A Blog from David Crump
Dr. Trita Parsi is an American-Iranian scholar who always provides well-reasoned, cogent analysis on Iranian actions.
Dr. Parsi has written 3 books on Iran-US relations and is the cofounder of the Washington DC think-tank, The Quincy Institute for Responsible State-Craft. (The other founder is Col. Andrew Bacevich.)
Again, discover some level-headed analysis free of the common western-Israeli anti-Iranian hysteria.
On April 1st Israel bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, killing between 12 to 16 people (reports vary). At least 7 of those killed were Iranian military personnel. At least 1 of them, a high ranking general.
Embassies around the world are all considered the sovereign territory of the nation it represents. To attack an embassy is to attack the country.
Imagine the American response, or the Israeli response, if Iran had attacked
the American embassy in Israel, or the Israeli embassy in the US. You can bet your bottom dollar that this would be described as a flagrant act of war and a significant military response would soon
follow.
Yet, when Iran responds similarly Israel and the US describe Iran’s counter-attack as an uncalled-for act of aggression.
The UN Security Council censured Iran for its response. Yet, the same UN body failed to censure Israel for its previous attack against Iran. This is anything but even-handedness.
Given the rank hostility against Iran eminating from Israel and its western allies, let me mention a few facts about Iran’s attack that a westerner is unlikely to learn from the mainstream (or the Christian) media:
Below is an excerpt from a recent article by Scott Ritter, former Marine intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector. He offers a careful, informed analysis of this attack following Israel’s aggression against Iran.
The article is titled “The Missiles of April”:
I’ve been writing about Iran for more than two decades. In 2005, I made a trip to Iran to ascertain the “ground truth” about that nation, a truth which I then incorporated into a book, Target Iran, laying out the U.S.-Israeli collaboration to craft a justification for a military attack on Iran designed to bring down its theocratic government.
I followed this book up with another, Dealbreaker, in 2018, which brought this U.S.-Israeli effort up to date.
Back in November 2006, in an address to Columbia University’s School of International Relations, I underscored that the United States would never abandon my “good friend” Israel until, of course, we did. What could precipitate such an action, I asked?
I noted that Israel was a nation drunk of hubris and power, and unless the United States could find a way to remove the keys from the ignition of the bus Israel was navigating toward the abyss, we would not join Israel in its lemming-like suicidal journey.
The next year, in 2007, during an address to the American Jewish Committee, I pointed out that my criticism of Israel (which many in the audience took strong umbrage against) came from a place of concern for Israel’s future.
I underscored the reality that I had spent the better part of a decade trying to protect Israel from Iraqi missiles, both during my service in Desert Storm, where I played a role in the counter-SCUD missile campaign, and as a United Nations weapons inspector, where I worked with Israeli intelligence to make sure Iraq’s SCUD missiles were eliminated.
“The last thing I want to see,” I told the crowd, “is a scenario where Iranian missiles were impacting on the soil of Israel. But unless Israel changes course, this is the inevitable outcome of a policy driven more by arrogance than common sense.”
On Monday night, early Tuesday morning, April 13-14, my concerns were played out live before an international audience — Iranian missiles rained down on Israel, and there was nothing Israel could do to stop them.
You can read the entire article here.
Last week president Biden ordered more illegal airstrikes against Iraqi forces in Iraq and Syrian forces in Syria. The State Department issued a
statement (more on that below) declaring that the US was merely exercising “its right to self-defense,” echoing Israel’s favorite excuse for its illegal bombings in Gaza.
Let’s recall several crucial facts, however:
One, US military forces in both Iraq and Syria are in those countries illegally. Both are sovereign nations, whether or not we like their governments. Both governments have told the US, in no uncertain terms, that they wanted US troops OUT of their countries long ago.
Thus, we are in both countries as an illegal invading/occupying power. Under international law, such military forces have no right to “self-defense.”
We are the illegal aggressors. It is the Iraqis and Syrians who have every legal, moral right to defend themselves against the unwanted US forces that have outrageously installed themselves in their countries.
Two, Iran in a neighbor to both Iraq and Syria. The US is not. The Iraqi and Syrian governments are free to seek military assistance from anyone they choose.
Given the hostility directed against Iran by the US, and the close regional, strategic affinities linking Iraq and Syria to Iran, it is hardly surprising that local militias fighting against the unwanted US presence would seek and accept Iran’s assistance in their struggle.
That assistance does not constitute a threat against the US.
Keeping those simple facts in mind, Glenn Greenwald offers an excellent
analysis on Joe Biden’s war-mongering, which is actually a bipartisan, long-standing American practice.
It is not an accident that most of the people around the globe regularly say that the US poses THE greatest danger to the rest of the world.
Glenn’s article appears at SheerPost and is entitled, “Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria Only Serves the Weapons Industry Funding Both Parties.” Below is an excerpt (all emphases are mine):
U.S. citizens derive no benefit, but instead suffer great loss, from endless war in the Middle East. But their interests are irrelevant to decisions of bipartisan Washington.
For the second time in the five months since he was inaugurated, President Joe Biden on Sunday ordered a U.S. bombing raid on Syria, and for the first time, he also bombed Iraq. The rationale offered was the same as Biden’s first air attack in February: The U.S., in the words of Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “conducted defensive precision airstrikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region.” He added that “the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense.”
Embedded in this formulaic Pentagon statement is so much propaganda and so many euphemisms that, by itself, it reveals the fraudulent nature of what was done. To begin with, how can U.S. airstrikes carried out in Iraq and Syria be “defensive” in nature? How can they be an act of “self-defense?” Nobody suggests that the targets of the bombing campaign have the intent or the capability to strike the U.S. “homeland” itself. Neither Syria nor Iraq is a U.S. colony or American property, nor does the U.S. have any legal right to be fighting wars in either country, rendering the claim that its airstrikes were “defensive” and an “act of self-defense” to be inherently deceitful.
The Pentagon’s description of the people bombed by the U.S. — “Iran-backed militias groups” — is intended to obscure the reality. Biden did not bomb Iran or order Iranians to be bombed or killed. The targets of U.S. aggression were Iraqis in their own country, and Syrians in their own country. Only the U.S. war machine and its subservient media could possibly take seriously the Biden administration’s claim that the bombs they dropped on people in their own countries were “defensive” in nature. Invocation of Iran has no purpose other than to stimulate the emotional opposition to the government of that country among many Americans in the hope that visceral dislike of Iranian leaders will override the rational faculties that would immediately recognize the deceit and illegality embedded in the Pentagon’s arguments.
Beyond the propagandistic justification is the question of legality, though even to call it a question dignifies it beyond what it merits. There is no conceivable Congressional authorization — none, zero — to Biden’s dropping of bombs in Syria. Obama’s deployment of CIA operatives to Syria and years of the use of force to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad never had any Congressional approval of any kind, nor did Trump’s bombing of Assad’s forces (urged by Hillary Clinton, who wanted more), nor does Biden’s bombing campaign in Syria now. It was and is purely lawless, illegal. And the same is true of bombing Iraq. The 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq, which the House just last week voted to repeal, has long since ceased to provide any legal justification for ongoing U.S. troop presence and bombing campaigns in that country.
In its statement justifying the bombing raids, Biden’s Pentagon barely even bothered to pretend any of this is legal. It did not cite either the 2002 AUMF for Iraq or the 2001 AUMF authorizing the use of force against those responsible for 9/11 (a category which, manifestly, did not include Iran, Iraq or Syria). Instead, harkening back to the days of John Yoo and Dick Cheney, the Biden Defense Department claimed that “as a matter of international law, the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense,” and casually asserted that “as a matter of domestic law, the President took this action pursuant to his Article II authority to protect U.S. personnel in Iraq.”
Those claims are nothing short of a joke. Nobody seriously believes that Joe Biden has congressional authority to bomb Syria and Iraq, nor to bomb “Iranian-backed” forces of any kind. As The Daily Beast‘s long-time War on Terror reporter Spencer Ackerman put it on Sunday night, discussions of legality at this point are “parody” because when it comes to the U.S.’s Endless Wars in the name of the War on Terror, “we passed Lawful behind many many years ago. Authorization citations are just pretexts written by lawyers who need to pantomime at lawfulness. The U.S. presence in Syria is blatantly illegal. Such things never stop the U.S.”
That is exactly right. The U.S. government is a lawless entity. It violates the law, including its own Constitution, whenever it wants. The requirement that no wars be fought absent congressional authority is not some ancillary bureaucratic annoyance but was completely central to the design of the country. Article I, Section 8 could not be clearer: “The Congress shall have Power . . . to declare war.” Two months after I began writing about politics — back in December, 2005 — I wrote a long article compiling the arguments in the Federalist Papers which insisted that permitting the president unchecked powers to wage war . . .
The rest of the article appears here.
This past Monday evening, the Iraqi city of Erbil was hit by a rocket attack that
killed one US contractor and injured eight others, as well as one US service member.
Naturally, US spokespersons are up in arms threatening retaliation “at a time of our own choosing,” to quote the president. This has been a leading news story in the American press (see here, here, here, etc.)
The issue right now is that US officials have yet to identify the perpetrators.
Of course, their ignorance does not stop those same officials from pointing fingers at Iran (read the articles highlighted above). Naturally, no one in the American press has the courage to push back or ask questions like:
If you have evidence of Iran’s guilt show it to us. You have yet to produce anything.
It seems far too convenient for you to accuse Iran while you are also pressuring them to accept your unreasonable terms for reentering the JCPOA nuclear treaty.
Of course, Iran might be responsible. Or it might not. If it is responsible, the fact that president Trump assassinated Iran’s Commander of Iranian military
forces, Qassim Suleimani, certainly gives them good reason to strike back at the US.
Imagine how the US would respond if Iran launched a drone strike and assassinated the the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the leader of all US armed forces, on American soil. I don’t think I need to elaborate, except to point out that Iran has remained amazingly restrained.
On the other hand, the rocket may also have been launched by any one of a number of Iraqi militias.
The vast majority of the Iraqi people are Shia Muslims, as are the majority of Iranians. Most Iraqis have more reason to identify with Iranian opposition against the United States than they do to sympathize with America.
After all, the Iraqi government has repeatedly told US officials that they want American forces OUT of their country. Yet, the US continues to ignore these demands.
While there have been Iraqi protests against Iranian actions in Iraq, there have been far more popular protests against the American presence in Iraq. The people want the US out of their country just as much as the government does.
So, perhaps the recent rocket attack was the work of an Iraqi militia showing their displeasure with American forces remaining in their country?
This is an equally valid conjecture, perhaps even more so, yet American’s will
never hear about this possibility in US news coverage. No, Iran is the current US whipping boy. So, whether with evidence or without, Iran will continue to be demonized in the American press.
But that is only half of the story.
Another rocket attack occurred in Syria only a few days prior, but this attack received minimal coverage by the US press. More than that, US officials have not offered a word of condemnation because these missiles were launched from Israel.
Israeli sources report that nine pro-Syrian government personnel were killed. Syrian sources report that three Syrians and four Iranians were killed in the attack. And we must remember that whatever Iranian forces are fighting on the ground in Syria, they are in Syria at the government’s invitation to help Syria combat US aggression.
Actually, this was the third Israeli missile attack in ten days. How much US coverage did Israel’s offensive actions receive? Very little.
Attacking its neighbors is standard Israeli operating procedure.
Israel has bombed Syria for years, with impunity. Israel even boasts about its
bombing sprees. In fact the Chief of Staff of the Israeli forces, Aviv Kochabi, proudly admits, “We have struck over 500 targets this year (2021!) , on all fronts, in addition to multiple clandestine missions.”
The US never objects to these attacks because Israel shares the US goals of overthrowing the Syrian government. And both nations have black-balled Syria and Iran as dangerous enemies.
So, let me get this straight.
Israel can attack whomever it wants whenever it wants, with US support (and media silence).
The United States can continue forcefully to occupy whatever nation it wants for as long as it wants, despite the fact that both the national government and the majority of the population repeatedly demand that the US withdraw its forces.
However, Iran and Syria remain the “bad guys” who deserve to be punished — primarily for refusing to accept US/Israeli unilateral demands.
Meanwhile, any attack, no matter how small and ineffectual, against US (or Israeli) forces is decried as a horrible crime deserving the harshest punishment.
This is the Tale of Two Missile Attacks. One by Israel. The other by who knows who.
It is the story of American (and Israeli) Empire. It is ugly and unjust. It is a wicked abuse of power that ought to be condemned by every follower of Jesus Christ around the world.
Yet, the majority of America’s evangelical Christians will faithfully cheer on the bloodshed.
American historian and investigative journalist, Gareth Porter, has a new article discussing US relations with Iran at The GrayZone.
The title is, “Biden admin’s coercive Iran policy threats serious new regional crisis.”
Below is an excerpt, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above.
In case anyone was worried about the new Democratic administration getting serious about peace and fair-mindedness in the Middle East, have no fear. Biden is here!
The Biden administration continues the good old fashioned saber rattling and bullying tactics that have made US gunboat diplomacy famous around the world.
Although all US intelligence agencies confirm that Iran was always in full compliance with the terms of the (JCPOA) nuclear treaty, president Trump unilaterally torpedoed the treaty anyway.
Trump then imposed additional economic sanctions on Iran. Why? Because Trump’s evangelical base believes anything and everything the Israeli government says about its neighbor-states.
Israel hates Iran. So, evangelicals hate Iran. Thus, Trump black-balled Iran, despite its innocence.
After WE withdrew unilaterally for no good reason, any reasonable person could be forgiven for assuming that the US should apologize for its petulance, reenter the treaty, and THEN talk with Iran about how we will move forward.
But, no. The USA never apologizes and must always be the dominant, authoritative player.
Thus, America’s bipartisan instincts for war-mongering and gunboat diplomacy are just too strong for this Democratic administration to resist. So, once again, Israeli demands for regional hegemony dictate Biden’s strategy for Iran.
And don’t forget: Israel has a large nuclear arsenal with warheads targeted on major Iranian cities. Israel also assassinates Iranian scientists willy nilly, bombs Iranian facilities inside the country, and kills Iranian soldiers in Syria (who are there at Syrian invitation).
Have no fear, Biden will remain as irrational as Trump. Here is the promised excerpt:
A close analysis of recent statements by members of President Joseph Biden’s foreign policy team indicates his administration has already signaled its intention to treat negotiations with Iran as an exercise in diplomatic coercion aimed at forcing major new concessions extending well beyond the 2015 nuclear agreement. The policy could trigger a renewed US-Iran crisis as serious as any provocation engineered by the Trump administration.
Although the Biden team is claiming that it is ready to bring the United States back into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) if Iran comes into full compliance first, it is actually planning to demand that Iran give up its main source of political leverage. Thus, it will require Iran to cease its uranium enrichment to 20 percent and give up its accumulated stockpile of uranium already enriched to that level before the United States has withdrawn the economic sanctions that are now illegal under the JCPOA deal.
Meanwhile, the Biden team is planning to hold on to what it apparently sees as its “Trump card”— the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran oil exports that have gutted the Iranian economy.
But the Biden strategy faces a serious problem: Iran has already demanded all sanctions imposed after the JCPOA took effect must be ended before Iran would return to compliance. Iran expects the United States, as the party which initially broke the agreement, to come into compliance first.
The Biden administration is banking on a scenario in which Iran agrees to cease its enrichment to 20% and reverse other major concessions Iran made as part of the 2015 agreement.
The Biden team then states it would start a new set of negotiations with Iran, in which the United States would use its leverage to pressure Iran into extending the timeline of its major commitments under the deal. Further, Tehran will be required to accept a modification in its missile program, as European allies have urged.
The Biden team’s Iran strategy was not hastily cobbled together just before inauguration. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan outlined it in an interview last June with Jon Alterman, the Middle East program direct at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You can get some early wins on the nuclear program but tie long-term sanctions relief to progress on both [nuclear and other issues] files,” Sullivan explained.
