TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif couldn’t be more accurate when he described new US sanctions against Iran as "economic terrorism," warning of “consequences" if the US keeps up its pressure against the Iranian nation.
In his words, "If the United States decides to cause so much pain on the Iranian people by imposing economic warfare, by engaging in economic terrorism against Iran, then there will be consequences. We don't differentiate between economic war and military war. The US is engaged in war against us, and a war is painful to participants. We have a very clear notion that in a war, nobody wins. In a war, everybody loses, [but] the loss of some will be greater than the loss of others."
This is not the first time that the US is torching the international order and it won’t be the last.
The US is no longer playing an internationalist role it used to play in trade and finance, security and environment. This new policy has had profound effects on global security and prosperity, while friends and foes bear the consequences.
Courtesy of the Trump administration, the US has torn up many international pacts. It has walked out of the nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, called the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, even if it risks sparking a new nuclear arms race.
To this end, Trump cares little if in his ruinous trade war with China there are also losers on both sides of the Pacific, or global markets grapple with a tariff war that seems to benefit no one or protectionism in the form of tariffs on Chinese goods is actually hurting the US economy, companies, and consumers. He likewise doesn’t care if the International Monetary Fund is warning that his trade wars and economic terrorism could sink business and financial market sentiment, derail global energy supply chains, and subtract the projected recovery in global growth.
Regrettably, Trump's one-man foreign policy, executive orders, disruptions, and measures against the rules-based international order are not limited to trade wars and economic terrorism. Under pressure from Washington, Japan and Russia are yet to formally end their World War Two hostilities. Japan refuses to conclude a peace treaty with Russia, which depends on the fate of the islands of the South Kuril Ridge. Tokyo refuses to guarantee that after a deal is reached the islands won't be populated by US military personnel.
In this hostile environment, if you think that's all there is to it, you are mistaken. The 11th Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council on May 6-7 in Rovaniemi, Finland, was all about "scientific collaboration, cultural matters, and environmental research trade" before the Trump administration pushed it off the cliff.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo showed up and trashed the party by a brash speech plagued with lies and baseless accusations against Russia, China, and Arctic countries. He even threw the kitchen sink at the participants to make sure they didn't reach a formal Ministerial Declaration at the end of the long-anticipated meeting.
These are just some of the recent examples that discern how the Trump administration is doing everything it can to uptick the international order through diplomatic vandalism. They put in view how the US has become a rogue state and trashed its own leadership and engagement in international affairs. The US government is increasingly playing a confrontational role in the world, making sure countries do not get along with each other on any issue of regional and international concern.
This provocative policy is designed to maintain unipolarity and prolong geopolitical tensions in the Middle East as well. The disorders and distrusts the core axis of this policy has created, or the way regional institutions and treaties have been made obsolete, will only worsen in places like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen.
The official Washington should realize that in this hostile environment, other countries won’t sit on their hands. They will adopt a similar confrontational strategy toward the US and its wasteful agendas in trade, security, and energy. It makes no sense for other countries to conduct their activities in accordance with international law, regional security arrangements, and trade agreements, if the same shared commitment doesn't exist in Washington.
In response to Trump's decision to bin the nuclear deal and impose sanctions, Iran has warned to end its compliance with two particular obligations of the 2015 nuclear deal in coming weeks. Russia has slapped economic and financial sanctions on American businesses and officials, and might restart low-yield nuclear tests. China has imposed tariffs on American goods and might cut off rare earth minerals exports to the US as a countermeasure in the escalated trade conflict. Others are also imposing their own tariffs on American goods.
As it turned out, foreign policy changes along with circumstances. In most cases, many countries cannot control the behavior of Washington and its economic terrorism, trade wars, diplomatic shenanigans, and insecurity arrangements and policies, but they can always choose how they respond to them. Many are responding in kind.
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