaign to pressure MPs. Groups favoring reengagement, however, such as the Iranian Canadian Congress, were unable to match these lobbying efforts.”

    Zionists in Canada have sought to lay obstacles to renewing diplomatic relations with Iran. An important obstacle is Ottawa listing Iran as a state sponsor of terror and seizing its diplomatic assets. In 2019 Canada seized and sold $28 million worth of Iranian properties in Ottawa and Toronto to compensate individuals in the US who had family members killed in a 2002 Hamas bombing in Israel and others who were held hostage by Hezbollah in 1986 and 1991. The Supreme Court of Canada and federal government sanctioned the seizure under the Harper Conservatives 2012 Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which lifts immunity for countries labeled “state sponsors of terrorism” to allow individuals to claim their non-diplomatic assets. Tehran considers the asset seizure a violation of international law and, as I detailed in “Seizure of Iranian Property to Pay Americans Another Example of Canadian Hypocrisy”, many other victims have far more legitimate claims to seizing diplomatic (US/Israeli) assets. But the asset seizure and state sponsor of terrorism listing are a major hurdle to re-establishing normal relations between Canada and Iran.

    Canadian Zionists sometimes claim the notion of a powerful “Israel lobby” is an anti-Semitic “trope” but their success in disrupting promises made in the Liberal Party election campaign proves its

    The post Pro-Israel Canadians Pressure Ottawa over Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Iran Official Proposes Formation Of Countries’ Union Against Sanctions

    All, with consolidation, should stand against the US sanctions and plots, Rezaei said in a meeting with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, according to the IRNA Saturday report. In his remarks, Rezaei said that the Iranian nation and government pay special respect to Nicaragua’s resistance against excessive demands. He went on to stress that the resistant countries should make further efforts to expand their relations and friendship because the bullying powers, particularly the United States, are after preventing nations’ development and cooperation.

    The post Iran Official Proposes Formation Of Countries’ Union Against Sanctions appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Ground breaking conviction of Syrian torturer in Germany

    Group of framed portraits
    Photos of Syrians who have been detained or disappeared set up by Families for Freedom, as part of a protest in front of the court in Koblenz, July 2, 2020. © 2020 Alexander Suttor

    The conviction of a former Syrian intelligence officer for crimes against humanity by a German court is a ground-breaking step toward justice for serious crimes in Syria, Human Rights Watch said today. The judgment is a meaningful moment for civilians who survived torture and sexual abuse in Syria’s prisons.  

    On January 13, 2022, a German court delivered its judgment in the trial of Anwar R., a former member of Syria’s General Intelligence Directorate, one of the country’s four main intelligence agencies commonly referred to collectively as the mukhabarat. Anwar R. is the most senior former Syrian government official to be convicted for serious crimes in Syria.  

    German prosecutors accused Anwar R. of overseeing the torture of detainees in his capacity as head of the investigations section at the General Intelligence Directorate’s al-Khatib detention facility in Damascus, also known as “Branch 251.” 

    The judges found Anwar R. guilty of committing crimes against humanity and sentenced him to life in prison. Following the verdict in the case, Anwar R. has one week to appeal.  

    “More than 10 years after the violations were committed in Syria, the German court’s verdict is a long-awaited beacon of hope that justice can and will in the end prevail,” said Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch. “Other countries should follow Germany’s lead, and actively bolster efforts to prosecute serious crimes in Syria.”  

    Human Rights Watch issued a question and answer document and a feature article on the trial and how it is situated in the larger context of the Syrian conflict on January 6, 2022. The trial against Anwar R. and Eyad A., who was found guilty of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in February, began in April 2020 and was the first anywhere in the world for state-sponsored torture in Syria. Eyad A.’s appeal against his conviction remains pending. 

    Syrian survivors, lawyers, and activists have been central to making this trial a reality, not only pressing for justice but laying the groundwork that makes justice possible, Human Rights Watch said.  

    More than 80 witnesses testified, including former detainees, former Syrian government employees, German police investigators, and experts in Syrian affairs. The testimony included well-documented accounts of torture and sexual abuse in Branch 251, descriptions of mass graves, and details of Syria’s government policy to violently crack down on peaceful protesters in 2011. Several of the witnesses were able to identify Anwar R. in the courtroom.  

    One of the major challenges of this trial was witness protection. Several witnesses living in Germany and other European countries cancelled their appearance in court out of fear for their lives and safety, or that of their families. Several witnesses, some who were also victims, testified that they feared a risk to themselves and their families given their role in the trial. German authorities should ensure that witnesses and victims are sufficiently informed about their rights to protective measures, including to appear anonymously before the court. 

    Tens-of-thousands of people have been detained or disappeared in Syria since 2011, the vast majority by government forces using an extensive network of detention facilities throughout the country. The Syrian government continues to detain and forcibly disappear thousands of people. 

    Many of those detained have died from torture and horrific detention conditions. Comprehensive justice for these and other unchecked atrocities in Syria has been elusive. Syria is not a member of the International Criminal Court. And in 2014, Russia and China blocked efforts at the United Nations Security Council to give the court a mandate over serious crimes in Syria. 

    The trial of Anwar R. and Eyad A. is possible because Germany’s laws recognize universal jurisdiction over certain of the most serious crimes under international law. That allows for the investigation and prosecution of these crimes no matter where they were committed and regardless of the nationality of the suspects or victims. Universal jurisdiction remains one of the few viable pathways to justice for crimes committed in Syria.  

    Germany has several elements in place to allow for the successful investigation and prosecution of grave crimes in Syria. It has above all a comprehensive legal framework, well-functioning specialized war crimes units, and previous experience with prosecuting such crimes. Countries with universal jurisdiction laws should establish specialized war crimes units within law enforcement and prosecution services, and ensure that such units are adequately resourced and staffed. 

    “Germany’s trial against Anwar R. is a message to the Syrian authorities that no one is beyond the reach of justice,” Jarrah said. “The Koblenz case has shown that with other avenues blocked, national courts can play a critical role in combating impunity.” 

    The first such reaction came immediately, see: https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/human-rights/after-german-conviction-of-syrian-official-focus-may-turn-to-swedish-trial-of-iranian/

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/13/germany-conviction-state-torture-syria

    https://www.fidh.org/en/region/north-africa-middle-east/syria/syria-landmark-ruling-offers-hope-to-regime-s-victims

    https://www.ecchr.eu/en/case/first-criminal-trial-worldwide-on-torture-in-syria-before-a-german-court/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Why Washington’s Focus on “Credibility” is a Recipe for War

    The most pressing threat to global security right now isn’t so-called “provocations” by either Russia or China. It is the United States’ misplaced obsession with its own “credibility”.

    This rallying cry by Washington officials – echoed by the media and allies in London and elsewhere – is code for allowing the US to act like a global gangster while claiming to be the world’s policeman. US “credibility” was apparently thrown into question last summer – and only when President Joe Biden held firm to a pledge to pull US troops out of Afghanistan.

    Prominent critics, including in the Pentagon, objected that any troop withdrawal would both suggest the US was backing off from a commitment to maintain the so-called “international order” and further embolden the West’s “enemies” – from the Taliban and Islamic State (IS) group to Russia and China.

    In a postmortem in September, General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, echoed a view common in Washington: “I think that our credibility with allies and partners around the world, and with adversaries, is being intensely reviewed by them to see which way this is going to go – and I think that damage is one word that could be used.”

    At the same time, a former defence official in the George W Bush administration judged US credibility after the Afghanistan withdrawal at “rock bottom“.

    The only way this understanding of US “credibility” makes sense is if one disregards the disastrous previous two decades of Washington’s role in Afghanistan. Those were the years in which the US army propped up a bunch of wildly unpopular kleptocrats in Kabul who ransacked the public coffers as the US launched an arms’ length drone war that ended up killing large numbers of Afghan civilians.

    To bolster its apparently diminished “credibility” after the troop withdrawal, the US has imposed crushing sanctions on Afghanistan, deepening its current famine. There have also been reports of CIA efforts to run covert operations against the Taliban by aiding its opponents.

    Cold War relic

    Washington’s “credibility” was also seemingly in peril when US and Russian officials met in Geneva this week for negotiations in the midst of a diplomatic, and potential military, standoff over Ukraine.

    The background are demands from Moscow that Washington stops encircling Russia with military bases and that Nato end its relentless advancement towards Russia’s borders. Nato should be a relic of a Cold War-era that officially ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991. Moscow dissolved its own version of Nato, the Warsaw Pact, more than three decades ago.

    Russia had been given verbal assurances in 1990 by George HW Bush’s administration that Nato would not expand militarily beyond the borders of what was then West Germany. Seven years later, President Bill Clinton signed the Nato-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations, which committed Russia and Nato not to treat each other “as adversaries”, while Nato reiterated that there would be no “additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces” in former Eastern bloc states.

    Every subsequent US administration has flagrantly broken both of these pledges, with Nato troops now stationed across eastern Europe. Perhaps not surprisingly, Moscow feels as menaced by Nato’s aggressive posturing, which serves to revive its Cold War fears, as Washington would if Russia placed military bases in Cuba and Mexico.

    No one should forget that the US was prepared to bring the world to the brink of armageddon in a nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union in 1962 to prevent Moscow from stationing nuclear missiles in Cuba.

    Historic alliance

    Despite the current clamour about the need for the US to maintain its “credibility”, Washington was in fact only being asked at the Geneva talks to start honouring, 30 years late, commitments it made long ago and has repeatedly violated.

    The latest flashpoint is Ukraine, Russia’s neighbour, which has been roiling since a coup in 2014 overthrew the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Moscow. The deeply divided country is split between those who want to prioritise their historic ties with Russia and those who want to be embraced by the European Union.

    Moscow – and a proportion of Ukrainians – believe Washington and Europe are exploiting the push for an economic pact to engineer Ukraine’s subordination to Nato security policies, directed against Russia. Such fears are not misplaced. Each of what were formerly Soviet states that became an EU member has also been recruited to Nato. In fact, since 2009 it has been an official requirement, through the Treaty of Lisbon, that EU member states align their security policies with Nato.

    Now US “credibility” apparently depends on its determination to bring Nato to Russia’s front door, via Ukraine.

    US perfidy

    Reporting on a working dinner with Russian diplomats last Sunday, before the Geneva meeting, Wendy Sherman, the US deputy secretary of state, recast that perfidy as the US stressing its commitment to “the freedom of sovereign nations to choose their own alliances”.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, is being widely made out to be the aggressor after he posted tens of thousands of troops at the border with Ukraine.

    One can argue whether those soldiers are massed for an invasion of Ukraine, as is being widely assumed in the western media, or as a show of force against a US-led Nato that believes it can do whatever it pleases in Russia’s backyard. Either way, a miscalculation by either side could prove disastrous.

    According to the New York Times, General Milley has warned the Russians that an invasion force would face a prolonged insurgency backed by US weaponry. There are reports that Stinger anti-aircraft missiles have already been delivered to Ukraine.

    Similarly, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, has threatened“confrontation and massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression on Ukraine”.

    Drumbeat of war

    This reckless way of projecting “credibility” – and thereby making confrontations and war more, not less, likely – is currently on show in relation to another nuclear-armed power, China. For many months, the Biden administration has been playing what looks like a game of chicken with Beijing over China’s continuing assertion of a right to use force against Taiwan, a self-governing island off the coast of China that Beijing claims as its territory.

    Few countries formally recognise Taiwan as a state, and nothing in relations between Taipei and China is settled. That includes heated disagreements over the division of airspace, with Taiwan – backed by the US – claiming that a whole chunk of southeast mainland China falls within its “defence zone”. That means the scaremongering headlines about record numbers of Chinese warplanes flying over Taiwan need to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

    The same disputes apply to China and Taiwan’s respective claims to territorial waters, with a similar potential for provocation. The pair’s conflicting views of what constitutes their security and sovereignty are a ready hair-trigger for war – and in circumstances where one party possesses a large nuclear arsenal.

    Nonetheless, the Biden administration has stomped into this long-simmering feud by feeding the media with alarmist headlines and security analysts with talking points about a possible US war with China over Taiwan. Top Pentagon officials have also stoked concerns of an imminent invasion of Taiwan by China.

    Diplomatically, President Biden snubbed his nose at Beijing by inviting Taiwan to attend his so-called “democracy summit” last month. The event further inflamed Chinese indignation by showing Taiwan and China in separate colours on a regional map.

    The CIA has announced the establishment of a new espionage centre with an exclusive focus on China. According to CIA director William Burns, it is necessary because the US is faced with “an increasingly adversarial Chinese government”. That “adversary”, however, poses no direct threat to US security – unless Washington chooses provocatively to bring Taiwan under its security umbrella.

    Washington’s drumbeat has been so constant that a recent poll showed more than half of Americans supported sending US troops to defend Taiwan.

    Nuclear hard line

    The picture is the same with Iran. US “credibility” is being cited as the reason why Washington needs to take a hard line against Tehran – goaded, as ever, by Israel – on its presumed ambitions to build a nuclear bomb.

    Israel, of course, has had its own large arsenal of nuclear weapons for decades – entirely unmonitored and in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Both the US and Israel fear Iran wants to level the nuclear playing field in the Middle East. Israel is determined to make sure that only it has the power to make nuclear-backed threats, either against others in the region or as leverage in Washington to get its way.

    President Barack Obama’s administration signed an agreement with Iran in 2015 placing strict limits on Tehran’s development of nuclear technology. In return, Washington lifted some of the most punishing sanctions on the country. Three years later, however, President Donald Trump reneged on the deal.

    Now Iran suffers the worst of both worlds. The US has again intensified the sanctions regime while demanding that Tehran renew the deal on worse terms – and with no promise, according to US Secretary of State Blinken, that the next US administration won’t tear up the agreement anyway.

    US “credibility” does not depend, it seems, on Washington being required to keep its word.

    In the background, as ever, is the threat of joint military reprisals from Israel and the US. In October, Biden reportedly asked his national security adviser to review Pentagon plans for a military strike if this one-sided “diplomatic process” failed. A month later, Israel approved $1.5bn for precisely such an eventuality.

    Drunk on power

    Washington’s emphasis on its “credibility” is actually a story the US elite tells itself and western publics to obscure the truth. What is really prized is America’s ability to enforce its economic interests and military superiority unchallenged across the globe.

    After the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the US overthrow of the elected government of Iran to reinstall its dictator-monarch, there is barely a corner of the planet where the US has not meddled. In Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and its so-called “backyard”, Latin America, US “credibility” has required interventions and war as an alternative to diplomacy.

    In October 2019, as Trump suggested that US troops would be pulled out of Syria – where they had no authorisation from the United Nations to be in the first place – Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and former head of the CIA, observed that the decision had “weakened the US” and “undercut our credibility in the world”.

    He added: “There isn’t an ally that we’ve around the world that doesn’t now distrust us and worry about whether or not we will stand by our word.”

    But this kind of credibility is built not on principle, on respecting others’ national sovereignty, or on peace-building, but on the gangsterism of a superpower drunk on its own power and its ability to intimidate and crush rivals.

    Washington’s “word” is only selectively kept, as its treatment of Russia and Iran highlight. And enforcement of its “credibility” – from breaking commitments to threatening war – has had a predictable effect: they have driven Washington’s “enemies” into an opposition camp out of necessity.

    The US has created a more menacing adversary, as Russia and China, two nuclear powers, have found a common purpose in asserting a countervailing pressure on Washington. Since the late summer, the two have held a series of war games and joint military exercises, each of them a first.

    The world is entering what looks like a new, even more complex cold war, in which any misunderstanding, mishap or false move could rapidly escalate into nuclear confrontation. If it happens, the pursuit of US “credibility” will have played a central part in the catastrophe.

    • First published in Middle East Eye

    The post Why Washington’s Focus on “Credibility” is a Recipe for War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Seyed Mohammad Marandi On The Iran Deal And The Assassination Of Soleimani

    World leaders have descended upon Austrian capital Vienna to participate in the ongoing nuclear deal being negotiated primarily between the United States and Iran. Today, MintPress spoke to Dr. Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran. Dr. Marandi is currently in Vienna as part of the Iranian delegation. While corporate media often portray Iran as a recalcitrant pariah and the United States as a long-suffering broker in the situation, Dr. Marandi notes that it was actually the Trump administration that unilaterally walked away from the agreement. Furthermore, President Barack Obama refused to live up to his promise to remove financial sanctions against Iran.

    The post Seyed Mohammad Marandi On The Iran Deal And The Assassination Of Soleimani appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iranian dissident Poet Baktash Abtin dies of Covid in arbitrary detention

    On 8 January 2022 the Iranian poet Baktash Abtin died in Tehran after contracting COVID-19 in Evin Prison. Abtin, who died after being put into an induced coma while hospitalized, is the second known political prisoner to die in Iran in the first week of 2022. On January 1, Kian Adelpour died after going on hunger strike to protest being imprisoned without a fair trial.

    “This is a preventable tragedy and more prisoners’ deaths are inevitable because there is no accountability in the Iranian government,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). “Abtin was imprisoned in Iran because the government wanted to muzzle him with a jail cell; the state killed him.” Abtin had been serving a five-year prison sentence on the charge of “assembly and collusion against national security.”

    A group of main NGOs had addressed a joint letter to Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei on 7 January repeating their call that Abtin be given access to the best possible medical care as he battles for his life. In addition, we urge that: he and all those unjustly detained for their writing or expression be immediately and unconditionally released; that authorities refrain from summoning political prisoners to serve their sentences while the conditions inside Evin and other Iranian prisons remain unsafe; and that any who do contract COVID-19 or other serious illnesses while in jail be granted speedy access to all needed medical care or a medical parole on humanitarian grounds.

    While offering condolences to Abtin’s family and friends, the Iranian Writers Association (IWA) where Abtin, 48, was a board member, released a statement on January 8 on the “injustice that was committed against Abtin”: “Baktash Abtin is alive because the spirit of freedom-seeking and the fight against tyranny and injustice is alive,” said the statement.

    Fellow IWA board member Reza Khandan Mahabadi was also sentenced to five years in prison and Keyvan Bajan to three years and six months. An international chorus has condemned the IWA writers’ imprisonment, with dozens of high-profile writers and artistic figures including Nobel laureates calling for the writers’ acquittal.

    At least 11 writers are known to be either currently imprisoned or living with an unserved prison sentence hanging over their heads in Iran as they await an appeal or to be summoned to jail, according to a list compiled by CHRI.

    In an interview with CHRI in May 2019 after his trial, Abtin forcefully said the charge of “assembly and collusion against national security” was for statements published by the IWA, articles in the organization’s internal newsletter, and holding memorial ceremonies for IWA members Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh, who were murdered in 1998 as part of a concerted state policy to eliminate political and cultural dissidents inside and outside of Iran.

    “Nowhere in the world is it necessary to get a permit to gather around someone’s grave,” Abtin told CHRI. “But that’s what we’ve been charged with.”

    Iranian Poet Baktash Abtin Dies After Being Arbitrarily Detained in Iran

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/07/joint-ngo-letter-khamenei-baktash-abtins-condition

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • As Iran Honors Qassem Soleimani, Ebrahim Raisi Demands That Trump Be Put On Trial

    Thousands of Iranians took to the streets on Monday, January 3 to observe the second anniversary of the assassination of major general Qassem Soleimani. The largest procession was taken out in his hometown in Kerman. Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi also addressed the nation on the occasion and demanded a fair trial of former US president Donald Trump and his associates for the assassination.

    The post As Iran Honors Qassem Soleimani, Ebrahim Raisi Demands That Trump Be Put On Trial appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Thousands Rally In Baghdad To Mark 2020 Killing Of Iran General

    Thousands of people have rallied in the Iraqi capital to mark the second anniversary of the killing of a revered Iranian commander and his Iraqi lieutenant in a drone attack by the United States. Chanting “Death to America”, the marchers filled a Baghdad square to honor Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the elite Revolutionary Guard, until his death on January 3, 2020. “US terrorism has to end”, read one sign at the rally by backers of the pro-Iranian Hashed, also known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a former paramilitary alliance that has been integrated into Iraq’s state security apparatus.

    The post Thousands Rally In Baghdad To Mark 2020 Killing Of Iran General appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.