By Martin Love
NORTH CAROLINA - President Rouhani and other leaders in Iran have lately been appealing for unity among all Muslims to counter the threats posed by the Israelis and the U.S. and the Saudis to sow yet more chaos in the Middle East. No one can argue against the idea of such unity, but aside from a few discrete periods in Islamic history the effective unity of the “ummah” has been and seems to remain a chimera, a least when viewed from any purely political angle.
In the lands where Islam as a religion has expanded and dominated since the Ummayad and later the Abbasid caliphates, even in periods when the “West” was not meddling and forcing its imperialistic pretensions, as especially in the past century when the last serious Muslim “empire”, the Ottoman one, dissolved, Islamic polity has rarely been unified as an entire, powerful bloc.
The Middle East and beyond to the Far East has been too ethnically and politically diverse to realize the grand ideal of true Islamic unity at least as regards the kind of unity that could not be disrupted and split politically by internal factions and frictions and the impositions of Western imperialism.
Rouhani has recently claimed that the U.S. is “more isolated than ever” over its multitude of sanctions and not just on Iran and that the sole answer to it all must be Muslim solidarity, and that includes solidarity with the Saudis who he says are perceived by Iranians as “brothers” whom Iran is ready to help defend against “terrorism, aggressors, and superpowers”.
It certainly has not escaped President Rouhani, and should not escape anyone, that the Trump Administration looks primarily like an extortion racket. For example, the price tag for Trump not punishing the Saudis and specifically Muhammad bin Salman, the idiot “prince”, for what appears to be a direct order to murder Jamal Khashoggi back in early October, is an expenditure eventually by the Saudis of $450 billion in additional purchases of U.S. goods, particularly arms, to enrich the coffers of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex (and Trump’s domestic standing) which has become a big but bad part of the entire U.S economy – exactly what President Eisenhower warned against in 1961.
President Rouhani apparently, and rightly so, considers this extortionist demand by Trump little more than a “humiliation” and not just of the Saudis, but of Muslims generally. He cited a cynical statement by Trump a couple years ago that Saudi Arabia was a “milk cow” for U.S. interests. Rouhani is exactly correct in his attempt to point out to the ignorant Saudis that they have also been played by the U.S. as well as by the Israelis, who seem to be directing U.S. foreign policy like never before in the Middle East.
But this is all destined to eventual failure, because just as the U.S. grows more isolated worldwide, so also does Arabia under the Saudis. The utter absence of a moral compass in the U.S. under Trump, in Israel under the Likud maniacs, and in Saudi Arabia under MBS, reminds one of the words of Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights struggle in the U.S. who said that while the arc of history is long, it bends (ultimately) towards “justice”. Maybe the arc of history does not bend towards complete and full “justice”, but justice does present itself to some extent at least in time as history has proven.
But so much remains unclear. Dealing with this is tortuous. Will Iran be able to suffer through this sanction period and maintain some level of acceptable internal unity and stability? Will Europe and China and Russia manage to erect alternative economic mechanisms to dilute the effect of sanctions and not just those burdening Iran? Will the U.S. economy enter another recession soon and expose Trump’s wild claims of “success” as President as falsehoods, which they are?
Will even the expanding Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the Zionists eventually force Israel towards real democracy and the dismantling of “apartheid” in somewhat the same manner that abhorrence of South Africa’s apartheid led to its dissolution there? These and many other questions remain to be answered and answers are eagerly awaited.
In any event, Trump and those who are advising him on Mideast policy, are certainly insane. If, for example, the aims of the Trumpists are in fact a change of government in Iran and submission to U.S. demands, why in the Hell are they championing a known terrorist cult, the MEK? Do they really believe, or can they believe, that the MEK would ever be an acceptable alternative to Iranians? This alone spells out what Trump and his Zionist pals really seem to want: disorder and chaos, not eventual harmony among nations.
And one must wonder what Iran might do going forward to best counter and further expose the U.S. IF U.S actions and postures are as claimed based on concerns about international or just national “security”, what if, say, Iran’s leaders came right out and stated, backing up President Rouhani’s gestures of goodwill to Muslim “brothers”, that its policies have been and will remain entirely defensive in character. Additionally, with acceptable quid pro quos (such as lifting sanctions and that just for starters), Iran might reduce its presence in Syria and Iraq and even its support of Hizballah and as well reduce its defensive efforts with rocketry (as it did with the JCPOA with regard to nuclear technology).
No question any such bold suggestions or moves would be starkly courageous and perhaps even dangerous to Iran, but it seems a certainty that the U.S., Zionists and Saudis and others would have to respond positively – or else become so further “isolated” as to lose ALL credibility and respect worldwide. Yes, obviously, ideas such as these may be quite naïve and preposterous, but at the margin, they may be worth study.
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