The empire is at its old game of aggression again and the stakes have been getting higher since the JCPOA was shredded by Donald Trump in 2018 and a lot more higher since the US led Warsaw Conference was held in February 2019 in Warsaw, Poland in which US secretary of state and Iran hawk Mike Pompeo said that the purpose of the conference was to focus on “Iran’s influence and terrorism in the region”. Due to objections from several European nations to form a global coalition, the Conference morphed into the basis for the Arab-Israeli pact against Iran. The Arab coalition of Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt are expected to assist and fund the war.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) known as the Iran nuclear deal, is an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program reached in July 2015, between Iran, the five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council + Germany. It was hailed as a landmark nuclear agreement under the watch of Barack Obama. However, since it’s inception Israel has been criticizing it as not going far enough and has managed to convince Trump that Iran must be militarily and economically stripped to the bare bones. Trump relented.
Israel, a small country with massive geopolitical ambitions with an arsenal of nuclear bombs and high-tech missiles has been clamoring for several years that Iran is the biggest threat to its survival since America removed the Iraq threat in 2003. Israel seeks global political, geographic and economic hegemony for itself through an American primacy that has been shaped by an economic system that is fully controlled by a neo-conservative platform for over a century. The system is based on a dominant currency, the US dollar, the Federal Reserve banking, United Nations, IMF and World Bank.
Thanks to the system, America has emerged as a mighty aggressive, war machine during the past two World Wars, in Far East Asia, S. America, Africa and the Middle East. During the past hundred years the only country that has managed to defeat America was Vietnam supported by the Communist system of the Soviet Union and China but lamentably America is still unwilling to learn from its mistake puffed up by the arrogance that its cold war policies ended the Soviet Union and that, by its current economic policies of trade tariffs, China will eventually meet the same fate as the Soviet Union.
Israel and the Saudi, Egyptian and UAE Arabs at their best are cowardly and atrocious nations that only, without shame, kill unarmed and defenseless men, women and children in Palestine, Gaza and Yemen.
The twenty first century is shaping out to be different than the past century where the old geopolitical players were weak. Russia has emerged different than an economically weakened Soviet Union by its failure in Afghanistan. China was a far inferior economic power only a couple decades ago but has emerged as one equal to or superior than the USA. In the context of then and now, the world order is slipping from the American control but neither America nor Israel are accepting this fact.
While anticipating for several years that both America and Israel are planning a war against it, Iran has taken the measures for protecting itself against the aggression and no longer a nation that can be easily defeated. Iran is not Iraq or Afghanistan, or an Arab country splintered by tribalism and ruled by corrupt and weak leadership. It not only possesses a strong military, navy and missiles and battleground hardened in Iraq and Syria but it is also strategically located in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf overlooking the strategic Strait of Hormuz and by virtue of its proxy Houthis in Yemen, Iran is also able to control the strategic Bab-al-Mandab (door of tears) at the exit of the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Hopefully Israel has also not forgotten the lesson Iran’s proxy Hezbollah taught Israel during 35 days in July 2006. Iran and Russia have also collaborated and stalemated the US in Syria during 2011-2018.
For one Trump may have miscalculated Iran’s capability for defending itself against aggression. Moreover, he had hoped that by shredding the JCPOA, Iran would agree to re-negotiate more stringent nuclear and missile regime limitations and that by oil sanctions it would economically strangulate Iran. Thus far Iran has resisted. Iran’s foreign minister Javid Zarif had aptly stated “while Iran has mastered the art of playing chess, the Americans are just learning to play the game of draughts”.
So far, Trump and his Iran hawks John Bolton and Mike Pompeo have failed in all their efforts to placate Iran. Whether it has been the threat of USS Abraham Lincoln’s presence in the area, the downing of the American hawk drone by Iran, the “cocked and loaded threat on Iran”, Japan’s Shinzo Abe’s recent efforts to bring Iran to the American table or the suspicious attacks on the oil tankers in Fujairah and Gulf of Oman, Iran is not being intimidated by America.
Will America blink or will it be Iran? Though Trump relented to hawks he is now trapped between the proverbial rock and a hard place – the choice between two unsatisfactory choices. While Trump is politically gibbering that he does not want war with Iran, it seems that war is the choice being thrust upon him. Given the circumstances, it is highly unlikely that Iran will blink.
Trump and Netanyahu are only playing out the game in the hope that Iran can be intimidated to come to the negotiating table or failing which the aggression will start with a major operation against Iran. The accusations are only a prelude. It literally seems that Iran is inviting the US, Israel and the Arab coalition for a showdown. Will they take on the challenge? If they do, they’re damned with an Armageddon in the region and if they don’t, they’re damned as “the empire that failed”. Certainly, Iran does not seem to be bluffing. It holds three aces.
Having failed to muster global support from allies at the Warsaw Conference and more than unlikely from the United Nations, America can only hope to gain support from China by offering it a trade deal in exchange or from Russia by some business deal. Whatever, Israel will, in frustration, force a war against Iran in collusion with Arab coalition support knowing well that America will have no choice but to get involved.
The reader of this article would be interested in Mr. Munir Akram’s opinion “War with Iran” published in the Dawn of June 23, 2019 in which his closing remarks are “Over the past 40 years, several ‘independent’ Muslim states have been progressively attacked, subverted and neutralised: Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan. If Iran is militarily and economically destroyed, who is next? https://www.dawn.com/news/1489907/war-with-iran
Gulam Asgar Mitha is currently retired in Calgary, Canada having worked as a project, process and technical safety engineer in Canada, USA, Libya, France, Pakistan and Kuwait. He was born in Mumbai soon after partition immigrated with family in 1951 to Karachi. After schooling proceeded to USA for further studies and obtained Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering and Masters in Economics.
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