The USA and Iran: cautious or reckless, war or peace?

Honestly this is a bit sickening, the guy was in showbiz, he at least knows when someone is brown nosing him, he can't possibly believe that he "is a unique character capable of the impossible" or that the Sheikhs love him for his personality, I really hope he's just selling them words, letting them think they bought him with gold medals and then laughs all the way to the bank, at least that's smart politics.

This "administration" doesn't care about human rights, because it is a long term investment, it doesn't give any kind of immediate gratification for someone who isn't thinking of building something, they want spoils of war now and think that's how they get it, they gave Saudi Arabia a lifeline when it was in tatters, they were being outdone in the civilized race and didn't have anything but checkbooks to wave around for strategy and proxy wars, he just gave them a claim and cause.

As was widely reported before his announcement, the President has refused to (re-) certify the USA's commitment to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA], also known as the Iranian Nuclear Deal, which means that Congress will have to make the decision where the expectation is that it will maintain the USA's current position. In international terms, the announcement means nothing as the USA is a signatory to the JCPOA and supported Security Council Resolution 2231 and cannot unilaterally walk away from the agreement, though clearly if the President wants to make a fool of himself that is his problem, for example, calling the JCPOA 'the worst deal ever negotiated' which merely underlines his pathetic ignorance of history.

The simple fact is that the President's own staff believe what he chooses not to, that Iran has abided by the terms of the agreement, and even in Israel where Benjamin Netanyahu has vigorously encouraged his mate in the White House to scrap it, his view is not shared by Israeli Generals and Mossad who also recognise Iran's fidelity to the agreement.

On the negative side the decision raises questions about the USA as a trustworthy partner in international agreements, if this President is going to scrap them or walk away from them not because of any intrinsic flaw in them, but simply because the agreements were signed by President Obama.

Perhaps the key to all this is not policy at all, but the manipulation of headlines and tweets that are aimed at the President's voter base, where he makes a public statement that appears to claim a decision has been made that fulfills a campaign promise when the reality is that instead of negotiating with Congress, the President makes his announcement, then leaves it up to Congress to either endorse or reject it. If they endorse it (and so far they have not) it is because they are on his side, if not then it proves how rotten they are.
A good example of this deliberate lying was provided by Mike Huckabeee who tweeted

@POTUS keeps promise & pushes back on Iran deal that should never have been made. Appeasement no longer US policy.

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) October 13, 2017

even though 'the promise' has not been kept, but it appears the truth is of no importance anymore, and the President and his supporters can say anything they like to prove they are winning.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stavros

As was widely reported before his announcement, the President has refused to (re-) certify the USA's commitment to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA], also known as the Iranian Nuclear Deal, which means that Congress will have to make the decision where the expectation is that it will maintain the USA's current position. In international terms, the announcement means nothing as the USA is a signatory to the JCPOA and supported Security Council Resolution 2231 and cannot unilaterally walk away from the agreement, though clearly if the President wants to make a fool of himself that is his problem, for example, calling the JCPOA 'the worst deal ever negotiated' which merely underlines his pathetic ignorance of history.
.

---

I understand that the U.S cannot walk away from an international treaty we are a signatory to, but if the United States fails to comply with the terms of it Iran will have no incentive to comply. If Congress decides to reinstate sanctions on Iran, I can't imagine why Iran would not enrich Uranium.

All credible sources say that Iran has not violated the agreement. If Trump's just grandstanding it's a dangerous game because it looks like bad faith which could encourage a breach from Iran and if he's not, then I can't think of a better way to ensure the outcome the jcpoa was intended to avoid.

Edit: let me state I don't think Congress will reinstate sanctions. I agree that this damages the credibility and reduces the negotiating power of the U.S.

Although I think you are right about Congress, I think there are some wider issues at stake here. The first is that we have a President who used to have people flowing in and out of his New York apartment, and then the White House 'offering' advice to someone they know has no experience of political office and is so ignorant of world affairs they believe he can be swayed to their point of view. General Kelly has put a stop to that with the consequence the President feels imprisoned, yet cannot be controlled at 5am when he belts out his crazy tweets, or goes off-script in public gatherings. One gets the impression that to him the Presidency is either a game show, or that it goes down best with his core voters if he treats it as if it were a game show, with its neatly sectioned dramas and taglines.

The problem with Iran is that it is hardly an innocent in the Middle East, and that while there is a well-educated urban population who could easily live in Paris, London or LA, the religious elite in the Guardian Council believe Khomeini's legacy must be preserved at all costs, and rely on the conservative social attitudes in rural Iran to support them, and in terms of attitudes they are not so far apart from the people who voted for Roy Moore in Alabama. On the other hand, it was as clear as day that when Saddam Hussein and the Sunni minority in control of Iraq were removed from power, that this would provide the Shi'a in Iraq with a natural majority, that this would benefit Iran, and that the 'balance of power' in the Middle East would at least be challenged, if not changed, for while the Shi'a are not and will never be a majority across the region (even less so if one includes North Africa), it would put more pressure on Saudi Arabia to take the role once played by Egypt, even though history shows Egypt in the long term took the Middle East in the wrong direction, just as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is driving Saudi Arabia into a brick wall.

The US, by backing Saudi Arabia against Iran, is confirming the existence of an anti-Iranian Saudi-Israel alliance, which is only going to be temporary, but is a fair reflection of how things have changed since the Iraq war. In the 1980s when the Reagan administration sold AWACs to Saudi Arabia, Israel went berserk, as it usually does, rhetorically at least, seeing it as a strategic threat to Israel. Today, Saudi Arabia has long range missiles capable of striking all major targets in Israel, and has paid Pakistan for a nuclear bomb, maybe more than one, should the need arise, while quietly developing its own nuclear capability. In any other time, this would be a crisis for Israel and its allies in the US Congress would be putting a lot of pressure on the White House to change its policy or at least take some steps to stop this as best they can.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/saudi-...from-pakistan/

If you want to know why this has not caused a storm of protest, consider the amount of money that the President has made from the Saudis and their compliant brothers in the Gulf (he has made no secret of this), the arms sale that was agreed with the brutal, un-elected dictatorship earlier this year- with who knows how much paid in bribes?- and Israel's temporary support for the anti-Iranian alliance, which also includes the attempt to bankrupt Qatar.
At the same time the President describes Iran as a 'dictatorship', which it clearly is not, the crimes he accuses Iran of can all be documented in Saudi Arabia, from public executions, to overt and covert support for Islamic extremists in Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan to name just three places, and the explicitly anti-Jewish literature which Saudi Arabia provides to state-funded Madrasas across the Sunni world.

The issue of nuclear weapons is important, because they are so dangerous, but the same fears that people had over their development in Pakistan and India, namely that they would be used, has in fact been replaced by the more worrying lack of control on the spread of nuclear technology as an export strategy, a role Pakistan played in the development of North Korea's programme at one stage. It also begs the question why Israel can possess the weapons Iran must not. If deterrence works, then possessing nuclear weapons reduces the threat of attack. One notes, in addition, that the reason why India has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is that the NPT only allows the development of a nuclear capability in five states, so that by definition, signing the NPT would require India to relinquish its nuclear arsenal. Compare the international agreement that limits Iran's ability to grow its nuclear capabilities with the right of external inspection and reports, with the lies that Israel tells about its own capability, and the lengths it goes to to pretend it does not have such weapons.

Hypocrisy is, I suppose, a staple feature of international relations, and there aren't that many good guys out there, but when a President stakes out a position simply to spite the man who preceded him in the White House, threatening delicate relations and agreements with no real thought as to the long-term consequences for his own country, you wonder what would happen if MMKT were not there to restrain this bombastic fool. Either way, this President has already caused damage to the reputation of the USA, and it only remains to be seen how much lower he can go, having already re-drawn the boundaries of personal behaviour and policy risks.

Aside from appealing to his support base, I think a key motivator for Trump is that he can't bear to back down after taking a strong position on something, no matter how flimsy the basis for that position. A prime example is Obamacare, which must be destroyed because Trump has said it is a terrible thing, even though it's clear that millions would lose health insurance as a result.

We need to stop this insane war all the time. Get out of the 2 we are in for the last 18 years, and stop going to war.The children born when we first invaded Iraq, are old enough to join themselves in the same war their fathers were in and maybe died in. Our nation has become the bully of the world. Spending trillions on war and no money for Medicaid, Medicare and single pay health care. GOD what an insane moral compass. Infastructure is falling apart, bridges are crumbleing, and we are looking at war 3.0?

In the last week dramatic developments have been taking place that suggest Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz (CPM) is entering a new stage in his plan to re-shape the dictatorship he presides over (given he is King in all but name) as well as the wider Middle East. One can accept that in Saudi terms, allowing women to drive is a radical bombshell moment, and that might tell you what reform looks like, but little else about what CPM thinks 'reform' might become, and let's just say political parties and democracy are not part of the plan.

The drama took place on two fronts, with the arrest of 201 people, around 11 of them wealthy Princes (of which there are thousands, owing to Abdul Aziz ibn Saud -quite apart from his brothers, having had over 40 wives and concubines and Allah Only Knows how many offspring) the rest being senior officials, the claim being that collectively they have defrauded the Kingdom of over $100 Billion in various ways though we have yet to be told how much was paid out in bribes sanctioned by CPM to secure the latest arms deal with the USA, given that we know Bribes are endemic in the system and that they were used to lubricate the al-Yamama deal the British signed in the 1980s.

More dramatic still was the sudden departure of the Lebanese Prime Minister, Saad Hariri to Saudi Arabia on the 3rd of November. A dual Lebanese and Saudi citizen (the Hariri family took Saudi citizenship to make the best of their lucrative real estate business in the Kingdom, Saad himself is worth around $1.5 Billion), Hariri arrived in Riyadh without the customary welcome party, but instead had his mobile phone taken away, while he went to the family home from where he issued his public statement resigning as Prime Minister and where he still 'lives' though the Saudis claim he is free to leave anytime he wants to.

Following Saudi Arabia's attempt to isolate Qatar, this latest move is seen by some as taking the confrontation with Iran a dangerous step further. The problem for CPM is that Saudi Arabia got involved in the Syrian civil war, and lost, and if you see this as a zero-sum game, what Saudi Arabia lost, Iran through its support for al-Asad won. When it realised it was losing the war in Syria, the Kingdom abandoned its Syrian proxies to wage war in the Yemen,where it is clear so far it has achieved nothing positive but has created a massive internal refugee crisis in the country, with the attendant problems of disease and starvation that go with it. Given that Saudi Arabia wherever it goes -37 years and trillions of $$ has not secured Afghanistan- it loses, one wonders what victory in Lebanon looks like when it happens, given there is no victory in the Yemen and that this crazy country looks set to remain a ruin for many years to come.

The aim must be to 'smash' Hezbollah, or in some way to weaken it, much as the Israelis tried to do with the PLO in Lebanon in the 1980s, removing it from Lebanon but merely shifting it somewhere else and in the long term signing a peace treaty with them. Israel and the USA are on board with CPM, as both have their own reasons for taking on the Iranians, though yet again one wonders what will be achieved. An Israeli General has claimed that after the mess they got into in 2006, their military can now do in Lebanon in hours what they struggled to do in weeks, but what does this mean?
Is Israel with Saudi and American backing going to wipe out Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Beirut? How, and with what level of casualties? What happens to the governance of Lebanon if half of its democratically elected MPs have been killed with the country returned to the bomb-site it was in the civil war? And, even if there was some 'precision strike' on Hezbollah's military capability, Iran will replace it, free of charge. But I guess, as with some of these strikes, it will 'send a message' to Iran, a message that will get through, but may result in Iran retaliating in a grisly fashion, as it has done in the past, Lockerbie being the retaliation for the USS Vincennes blowing up Iran Airflight 655.

So far the US President has been a dog barking in the White House. He hasn't bitten anyone yet. But with CPM at one end of the lead pulling him on, backed by Middle East 'expert' Jared Kushner, determined to 'make things happen' in the Middle East, is this Saudi gambler about to drag the USA into another ditch in the Middle Eastern wars it will struggle to get out of? The last time the Americans got involved in Lebanon, 241 'peacekeepers' were blown to kingdom come -that's a lot of phone calls, Mr President.

And if the confrontation with Iran becomes a confrontation with Russia as the guarantor of Syria -and if Syria, why not Lebanon (the Russian naval base is an hour's sail down the coast)?

Some of us think they are all barking -mad. But we don't make policy. Scary times.

Some reports here-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...uption-inquiry
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/1...060742360.html

Re-reading the posts in this thread I am surprised at how harsh I was with alreik, and should offer an apology as we did indeed often agree if not on some details. The year that has since passed has seen the US withdraw its support for the Iran Nuclear Deal and to re-impose the sanctions that were lifted in 2015.

It is too early to say how the sanctions on petroleum exports will affect Iran when they begin in November 2018. We have been here before. But when Iran nationalized its petroleum industry in 1951, sanctions were devastating to the economy because it was the only significant industry Iran had, and because the international market for oil was smaller than it is today, and because in a world economy in which China and the USSR was mostly absent, Iran was isolated. Today the market is larger, the opportunity to beat sanctions much easier (as South Africa showed in the 1980s and Iraq in the 1990s), and Iran has friends in Russia and China that may enable Iran to find the new sanctions easier to live with.

The Coup in 1953 that deposed the government of Mohamed Musadeq was mounted by the armed forces backed heavily by the US through the CIA ad its slush funds (on one occasion as the Tehran press noted, a suitcase full of dollars delivered to an opposition group by Norman Schwarzkpt, Sr, father of Gulf War 'hero' 'Stormin' Norman). Its primary agent, Kermit Roosevelt had successfully exploited economic hardship in Iran to pay agents provocateurs to mount or disrupt demonstrations for and against the government, often with extreme violence, though there is still some debate over the discontent with Musadeq and why people who had once supported him did not fight back when the Shah was enabled to return to Iran (he bolted to Switzerland when the Coup began just in case it failed) and impose autocratic rule.

John Bolton, who has claimed recently that regime change is not US policy, has in fact been advocating it for years, and as someone who will have read up on Iran, appears to believe that as with Iraq, routing protest through domestic opposition groups such as the MeK will with sanctions weaken the theocracy and at least begin the 'countdown' to precisely the regime change he claims the US does not want. Unlike the plan for Iraq, and instead of a direct bombing campaign, he may think that as with the USSR, a nudge to the domestic scene from outside and the house of cards will tumble, the Mullahs will go back to the Mosques, and a US friendly government will emerge in Tehran to link hands and dance.

Bolton's links to the MeK with its history of murdering Americans is in the link below, and if he claims they have changed, well the Muslim Brotherhood has changed over the years too, but is still considered a terrorist group by its critics in the US and Israel.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-...he-white-house

Chaos may indeed become more common in Iran as the people become frustrated with their economic situation, but I doubt that those same Iranians will thank the US for whatever happens next, and if there is chaos, it means a higher oil price, which is good for Saudi Arabia and the domestic US producers (but not consumers, as if Bolton cared about them!) while a weaker Iran would be, in theory at least, a benefit to Saudi Arabia and Israel and make any nuclear development that much slower and more expensive.

Bolton is controversial because of his style, an abrasive indifference to diplomacy informed by the kind of America Alone thinking that he has found congenial in the President and vice versa. Bolton was part of the Bush administration that argued the US should never concede an inch in any international situation, and who was relentlessly unforgiving of Iran even when, as happened after 9/11, Iran publicly supported the US and gave it key co-ordinates of Taliban positions in Afghanistan at the same time the Pakistan government was giving it co-ordinates of the USA's allies, the 'Northern Alliance'.
Far from thanking Iran, which also gave the US info on al-Qaeda movements in Iran and its 'protection' of members of Osama Bin Laden's family there (which would also have reached the US through spies in Tehran), Bolton said:
Iran must get down on their knees and thank us for getting rid of their enemy-
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...hatami&f=false

Bolton's philosophical view can be summed up simply in the form French fascist Marine le Pen put it: he is a 'Patriot' not a 'Globalist', indeed for Bolton anything multi-lateral is the problem:

The blunt-spoken Bolton is a Yale-trained expert in international law who has spent a career seeking, ironically, to delegitimize the very idea of international law, and of multilateral action and organizations...
militant libertarian thinker who has believed passionately that the United States has surrendered its sovereignty for far too long to multilateral treaties and organizations of all kinds, including the United Nations. In articles and speeches, he has gone so far as to question whether “globalism” or international law have any legitimacy under the U.S. Constitution. In a 2000 essay in the Chicago Journal of International Law titled “Should We Take Global Governance Seriously?” Bolton cast the U.S. political debate as a clash between two “parties” — what he called the “Americanists” versus the “Globalists” — and that he, as a “convinced Americanist,” was engaged in a losing battle for America’s very soul. “Americanists find themselves surrounded by small armies of Globalists, each tightly clutching a favorite new treaty or multilateralist proposal,” Bolton wrote.
Bolton then proceeded to attack nearly every major multilateral convention, including the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming, the Land Mines Convention in Ottawa and the International Criminal Court. Over the years, he also has taken on the Biological Weapons Convention and the World Trade Organization, among other multilateral treaties, and continues to do so. Trump’s new unilateral trade tariffs against China will likely meet with his incoming national security adviser’s approval.
In what has since become his mantra, Bolton wrote back then that globalism “represents a kind of worldwide cartelization of governments and interest groups,” and “the costs to the United States — reduced constitutional autonomy, impaired popular sovereignty, reduction of our international power, and limitations on our domestic and foreign policy options and solutions — are far too great.” This puts him at odds with the 70-odd year consensus that has guided U.S. foreign policy since World War II: that a world of rule-based cooperation rather than atavistic competition is ultimately in American interests, too.
https://www.politico.eu/article/trum...mcmaster-anti/

So whatever happens next, it appears that policy in Iran is in the hands of people convinced that diplomacy does not work, and that if the US wants to achieve its objectives, it must and can disregard all and any international agreements it has signed or agreed to.

But will this confrontation with Iraq produce what the US thinks it desires? Iran has never allowed itself to be beaten down without exacting its own version of revenge, often in a bloody fashion. Obama proved the US can achieve good relations with Iran through precisely the diplomacy Bolton rejects, but can Bolton produce a 'liberated' Iran that will be American's friend again? Though I cannot say, my pessimistic self suggests we are taking not one, but two, or even three steps backwards on Iran, and that is not good for anyone.

The attack in south-western Iran over the weekend is a worrying sign that a coalition of the USA, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel is increasing the pressure on Iran to the extent that by attacking the Islamic Republic in this manner they expect -may even hope- that Iran will retaliate in kind. Such an escalation would prove that Iran cannot be trusted and in turn increase the prospect of some kind of military confrontation, although Israeli and US Generals may be holding the President back because in reality there is no military solution to the 'problem' of Iran, which is its Islamic government with, as the President claims, regional ambitions to be the dominant power. That Saudi Arabia claims this is not something the Americans will challenge as long as they are paying.

Moreover, it comes in the week that the President of the USA will address the General Assembly of the UN in a speech in which he is expected to issue incendiary threats to Iran much as he did to North Korea in his previous visit. That the Iran Nuclear Deal was endorsed by the Security Council of the UN would suggest that if the US was bothered by it, a request that the Security Council to review the agreement would have been the most obvious next step, but the President holds the UN in contempt and has by-passed the premier source of international law to make a unilateral decision.

It is most likely that the President is being advised by John Bolton, but particularly Jared Kushner via his links in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and that the short-term aim is to put pressure on Iran to withdraw its forces in Syria as well as its support for proxy forces fighting there. The attack in Ahwaz makes this less likely but that might be to the advantage of the Americans as they point out how 'dangerous' the Iranian presence is to the whole region.

Sanctions against companies trading in Iran's oil and gas come into effect in November though the EU has mechanisms to neutralize them, they may be effective and be an additional reason for Iran to retaliate, though when where and against whom we cannot know.

The attack in Ahvaz was claimed by ISIL but also a local group called Al-Ahvazia (this is Farsi, as the Arab name for the town is actually Ahwaz) which may be linked to another group called the Ahvaz National Resistance Group, and a third called the Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz. Of interest is that while the Iranians claim these groups are funded by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, aka 'US backed regimes', President Rouhani has said that the local militias were a left-over of Iranian Arabs previously funded by Saddam Hussein. The armed gang that seized the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980 claimed to be members of the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan, an Iraqi label for the Khuzestan province of south-western Iran in which the weekend attack took place. The London siege took place but months before Iraq invaded Iran to initiate a fabulously expensive and strategically futile war that resulted in no transfer of territory but which did bleed dry the treasuries of Iran and Iraq leading the latter to invade Kuwait in 1990 in a desperate attempt to seize Kuwait's oil fields.

In other words, encouraged by Saudi Arabia and Israel, the President of the USA is being led, like the ignorant donkey that he is, into an escalation of tension with Iran just as his personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani has called in public for regime change in Tehran as he has done before, just as this odious little creep who will never lose any sleep for supporting the terrorist MeK movement that has slaughtered so many Americans, just as the President is so besotted with Saudi money he doesn't care how many friends and relatives of the 9/11 Hi-Jackers come and go from the USA.

Expect lots of heated rhetoric and, at some point, more dead bodies.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east...hani-/1262614#
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/...134648290.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...crushing-ahvaz

So in the end it was just the usual hypocrisy from the President of the USA. Without making the kind of threats I expected one can argue that in the roll call of Middle Eastern killers, Iran got top billing, while the others, the UAE, Qatar (still isolated without US support as it is pressured by) Saudi Arabia don't just get a free pass, but praise!

On the one hand you have the simple fact that the popular rebellion against the Ba'ath government of Bashar al-Asad in 2011 deepened into a civil war in which Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE all played a direct role through funding and arms imports, before abandoing the rebels to a cruel fate, while the unelected butchers of the Saudi Kingdom turned their violence on the Yemen even as the hypocrite claimed

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have pledged billions of dollars to aid the people of Syria and Yemen. And they are pursuing multiple avenues to ending Yemen’s horrible, horrific civil war.
https://www.vox.com/2018/9/25/179010...eech-full-text

That Saudi Arabia has been, and still is hammering the Yemen with bombs and starvation unveils the cynical indifference to the truth to which the President of the USA is addicted.

On the other hand, the President has benefited personally from Saudi Arabia in terms of millions of dollars, while his son-in-law has had his business interests in New York City saved from oblivion by Qatar and un-documented sums from the UAE.

Had Iran been a source of financial benefit to the President it would not be in the crosshairs of his vanity gun, as it is they are because the President judges foreign counties by their finanial contributions to his personal bank account(s), rather than in the interests of the USA. So maybe that is why Russia, direclty involved in the murder of thousands of Syrians and the displacement of millions more, also gets a free pass.

The best things in life are free, and one day this man will pay for his lies.