No understanding in the White House of what might come next
President Donald Trump
makes a point of insisting that he has nothing against the Iranian
people and is only interested in opposing what he regards as the
dangerous activities of their government, but his own record in office
belies that claim. It is clear that what he is trying to do is put
pressure on the people of Iran to rise up and force a change in
government, a process otherwise referred to as regime change. Indeed, if
one is to believe Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani, the White House is now committed to “bring down the Iranian regime.” He added that
“The collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran is around the corner.”
Giuliani was
addressing a Paris meeting of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
at the end of June, the political front group for the terrorist
Mujahideen-e-Khalq, for which he has been a frequent paid speaker. This
dream of an abrupt transition in government is a fantasy project that is
widely held within neoconservative and pro-Israel circles in
Washington, to include Giuliani, and it very often is invoked as part of
what is sometimes referred to as the “Obama betrayal,” which posits
that if President Barack Obama had actively supported
so-called “green” reformers in the Iranian election of 2013, they might
have actually won. That supposition greatly inflates the actual support
for the reformers at that time and also currently, confusing a largely
civil rights movement with a unified political party.
Obama then went
on to sign the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear
agreement with Iran, which has been a target of joint Israeli and neocon
wrath ever since. Trump, of course, has risen to the bait and has
withdrawn the United States from the deal, also reintroducing both
general and targeted sanctions as well as seeking to ban the sale of
Iranian oil worldwide.
Unfortunately, as is so often the case, Trump and his advisers, certainly to include National Security Adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Senior Adviser for Policy Stephen Miller,
are engaging in the wrong tactics to bring about any what might
reasonably be regarded positive changes to moderate the grip of Iran’s
Supreme Religious Council and are instead hardening domestic popular
support for the government through the threats and sanctions which
ultimately accomplish little more than punishing the Iranian people.
Oddly, the White
House seems unaware of the fact that Iran is neither Libya nor Iraq. It
has a strong and historic national identity that means that it does and
will resist being bullied by outside powers, including the “leader of
the free world” United States. The neocon and pro-Israel script that has
evidently taken control of Trump pushes all the wrong buttons as it
basically employs an increasing number and severity of sanctions to seek
to wreck the economy and create discord in Iran that will eventually
bring people out into the streets in large numbers. That means in
practice using not only sanctions that selectively targeting “bad guys”
like the Revolutionary Guards but also benign institutions that exist to
maintain social stability inside the country.
Reports from
inside Iran suggest that the renewed and additional sanctions are
already hurting the Iranian people while at the same time having little
impact on the government commitment to remain in Syria, which is the
principal bone of contention at the moment vis-à-vis the joint
U.S./Israeli/Saudi grossly exaggerated and self-serving assessment of
what Iran may or may not be doing to destabilize the Middle East.
Two organizations
which have recently come under sustained attack by the neocons and
their allies are the “Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order” (EIKO) and its
associated Barakat Foundation. The EIKO’s principal mission is to help poor families in Iran and to perform other charitable works, but it has been assailed as a major economic resource controlled by the Supreme Religious Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s office, which misrepresents how the foundation is organized and functions.
Leading the charge against EIKO, inevitably, has been renowned neocon Canadian import and Iranophobe Mark Dubowitz,
Chief Executive of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD),
who has described how the Iranian leadership controls a vast business empire which must be targeted with U.S. sanctions to punish the government and strip it of the resources available to make mischief.
This campaign, spearheaded by Dubowitz and his associate Saeed Ghasseminejad, has been going on since Trump was elected, with the folks at FDD confident they had a friend in the White House.
Other outlets in
the pro-neocon-inclined and friendly to Israel media have also picked
up on the theme that Iran must be the target of what amounts to economic
warfare. The National Interest recently ran an article
advocating the imposition of oil sanctions on Iran in general while
also targeting EIKO in particular in order to “change Iran’s behavior,”
which is presumed by the authors to be very bad though without any real
explanation of why that is so.
And the U.S.
Congress is also in on the act. As is nearly always the case, the U.S.
House of Representative’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s
subcommittee on National Security sought expert testimony on how to
punish Iran but only looked for speakers who were inclined to take a
hard line. They received that kind of enlightenment from the FDD’s own Richard Goldberg, who is hardly a disinterested observer on the subject.
Goldberg begins
by making his case for bipartisan ire directed against Tehran, gushing
about how “[he] had the privilege to work with many talented people –
Democrats and Republicans – who shared a passion for keeping America and
our allies safe from the long list of threats posed by the Islamic
Republic of Iran. Together, we put forward numerous bipartisan bills to
increase the pressure on Iran. …It is my sincere hope that we can find a
way to resuscitate the bipartisan spirit that once infused this
important national security issue.”
Goldberg, who is
a bit vague on exactly what kind of “long list of threats” Iran
represents, was senior foreign policy adviser to Israel-firster hawk
former Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois. He celebrates in his FDD bio
how “[he] was instrumental in the deployment of a U.S. missile defense
radar to the Negev Desert – the first-ever full-time deployment of U.S.
forces in Israel. In the Senate, Rich emerged as a leading architect of
the toughest sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was
the lead Republican negotiator for three rounds of sanctions targeting
the Central Bank of Iran, the SWIFT financial messaging service and
entire sectors of the Iranian economy.”
There has been some pushback against the war-by-sanctions approach currently being advanced by the Trump Administration. Robert Fontina of Counterpunch
has rejected the depiction of EIKO as anything but a charitable
foundation. The truth is that EIKO engages in major social projects,
including rural poverty alleviation, empowering women, home and school
building, and provision of healthcare. American sanctions against it and
similar entities hit ordinary Iranians’ lives by producing food
insecurity while also restricting the supplies of needed medications. Ahmad Noroozi of the Barakat Foundation claims that numerous Iranians
have already been affected by U.S.-initiated sanctions directed against
his country, restricting access to cancer treatments and other
pharmaceuticals. And it is all aimed at fomenting social unrest and
ultimately regime change.
Iranian writer Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich,
no friend of the Iranian government, has declared that American
sanctions directed against the Iranian economy and people are little
more than “sanctioned terrorism.” Her assessment is undeniably correct.
It is indeed
disturbing that the abandonment of the rule of law by the Trump
Administration and its allies in the media has meant that Washington is
resorting more and more to sanctions as an extreme form of punishment in
order to enforce its geopolitical demands. Countries that oppose
Washington’s policies are now routinely subjected to financial and trade
penalties. Cuba, North Korea, and Iran have recently been joined by
Russia and Syria as targets of the U.S. Treasury Department. Even
America’s European allies and friends are being threatened if they seek to buy Iranian oil or cooperate with Russian energy initiatives.
The sad fact is
that the pretense of U.S. global leadership now consists of a basket of
new “rules” that are both arbitrary and basically illegal supported by
pretexts that are essentially fabricated. Consider the frequent
fallacious designation of Iran as “the world’s biggest state sponsor of
terrorism” and the repeated false assertions from U.S. and Israeli
government sources that Tehran is secretly building a nuclear bomb.
Trump has become effectively the mouthpiece of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, with the latter calling the shots. Shortly after Trump had announced American withdrawal from JCPOA, Israel mounted
a series of deadly air strikes against Syria, specifically targeting
Iranian military personnel present by invitation in the country to fight
ISIS and other terrorist groups. It was an incident that could have
rapidly escalated into a broader war, which was clearly the Israeli
intention.
There are deadly
consequences to following the Israeli and Saudi lead into a possible
major war with Iran. If sanctions produce desperation inside Iran, an
apparent breakdown in order could easily invite a hypocritical U.S. and
Israeli “humanitarian” intervention, possibly escalating into an
international conflict, something that the White House appears to not
understand. As is often the case, the Trump Administration has not
developed sufficient maturity to appreciate that if one pushes hard
against a certain country or group of countries there will be an equally
strong reaction, and the results might not be pretty. Punishing the
Iranian people without any real understanding of what might emerge in
pursuit of nebulous political objectives just might not be a good idea.
*
This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Philip M. Giraldi,
Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a
501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more
interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Dr. Giraldi is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Philip Giraldi, Global Research, 2018