DISCLOSURE: Sourced from Russian government funded media
Feature image: The road to hell is paved with good intentions
by Salman Rafi Sheikh, with New Eastern Outlook, Moscow, and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a research institution for the study of the countries and cultures of Asia and North Africa.
[ Editor’s Note: We had been expecting to see the usual spin from the usual suspects, pitching a scenario of doom and gloom with the new ‘conservative’ Iranian president Raisani. But as usual, all of that was to blow smoke to hide the past and future nefarious intentions of Western malevolent actors. It is a complex and multilevel game.
This whole idea of renegotiating a deal showed a flagrant breach of trust with Iran, one it will remember, aka, the West’s agreement on anything is not worth squat.
At I type, the JCPOA agreement, for those that are still in it, is marching toward its tenth anniversary when the whole thing comes up for renewal anyway. All the parties know that, but for some reason I have NEVER seen it mentioned in corporate media. Please correct me in the comments if I missed something.
The US has already broken the deal and it recently admitted that even if it signed a new one, it could not guarantee that a new president would not bail out of it. So that begs the question of what is the point of having an agreement that is just a pretend one, a palliative for the various publics that reason rules, when it obviously does not?
So we have the US and NATO wanting to restrict Iran’s retaliatory and defensive weapons, where that just screams “we insist on having an easy shot at you for a first strike, for any scenario we choose”. Why would any country in its right mind agree to such nonsense?
And then we have the elephant in the living room who has been attacking Iran when and if it chooses, which Israel has admitted to now, and neither the US, EU, nor NATO objects, what could possibly entice Iran into playing along with making itself an easier target?
In fact, with all of the hard wired duplicity going on between Israel and the West against Iran, the latter really only has one path toward ensuring its long term security, and that is via having nuclear weapons as a retaliatory defense. That worked between the US and Soviet Union until more rational times came.
The West’s position that it’s OK for Israel not only to have nukes, but also OK to threaten using them whenever it wants for whatever reason, I would pose that that is a very ‘destabilizing’ position which is a major threat to the future, and piss poor strategic diplomacy.
Israel can be controlled overnight with a full sanctions lockdown, without a shot being fired, letting it enjoy the Gaza and West Bank lockdown for a while.
I am not the only one to see this. We have a world full of pretenders, with the Trumpster ‘The Steal’ grifters now holding the Olympic gold medal. But right behind that comes the NATO/West fake presentation of itself as interested in ‘regional security’.
If that were true then step number one would be to rein in the Israeli terrorists, and then the rest of the problem could be solved through diplomacy after dismantling the Israeli international terror network.
The problem has never been Iran. It has been the dog beaten by the West since the CIA coup, where the usual puppet was installed and then the country asset stripped… Jim W. Dean ]
Jim's Editor’s Notes are solely crowdfunded via PayPal
Jim's work includes research, field trips, Heritage TV Legacy archiving & more. Thanks for helping. Click to donate >>
First published … June 26, 2021
While the election of Ebrahim Raisi, who is known as a “hardliner” and “conservative” as opposed to the “moderate” Raisani, as Iran’s president could make a compromise difficult in the on-going negotiations between the US and Iran for reviving the JCPOA, the election of Raisi has also added a new variable of fear to the equation that could alter the whole landscape negatively for the talks to even proceed meaningfully.
The reason for failure, if it happens, will not merely be the presence of a so-called “conservative” president in Iran, but mainly the fear in the US of dealing with a “conservative”, who is largely portrayed as a “human rights abuser” in the US.
Iran has been under US sanctions since 2019; hence, the question: how will dealing with someone like Ebrahim fare politically for the Biden administration, especially when the Republicans are already putting a lot of pressure on Biden for being “soft” on Iran?
What adds to the problem for the Biden administration is Israel’s continuing opposition to JCPOA and its tendency, completely regardless of who rules Iran, to sabotage talks through targeted military attacks inside Iran, which could amount to a declaration of war.
Former president Donald Trump recently said that the Biden administration “cravenly lifted sanctions” on Iran in a “shameful and embarrassing manner.” Mounting Republican criticism on Biden has already led him to refuse to fulfil a core Iranian demand for lifting all sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
“Religious zealots run the place,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina complained this week. “The idea of going back into negotiations with the ayatollah and his henchmen is insane”, he added, stressing his party’s opposition to deal making.
Political actors in the US continue to oppose a revival of the JCPOA, let alone a new deal, despite the fact that Raisi pledged in his very first news conference post-elections that Iran’s “foreign policy does not start by the nuclear deal and it will not be limited to the nuclear deal.
We will pursue interaction with the whole world and all the world states under broad and balanced interaction in foreign policy, and only those negotiations which ensure national interests are definitely supported”, adding that Iran will “tell the US that it is duty-bound to lift all sanctions and that it should return and implement its undertakings.”
However, according to John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Advisers and one of the chief opponents of the JCPOA said:
“If Biden gives it away [accepts Iran’s demands for lifting sanctions] he will virtually guarantee that the sanctions will collapse, and ultimately Iran will get nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them both on Europe and on the United States.”
In March, 140 members of the House of Representatives, 70 from each party, joined a letter urging that any deal with Iran must not only extend the nuclear agreement beyond 2030 and address other US concerns, but must also include Iran’s ballistic missile program and curb its intervention in other countries i.e., in Syria, which Israel sees plays a vital role for Iran to keep Hezbollah armed.
As is evident, it is the very idea of lifting all sanctions imposed by the Trump administration and simply revive the JCPOA without adding new aspects of Iran’s military and foreign policies that has a certain political cost for the Biden administration, as it is not the Republicans but the mainstream US media, too, which is largely toeing the same line of argument.
In a recent report, the New York Times called Ebrahim an uncompromising “ultraconservative”, who not only harbours ambitions with regards to making Iran a regional power ladened with ballistic missiles, if not nuclear weapons, in the near future, but has also termed Iran’s ballistic missile programme “non-negotiable.”
A particular type of portrayal that Raisi is being given in the US is going to create more difficulties for the Biden administration, which has been promising to not only revive the JCPOA, but also include non-nuclear issues in the ‘new’ deal too. What Raisi’s stance shows is that, while JCPOA could be revived, the prospects for an altogether new deal are very grim, if not absolutely diminished.
What, however, is going to make things worse for the revival of JCPOA is not simply the rise of Raisi in Iran, who still very largely favours the revival of JCPOA, or the political opposition within the US, but the position that Israel will take vis-à-vis Iran’s new leadership and the revival of JCPOA short of addressing Iran’s ballistic missile programme or its presence in Syria.
Israel, being currently led by its own right-wing political leadership, is most likely to raise the temperature through its own targeted attacks both inside Iran and in Syria to sabotage the process. Its major manifestation came only yesterday (June 23, 2021) when a centrifuge facility was targeted in Iran.
While no country or group has claimed the attack, it is a well known fact that the site was on the list of targets Israeli leadership had presented to President Trump early last year. Among the targets presented at the time, according to senior US intelligence official, were attacks on the uranium enrichment site at Natanz and the assassination of Mr. Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist.
Israel reportedly assassinated Fakhrizadeh that November, and struck the Natanz plant the following April, damaging a large number of centrifuges. The latest attack is a continuation of the same policy that the Trump administration had sanctioned, and which the Biden administration has not been able to change.
At the same time, the new Israeli right-wing government has already started taking steps to prepare for an armed conflict with Iran. Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, in view of the presence of a “hardliner” president in Tehran, recently ordered some units of the Israeli Defence Forces to accelerate preparations for a conflict with Iran. Meanwhile, during his visit to the US, Kochavi did highlight the state of Israel’s continuing opposition to the revival of JCPOA.
It is obvious that the real threat to the prospects of the revival of the JCPOA does not come from Iran or its new “conservative” president, but from within the US, and compounded by Joe Biden’s inability to reconcile his administration’s strategic objectives in the Middle East with a deal (the JCPOA) that he himself had helped make and finalise as Obama’s vice-President in 2015.
For the Biden administration, the question is not simply about overcoming the “hardliners” in Iran; rather it is about overcoming “hardliners” in both the US and Israel.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Jim W. Dean is VT Editor Emeritus. He was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022. He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews. He now writes and posts periodically for VT.
ATTENTION READERS
We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully InformedIn fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion.
About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy
Jim, if you were head-man-in-charge, and had the power to implement your plan for resolving the problem in the ME, I think you would go a long way in bringing peace and stability.
You named it. Iran is not the problem!
Iran’s religion is not the problem!
There are multimillions of Muslims in many countries around the world, but we never hear about them being a major destabilizing factor, at least not internationally.
We all know what and who the problem is, but due to their piratical cutthroat nature, and money-power, plus espionage and governmental infiltration, the whole world seems important to bring the line bad actor to heel who keeps the world in a state of turmoil over their phony-ass victimhood and misplaced claims on someone else’s land.
“world seems IMPOTENT,”
not “important”
stupid “smart” phone
And one more thing; if the duped Christians who think they are doing what Jesus would do by supporting the evil designs and ambitions of “the synagogue of Satan, (that’s what Jesus called them), if the misled Christians ever wake up and realize that by supporting “Israel,” they are supporting anti-Christian satanists, then the Zionist project will be over.
One consolation: when it comes to “National” claims over territory, possession is as they say, nine tenths of the law.
So: even if the Israelis have established their territory using evil tactics and means, never the less, they are where they are by the will and grace of God.
But probably not just how they think it.
Israel is the factor that makes solving problems impossible.
“Please correct me in the comments if I missed something.” The only thing you missed, Jim, is that there’s no way the JCPOA will ever be revived because almost half of the Congress, the ReTrumplicans, are against any nuclear deal with Iran. They’re also against dropping the onerous sanctions which are becoming obsolete anyway because of Iran’s trading relations with China and Russia. They couldn’t care less what Biden does or doesn’t do at this point. He has no leverage with them and he knows it. He’s just going through the motions until the next horrible false-flag event, blamed on Iran, drives us into WWIII and the end of the USA as we know it. That’s what the crazy Trumpsters have wanted all along.
If they stiff Iran then it certainly has a backup plan. It might join Israel to make the ‘we don’t acknowledge our nuclear program’ group to TWO. Tensions in the Mideast willthen go up when Biden has committed to pulling out of there as part of the shifting of military assets toward China. Either way, the US can whine all it wants about a rouge Iran, but that will open the door to why the US has no problem working with rogue countries that serve its interests, like getting asset stripped or to be used as cannon fodder in the next war. There is no win for the ‘United States of Sanctions”, not for the folks any way. As for the grifters, they always tend to live well.
Comments are closed.