Category: USA

A deal with Iran this week?

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By Jonathan Power
June 30th 2015.

According to the New York Times, “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on all public matters in Iran, last week demanded that most sanctions be lifted before Tehran has dismantled part of its nuclear infrastructure and before international inspectors verify that the country is beginning to meet its commitments.”

“US Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States was prepared to ease sanctions before it fully resolves what, exactly, Iran’s nuclear scientists have been working on in secret for more than a decade.

‘We’re not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what they did at one point in time or another,” Mr. Kerry said. “It’s critical to us to know that going forward, those activities have been stopped, and that we can account for that in a legitimate way.’”

So in the final days of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program – meant to have been concluded on Tuesday but Read More »

TFF PressInfo # 328 – With another approach, we would have a deal with Iran today

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By Jan Oberg

There could have been a deal with Iran today – to the benefit of everybody – if the nuclear issue had been approached in a fair, principled and visionary manner from Day One.

If there will be no deal later, one of the most important possible agreements in contemporary international history will have been lost, the risk of war will increase and the Iranians will suffer. And the United States and the EU (here France and Germany) will move further down in terms of relative global power and up in terms of self-isolation.

On the day of no deal, perhaps the Five Ps + Germany should spend a moment on self-reflection: What could we have done differently?

To the trained conflict- and peace-making eye, 99% of the Western commentators have failed to point out the benefits of a deal and, instead, devoted their creativity to find all kinds of possible negative aspects, details and – of course – on how the West should demand even more. They’ve suggested “red lines” at absurdum.

The fundamental a-symmetry of this whole conflict eludes them – or is conveniently left unmentioned.

At the table sit the five largest nuclear weapons powers which have, de facto and de jure, for decades completely and systematically ignored the provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, and have repeatedly broken international law and conducted wars. They would never allow the type of inspections on their own territory that they demand of Iran. The U.S. issues threats – and plan a war – Iran has never threatened the U.S. And so on and so forth.

Absent from every nuclear discussion is Israel and other nuclear-armed countries which, in contrast to Iran, are not members of the NPT and have a record of warfare and occupation.

Imagine a world in which we had seen negotiations, for real, about reducing the possession of nuclear weapons as a quid pro quo of proliferation – exactly as stated in the NPT.

Imagine that we had required Iran to abstain from getting nuclear weapons as a quid pro quo of a promise by the nuclear “haves” that they would reduce their arsenals. Indeed, imagine that the United States which is Second to None in putting up demands on everybody “or else … and all options remain on the table” had promised the world that it would do something too to further the accepted and UN-based goal of general and complete nuclear disarmament. Imagine the recent NPT Review conference had resulted in something decent in a world order perspective. Indeed, imagine some kind of mutuality, fairness, and equivalence in the whole approach.

The approach was wrong from Day One. It was built on military and structural power, not on intellectual power.

What stands between the parties is Read More »

TFF PressInfo # 326 – Outrageus attempt at killing a deal with Iran

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By Jan Oberg

Internal elite power games in Washington are now putting Middle Eastern and global stability and peace at stake.

Here is the latest attempt at killing a deal with Iran that, to the sensitive reader with a minimum of knowledge of foreign policy and of the Iranian civilization, is little but one long argument for warfare on Iran in nobody’s interest – certainly also not in the interest of the citizens of Israel. 

Is it just because it is summer time that intellectuals, media commentators and diplomats as well as friends and allies of the US conveniently keep generally silent at such irresponsible statements – and the many before it?

Don’t they understand that the nuclear issue as such – not proliferation but possession – is humanity’s most important and that Iran has been the object of revengeful harrassment since 1953 and punished for years for not having nuclear weapons?Read More »

The US’s wrong priorities on terrorism

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By Jonathan Power

Were the killings in the church in Charleston terrorism, meant to intimidate the black population of America? Of course they were. Moreover, they were a reflection of the still widespread white hatred for America’s first black president, Barack Obama.

Indeed, as the New York Times editorialized last week, “The main terrorist threat in the US is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. (Many of them anti-black.) Just ask the police”. The New York Times has studied 382 police forces and 74% reported extremism by whites. Severe Muslim extremism was only 3% of the total.

The number of violent plots carried out by international terrorists remains very low and most attempts were disrupted. ‘

Last year not one US citizen at home died from international terrorism.Read More »

Demands in US-Iran nuclear talks as political Kabuki theatre

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By Gareth Porter

In the final phase of the negotiations with Iran, the US-led international coalition is still seeking Iran’s agreement to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit any military facilities it deems suspicious and to interview a selected list of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Such measures are not necessary to ensure that Iran is adhering to its commitments under the agreement, but they are necessary to manage the political threat from the pro-Israel extremists in the Senate to sabotage the whole agreement.

To fend off that threat, the Obama administration made the spurious claim that it had succeeded in getting Iran to agree to the demand for IAEA inspection of any site it found suspicious. In fact, Iran had agreed only that IAEA would have “enhanced access through agreed procedures” – as reflected in the wording of the joint statement of the P5+1 and Iran on 2 April.

Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and senior military officials have vehemently ruled out both IAEA inspection of military sites on demand and interviews with Iranian scientists.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano claimed on 12 May that Iran’s acceptance of the Additional Protocol as part of a comprehensive nuclear deal meant that Iran had accepted inspections of its military sites on demand. “In many other countries from time to time we request access to military sites when we have the reason to, so why not Iran?” Amano said. “If we have a reason to request access, we will do so, and in principle Iran has to accept it.”

But that was a brazen misrepresentation of the Additional Protocol. That agreement allows unrestricted IAEA access to sites that have already been designated previously by state as related to the nuclear fuel cycle. For all other sites, IAEA access under the Additional Protocol clearly depends on the approval of the state in question. Article 5 (c) of the agreement, provides that, if the signatory state is “unable to provide such access,” it “shall make every effort to satisfy Agency requests without delay through other means”.

Now the New York Times has further muddied the waters by reporting on 31 May that the Iranian rejection of those demands had “prompted concern that Iran might be backtracking from understandings sketched out in earlier talks”.

The Times tries to support the US demand by asserting that “experts” say “wide-ranging inspections are needed to guard against cheating”. That is a reference to the argument that opponents of a nuclear deal with Iran have been making for years that Iran is likely to try a “sneakout” route to nuclear weapons, using covert supplies of enriched uranium or plutonium and a covert enrichment facility.

The main figure to make that argument isRead More »

America at its best is – strange

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By Richard Falk

America even at its best is a strange place, alive with contradictions, a Teflon political culture that has an unshakable faith in its innocent and virtuous national character and its overall impact on the world, impervious to the ghosts of slavery and of ethnic cleansing of native Americans that should be tormenting our sleep and darkening our dreams, comfortable with its robust gun culture, and with its promiscuous reliance on rogue drones engineered to kill on command and on the brutal happenings that take place in black sites immorally situated in countries whose leaders agree to avert their gaze from the dirty work taking place.

Looked at from a short distance this is not a pretty picture.

Yet there are still those rare moments when this unsavory national profile seems not to be telling the whole story. For instance, I felt heartened by a recent news item reporting that the conservative Nebraska Legislature voted to abolish capital punishment, and in doing so went so far as to override the governor’s veto. That’s right, Nebraska!

Unfortunately, the welcome Nebraska move may not survive the backlash in the making. The Republican state governor, Pete Ricketts, vows to overturn the new law: “My words cannot express how appalled I am that we have lost a critical law to protect law enforcement and Nebraska families.” He is supported in this lethal passion by a pro-capital punishment legislator Read More »

TFF PressInfo # 325 – Hur Västvärlden bröt sina löften till Ryssland

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Av Jonathan Power, TFF Associerad

TFF PressInfo # 325

Lund, 5 juni 2015

Man undrar om västvärlden förlorat sitt sinne för historia – såväl i fråga om Mellanöstern som om Östeuropa.

Jonathan Power, en av de mest respekterade kolumnisterna inom utrikespolitik – förr på International Herald Tribune, nu på ett konsortium av ledande tidningar i alla världsdelar – visar vägen genom NATO-ländernas förnekelser:

Att Bill Clinton 1994 beslöt att inte låtsas om de löften som Västs ledare i slutet av det kalla kriget gav sina sovjetiska/ryska kollegor.

Det var oetiskt och – som Power med viktiga hänvisningar hävdar – en politisk tabbe av historiska proportioner.

Hans berättelse förklarar varför Väst inte heller är oskyldigt i fråga om den aktuella Ukrainakrisen – i sin tur åstadkommen genom en annan tabbe: försöket att byta regim i Kiev och få in Ukraina i det kärnvapenbaserade NATO.

Blankt förnekande sin egen inblandning börjar politiskt korrekta västmedier, politiker och Natohöjdare lämpligt nog sin historia med att Ryssland annekterade Krim som en blixt från klar himmel.

Power säger: ≫Historien kommer inte att se välvilligt på NATOs farliga och kontraproduktiva utvidgning≪.

Jan Öberg

Rysslands Europablickande drömmare har räknat in Pusjkin, Lenin, Gorbatjov och, tills rätt nyligen, president Vladimir Putin. Alla har de sett sitt lands framtid som en del av ≫det europeiska huset≪.

Men historiens tilldragelser har inte varit nådiga mot Ryssland. Napoleons invasion, revolution, två världskrig, Stalins kommunism och – senast – Natos utvidgning; allt detta har krossat drömmen gång på gång.

I slutet av kalla kriget, i och med överenskommelsen om en grundstadga mellan Nato och Ryssland (Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation), såg det ut som om jättekliv mot detta mål togs. Till att börja med skulle Ryssland få säte vid NATOs bord, senare skulle de få komma med i NATO och ännu senare i Europeiska unionen. Somliga förutsåg att detta skulle inträffa inom en tioårsperiod, andra trodde på tjugo år.

Men sedan – pang! – sprack drömmen när president Bill Clinton, Read More »

Is the Middle East something America owns and can lose?

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By Richard Falk

I was appalled by the embedded colonialism of a recent issue of The Economist [June 6-12, 2015], boldly proclaiming its mood of geopolitical angst on its cover titling its featured story “Losing the Middle East.” Any glimmer of doubt about the intent of the magazine’s editors is removed by displaying a somewhat bedraggled American flag on the cover accompanied by the sub-title “Why American must not abandon the region.”

The rationale offered for this political imperative within this most revered journal of intelligent establishment guidance strikes me as even more appalling than this provocative packaging giving the plot away before we even begin reading the story.

What The Economist proposes

The argument set forth rests on the colonialist assumption that the Middle East is America’s to lose, although not quite, as the lead editorial ends with an enigmatic distinction:

“The idea has taken root that America no longer has what it takes to run the Middle East. That it ever could was an illusion. But America has a vital part to play. If it continues to stand back, everyone will be worse of — including the Americans.”

We are never told whether the catchall ‘everyone’ includes the people of the region,Read More »

TFF PressInfo # 325 – Breaking the promise to Russia

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By Jonathan Power

The Russian European dreamers have included Pushkin, Lenin, Gorbachev and, until relatively recently, President Vladimir Putin. They have all seen their country’s future as part of the “European house”. But history and events have not been kind to Russia. Napoleon’s invasion, revolution, two world wars, Stalin’s communism and, most recently, the expansion of NATO, have shattered the dream again and again.

At the end of the Cold War and with agreement on the NATO-Russia Founding Act it seemed that big steps towards that goal were being taken. First, Russia would have a seat at NATO’s table. Later it would join NATO. Later still, the European Union. Some said this would happen over ten years, others 20.

Then, smash, the dream came to an end as President Bill Clinton, bucking America’s academic foreign policy elite, decided to expand NATO’s membership to former members of the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact. George Kennan, America’s elder statesman on Russian issues, commented, “It shows so little understanding of Russian and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then the NATO expanders will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are – but this is just wrong.” He characterized it as the most dangerous foreign policy decision that the US had made since the end of the Second World War.

Defending Clinton and, later, George W. Bush and Barack Obama who continued the NATO expansion policy, their supporters have said that in expanding NATO eastward the West did not break its promise to Moscow not to.

But it did.Read More »