Archive | Iran RSS feed for this section

A Remembrance of Jimmy Carter

3 Jan

[Prefatory Note: A recollection of my only meeting with the former president at the Carter Center, a minor event, although in the context of repeated mistakes by the ‘political realists’ who continue to shape American foreign policy, perhaps of some interest. The pessimistic note is that the economic hardships imposed on the Iranian people since the fall of the Shah may have been inevitable so long as imperial geopolitics and predatory capitalism dominate the Washington mindscape, and currently to threaten dangerous regional warfare in the Middle East.]

In 1981 or 1982 I was invited to a small human rights meeting at the Carter Centerin Atlanta. It was in the aftermath of the Iran hostage crisis that is blamed for Carter’s loss, Reagan’s win in 1980. The Carters somehow knew that I had previously supported their daughter, Amy, who was an activist against the Vietnam War. It is solong ago I cannot remember the exact context, whether it was a matter of political support or somehow connected with a legal proceeding associated with civil disobedience. Whatever the past, Rosalynn Carter apparently to show their appreciation seated me next to President Carter at a formal conference dinner despite their being more distinguished guests present.

I sheepishly did what I was told and took the opportunity to talk with the ex-president about the situation in Iran. I had been in Iran accompanying Ramsey Clark, the former American Attorney General who had become a leading progressive voice after leaving government and someone sympathetic with the Iran movement against the Shah. While in Iran in early 1979 in a period dramatized by the Shah’s departure from the country, we were frequently asked about Carter’s New Year’s toast to the Shah in 1977: “An island of stability” surrounded by “the admiration and love which your people give to you.” Ensuing events proved how wrong were these sentiments, but that is a longer different story of mass disenchantment that has been frequently told.

During our visit to Iran, we had met with numerous prominent Iranian officials, Islamic leaders, and ordinary citizens. We also met with the American ambassador in Tehran, William Sullivan, who was a hawkish diplomat during the Vietnam Era. Reacting to the anti-Shah movement, Sullivan was clear about the fact that the Shah’s 1979 abdication a few days before our meeting with Sullivan who felt that the Shah’s departure was  an inevitable development given the play of forces in Iran by that time, including the army’s abandonment of the Shah’s government by then. Sullivan hoped that the US Government would accept the outcome, and normalize relations with the new leadership, but reported being blocked by hardline National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was following the pro-Shah diehard diplomacy rather than accommodating approach recommended by the Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, a conservative realist, a somewhat aristocratic acquaintance of mine, yet seemingly free from the compulsions of the geopolitically oriented deep state that guided US foreign policy from its undercover sites during the Cold War, and beyond. We should be aware that the Shah was perceived as a major strategic asset in the Middle East, what Henry Kissinger described “as the rarest of things, and unconditional ally.’

During the hostage crisis that started on November 4, 1979 I had been asked to accompany Andrew Young to negotiate the release of the hostages after Ayatollah Khomeini had let it be known that he would welcome an Afro-American negotiator to arrange a diplomatic solutions. The trip was vetoed by Brzezinski. I recall the somewhat bitter, but likely discerning, comment by the head of the State Department’s Iran Desk at the time: “Brzezinski would rather see all the hostage dead than have Andrew Young get credit for their release.” This senior civil servant favored the Young mission, and Young was willing to go, but only if he received a green light from the White House, which never came, we never went, and the rest is history still in the making.

After some pleasantries at the dinner about the Carter Center and the conference, I gathered my courage and asked Carter why he followed Brzezinski policy advice rather than Vance’s counsel, and he gave a short, yet talked further but it was evident that Carter had no deeper reasons to cling to a lost cause, unsatisfactory answer: “Because he was loyal to me.” Nothing more, nothing less. I reflected at the time that Carter would probably have been hosting a state dinner at the White House and being hailed as a peace minded statesman rather than having this tense chat about the low point of his presidency with a brash stranger at his Center.  

The Road Not Taken

We do not know what would have ensued in Iran or the Middle East had the Vance view prevailed, and the US fully respected the exercise of the right of self-determination by the Iranian people. The political sequel to the overthrow of the Pahlavi monarchy was not clearly prescribed in advance. It might have led to a more democratic version of the Islamic Republic had it not been immediately threatened by internal enemies linked to foreign states in the region. With bad memories of the 1953 anti-Mossadegh coup, facilitated by the CIA, it is hardly surprising that Iran theocratic hard liners took command of the government, especially given the internal and regional challenges mounted against Iranian developments of 1978-79.’ What might have been’ could serve, even belatedly, as a signpost to ‘what should have been’ and more hopefully,  ‘to what will be in the future.’ More soberly, imperial geopolitics and neoliberal capitalism have displayed a willingness to potentially radical enactments of the right of self-determination, and as Kurt Vonnugut vainly tried to teach us, “and so it goes.”    

Tags: , , , ,

Palestine, Iran, and Populist Resistance: The Limits of Law, Morality, and the UN

3 May

[Prefatory Note: An interview with the Qods News Agency (Qodsna), the first specialized news agency in Iran, focusing on issues related to the Palestinian cause. The interview was published a week ago in Iran, and is reprinted in modified form that seeks to take account of the Palestinian struggle as connected with wider regional and global conflict patterns, and is giving rise to worldwidestudent protests against genocide and complicity with genocide, as well as a tidal wave of global consciousness sweeping away the cobwebs of political and moral complacency.]

  1. Given the fact that Israel has killed over 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, and prevented the entry of international humanitarian aid into the besieged strip, what is your opinion on nearly 200 days of onslaught in Gaza and its aftermath on Palestinians’ lives? How do you describe the genocidal onslaught and war crimes in Gaza?

What has taken place over the last 200 days in Gaza is the most transparent genocide in all of human history. It is the first time that the daily atrocities were broadcast and seen by the peoples of the world in real time. Past genocides have been known almost totally in retrospect through official reports, films and memoirs, which reconstruct horrifying events but after a passage of time. Those Palestinians who managed to survive physically such sustained violence of this extreme character are reported to be suffering from mental disabilities that could persist for their entire life. It is a tragic, dehumanizing ordeal, above all for children. It is further shocking that Israel should remain insulated from denunciation and accountability despite its continuing practice of such extreme criminality.

Genocide should be understood to exist from three quite distinct moral, political, and legal perspectives. The moral perspective is made clear in Gaza by the declared intentions, policies, and practices of Israel’s highest leaders, and carried out in a totally disproportionate, indiscriminate, and lawless manner, and aggravated by consistently sadistic and demeaning treatment of Palestinian civilians who fall under the control of the Israeli armed forces. The political perspective is established in Gaza by numerous trustworthy witnesses and victims, as well as by vivid visual evidence of genocide in line of justifications adopted by Israel and its supporters. Yet the political assurances about the commission of genocide is vulnerable, as here, to the be overridden by geopolitical considerations and strategic calculations. The legal perspective relies on the presentation of evidence and interpretations of international law, above all by the delineation of genocide in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). Provisional conclusions as to international law can be derived from the opinions of legal experts holding important professional positions. For instance, the current UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine, Francesca Albanese issued an excellent report in March 25, 2024 entitled ‘Anatomy of a Genocide’ [A/HRC/55/73]that carefully analyzed the elements of the crime and concluded that the facts and law supported the allegation of genocide. And yet until a qualified national or international tribunal with jurisdictional authority to assess the charge of genocide examines the evidence and hears the arguments of the defendant government or political actor it is impossible to say with technical propriety that the behavior in question is genocide from a legal perspective.

2-How can the world public put pressure on governments to force Israel to stop atrocities in Gaza?

It has proven difficult to challenge Israel effectively at the UN and elsewhere. Powerful countries in the Global West are complicit in supporting Israel’s policies and practices, including Israel’s misleading claim that it possesses an unlimited right to defend itself in response to the Hamas attack of October 7. The liberal democracies of Western Europe and North America are prominent among governments lending varieties of support to Israel that extends to endorsing Israel’s gross distortions of facts and law, which has had a detrimental effect on the authority of international law and the UN. The US above all has been guilty of double standards, using international law as a policy instrument to attack its adversaries such as Russia and China and disregarding its relevance with respect to the behavior of allies and friends such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and India.

It is important to also understand the more passive complicity of Israel’s main Sunni Arab neighbors that fear challenges from Hamas-type Islamic movements more than intrusions on their autocratic stability associated with the establishment of Israel or post-colonial intrusions by Western powers. It was a surprise to many in the West that the governments of Jordan and Saudi Arabia cooperated in defending Israel on April 13 against the Iranian retaliation for Israel’s April 1st attack on its Syrian consular facility, killing two of its top military advisors. This pattern of regime politics in the Arab world does not reflect the outlook of the population in these countries, which shares a strong affinity with the Palestinian struggle and is often oriented with Islamic leadership of populist, protest Arab politics as was evident during and after the Arab Spring.

South Africa has been applauded widely for taking the initiative to bring allegations of genocide to the International Court of Justice under Article XI of the Genocide Convention that legally empowers any party to the treaty to bring a dispute with another party before the ICJ. Although the ICJ rose above politics by rendering an historically important, near unanimous interim decision granting several of South Africa’s requests for Provisional Measures on January 26, 2024. Unfortunately, this preliminary ICJ order had little behavioral effect as Israel defied the interim obligatory adjustments in Gaza pending a subsequent decision on whether the allegation of genocide has been legally established after fully weighing pro and con arguments.

Israeli defiance and US dismissive attitude toward the authority of the ICJ given its view of Israeli violence in Gaza fully exposed ‘a UN crisis of implementation’ of great significance. Given Israel’s refusal to comply meant that any effort to enforce the ICJ Interim Orders would depend on action by the Security Council, which would almost certainly be vetoed by the United States. Additionally, an ICJ decision on the merits with respect to genocide must await comprehensive oral arguments and written pleadings, as well as the time needed by the judges to do their own inquiries, a legal process that would not be completed for several years, which would likely be after present emergency conditions in Gaza had been resolved for better or worse.

Nevertheless, the ICJ Interim Order was an impressive vindication of international law and a legitimating demonstration of the legal professionalism and political independence of the Court. It has also had an authenticating impact on the governments of the Global South and even more worldwide in relation to civil society, including even in the United States and other complicit countries where the surge of student pro-Palestinian protest activism cannot be wholly disconnected from the authoritative findings of the ICJ disregard in policy by Washington almost as much as by Tel Aviv. Whether this pressure will remain robust enough to result in coercive actions by way of boycotts and sanctions, and pariah status, remains to be seen, but at minimum it suggests that even in this unfavorable political setting international law and populist activism offer some hope that genocide can be stopped and its perpetrators held accountable, if not formally, then by the action of peoples around the world.   

3-What do you think about Palestinian resistance fighters’ right to initiate the October 7 operation against Israel?

The right of resistance on the part of a people long occupied and abused is well established. Prior to October 7, Israel’s commission of the crime of apartheid in its manner of governing the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian minority in Israel had been documented in detailed reports by several of the most respected human rights NGOs including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, as well as by the Israeli NGO, B’tselem, and by UN’s ESCWA.

While the right to resist is certainly justified by the conditions imposed over the long period of occupation, which featured Israeli failure to uphold its duty as Occupying Power to protect Palestinian civilians under its control, it does not confer unlimited rights of resistance. Tactics of resistance, as for other armed groups including those operating under the authority of a sovereign state, are obliged to comply with international criminal law, and not abuse or target civilians, impose collective punishment, and commit atrocities. Yet unlike the apartheid and genocide allegations against Israel, there is as yet no authoritative account of what happened on October 7. There were, at first, luridly exaggerated claims of barbarous behavior reported to the world by Israel, but later modified by retractions and much skepticism about Israel’s depiction of events on that day. Until an international factfinding commission is established and given full cooperation there will be doubt about the extent to which the criminality of the Hamas attack tainted its resistance claims, and the degree to which Israel itself was negligent about heeding warnings and otherwise responsible for the lapse of border security.

4-How can the Palestinian people achieve their rights and overcome the ongoing occupation?

The Palestinian people are winning the struggle for public support in civil society and among many governments in the Global South. The rise of popular support for Palestinian rights even in complicit governments may erode somewhat their willingness to continue normal relations with Israel. Whether this political post-Gaza reappraisal is enough at this stage to make a difference with regard to ending Israeli occupation is not clear at present. Prior anti-settler colonial struggles have been eventually won by a colonized people if they manage to survive the almost inevitable genocidal assault by settlers to their existence. The breakaway British colonies in North America, Australia, and New Zealand managed through genocidal tactics to marginalize or eliminate the resistance of native and indigenous peoples and complete their settler colonial projects; South Africa failed, and the project collapsed. Israel is in that space where it will either join the settler colonial ‘success’ stories or it will succumb to national resistance, with Jews either giving up the Jewish supremacy claims of Zionism or finding a means to coexist with Palestinians on the basis of true equality and mutual respect, presupposing a honest accounting of the past as with some sort of truth and reconciliation process that has smoothed a transition from repressiveness to constitutionalism. The best example of managing such a transition was South Africa, benefitting from the leadership of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, yet also experiencing bumps in the road along the way. Its pro-Palestinian ICJ initiative was a symbolically important way of honoring the enduring legacy of Mandela’s anti-apartheid struggle.

5-As you know, Israel attacked Iran’s consulate, killing its military advisors in Syria which is considered contrary to international conventions, which prompted a military response by the country. What is your take on Iran’s punitive response to Israel, especially in terms of international laws?

The Iranian retaliatory strike against Israel caused neither deaths nor damage, although had its array of missiles and large number of drones not been destroyed, it might have had a war-generating disproportionate effect. The interpretation of Iran’s retaliation remains ambiguous. Did it intend to display its military capabilities to attack Israel directly without inflicting major damage or was it an operational failure in the sense that the intention was to be as destructive as possible. Without clarity on this question, it is impossible to make an intelligent assessment of the relevance of international law to the events of April 13th.

The legal status of retaliatory violence is a gray area of conflicting opinions among law experts, often colored by political identities and jurisprudential orientations. On the one side are legalists who suggest that all retaliations violate the UN Charter and international law by validating uses of international force only in situations of a sustained armed attack across an international border. By this reading even a modest retaliation against the Damascus attack was not lawful.

As with other issues, this strict reading of international law is not descriptive of international practice with respect to acts of retaliation, which in practice over the years validate ‘reasonable’ retaliations so long as proportionate in relation to the provocation. Israel’s second attack on Iran, however, would seem to be unlawful as it ignored the reality that it initiating the cycle of violence on April 1st by its lethal attack on Iran’s consular facility in Damascus, and to regard it as entitled by any standard of law or reasonableness would tend to continue the cycle of interactive violence indefinitely.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Interview with Daniel Falcone: Trials and Tribulations of Palestinian Refugees in Syria & Israel/Palestine/Iran

15 Apr

[Prefatory Note:This series of questions was posed for my consideration early in late March 2024, published by CounterPunch on April 9th under the title, “The Forgotten Palestinian Refugees in Syria.” I have revised somewhat my responses, partly because of the impact of developments in April, especially the bombing of Iran’s consular facility in Damascus on April 1st killing 12 persons, including 7 Iranian military advisors, which led Iran to abandon its practice of retaliating for attacks by indirect responses to US/Israel assets/military bases or to entrust retaliations to Iran’s regional non-state allies in the region, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, and possibly Hamas. On this occasion Iran deliberately itself retaliation on April 12th, firing as many as 300 drones and missiles toward Israeli targets. Most were intercepted with the help of Israel’s Western supporters (and Jordan), yet Israel has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and threatens to retaliate, escalating the conflict. What will happen with this Israeli effort to get the US involved in a wider war directed at achieving regime-change in Iran remains uncertain, but raising doubts about the war-prevention capabilities, and even motivations, of the US and to a lesser extent, China and Russia.]

Interview with Daniel Falcone: Trials and Tribulations of Palestinian Refugees in Syria Prior to the Israel’s April 1st Attack on the Iran Consular Building in Damascus

Daniel Falcone Introduction: The Syrian Civil War was the longest and most complex geopolitical conflict to emerge out of the Arab Spring, thus creating a complicated legacy for leftist analysts to interrogate. In this interview, exclusive for Counterpunch, former United Nations special rapporteur, and international relations scholar Richard Falk, breaks down Palestine and Syria and the history and politics of that refugee crisis from the left. Often, this topic finds the center-right media attempting to focus on Syria, not in the interest of Palestinians, but to remove the attention away from US/Israeli aggression. Falk, a fierce critic of US and Israel foreign policies, highlights the complex circumstances of the Palestinians in Syria and points out how a host of domestic and foreign policies, and worldviews from the left and the right, both complicate and threaten Palestinian survival and their pursuit of liberation in the face of ongoing US-sponsored settler colonialism.

Daniel Falcone: How many Palestinians are in Syria, and how long have they been there?

Richard Falk: It is difficult to be very accurate about refugee and displacement statistics due to the prolonged internal Syrian turmoil over the course of more than a decade since 2011, and still are not fully resolved. Before the Syrian Civil War the number of Palestinian refugees registered by UNRWA in Syria was 526,744, the majority of whom came to Syria during the Nakba in 1947, fleeing especially from what was then northern Palestine, now Israel. A large proportion of the Palestinian refugees in Syria chose and were able to live outside the refugee camps, with no more than 111,000 of the more than a half million living in the nine official, and three unofficial camps, according to estimates in 2002.

Current estimates of the Syrian refugee population arrives at even smaller numbers due to the fact that many Syrians fled to neighboring countries and to Europe. It is now believed that correct current number of Syrian refugees within the borders of Syria is about 450,000. This experience of internal and external displacement of Palestinians in Syria during the civil war, exhibited the dangers of being vulnerable as a refugee in a combat zone during wartime, especially in the face of the growing enmity between the Syrian government and Palestinian refugees, greatly aggravated by their opposed alignments in the Syrian Civil War. Palestinians in Syria overwhelmingly supported the opposition to al-Assad regime in Damascus.   

Daniel Falcone: What kinds of social, political, and economic devastation do Palestinians living inside Syria experience? Stephen Zunes has indicated that reliable numbers for Palestinian civilians killed by Syrian military assaults is around 4,000.

Richard Falk: Until the civil war began in 2011 relations between the Syrian government and the Palestinian refugees seemed positive, especially as compared to the negative features of Palestinian treatment and experience in several other Arab countries, particularly Jordan (‘Black September 1970’) which encouraged the voluntary displacement of Palestinians, departing from Syria, and seeking refuge elsewhere, especially in Turkey and Western Europe. Prior to the civil war Palestinian refugees enjoyed substantially equal rights in Syria as compared to the resident population, being allowed to own property, and work in almost all sectors of the economy.

After 2011, Syrians were viewed by the Damascus government as a hostile presence in view of their overall support for the anti-government political forces, which in part reflected the Shiite-dominated Damascus political leadership in a life-and-death struggle with the Sunni-dominated opposition forces. Among other developments was violent repression by Syria of the refugee camps in Syria, most prominently the Yarmouk Camp located on the outskirts of Damascus, resulting in many Palestinian deaths, forced and voluntary displacements, and widespread hunger in the period between 2011 and 2018.

Such conditions prompted many Palestinian refugees in the 12 Syrian camps to risk the increasingly dangerous migrant journey to Europe, a situation further aggravated when Trump’s defunded UNRWA in 2018. Prior to the civil war in Syria, Palestinian refugees were much more regulated and their economic, political, and social options restricted in Lebanon, with its delicate Muslim/Christian demographic balance, and in Jordan, where the sheer numbers of Palestinian refugees were seen by the government as posing a political threat of a demographic character as further reinforce by their suspected distrust of the Hashemite monarchy.

Daniel Falcone: Is there a problem on the left in the United States in undermining the plight of Palestinians in Syria in relation to the left’s varying perspectives on the Syrian Civil War?

Richard Falk: Yes, the hostility of the hard left to intervention against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, despite its oppressive tactics, autocratic governance, and outright atrocities seemed dogmatically based on siding with whatever political forces around the world validated their behavior by deploying anti-imperial rhetoric and slanted arguments against siding with the anti-Damascus insurgents, which were a hybrid coalition that included more humane and democratic elements than did the government, at least at the outset of the conflict. At the same time, complexities were present no matter which side was supported in the bitter civil strife due to the lack of coherence by either the government or its array of opponents.

Beyond this, at the outset of the Syrian civil strife the US and Turkey underestimated the capabilities and loyalties of Syrian armed forces, being too quick to think it would be as easy to get rid of the Assad regime as it had been for NATO in 2013 to induce anti-Qaddafi regime change in Libya. NATO also badly miscalculated the domestic effects of regime change in Libya. Instead of a successor regime friendly to the Global West, the situation in Libya deteriorated from one of autocratic stability to a condition of political chaos and civil strife among Libyan ethnic communities, in effect from autocracy to a chaotic form of anarchy.

This misleading analogy between Libya and Syria was a costly miscalculation, especially for Turkey, compounded by the emergence of some strange opportunistic alliances in the course of the internal struggle. Perhaps most notable was the mutual relations between ISIS and the anti-Damascus forces. seeming joining in a common cause the liberal opposition to Damascus with an organization previously treated by the West as a virulent form of terrorism.

On the side of the Syrian government again, for a mixture of geopolitical and ideological reasons, were Russia and Iran. The Syrian Civil War was the most complex and prolonged struggle to spiral out of the Arab Spring, and perhaps in modern times, considering the bewildering variety of actors and issues at stake internally, regionally, and globally as well as the mix between state and non-state actors and compounded by the internal antagonisms on both sides.

Daniel Falcone: What are the differences and similarities for Palestinian refugees trying to survive across the Arab world?

Richard Falk: Responding to this tangled issue of comparative treatment of Palestine refugees throughout the Arab World is a stretch for me. Responding broadly, there is agreement that attitudes toward Palestinians refugees varied through time and from country to country, influenced recently by Israeli/US diplomacy promoting normalization of Israeli/Arab relations during the final months of the Trump Presidency in the form of the now notorious Abraham Accords. Since October 2023 the Israeli genocidal onslaught in Gaza has made Arab countries more conscious of their own identities while becoming somewhat more engaged with the  Palestinian ordeal, including reacting with varying levels of concern to what is increasingly regarded by pro-Palestinian forces as ‘a second Nakba’, in effect a brutally forced evacuation being implemented with a genocidal ferocity that far exceeds the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948— that is creating humanitarian pressures for offering shelter to Palestinians outside of Occupied Palestine, highlighted by a situation of widespread starvation and disease in Gaza, grim realities further intensified by the Western defunding of UNRWA since late January 2024 in response to a dubious all out Israeli campaign to discredit UNRWA in a supreme instance of their mastery of the dark arts of deflection.

At present, in reaction to the humanitarian emergency in Rafah, and continuing Israeli threats to launch a military attack on the small city abutting the Egyptian border which is sheltering over a million helpless Palestinians in horrifying conditions even without taking account of the acute fears arising from Israel’s threatened military attack, Egypt has so far responding in two somewhat contrary ways: 1) by deploring the forced cross-border pressures on Palestinians to leave Gaza or die if they are so stubborn as to continue resisting and, 2) by preparing for a mass Palestinian exodus from Gaza by constructing a large walled-in temporary refugee facility in the Sinai Desert, which is part of Egypt. Whether Egypt will eventually be persuaded or bribed to accept a large new influx of Palestinian refugees is uncertain at this point.

The issue posed is tragic for Palestinians in Gaza who have stayed in their homeland despite hardship and abuse since its re-occupation by Israel in 1967, enduring periodic punitive large-scale military incursions from land, air, and sea in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, and 2021, reinforced by a crippling blockade since 2007. The role of Hamas in Gaza is complicated: it reportedly won internationally monitored elections in 2007 because it resisted Israeli abuses more credibly than did the Palestinian secular alternatives, and steadily gained legitimacy among Palestinians throughout the occupied Palestinian territories because it was not tainted by collaborationism or corruption to nearly the extent of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, itself an outgrowth of the discredited Oslo diplomacy.

Since 2006 when it took over a governing role in Gaza, Hamas has been reduced to being a ‘terrorist’ entity by Israel, United States, and Germany. Its diplomacy was spurned over the years despite credibly proposing long-term ceasefires on several occasions. Israel made no secret of preferring to discourage Palestinian resistance by keeping Gazans on ‘a subsistence diet’ as supplemented by ‘mowing the lawn’ as needed, as well as using Gaza as a virtual free-fire zone to test weapons and tactics, and send a deterrence/Dahiya message to regional governments throughout the Middle East that Israel was not inhibited by law and morality when it came to dealing with its enemies, and disdained such widely accepted legal limitations on force as proportionality and discrimination (as to targets). Additionally, Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is subject to the 4th Geneva Convention addressing issues of Belligerent Occupation, as well as the unanimous Security Resolutions 242  and 338, which projected an early Israel withdrawal to its 1967 borders after minor territorial adjustments.

The Syrian government’s relationship to the Palestine/Israel conflict seems contradictory in its central aspects. Syria alone among major Arab governments has been actively pro-Palestinian in its foreign policy since the 1948 War. Israel has engaged in various destabilizing moves toward Syria, most dramatically in the form of periodic air attacks at targets thought to be helping anti-Israeli forces in the region. Israel incorporated into Israel the occupied Syrian territory, known as the Golan Heights, under Israeli administrative control since the 1967 War, during the latter part of the Trump presidency. And now it has attacked the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus threatening to make the wider war a

major source of intensifying conflict in the Middle East. In other words, despite its encounters with Palestinian refugees, Israel and Syria have a long history of mutual hostility, given dramatic focus from time to time by

Israeli cross-border air strikes with target located in Syria.

This present engagement with Syria and Iran on one side and the Israel and the US, and most of NATO on the other side, points to a more dangerous phase in the Middle East conflict configuration that has evolved since the end of the Cold War.

Tags: , ,

Biden’s Warning to Netanyahu: Political Maneuver, Not Policy Shift

6 Apr

[Prefatory Note: The post below contains modified responses to questions posed by a Brazilian journalist, Rodrigo Creviero on 4/4/2024. It is critical of President Joe Biden’s ‘muscular approach’ to the conduct of foreign policy, specifically in relation to China, Russia, and Israel, as played out at the expense of the peoples of the world, including the real interests of the American people. Biden is guilty of war-mongering, reluctance to engage in peace diplomacy, and complicity crimes of support given to Israel while carrying out a prolonged genocide against the long abused civilian population of Gaza along with demonizing and dehumanizing the resistance leadership exhibited by Hamas. In reactions to past genocides the US has done less to oppose their perpetrators than it should  have, but never before has it been an active accomplice, and in the process, undermining the authority of the most widely endorsed norms of international law and demeaned the institutions and procedures internationally available for purposes of interpretation and enforcement.]


1– Biden urged Netanyahu to reach “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza and called on Israel to act in the “next hours and days” in the face of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. How do you see that?

Biden’s call for concrete steps to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches Palestinians in Gaza comes very late, given a geocidal assault on the civilian population that is in its sixth month. Also, the effort to persuade Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire was not elaborated with the same urgency or seriousness as the humanitarian insistence on allowing aid to reach starving Palestinians. A cessation of Gaza violence has long been vital if further devastation of Palestinians is to be minimized, if not avoided, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its January 26 Interim Order decreed in support of South Africa’s plea for Provisional Measures as a response to its preliminary conclusion that it was ‘plausible’ to regard Israel’s violence in Gaza as genocide, the highest international crime that cannot be excused because of claims of self-defense or national security. It is notable that legal absolutism when it comes to genocide is supported by near unanimity among the 17 judges composing the adjudicating panel of jurists, and including judges from the United States, Germany, France, and Australia whose governments had supported Israel’s response to October 7. The ICJ was widely applauded for following the law rather than flags of nationaal allegience, analyzing facts and relevant norms of international law despite the face that the Security Council failed to implement its Interim Order and Israel defied its Interim Order. What the ICJ ordered jnfluenced the symbolic domain of international by legitimating concerns about genocide in Gaza and legitimting the resolve of civil society groups.

Biden’s highly publicized move seems primarily motivated by two developments other than a late surge of empathy for Palestinian suffering: first, shifts in US public opinion away from unconditional support for Israel, which are endangering his prospects for victory in the November presidential election and the fact that Monday’s clearly deliberate attack on the aid convoy of the World Central Kitchen resulted in the death of seven Europeans, sparking media outrage and anger among those governments that had been among Israel’s supporters. No such anger in Washington or hostile media attention were given to prior and worse atrocities responsible for mass casualties among children and women so long as the victims were Palestinians. The surfacing of these concerns, especially in the US, help explain why the public disclosure of the Biden/Netanyahu phone call occurred with official blessings. Such sensitive tensions between previous allies are not normally addressed with such transparency. Such diplomatic moves are considered more effective if carried on secretly, or at least discreetly. Biden evidently was more concerned about winning back Democratic Party voters and reassuring European allies that Western lives should be treated as off-limits for Israel in the future.

Even more disturbing was the explicit support given by Biden to Israel’s recent provocative actions directed at Iran during the 30 minute phone call. The leaders spoke in the aftermath of a targeted attack on April 1st that killed seven Iranian military advisors (including three commanders) while they were present in Iran’s consular building in Damascus, a location entitled by international law to immunity from attack.

Such provocations risk a devastating wider war. Iran has declared its intention to retaliate rather than be passive in the face of Israeli military strikes and assassination of prominent Iranian military commanders, and other violations of Iranian sovereignty by Israel. Given this background, Biden publicized reassurance of support for Israel’s provocations acts as a signal to Netanyahu, facing frustrations in Gaza, rejection by Israelis, and possible imprisonment in Israel on past charges of corruption, to embark upon a wider war with Iran in ways that will exert great pressure on the US to become actively involved in the military operations likely to result and divert attention from policy failures of Israel during these past months.

2—How do you analyze this intensifying of pressure by United States against Israel now?

It seems belated, and partial at best, and easily managed by Tel Aviv without any changes in its approach to Hamas or Palestinian statehood. As suggested, it could tempt Netanyahu to embroil Israel, but also Iran, in a regional war with global dimensions. As suggested, Netanyahu is extremely unpopular among Israelis, with growing protests against his leadership. These factors undoubtedly creates temptations on Netanyahu’s part to divert attention from the failure of Hamas war policy, both as a military operation and in making Israel a pariah or rogue state in the eyes of the peoples of the world, and an increasing number of governments in the Global South.

Given reports of Netanyahu’s defiant response to these ‘pressures’ from the US are coming  come too late and even now have an ambiguous impact, taking too abstract a form, not including an arms embargo or international peace force, and not raising even a possibility of support for UN-backed sanctions. I would conclude that Biden’s much publicized warning to Netanyahu presaging a US shift will not have significant humanitarian or peacemaking influence on Israel’s resolve ‘to finish the job’ by an attack on Rafah that produces devastation and many casualties in that beleaguered city giving hazardous shelter to more than ten times its normal population of somewhat more than 100,000. And could, paradoxically make things worse if Netanyahu seizes upon Biden’s apparently unconscious message to Tel Aviv that the time may have come to shift the eyes and ears of the world to a confrontation with Iran.

3- I am preparing a special article on 6 months of war. How do you evaluate the impact of the last 6 months in the efforts of a peace process in the future and in the relations between Israel and Palestinian people?

At this point, there seems no credible positive scenario for future Israel/Palestine relations. An Israeli consensus, not just the government, is deeply opposed to the establishment of a viable Palestinian sovereign state while the world consensus insists on establishing a Palestinian state with international borders and the enjoyment of equal rights in all respects, including security as Israel. The Palestinian people have not been consulted by either side of this nationalist cleavage and seems more and more inclined to opt for a single secular state with equal rights of both peoples as long favored by independent Palestinian intellectuals such as Edward Said.  

The UN attempted to impose a two-state solution in 1947 without taking account of the Arab majority indigenous population, and it led to failure, periodic wars, and much suffering. In my view, a sustainable future for both Palestinians and Jews depends on a peace process, with neutral international mediation, and respect for the right of self-determination in the framework of negotiations between legitimate, self-selected representatives of both peoples acting in a unified whole of their own devising.

At present, neither Palestine nor Israel, for differing reasons, is in any position to represent their respective constituencies in a manner that is either legitimate or effective. More specifically, Palestine remains divided between the PLO/Palestine Authority leadership in Ramallah and Hamas in Gaza, with additional elements seeking participation in representing the Palestinian people, including the 7 million refugees and exiles. Israel, in contrast, has had a coherent political elite during most of its existence, but now must act to soften tensions between religious and secular constituencies that have been intensifying in recent years to be a credible partner in the search for a political compromise that clears the path to sustainable peace for both peoples based on coexistence, equality, and effective internal and regional security arrangements jointly administered. Stating these conditions highlights how difficult it will be to make the transition from apartheid/genocide realities to the sort of solution roughly depicted.

The South African case, although vastly different, is instructive. It points to two factors that make what seems impossible happen in circumstances that swwm hopelesss: the release from prison of a unifying leader; a majority recognition that a win/win outcome for both peoples rests on genuine compromise and non-interference by third party governments and international institutions.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Is it Time to Stop Bullying Iran? Washington Should Restore the Nuclear Program Agreement with Iran Now

4 Sep

[Prefatory Note: A somewhat modified text of an article published by COUNTERPUNCH on Sept. 2, 2022. I recommend CP highly for anyone seeking to follow the best quality progressive commentary on global issues; also, follow Transcend Media Service (TMS) for a more global, academic, and cultural orientation heavily influenced by the pioneering work of Johan Galtung in the area of peace studies broadly conceived).

In the post below I call particular attention to the fact that the relevance of Israel’s nuclear weapons unregulated weapons capabilities and regional militarism has been totally overlooked in assessing the negotiations on whether the U.S. should rejoin the JCPOA, which Trump unilaterally withdrew from in 2018, reviving the agreement. Israel’s influence on the nature of the bargain reached for renewal and the side benefits that it will receive as ‘compensation’ for overriding its faux opposition to the agreement as articulated by its leading political figures. It illustrates the distortion of global policy debates whenever the domestic politics of the U.S. are entangled with the way an issue is resolved even sometimes, as here, at the cost of maximizing national interests.]To Renew or Not to Renew the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement, That is the Question

Photograph Source: United States Department of State – Public Domain

The Road Not Taken

After two weeks in Iran during latter part of January 1979, the height of the revolutionary movement against the dynastic, autocratic rule of Mohammed Reza Shah, I had the opportunity for an extended conversation with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in his tent where he received foreign visitors and journalists during his final days in Paris. This was the individual who would serve as uncontested Iranian leader, officially the Supreme Guide of the Islamic Republic of Iran until his death in 1989.

I was accompanied at the meeting by Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General and major progressive personality at the time in the United States and Don Luce, a prominent and courageous anti-war religiously oriented activist who gained worldwide fame in 1970 by departing from a prescribed tour route to expose a visiting delegation of U.S. Congress members to the notorious ‘tiger cages’ in Con Son Prison in Saigon, a major facility in South Vietnam that had become a repeated focus of severe torture allegations. During our time together in Iran we met many religious leaders and secular supporters of the popular uprising, individuals who would soon be running the government. We witnessed extraordinary displays of mass popular excitement in the country and anxious sighs of disbelief that greeted the news that the Shah had abdicated the Peacock Throne, and as it turned out, leaving Iran never to return.

There are many aspects of this meeting that are worth recalling but one stands out for me as having current relevance more than 43 years later. Immediately after greetings were exchanged, Ayatollah Khomeini carefully posed a question to us that seemed uppermost in his mind, more so than any of the topics covered in the ensuing two hours or so of questions and answers, with the three of us raising most of the questions. But the Ayatollah’s question came first, and it turned out to be the one where our words of response earned the full attention of this religious leader: “Do we think that the U.S. Government will repeat its intervention of 1953 that overthrew a popularly elected government and restored the Shah as Iran’s dynastic leader?” Later Ayatollah Khomeini confided that he had “only entered politics because there was a river of blood between the ruler and the people of Iran.”

We each responded along these lines: “Of course, we could not know for sure how Washington will act, but we believed the U.S. had learned some lessons from the past, including the awkwardness of supporting coups that brought to power repressive leaders while professing to lead ‘the free world’ against Communism and Soviet expansionism. We also stressed the recent failure of intervention in Vietnam and the apparent strength and unity of the movement that overthrew the Shah, as well as our impressions of the Iranian military as beset by divided loyalties, as well as institutionally weakened by the Shah’s own distrust of the leadership of the armed forces.”

We also called to the attention of the Ayatollah, on the basis of our meeting a few days earlier in Tehran with the American Ambassador in Iran, William Sullivan, who told us that he had forwarded repeated similar assessments to the White House, and a supposedly liberal president, Jimmy Carter, that the movement against the Shah’s government enjoyed the overwhelming support of the Iranian people and that even the leadership of the Iranian armed force was resigned to the acceptance of the political outcome. On this basis, Sullivan recommended an immediate and urgent  U.S. Government effort to reassure the leaders of the Iranian revolutionary movement that it sought normal and positive relations with whatever government emerged in Iran during the ensuing weeks.

Ayatollah Khomeini was a formidable presence, pondered our comments, and slowly responded in almost these exact words, “If what you are telling us is accurate, and comes to pass, then we have no objection to the Shah coming to the U.S. or elsewhere for medical treatment, and we can have normal relations with your country.” Of course, this road was not the path taken by either country, which has resulted in enormous adverse consequences for Iran and the Middle East as a whole, with distorting effects that have been playing out over the intervening decades, which are shamelessly generating skepticism and propaganda about the U.S. rejoining the JCPOA, thus setting the stage for another phase of dangerous outcomes whether the Iran Nuclear Agreement is restored or not in 2022.

There were already present some worrisome signs back in 1979 that made such an exploratory attempt to accept this dramatic internal display of the human rights of all peoples to self-determination unlikely to materialize without generating geopolitical friction. The U.S. National Security Advisor at the time, Zbigniew Brzezinski, strongly favored a commitment to once again restore the Shah to his throne, and had a strong influence on President Carter’s thinking, which was given priority over Sullivan’s strong advice based on his direct knowledge of the realities in Iran.

Meanwhile, in Iran there were some strong words being uttered by militants about the revolutionary intentions of Iran extending to the whole of the Islamic world, and especially the Gulf monarchies, which sent strategic chills down the backs of Western foreign policy elites extremely sensitive in those days to any further strategic threats to Gulf oil reserves. In the background was Israel aware of the pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist leadership emerging in Tehran, which set off loud alarms in reaction to some anti-Zionist rhetoric of the more militant leaders in the early period of the Islamic Republic. In any event, normalization between the two countries was not to be, however much sense it made with respect to peace, security, and self-determination back then and now.

Lines from a much quoted poem by Robert Frost are worth reflecting upon given this exchange of views more than 43 years ago.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Recontextualizing Nonproliferation for Some, Nuclearism for Others

Restoring JCPOA through Negotiations.

It needs to be emphasized that Trump unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 JCPOA and reimposed punitive sanctions (‘maximum pressure’) on Iran that inflicted many hardships on the civilian population despite the fact that Iran had been in full compliance with the terms of the agreement up through 2018 as confirmed by IAEA periodic inspections. It appears that Trump was induced by his ardent Zionist son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and leaders in Israel, especially the Prime Minister at the time, Bibi Netanyahu. Trump seemed thus persuaded to denounce the agreement as a terrible deal from a security perspective, providing a justification for U.S. withdrawal, but seemed no more than a pragmatic rationalization to cover a calculated political move. Not irrelevant, although further in the background is the powerful Iranian expatriate presence in the United States that has not given up on restoring secular rule in Iran, and views any kind of normalizing of relations with Iran to be ‘appeasement.’ Consider the recent shrill declaration to this effect by the eldest son of the autocratic Shah:

  • “This shift to appeasement was never going to solve any of the world’s issues with the Islamic Republic. The regime’s problem with the West is the West’s very existence, which obstructs its path to a global caliphate.” Reza Pahlavi, eldest son of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2022.

In the drawn-out Vienna negotiations on restoring the agreement the U.S. has been under constant public pressure from Israel and the Gulf monarchies to extract concessions from Iran bearing on matters outside the scope of the nuclear agreement. It would seem more plausible for the U.S. Government to have been confronted by demands from Iran for reparations for the harm it experienced by restoring, and intensifying, the sanctions since 2018. This bad faith behavior of the U.S. sets a dreadful precedent for the reliability of non-treaty international commitments. The fact that Iran has been prepared to go along with such a one-sided negotiating format undoubtedly reflects their motivation to gain relief from sanctions, and may also reinforce the sincerity of Iran’s continuing declared intention never to acquire nuclear weapons. Building trust in international relations presupposes mutual good faith adherence to carefully negotiated arrangements. At the very least, Biden should have humbly apologized to Iran for the disruptive 2018 withdrawal, and despite his legal inability to bind future presidents, he might have regained some higher ground by pledging to respect the agreements for as long as he remains president, and more rapidly moved to end sanctions once the agreement was restored.

It is worth comparing the extravagant language of the August 14th Biden-Lapid Joint Jerusalem Declaration of Strategic Partnership in which Biden not only affirmed a long-term U.S. commitment, audaciously proclaiming it as ‘bipartisan’ even ‘sacrosanct.’ The following language deserves scrutiny in light of the Vienna impasse::

“Consistent with the longstanding security relationship between the United States and Israel and the unshakable U.S. commitment to Israel’s security, and especially to the maintenance of its qualitative military edge, the United States reiterates its steadfast commitment to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter its enemies and to defend itself   by itself against any threat or combination of threats. The United States  further reiterates that these commitments are bipartisan and sacrosanct, and that they are not only moral commitments, but also strategic  commitments that are vitally important to the national security of the United States itself.’

Confirming Israel’s Nuclear Hegemony in the Middle East.

It has been completely ignored by the Western media that Iran has made a huge concession when it entered the Obama promoted Nuclear Agreement in 2015 (JCPOA) without an insistence that Israel simultaneously commit to destroying  its arsenal of nuclear weapons. As the agreement was negotiated, at least in public, there were no assurances required of Israel, not even something as intangible as requiring Israel to issue a No First Use Declaration. It was to be expected that Israel and the United States would remain silent about solidifying Western control of the region, and especially the signature feature of the ‘strategic partnership,’ the. crux of which is retaining sole possession of the ultimate weapon of destructive violence. Yet Israel, in particular, seems empowered enough to insist on receiving firm assurances that the U.S. would prevent Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons by all means necessary (again without drawing into question Israel’s retention of such weapons without any disclosure of its intentions with respect to threat or use). The language of commitment in the Jerusalem Declaration puts the U.S. in the position of committing itself to a use of force without any hint of or apparent need for a further legal authorization. Again the language of the Jerusalem Declaration is important:

“The United States stresses that integral to this pledge is the commitment never to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, and that it is prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure that outcome.”

Even this was apparently not enough for Israeli security hawks who wanted the pledge to pertain to any perceived steps toward acquisition.

Such an explicit bilateral strategic commitment as contained in the Jerusalem Declaration seems to overlook Iran’s completely valid legal and political option, if it wishes to rely upon it, to withdraw from the NPT, which it is entitled to do under Article X(1) of the treaty:

‘1. Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance. Such notice shall    include a statement of the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.”

Given Israel’s threats, its nuclear capabilities, its strategic partnership with the U.S., withdrawal would seem an entirely reasonable course of action for Iran to take. If deterrence can serve as a security justification under the NPT, it would seem few states in the world could make as strong a case as Iran.

Taking Nonproliferation Seriously. 

There is a further consideration. If the United States were taking the ethos of nonproliferation seriously it would be concentrating on denuclearizing the Middle East as a region rather than acting to preserve Israel nuclear hegemony. The obvious way to achieve such a result would be to support the negotiation of a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone together with a non-aggression security framework. All states except for Israel have supported such an initiative, including Iran and Saudi Arabia. It would be a breakthrough for peace and security, besides freeing billions for more constructive uses.

The NPT regime is not the best path to non-use of the weaponry in a state-centric world. The NPT, however, it may be best path if the true geopolitical objective is to retain oligopolistic control over nuclear weapons. Phased disarmament within a treaty framework is the only promising path if the overriding objective is to achieve a world free from this infernal weaponry.

A start in this benevolent direction has been made in the Treaty of Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) negotiated under UN auspices and coming into force in 2021. But to gain political traction sufficient to provide a post-nuclear security framework it require to receive the support of the current nine nuclear weapons states. None have so far become Parties to TPNW, and the three NATO nuclear weapons states, the U.S., France, and the UK, along with Russia have issued statements expressing their principled opposition and unconditional rejection of a disarmament approach, despite its promise of total nonproliferation.

A Concluding Remark

If we are destined to live with nuclear weapons, we may have to endure the nuclear hegemony of the P-5, but to use the NPT ethos to justify discriminatory treatment of a non-nuclear state such as Iran seem to be an extremely regressive geopolitical undertaking. For this reason alone, people of good will should hope for the unconditional renewal of the JCPOA. It is time for the morally attuned public to awake to the reality that a nuclear Israel has neither a security justification nor political grounds for its posture of continuing bullying of Iran. To complain about Iran’s political solidarity with some movements in the region as Israel does is gross hypocrisy. It pales in its gravity compared if fairly to the U.S. and Israel’s discretionary bombing, political assassinations, interventions, and violations of the basic sovereign rights of countries in the Middle East..

Tags: , , , ,

The Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA, 2015) Should be Renewed

25 Aug

[Prefatory Note: Richard Falk Responses to Questions posed by Mohamadreza Farahzadi, of the international desk of Farhikhtegan Daily pertaining to long process of rejoining this agreement limited Iran to the development of civilian nuclear power technology; the text of my responses and the title has been modified. It is one more example that undoing the human and diplomatic harm of Trump’s international legacy is a complex matter that not only exhibits the persisting influence of unrepentant Trumpists but the passivity of the Democratic Party leadership, particularly when it dares to disagree with Israel on a matter of foreign policy concern.]

1. According to the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear commitments, Tehran was fully fulfilling its obligations according to the JCPOA until the US withdrew from it. However, even after the withdrawal of the USA from the JCPOA, these approvals continued and were accepted by the existing members as well.

It seems that Iran, which started adjusting its nuclear commitments a year after the withdrawal of the USA from the JCPOA, has no problem with returning to its previous commitments. In the meantime, the only problem that is the main reason for the existence of JCPOA revival negotiations is the withdrawal of the United States from the agreement during the Trump era and its not returning during the Biden administration. Accordingly, Iran in general is only seeking guarantees so that it will not be deprived of the economic benefits of fulfilling its obligations. Why has the USA refused to return to the JCPOA?

Response: I share the view that the 2018 U.S. withdrawal from JCPOA was the sole explanation for the breakdown of the 2015 agreement, which as you suggest, was working well, with the IAEA confirming Iran’s compliance. This compliance was impressive insofar as Israel continuing to violate Iranian sovereignty by engaging unlawful and provocative ways involving further efforts to disrupt Iran’s legitimate nuclear program, including the assassination of nuclear scientists and acts of sabotage directed at nuclear facilities..

It is correct to point out that Biden would encounter political difficulties in providing a meaningful guaranty to Iran that a future president of the United States would not again withdraw as Trump would almost certainly do should he be reelected in 2024. Biden is also under pressure from Israel and from domestic politics with an mid-term election scheduled for November 2022, not to rejoin the JCPOA, at least not without additional constraints on Iran relating to non-nuclear armaments and regional political activity and a green light to Israel’s unilateral efforts to violate Iran’s sovereignty for purposes associated with alleged security concerns..

If fairness were to prevail, the. U.S. would repudiate Israeli efforts to shape U.S. foreign policy and rejoin JCPOA without any new preconditions, and accompanied by certain conciliatory acts that were in effect an apologetic acknowledgement of the harm endured by Iran and its people due to the wrongful withdrawal in 2018.

2. In recent weeks, the European Union has presented a final proposal package to Iran and the United States to revive the agreement. Iran quickly responded to the package of the European Union. Citing sources in Europe who had access to the text, some media have called Iran’s text “constructive”. However, the United States has so far refused to respond to the package proposed by Europe and maintains that it is still examining the package and Iran’s response to it. Does the fact that Iran’s speed in responding and its content which has been called “constructive” by European sources, have been faced by the delay of USA, imply Democrats’ unwillingness to revive JCPOA? The conjecture is intensified having in mind the notion that the mid-term elections of the Congress are near and returning to Iran nuclear deal can have negative results for the Democrats.

Response: I would suspect that the major explanation for the delay on the U.S, side is its search for a formula that will lessen Israeli and domestic public criticism for moving toward an acceptance of this latest proposal package table by the EU. Unlike the U.S., Iran does not need to consult with other governmental or political entities before fashioning its response. The European sources asserting that Iran’s proposals are ‘constructive’ undoubtedly is intended to influence Washington to respond in a similar favorable manner to that of Iran, and hence close to consummating a new deal.

This outlook reflects overwhelming sentiments that JCPOA is a positive framework for tension reduction and war avoidance in the Middle East that deserves widespread support to overcome these unfortunate pockets of continuing opposition to any agreement with Iran, and persisting demands to renew and even intensify the coercive approach to Iran by way of sanctions that lasted almost 25 years. Israel has attacked the proposed renewal of JCPOA on three unconvincing grounds: first,, that it will not stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weaponry, posing severe threats to the security of countries in the region; that sanctions relief will provide the Iranian government with $100 billion per year to fund ‘terrorist’ organizations’ (specifically, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jirhad); and by agreeing to such an arrangement the U.S. signals a lack of resolve to oppose Iranian expansionism .

3. Iran is strongly seeking to receive a guarantee from the United States that Washington will not withdraw from the nuclear agreement. However, the United States ignores Iran’s request on the pretext that it is not able to make such a promise based on the structures of the United States. Although Washington’s argument may seem correct at first glance, in any case, countries have international and bilateral obligations that all their administrations must respect.

On the other hand, as the Iranian authorities have announced, it seems that they want to increase the moral cost of the USA withdrawal, because in practice, if Washington or even another country wants to withdraw from the agreement, it is impossible to force it to stay. Having in mind the fact that the provision of such assurances only increases the moral constraints of the agreement and may not have any practical value, why is Washington resisting their provision? Does Washington want another unjustified exit?

Response: My assessment is that as weak an American president as Biden will be very reluctant to generate critical reactions contending that he is giving assurances to a hostile foreign government that exceed his constitutional authority, based on the doctrine separation of legislative and executive authority that is invoked as an integral part of the foundation of legitimate governance in the U.S. The normal path to a long-range irreversible national commitments takes the form of an international treaty requiring ratification by 2/3s of the U.S. Senate. This would not be unobtainable in relation to the JCPOA. given Israel’s and Republican right-wing’s opposition to concluding any agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. In any event, to follow treaty ratification procedures would require years of effort even if the political atmosphere made ratification a practical option.

It is also probably useful for Biden to have the freedom to assure Israel and critics of a diplomatic approach coupled with an assurance that if Iran behaves in a manner that is regarded as unacceptable, then a second withdrawal is an option that has not been foreclosed, even morally. The issue is on both sides one of appearances, For Iran the appearance that JCPOA is this time a durable arrangement not subject to changes in political leadership in signatory countries. For the U.S. the appearance of flexibility are assurances to opponents and critics that JCPOA does not constrain American leaders from once more withdrawing and opting once more for a totally coercive approach to relations with Iran.

As matters now stand, the U.S. has virtually admitted that it needs time to consult with the E3 countries (France, UK, Germany), and most of all Israel to make sure that the terms agreed upon for the renewal of the JCPOA take maximum account of their national security interests. Whether the text subject to these consultations ends up in a deal probably depends on whether Washington is willing to ignore opposition by Israel and to moderate criticism by promising a strong U.S. future military and diplomatic engagement in securing the region. If an agreement does result it may also include an expressed willingness to refrain from Israeli unilateral moves against Iran even uses of aggressive force in total disregard of international law and the UN Charter.

Tags: , , , , ,

The Middle East: Geopolitical Battleground

18 Apr

[Prefatory Note: The following text is based on a series of questions posed on the basis of my memoir by the Egyptian journalist, Bassem Aly, to be published in Al-Ahram Weekly and Ahram Online on 20 April 2021. The interview covers several distinct issues that involve interpretations of major foreign policy concerns in the Middle East.]

  1. Your memoir, Public Intellectual thoroughly explains your experience in Vietnam. In your view, did costly interventions as those of Vietnam, and others in Iraq and Afghanistan, limit the US appetite for repeating them during the past decade?

Unfortunately, the real lessons of involving Iran are interwoven with the Vietnam War and both remain unlearned. The fundamental failures were repeated as your question suggests later in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would add Libya, and less directly, Yemen and Syria. 

The U.S. Government did attempt to make some adjustments: in reaction to defeat in Vietnam. It ended reliance upon conscripted armed forces obligating the general citizenry to do military service. Instead, it established entirely professionalized armed forces who were recruited on the basis of career opportunities within the military sphere of the public sector. This adjustment was based on the partially misleading assumption was the Vietnam War was lost, not in Vietnam, but in American living rooms where families watched on nightly TV coffins carrying dead young American men home from a distant war that seemed remote from national security. With further support from a middle class anti-war movement, the public withdrew political support, and this influenced most political leaders to defer to public opinion. In American society a long war cannot continue without the support of the public support, which will not be patient if middle class children are being forced to participate. With Afghanistan, a war lasting at least 20 years, those in open combat enduring casualties were either hardened professionals or persons of color with little voice in American politics. 

A second type of adjustment was to replace traditional combat troops and ground warfare with high technology interventions that could be carried out largely from the air, relying on more and more sophisticated weaponry, exemplified by the increasing reliance on attack drones equipped with missiles directed from remote locations often thousands of miles away from the combat zones. Some attempt was also made to neutralize criticism in the media by ‘embedding’ journalists with combat forces, hoping that their outlook would be more sympathetic to the military mission underway if they could be made to feel part of it. In effect, the post-Vietnam approach was to rely on innovative technology that reduces dependence on soldiers fighting on the ground and neutralizing critical media accounts of how the war was going from the perspective of American intervenors.

There has been some reaction against these costly inconclusive interventions, even aside from concern over casualties and the effectiveness of military approaches to conflict resolution. As Vietnam showed, and these other interventions reinforced, it is almost impossible for external actors to prevail in internal struggles for power by relying on their military superiority. This explains why these struggles are increasingly called into questions as ‘forever wars’ that do not serve the national interests of the United States or the West generally, and such major commitments as Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are being gradually terminated. 

At the same time, domestic forces in or connected with the United States government bureaucracy and the private sector continue to encourage the belief that military engagements seeking to control the outcome of foreign internal struggles are essential to uphold the global security system that the U.S. and NATO have established and sustained since after World War II. The ongoing quest of strategic planners in the U.S. is find ways to inject military power from sea, air, cyber sources that are becoming the features of postmodern forms of warfare. These operations are reinforced through modalities of  covert operations conducted by ‘special forces’ that carry on their destabilizing activities as secretly as possible and by drone warfare, sanctions, threats, and economic coercion. Part of this continuing militarization of foreign policy has to do with maintaining the public acceptance of the idea that American security, economic interests, and standard of living are under threat from multiple actors around the world, and only a wartime military budget will enable the government to protect the prosperity and security of the American people, and that of close allies. 

2. You argued that the “dynamics of self-determination” should serve as the basis of the US-Iranian ties. But Joe Biden’s administration refuses to re-join the nuclear agreeement that Donald Trump withdrew from, for the former wants to include Iran’s Middle East strategy in the deal. Do both Republicans and Democrats now see this Obama-sponsored agreement as a mistake?

The issues involving Iran are interwoven with the special relationship that the U.S. has with Israel and Saudi Arabia, and the degree to which the pro-Israeli lobby in America wields disproportionate influence in Congress, and within Biden leadership circles. Restoring the JCPOA with Iran serves the real interests of Iran and the U.S., but since it antagonizes Israel and Saudi Arabia, it has become a treacherous rite of passage for the Biden presidency. Biden above all quite reasonably does not want to risk weakening public support for domestic priorities associated with overcoming the COVID challenge, restoring the American economic, and reforming immigration policy. In this sense, the nuclear agreement is not evaluated on its own but in the context of these regional relationships, which are obsessive in their intent to confront Iran. Israel and Saudi Arabia seek to discourage U.S. renewed participation in the nuclear agreement, but insist that if the US again participates in JCPOA it should demand that Iran imposes limits on its missile capabilities, especially with respect to range, numbers, and precision. They also are exerting pressure on Washington to curtail political alignments between Iran and such non-state regional political forces as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis as the political price of ending U.S. sanctions, which are blamed for disrupting the regional status quo.

U.S. policies have long been distorted, and regional stability has collapsed as a result. From the perspective of the Middle East, the most sensible development would be to push for denuclearizing arrangements and mutual non-aggression pledges. A dramatic sensible stabilizing step would be to establish a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone, but this would require Israel to eliminate its nuclear weapons stockpile and limit the enrichment capabilities of its centrifuges. It is notable that every important countries in the region including Iran has favored such a development, with the notable exception of Israel. 

Because of this exception, the U.S. will not even consider such steps despite their immediate major proliferation and stability benefits, as well as for once demonstrate that American leadership is committed to conflict reduction in the diplomatic sphere, and is not any longer relying on the flexing of its geopolitical muscle.

3. Turkey has recently clashed with the West on many levels, including its purchase of Russian missile system, attacking a French navy vessel in the Mediterranean, threatening the EU to send migrants or militarily intervening in the conflicts of Libya, Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh. How would this impact the future relations between Turkey and the West? 

These conflictual issues are real, but are all on a secondary level as compared to the shared interests in re-centering American global policy on a reenergized NATO and an approach that associates the primary security challenge to the West as emanating from China, and secondarily from Russia. In this sense, despite the tensions with Europe and the U.S., Turkey remains an important player in the Biden scheme of things, which highlights on intensifying geopolitical rivalries and reviving Western alliance diplomacy in conjunction with its traditional European allies. Turkey also plays a key role in mitigating the flow of refugees and migrants from the Middle East,  especially Syria, which in turn is viewed as essential if Western European countries are to remain politically moderate enough to retain membership in the liberal democratic camp.

It should be remembered, as well, that since the failed Turkish coup of 2016 seeking the overthrow of the Erdogan government, there has been a concerted anti-Turkish international campaign that has linked Kemalist, Fetullah Gülen, Kurdish, and Armenian, which has been strongly encouraged behind the scenes by Israel and Saudi Arabia. In effect, there are contradictory relations between Turkey and the West—both an anti-regime coalition seeking to exert pressure on the Erdogan leadership of Turkey and a traditional NATO worldview that relies on Turkey as an alliance partner.

4. Concerning the seven-decade, Palestinian-Israeli conflict, in your view, which factors have prevented a comprehensive settlement to it? 

Most of the explanation for the persistence of the struggle relates to Israel, and its enactment step by step of the maximalist Zionist program, which makes it increasingly clear that there is no willingness to reach the sort of negotiated agreement based on a political compromise that would lay the foundations for a sustainable peace. The Palestinians have long made it very clear, including representations by Hamas, that they would accept an interim peace arrangement of indefinite duration if Israel would withdraw to 1967 borders. The Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, and even the earlier 1988 expression of willingness by the PLO to normalize relations with Israel if such a withdrawal were to be coupled with an acceptance of Palestinian statehood, the basis of the two-state diplomacy that underpinned the Oslo Framework since 1993, having been implicit in international thinking ever since the UN General Assembly Partition Resolution 181 in 1947. Such an approach also underlay the unanimous UN Security Resolution 242 adopted after 1967.

It is also important to acknowledge that the Palestinians have not acted effectively in promoting their struggle for basic rights in several important respects. Above all, in all these years, there has never been a clearly articulated Palestinian authoritative peace proposal put forward. Palestinian peace diplomacy has been reactive and seemingly passive. It seems that Palestine has never achieved sufficient political unity to put forth a position that represents the Palestinian people as a whole, exhibiting splits in its political factions between secular and religious elements and between Palestinians living under occupation and confined to refugee camps in neighboring countries. This failure of the Palestinian movement to put all differences aside until achieving political independence in a viable form has disclosed a crucial weakness of their diplomacy. It has allowed Israel to move toward achieving their goals by implementing a politics of fragmentation with to the Palestinian people combined with their own relentless push toward territorial expansion and the legitimation of Israel as an ethnocracy, openly avowed, after decades of denial, in its Basic Law of 2018.

From the perspective of the present, the Palestinian struggle for basic rights and self-determination seems to be blocked. Neither the UN nor traditional international diplomacy, led by the U.S., has been able to fashion a solution, and perhaps never strongly motivated to do so. Continuing lip service to the two-state approach is almost an admission of U.S. failure given Israel’s unmistakable opposition, taking into account its own territorial ambitions, and its largely irreversible encroachments on occupied Palestine, substantively highlighted by the scale and dispersion of its unlawful settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. With these considerations in mind, the future for the whole of Palestine (that is, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea) is almost certain to be governance as a single state, which is presently the de facto reality. In practical terms, this means either a continuation of a single apartheid Israel one-state outcome or a secular democratic singly state based on ethnic equality and the diligent observance of human rights, which in effect rolls back Zionist ambitions from a Jewish state to the original pledge of a Jewish homeland.

Given the failure of the UN and inter-governmental diplomacy after decades of futile maneuvering, prospects for peace rest almost entirely on Palestinian resistance and global solidarity initiatives of civil society, giving Israel the choice between pariah status and peaceful coeexistence based on human rights for all. The combination of forces that led to the collapse of South African apartheid could lead to a similar outcome for Israel/Palestine. It is this earlier experience of overcoming a long period of oppressive governance that should inspire hope among Palestinians and their supporters and haunt the sleep of Israel’s leaders and its Zionist supporters within the country and around the world.

5. The Palestinians will vote for a new parliament and president in May and July respectively. To what extent would the polls contribute to the finalization of the intra-Palestinian, reconciliation process?

At this time, there is little reason to be hopeful that these three scheduled elections will produce either reconciliation among Palestinians or the kind of dynamic leadership that could create Palestinian unity and robust international support for Palestine’s struggle to achieve self-determination on the basis of arrangements that produced a negotiated peace arrangement that was widely accepted as fair and reasonable for both people given the surrounding circumstances. The most likely outcome of the election if held at all is to reinforce current divisions, including a renewal of the electoral mandate of existing leaders and the protection of the entrenched interests of Palestinian elites. In fairness, the elections are being conducted under conditions of apartheid governance with undisguised Israeli interferences designed to prevent results that would strengthen the quality of Palestinian leadership and governance potential. So far, Israel seems unwilling to allow the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to vote because Israel claims territorial sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem as a result of formal annexation in 1967. 

If serious peace prospects are to emerge in coming years, it will result from Palestinian resistance, augmented by a growing international solidarity movement rooted in civil society activism and likely featuring the BDS Campfaign. Such pressures from within and without might over time induce the Israeli leadership to recalculate their own interests in such a way as to replace the Zionist conception of Israeli statehood based on Jewish supremacy by a scaled back willingness to settle for a Jewish homeland as constitutionally implememted in a democratic secular state based on an ethos of collective and individual equality. Although such a solution to the Palestinian struggle and appropriate political arrangements between Jews and Palestinians based on ethnic equality seems ‘impossible’ from the standpoint of the present, it seems the only alternative to ongoing resistance combined with oppressive rigors of apartheid governance. 

Tags: , , ,

Remembering Ramsey Clark

12 Apr

Remembering Ramsey Clark

Ramsey Clark was a great man, and it was my privilege to work with him closely on several occasions. His death is a time to mourn, but it is also a time to remember who he was and why his life mattered in profound ways to so many people. 

I first met Ramsey under somewhat unusual circumstances. It was not long after the ending of the infamous Chicago 8 trial of 1969 that prompted Ramsey’s withdrawal from government, and it was just prior to the Harrisburg Kissinger Kidnapping Trial of Philip Berrigan, Elizabeth McAlister, Eqbal Ahmed, and several other for a fanciful alleged plot to kidnap Henry Kissinger while he was Secretary of State, at attractive phantasy but never planned beyond the musings of anti-war imaginaries. There were concerns about the future wellbeing of these idealistic defendants. because Harrisburg was deemed a conservative site for such a trial and that attempted kidnapping might produce lengthy prison sentences. With these considerations in mind, these defendants believed that it would be inflammatory to have the defense team led by a theatrical celebrity lawyer like William Kunstler who was seen as likely taunting and probably antagonizing judge, jury, and community. It was feared by friends of the defendants that such tensions could lead to a harsher sentence, however outlandish the charges.

The three best known defendants were my close friends, and I was asked to go meet Ramsey in Washington and see if he might be willing to represent the Berrigan/McAlister defense, which was delicate, as Bill Kunstler was their longtime devoted lawyer, friend, and devoted comrade. Ramsey was still in his Washington office shortly after leaving the government as its Attorney General, accompanied by gossip that LBJ hoped that Ramsey would become the next Texan to become a U.S. President. I was somewhat nervous about such a mission and intimidated by the prospect of meeting on my own about an ultra-sensitive issue with this high profile former government official who had this recent change of heart with respect to the Vietnam War. 

My anxieties were misplaced. I arrived on time, and was immediately ushered into Ramsey’s office, directed to a comfortable seat while he finished a phone call. As soon as I sat down, Ramsey tossed me a box of triscuits that had been on his desk, and fortunately I caught it or else legal history might have turned out differently. But what was disclosed by this trope was Ramsey’s unpretentious, casual, folksy, humble, and unassuming manner, which was a bit disconcerting as it was combined with a laser sharp mind and a character that could stand his ground as firmly as the most prized Texas Longhorn steer. When Ramsey’s phone call ended we talked without formality, as if friendly cousins who had much in common and had not seen each other recently. Our conversation ended with Ramsey agreeing to visit Philip Berrigan in a Danbury, Connecticut jail where he was serving time for prior acts of civil disobedience. Ramsey went on to represent and befriend the famed Berrigan brothers, at first only Philip at Harrisburg, bonded with them and the others on the legal team, and staked his claim, never to be relinquished, as America’s once mainstream nationally prominent civil servant, who became in the years after his heralded departure from government a renegade to those who identified with the establishment and a legendary hero to those of us who thirsted for progressive change.

For me Ramsey was a great man because of two extraordinary qualities:

–he never allowed his formidable ambition and public reputation stand in the way of principled action,resigning with cause from the highest echelons of government, burning his bridges of return by identifying openly with the radical wing of the anti-Vietnam War Movement. It has long surprised me how rare such displays of conscience are in American public lifeI could think of only Daniel Ellsberg who came close, who although acting from a lower level of prominence, made his notorious break with the government by way of high drama featuring the release of a large dossier of classified official documents relating to Vietnam policy, known to us as the Pentagon Papers that he expected to land him in prison for a lengthy sentence. Ramsey never wavered, and as far as I can tell, never regretted this momentous change from looking down from the pinnacles of public authority to looking up from the trenches of struggle on behalf of thoae marginalized and vulnerable at home and abroad. Ramsey, in common again with Dan, never lost his faith that the American way, politically and constitutionally, was the best path for governance, but if and only if it lived up to the Jeffersonian vision of political democracy so early encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence, which critics insist was already relegated to museum viewings by the more property-minded conservative U.S. Constitution.  

–Ramsey second quality that so impressed me was his fearlessness in the face of danger. We went together with Philip Luce to Iran at the climax of the revolution in early 1979, and had some harrowing experiences that shook my composure while leaving him unphased. I recall with especial vividness, as if yesterday, being together for lunch in the Iranian religious city of Qom after having just had an intellectually stimulating meeting with a leading Islamic figure, Ayatollah Shariat Maderi, who we were told was the best theological mind in Iran. After enjoying a simple Persian lunch on the central square, we ventured outside for a walk, soon to be confronted by young Iranians of high school age who identified us as Americans. They shouted in English chilling slogans: “Death to the Shah, Death to Americans.” Before we realized what was happening, hundreds more were attracted by the spectacle, some carrying posters with the picture of Ayatollah Khomeini. Two youthful ardent mullahs took over the spontaneous gathering, leading the chanting that raised the mob temperature to a fever pitch, which I interpreted as the prelude to a lynching. Ramsey standing tall amid the bloodthirsty crowd was as calm as if cutting a birthday cake. 

As might be obvious as I survived to recall the incident, our guides from Tehran finally managed to convince the mullahs that we were not CIA operatives or off-duty American soldiers, but had come to Iran at this time at the personal invitation of Mehdi Bazargan so as to understand that a popular revolution was underway, which was  revolutionary determined to transform the country but hoped it could avoid a feared U.S. intervention of the kind that had displaced the democratically elected Mohamed Mossadeq in 1953. With the switch in crowd mood from hostile to hospitable, Ramsey was fully at ease, while it took me time to quell my anxieties of a few minutes earlier when I was sure that I was on the verge of experiencing a bloody ending of my life. As it happened, we had meetings back in Tehran, declining offers of dinner by our former tormentors, and left in peace with the blessings of those whose chants had called for our death a short while ago.

–Ramsey had a third quality, which for most of us would have been sufficient to make most of us feel fulfilled in life, but for him merely added luster to those virtuous qualities that I believe he would have most wanted to be remembered for—principle above all else and fearlessness. As I was earning bread and board as a salaried intellectual, Ramsey’s third special quality aalone aroused my envy, knowing that the first two were beyond my reach. Ramsey possessed a prodigious storehouse of quotations from Rousseau, Jefferson, Locke, Oliver Wendell Holmes, FDR, JFK, Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others that he inserted effortlessly into his many extemporaneous talks during our times together, conveying the impression that he had internalized the wisdom of the ages. In addition, he was able to recall and distinguish what we were told by the numerous political and religious figures whom we had met day after day, reciting sentences verbatim, without ever taking a single note. I felt my mental inferiority, struggling to take down as much as I could from this fascinating array of individuals who met with us during those ten historic days in Iran during which the Shah left his throne forever, allowing the revolutionary movement to celebrate its extraordinary victory. All the while our modest mission dealt with a daunting schedule from dawn until the moon was high in the sky, and Ramsey gladly missed sleep rather than cancel even one of our scheduled meetings.

During this exhausting trip, climaxing with a long meeting with Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris, just prior to his return to Iran after 17 years spent in exile, we all learned a great deal, grateful for this exposure to the live tissue of revolution. I am tempted to set down as part of this concluding conversation with this future leader of Iran in the form of recalling this mysterious personage who was to dominate the political stage in his country for the rest of his life, but I will refrain. I did try to recall and appraise in my political memoir, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim that published weeks ago, which devotes a long chapter to this Iranian visit, with Ramsey figuring larger than life in many of its aspects.

Having praised Ramsey, I want to acknowledge some minor reservations that caused some friction during this Iran experience, and an earlier one in the less fraught, yet still tense, circumstances of the Tunisian struggle for democracy in the face of dictatorial rule. We had been invited to the country to speak at a human rights conference in the capital city of Tunis, convened by the leading opposition figures. The public event was cancelled by government edict, and we tried our best to perform in private venues according to the wishes of our brave, unintimidated hosts. Ramsey was as in Iran a tower of strength, an eloquent voice for freedom, democracy, decency who avowed his solidarity with those in opposition who, unlike the revolutionaries in Iran, resembled American liberals, invoking John F. Kennedy as their model of governance.

My reservations may be linked in various ways to Ramsey’s virtues. I was at times embarrassed by his ‘lectures’ to eminent Iranian religious and political leaders in which he basically urged them to follow the path of American constitutionalism. Although he was all for their revolutionary struggle, he felt its outcome could be best realized by following the American lead. Our hosts were invariably polite, partly sensing the importance of winning the valuable support of such a high profile visitor who opposed in Iran what Washington was hoping for, but I also noticed that they were bored and despite their best efforts, inattentive, staring out the window, playing with a pen or pencil but refraining from taking notes. I believed then and still do, that these Iranians didn’t appreciate being instructed even by Ramsey about what was best for the future of their country, a place with a long history and deep distinctive cultural characteristics. In my view, even Ramsey didn’t understand that we lacked credibility to Instruct Iranians about how to construct their post-Shah future.

I was also bothered by Ramsey’s tendency to dominate these meetings, and our contacts with the media. I felt that I had some things worth saying as did our third companion, Phil Luce, a notable anti-war activist with a religious vocation, combining social shyness with political brashness. We both felt somewhat frustrated by this unintentional marginalization. I overcame my own deference to Ramsey to raise our concern somewhat timidly. He responded that he understood, but claimed that he was helpless, that the persons we encountered and the media were primarily interested in him because of his background. This was a large part of the story, but not the whole of it. Ramsey could have made space for us, but the more I observed him, the more I realized that he flourished in the limelight, and sought it. Putting all this in perspective, on reflection it is more impressive that someone so ambitious in a context that was within his comfort zone, could toss ambition aside when it encroached upon his principles of justice and truth. I learned so much more from Ramsey about being-in-the-world that perhaps I should have suppressed these petty reservations. These criticisms are do not dilute my admiration for the man and his life, although maybe these qualities might have limited the depth of our friendship to some degree.

One final thought. When I first knew Ramsey he was a different person in the presence of Georgia, his life partner, who brought him joy and loving companionship, as well as lightened his manner. Without Georgia, Ramsey was a different person, austere and totally serious even when off camera. I never had the feeling that Ramsey on his own was capable of self-indulgence—reading trashy novels or watching entertaining movies, following sports, playing games, and being silly. Maybe he exposed his less puritanical sides to others who were more intimate. The bottom line is that Ramsey Clark, in my book, was an American hero who coveted virtue more than power or profits, and more than most lived his truths to the fullest. 

Tags: , , ,

How Significant is the $400 Billion Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between China and Iran

8 Apr

[Prefatory Note: the post below consists of my responses to questions posed by the Iranian journalist Javad Heiran-Nia Questions on the China/Iran Agreement (4 April 2021). The agreement, officially known as Comprehensive Strategic Partnership  was signed formally just a few weeks before it was announced that so-called ‘indirect talks’ between Iran and the U.S. were taking place in Vienna dealing with conditions relevant to the U.S. willingness to rejoin the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, that had been negotiated in 2015 to address proliferation concerns of the UN P-5 + Germany and the sanctions concerns of Iran. The U.S. withdrew from the agreement in 2018 in fulfillment of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign pledge to do so because it was derided as a bad deal for the West. What accounts for such talks being ‘indirect’ is not covered in the interview, and seems like a hedge against directly failing to find enough common ground to commence overdue ‘direct’ talks.] 

  1. 25-year cooperation document between Iran and China was signed. What is the significance of this document for the two countries?

The agreement configured to be worth at least $400 billion, carefully negotiated, and significantly named Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, promises significant mutual benefit to both countries. For China it offers both a major extension of its Belt and Road Initiative, involving huge infrastructure and investment features, especially Chinese investment in Iranian energy infrastructure and an Iranian commitment to supply China with crude oil. It also extends China’s diplomatic presence to and economic engagement with an important country in the Middle East at an opportune time given the present global setting. The fact that the agreement covers a period of 25 years suggests that it represents long-term commitment by China to Iran and Iran to China, presupposing continuity of governing structures in both countries.

For Iran, it signals the United States that Beijing is not isolated, and possess policy alternatives that can encroach upon American strategic interests. It also sends the message that China will not submit to U.S. pressures with respect either to the restoration of JCPOA or curtail its regional diplomacy that runs counter to the positions of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S.. The economic dimensions relating to infrastructure investment and trade also promise relief from the burdens imposed on Iran and its people by U.S. sanctions and threat diplomacy over a period of almost 40 years. The long duration projected for the arrangements also gives Iranian governing arrangements a vote of confidence as to stability and legitimacy. 

2. In terms of timing, what messages does the signing of this document have for the United States?

The timing seems important. Coming at the outset of the Biden presidency it sends a dual message: China is prepared to lend its support to countries that are placed under intense pressure by the United States and that China’s international policies will not be changed by the sort of bullying tactics that were exhibited by the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, at the recent bilateral meetings in Alaska. It also is an illustration of the difference between the U.S. emphasis on militarism by way of coercive diplomacy, arms sales, and overseas bases, and the very different Chinese stress on fashioning win/win economic relationships that result in mutual benefits without entailing intervention in internal affairs or abridgement of sovereign rights, although in this agreement it contains a provision on security cooperation including sharing intelligence and joint training exercises. At times, Chinese diplomacy may weaken national self-reliance and autonomous development of its partners, but its diplomacy seems to rest consistently on peaceful means and mutual benefits.

 3. The United States has expressed concern about the signing of this cooperation document. What worries America?

It seems inevitable considering the scale, scope, duration, timing, and even the name of the Iran-China agreement would cause concern in Washington.

The United States has two principal concerns: a weakening of its diplomatic leverage with Iran and a further display of Chinese competitive skills that expose the weakness of current U.S. hegemonic approaches to world order, and specifically in the Middle East. The fact that this cooperative mega-agreement is situated in the Middle East threatens to diminish U.S. regional influence in a crucial strategic setting where it has been unopposed since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. This observation is given added plausibility by the recent efforts of several important countries in the Middle East, including even Israel and Saudi Arabia, to enter into significant economic relationships with China. The recent good will visit of the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, to the region also reinforced the impression of increasing China’s interests and activities in the region, which can only make Washington nervous about being displaced, or at least challenged. Mr. Wang set forth five principles delimiting satisfactory inter-governmental conduct, which he indicated that if accepted by the governments of the region, would encourage China to play a supportive role. These five principles, somewhat resembling the principles of peaceful coexistence drafted and endorsed by the UN General Assembly are rather benign, but convey aspirations for cooperative relations among states rather than conflictual or hegemonic international relations. [See Declaration of Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, GA Res 2625 (XXV), 24 Oct 1970] The five points set forth are mutual respect, upholding equity and justice, achieving non-proliferation, collective security, and accelerated development assistance. Only ‘achieving non-proliferation’ seems a bit peculiar considering that Israel already possesses nuclear weaponry [for elaboration see “Wang Yi Proposes a Five-point Initiative on Achieving Security and Stability in the Middle East,” PR China, March 26, 2021] In this spirit the Foreign Minister ventured to suggest China’s willingness to host a conference dealing with the security of sea lanes and oil facilities in the Middle East.

4- During Iran foreign minister Zarif’s visit to China, the Chinese Foreign Minister somehow tied the signing of this agreement to the settlement of Iran’s disputes with the countries of the region. But he has now traveled to Iran to sign the agreement. Has there been a change in China’s view since Biden came to power in the United States? In other words, has China been waiting for the policy of the new US administration?

That earlier Chinese reluctance to sign the agreement has not been mentioned very often in the Western assessment of the event, which had been tied to Iran’s successful overcoming of difficulties with Arab countries in the region. This somewhat unusual demand, and now the change of position on China’s part lends weight to the circumstantial evidence that formalizing the agreement at this time reflects a reaction to the wider political context. It particularly suggests that China is prepared to demonstrate its firmness and independence in relation to the United States. It is a warning to the Biden presidency that if the U.S. forcibly challenges China’s regional sphere of influence in the South China Seas, China has ways to retaliate. China may still be hoping for a de-escalation of tensions when the negative effects of starting a new cold war become better appreciated by the Biden leadership. This is speculative on my part as nothing formally articulated suggests that such a reconsideration is underway in Washington. The irresponsible allegations of ‘genocide’ allegedly being perpetrated by the Chinese government against the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang area suggest a further worsening of relations, allegations certain to further inflame relations between these two major countries.

Nevertheless, Washington’s cautious signs of willingness to move toward the resumption of negotiations with regard to JCPOA may also be indicative of a new American interest in neutralizing China’s leverage and influence in Tehran. And beyond this, to keep open the possibility of limiting confrontations to peaceful forms of competition, regionally and globally.

The underlying agreement, officially known as Comprehensive Strategic Partnership  was signed formally just a few weeks before it was announced that so-called ‘indirect talks’ between Iran and the U.S. were starting in Vienna dealing with U.S. conditions and demands relevant to its willingness to rejoin the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, that had been negotiated in 2015 to address proliferation concerns of the UN P-5 + Germany and the sanctions concerns of Iran. The U.S. withdrew from the agreement in 2018 in fulfillment of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign pledge to do so because it was derided as a bad deal for the West. What accounts for such talks being ‘indirect’ is not covered in the interview, and seems like a hedge against directly failing to find enough common ground to commence overdue ‘direct’ talks

5-One of the important issues raised for this cooperation document is Iran’s land connection to Iraq and Syria. In this way, China can connect to the Mediterranean Sea through Iran, Iraq and Syria. Iran has a strong presence in the Syrian port of Tartus, and pro-Iranian forces also control the Bokmal border crossing in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor province and the al-Qaim crossing in Iraq’s Anbar province. How feasible do you think this path is?

I am not in a good position to make any informed judgment beyond expressing the view that this kind of projection is consistent with other arrangements concluded within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, which has taken advantage of Chinese capital and skilled labor for similar development projects in Asia and Africa. All of these countries benefit when such plans go forward, and it would strengthen the temptation to preserve political independence in Iraq and Syria to encourage such arrangements, which could be part of a broader strategy of protecting national security of vulnerable countries by practicing equi-distance diplomacy, that is, maintaining workable relations with both the U.S. and China without alignment with either one, and thereby retaining freedom of maneuver.

The Chinese agreement with Iran, officially known as Comprehensive Strategic Partnership  was signed formally just a few weeks before it was announced that so-called ‘indirect talks’ between Iran and the U.S. were taking place in Vienna dealing with conditions relevant to the U.S. willingness to rejoin the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, that had been negotiated in 2015 to address proliferation concerns of the UN P-5 + Germany and the sanctions concerns of Iran. The U.S. withdrew from the agreement in 2018 in fulfillment of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign pledge to withdraw because the agreement was derided as a bad deal for the West. What accounts for such talks being ‘indirect’ is not covered in the interview, and seems like a hedge against failing to find enough common ground if the parties were to commence overdue ‘direct’ talks without adequate preparation. It is likely that these indirect talks are really to intend to explore whether negotiations had a reasonable prospect of success.

Tags: , ,

Iran’s Islamic Republic Celebrates its 42nd Anniversary

9 Feb

[Prefatory Note: Iran is in the process of celebrating the 42nd Anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that led to the downfall of the Shah of Iran’s dynastic rule and its replacement by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has defied the odds by resisting successfully a variety of attempts to restore the old established order either by an Iraqi encouraged war in the 1980s, destabilization efforts all along pushed by the U.S. and Israel, and an undisguised goal of regime change. It should also be remembered that the U.S. helped restore the Shah to his imperial  crown in 1953 by helping to engineer a coup against the democratically elected Mohamad Mosaddeq. Months after the Shah abdicated and revolutionary supporters took over the Iranian government, Iranian students seized control of the American Embassy in Tehran and held the staff, including diplomats, hostage for more than a year. Such an event escalated the confrontation between Iran and the United States, which has risen to war-threatening heights at times, and veered toward normalization at other times. With a new American president in the White House who seems eager to promote a more moderate atmosphere in the Middle East there were widespread hopes for accommodation, but so far there are as many signs of continuity with the Trump years as indications of seeking accommodation based on equality and respect. 

I am aware that it is ‘politically correct’ in the West to comment favorably on this anniversary occasion, but I continue to view Iran as practicing the politics of post-colonial self-determination that has made it a target for hostile forces in the Middle East and elsewhere, and that hopes for a peaceful regional future rest on the further dewesternization of liberal secular criteria of governmental and behavioral legitimacy. I would not minimize Iran’s bad record when it comes to human rights, but its emphasis in the Western media is more a matter of geopolitics than empathy for victims, especially if compared with the silence about much worse infractions by regional allies of the Wesst, and taking account of the tendencies of even the purist of democracies to become paranoid and repressive when threatened by intervention and a counterrevolutionary crusade. Surely, maintaining comprehensive sanctions on Iran by the United States despite humanitarian appeals for their suspension during the COVID pandemic because of the massive harm done to the Iranian people should also be taken into account.]   

Q. 1: The anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran is coming up. Many argue that the Iranian revolution, besides having internal effects, has affected the region and the international community. If you are positive with this viewpoint, what are its major international effects?

It is difficult to draw firm conclusions about cause and effect in international relations as there are many factors interacting at that same time. It seemed clear that the Islamic Revolution posed a challenge to Western vital strategic and economic interests that were tied closely to the Shah’s regime. It should be remembered that Henry Kissinger reminded the world that the Shah was “that rarest of things, an unconditional ally.” More broadly, the Islamic Revolution created the perception that the U.S. had a new adversary in the Middle East additional to, and perhaps more threatening, than the Soviet Union and the ideology of Marxism/Leninism. Its regional policies had previously emphasized, other than the containment of Soviet influence, access to oil at affordable prices and the security of Israel. This belief in Iran as a strategic threat was interpreted in the West as an ideological threat, as well, giving rise to Islamophobia that reached its peak in the United States after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, primary symbols of American economic and military power. 

Imam Khomeini reinforced Western and regional anxieties by his insistence that the transformation of Iran was an ‘Islamic Revolution,’ nor a ‘Iranian Revolution’ or a ‘Sunni Revolution,’ implying strong concerns beyond the borders of Iran. Such a sentiment had an electrifying and mobilizing effect on Islamic thought and action throughout the Arab world, and recreated the idea that territorial states within enclosed borders were a European conception of community imposed on the Middle East after World War I, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Nationalist thinking and organization inauthentically displaced the primary existential community of shared adherence to Islamic beliefs, the umma. Such an interpretation of community undermined the legitimacy of many governments in the Arab/Islamic context that relied on nationalist and secular sources of legitimacy while actually serving the interests of the West. 

The Western views of the Khomeini impact were highlighted by such phrases as regarding Islamic countries as the new ‘arc of crisis,’ or more memorably as ‘the clash of civilizations,’ the sequel to the Cold War, and the basis for a new phase of ideological and geopolitical confrontation. 

The Israeli dimension of the effects of the Islamic Revolution in Iran should not be overlooked. Israel was regarded as an alien force in the region, anti-Islamic, secular, and a lingering remnant of the colonial era. For the West it was an outpost of enlightenment, modernity, and shared goals, and after the fall of the Shah the became the leading strategic ally of the United States, a relationship that continues to haunt the region with intervention and political violence, as well as the denial of basic rights to the Palestinian people in their own homeland.

 Q. 2: Imam Khomeini, as the founder of the Islamic Revolution, unified the Muslim community towards certain causes, while before the Iranian revolution, there was not a dynamic wave of the Muslim community. What reasons caused that situation before the revolution?

Before the Iranian developments in 1978-79, the Middle East in particular was governed by authoritarian regimes that were on one side or the other of the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Many regional leaders in the Islamic world were fearful of the Islamic orientation of their own people, portraying Islam as anti-modern and an enemy of progress, and potentially threatening to the economic elites bonded with international capitalism. The Shah’s Iran typified this orientation and exhibited an acute form of civilizational alienation.

Imam Khomeini arrived on the political scene with a different vision of a political community animated by the resurgence of Islam as tradition and the foundation of ethically grounded governance. Because Iran faced counterrevolutionary threats from within and without, the governing challenges in Iran gave priority to protecting the revolution from its enemies, with a harshness often relied upon by the West to contend that the Islamic Revolution was a regressive development, a view encouraged by many of the Iranians who fled the country for various reasons. It is notable that these harsh tactics allowed the Islamic Revolution to survive and evolve, and contrasts with the experience of other efforts to achieve transformation, even reform, in Islamic countries, for instance, Egypt. The achievement of the Islamic Revolution is to persist in such a hostile environment suggests the skills of its leaders and the support of the great majority of its people.  

Q. 3: Experts on the Palestinian issue argue that the Islamic Revolution changed the direction of fights against Israel. What is your opinion about this matter?

In a few words, whereas before the Islamic Revolution support for the Palestinian struggle was pragmatic and opportunistic, while afterwards identification with Palestine became a matter of fundamental principle and a source of authentic identity. The Islamic Republic of Iran, no matter what pressures it was subjected to during the last four decades, has never wavered in support for the rights of the Palestinian people. 

Such speculation is difficult to be sure about as many forces were at work, but certainly the Islamic Revolution was one factor that altered the character of the struggle over the future of Palestine. From an Israeli perspective, Iran posed an increasing threat not only to its internal security and nationalist claims of legitimacy, but also to its regional and expansionist ambitions. At the same time, Iranian hostility to Israel reinforced Western hostility to the Islamic Republic. It also had the effect of leading the Gulf countries, with the exception of Qatar, to believe that their own legitimacy and stability was more threatened by the Islamic Republic than by Israel. These regimes, led by Saudi Arabia, also emphasized sectarian identities, insisting that only Sunni Islam was the true faith and that Shi’ia Islam was a deviation. At the same time, these Arab elites became persuaded that their rivalry throughout the Middle East with Iran was their primary concern, shared with Israel (and the United States), and that tensions and opposition to Israel no longer served governmental interests despite the persisting identification of their citizens with the Palestinian struggle. The climax of this revision of priorities became evident when the anti-Iran diplomacy was recently signaled to the world by the normalization agreements reached with several Arab countries, encouraged by others, and celebrated as a triumph of Trump’s pro-Israel foreign policy.

The Palestinian movement for self-determination was always viewed as problematic, and potentially dangerous, by the top-down governing processes in Iran and throughout the Arab world. Any bottom-up popular democratizing movement, epitomized by the Islamic Revolution in Iran and later by the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, was opposed by these repressive government scared of their own people. The Palestinian movement was deemed threatening in two of its dimensions—as putting forth political demands from below (a polar opposite from dynastic claims to rule from above, and so condition the role of Islam) and as challenging the links to the West to sustain internal security through weaponry and counterinsurgent tactics.

 Q. 4: Was Imam Khomeini, as a spiritual leader, effective in changing the status of the Palestinian issue?

I think Imam Khomeini did give the Palestinian struggle a higher status than it had earlier possessed, particularly within the region, it became a matter of ethics, not just politics. His emphasis on Palestinian self-determination, the illegitimacy of the Zionist Project, was treated as a fundamental commitment of the Islamic Republic from its inception, and Israel was viewed as a distinctly Western challenge to the prevalence of his sense of the Islamic community of peoples. In the course of my meeting with Imam Khomeini he made very clear that in his view of the illegitimacy of a Jewish state based on claims of ethnic superiority coincided with his great respect for Judaism as an authentic religion. He expressed his hope at that time in 1979, that the Jewish minority in Iran would disentangle itself from identification with and support for Israel and the Zionist Project, and if this happened, he declared his view that it would be a tragedy for Iran if Jews did not remain in the country after the revolution. 

This distinction between Israel and Judaism is crucial, and is the opposite of what the Israeli leadership and its more militant followers want the world to believe, which is that Israel, Jewishness, and Zionism are one, and that any criticism of Israel necessarily exhibits a form of anti-Semitism. Recently, the world respected Israeli human rights NGO issued a report that confirmed the view that Israel was an apartheid stated, premised on the efforts to make Israel ‘a Jewish supremacy state.’ As apartheid in any form is an international crime, listed as a Crime Against Humanity, in Article 7(j) of the Rome Statute governing the framework of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the views of Imam Khomeini accord with basic principles of law and justice on this crucial matter of distinguishing between the State of Israel and the Jewish people.  

Q. 5: It is widely believed that Iran’s resistance against international pressures has shifted the international order and has created a new resistance force against world powers. Can we connect this process to the current undermined position of the United States?

I believe it is correct that the failure of the United States to overcome Iranian resistance to its destabilization and counterrevolutionary efforts is viewed as one dimension of American imperial decline. Military intervention and even coercive diplomacy by way of sanctions and threats is far less effective than in the colonial era, and is unable to control the political outcomes of many internal struggles for the control of States. It has contributed to what is generally viewed as a much more multipolar world. New patterns of alignment are emerging globally and regionally. The Biden presidency will try to restore the Cold War Euro-centric pattern of alliances, with China as the new principal rival, with Russia also on the outside looking in. There are many uncertainties in all domains of international life that will reshape world order in coming years. Of especial importance will be the management of climate change, health hazards, and global economic policy. There are several lines of uncertainty, including whether a new form of ideological tension arises and inhibits global cooperative problem-solving. There is a need for stronger institutional mechanisms at all levels of political interaction to safeguard and promote the global public good. The United Nations could be reformed to play a more central role in moderating diversities of interests and values, while protecting the sovereign rights of States and extending a greater effort to impose UN Charter Principles on the five Permanent Members of the Security Council. The UN would benefit for greater funding independence and less tolerance for geopolitical impunity.  

Tags: , , , , , ,

← Older Entries