Tag: Palestine

President Trump,  has now  officially pulled the United States out of the Iran  nuclear deal , officially known  as the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA) 

Negotiated via U.N.  auspices, the Iran deal limited Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium and thus limit any potential  for Iran to develop  nuclear weapons;  something it has always said is has not intended  nor planned to  do. UN inspections prove that  Iran has indeed complied with  the JCPOA in  full  since its inception in 2015. The deal  in no way  prohibits Iran’s develop  of missile technology,  which would be seen by  any state as a   sovereign  right to protect  itself from  aggressors.

And Iran has many threatening states  to protect  itself from. These include Israel, who  sees Iran  as its major  spoiler to the  ongoing expansion of Israeli  territory  in  the Middle East;  particularly  because of Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, who  roundly  defeated  Israel in its last  attempt to  occupy Lebanon in   2006 . Then  there is Saudi Arabia,  the despotic regime which  pretends to be a ‘monarchy” who  actively supports protects and funds the Salafist terrorists  across the Middle East  and beyond.  Salafists believe that  all  other Islamic and other religious  beliefs   other than  their own  are ‘heretical”, and therefore those people who  hold such beliefs need to be either forcibly converted or disposed of. Hence the  millions of Shiite peoples of Iran   and its Shi-ite theocracy are anathema to  the Saudi  ‘princes’. Iran is a  large country of over 80  million people,  and while its economy has been made vulnerable by  years of U.S. and other Western countries sanctions, it has managed to develop a wide range of responses to those sanctions,  and particularly  a  home grown defence industry.

Iran is therefore not  significantly vulnerable to  attack  by  Saudi Arabia ,  despite S.A.s huge defence spending ($76 billion in 2017 – third  highest in  the world after the U.S.  and China) ,  as opposed to Iran’s approximately $14 billion), largely because of its very  effective home grown  ballistic missile systems. (it is always amusing to note that U.S. military ‘specialists  always attribute this or that countries’  home grown  military capabilities to some other country – implying in some way  that the specific  country does not have the  technology ,  research  capability and technical know-how that  only  the great and exceptional  U.S.  has!)

And finally,   Iran’s perhaps most significant threat  comes from  the United States,  who has desperately tried to destabilize Iran’s theocracy  in  every  way  possible way since its inception in  1979, after overthrowing the U.S.  and and U.K. installed  despot, the ‘Shah’  of Iran .

The U.K.  has also  played a supporting role to the U.S.  since 1953 in supporting the salafist regimes in the Persian Gulf  and encouraging the export of  Saudi  and Qatari  jihadist  terrorists to  Middle East  states  which  are not active supporters of Western colonialism or Israeli  expansionism.

Thus the latest  move by  the Trump administration to  undermine the U.N.  JCPOA agreement  and threaten sanctions against  countries  and companies that do  not comply with its renewed sanctions against  Iran, is simply part of the ongoing war  by the United States against  Iran that had its inception in  the overthrow of its  brutal dictator ,  the Shah.

The drivers for this  ongoing  war against  Iran are  largely economic:  primarily  re-acquisition of the huge Iranian  oil  market  by  American oil  companies  will  buffer the U.S.  against  the imminent collapse of the local  shale oil  market, whilst  ensuring that Iranian owned oil  and gas is not pipe-lined through to  Europe and Turkey.

However the other major U.S.   impetus for Iranian destabilisation and overthrow of its  independent theocracy is the role of Israel  and its Zionist  lobbyists in  Washington.  Now that Saudi Arabia has been bought into  the Zionist  fold and accepts  the Israeli   theft of Palestinian  lands since 1948 as legitimate, there is only Iran  as a significant power player in  the Middle East  who is  able to  confront Israeli  expansionism.  A tame Iranian regime that supported both  Israel  and  U.S.  colonial policy in  the Middle East  would mean Chinese and Russian commercial and strategic   ambitions  there could be thwarted, and  U.S.  and U.K.  (and to  a smaller degree, French) companies could make billions exploiting the region. With  the truly psychopathic John Bolton now  as Trumps defence advisor, drooling for war  with Iran, and Israel’s Netanyahu frothing at  the mouth for the U.S.  to bomb Iran, all  options are truly on  the table.

While Iran does not have an  effective airforce, due to the  long-standing sanctions against it; it’s ballistic missile  capacity is  indeed formidable,  although largely deprecated by  U.S.  defence analysts . Should the U.S. launch  an attack on  Iran’s infrastructure, as it has continually threatened to do  over the years, the U.S.  would undoubtedly be able to , over time,  obliterate much of Tehran  and  its  key urban  centres as it has done in North Korea,  Vietnam Libya and Iraq in  the past, along  with the consequent  huge suffering and civilian casualties  that  entails. However in  the first  days and weeks of such  a war, Iran’s  widely  dispersed military units, and particularly its missile and anti-ship  units, will  be able to  inflict  massive damage on  U.S.  military bases and aircraft  carriers in  the Gulf because of their close proximity to Iran. An ongoing guerilla war against  U.S.   economic and military  interests in  the Middle East   could well  last  for years. In  comparison  to  the U.S.  war against  Iraq,  Iran’s military capabilities cannot be under-rated as American  defence  analysts  are wont to do  in  their arrogance. This would not be the  “cake-walk” that  the neocons pretended the Iraqi  invasion would be!

Should Israel  also enter the war,  as it has often promised to,  then Tel Aviv is now  well  within  missile striking distance by  Iran’s  Lebanese allies.  Hezbollah.

One would hope that  the crazies like Netanyahu  and John Bolton will  finally be locked away  somewhere safe for the rest of humanity’s sake ,  and the fools like Donald Trump  fade into  quiet  oblivion,  but sadly it seems , that may not be the case…

Links

The Deep State First – Madness On Both Ends of the Acela Corridor

How Hezbollah Defeated Israel

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/05/countdown-to-war-on-iran.html