The World Is Uniting For International Law, Against US Empire

by Kevin Zeese

Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flower

“We oppose the extraterritorial application of unilateral measures.“

That is not Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Russia, or China talking about the most recent unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States against Venezuela, i.e. economic sanctions that have become an economic blockade, but the European Union. Even allies who have embarrassed themselves by recognizing the phony “interim president” Juan Guaido are saying the US has gone too far.

All of the countries listed above and many more have stated their opposition to the escalation of the US economic war against Venezuela. Venezuela, along with Iran, has become a prime target of US regime change, and both are uniting the world in opposition to US bullying behavior, which is hastening the demise of US domination. Popular social movements are growing against US unilateralism and violations of international law.

Activists in Indonesia on the World Day of Protest against the US blockade of Venezuela. Telesur.

Countries of the World are Uniting Against the United States

Six months ago, the US sought to install a puppet government led by Juan Guaido. Guaido, trained by the US, was an unknown personality to most Venezuelans. He is a minor politician who barely won election to the defunct National Assembly. Today, the failure of the US coup attempt is evident. Repeated efforts by Guaido, his allies and the United States to rally support for Guaido from the people and Venezuelan military have failed.

A large rebuke on the international stage occurred in July when delegations from 120 countries of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) united to oppose US policy against Venezuela, saying in a statement that only Venezuela can decide its fate, no other state can intervene in accordance with the United Nations Charter. The UN General Secretary pointed out the importance of the Non-Aligned Movement when she spoke at the beginning of the conference, stating that “two-thirds of the United Nations members and 55% of the world’s population” are represented by it, making it the second-largest multinational body in the world after the UN.

Javad Zarif, the Foreign Minister of Iran, put the US intervention against Venezuela in context, declaring upon his arrival for the meeting: “The resistance of the people of Venezuela against the United States is very important for all the countries of the world.”

The economic blockade, announced last week, has also escalated opposition to dollar domination. There are now 21 countries on the US sanctions list and scores of other countries are impacted by US sanctions. In reality, what the US is doing is imposing unilateral coercive measures against these countries, which violate the United Nations Charter. Sanctions imply there was a formal action that justified punishment, but that is not the case here.

The Caracas Declaration was passed at the NAM meeting. As Anya Parampil reported in the Grayzone, “the delegates unanimously affirmed their pursuit of a multipolar world and a desire to construct an international financial system independent of US control.”

The Declaration also contained a clause calling for following the Vienna Convention, which includes a provision to protect diplomatic missions. No doubt this was in response to the US seizure of Venezuelan diplomatic properties, highlighted by the work of the Embassy Protection Collective to uphold international law.

Support the defense of the Embassy Protection Collective
against federal criminal prosecution, join in calling for dropping the charges and raising funds for the legal defense.

Minneapolis, July 15 (RHC) Demonstrators in the state of Minnesota condemned U.S. sanctions against Iran, Venezuela and Cuba and expressed solidarity with the peoples of these countries.

Sanctions are Economic Terrorism

At the NAM meeting, representatives of various countries described the impacts of the US’ economic war on their people. Zarif of Iran made the point clear:“Just Google ‘terrorism.’ This is the definition that the dictionary will give you: ‘unlawful use of violence or intimidation, especially against civilians, in pursuit of political gains’… so please friends, stop using [the term] ‘sanctions’… sanctions have a legal connotation. This is economic terrorism… we have to say it again and again.”

Illegal unilateral coercive measures have contributed to the deaths of 40,000 Venezuelans in 2017 and 2018. A leading Venezuelan Economist, Francisco Rodríguez, says the Trump Administration’s sanctions are costing Venezuela $16.9 billion annually and threaten a famine that could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. Two days after Trump’s new Executive Order was signed, a ship carrying 25 thousand tons of soy-made products for food production in Venezuela was blocked.

The NAM conference agreed to study and report on the impact of US sanctions, ensuring that the movement against illegal unilateral coercive measures by the United States will continue.

Russia, an observer of the NAM, was represented by Vice Minister Sergey Ryabkov who said the US was strangling Venezuela with one hand through sanctions while pick-pocketing it with the other by freezing its assets held in Western banks. Ryabkov told The Grayzone, “the US has sanctioned almost 70 countries in recent decades, impacting the lives of over one-third of the world’s population.”

The US tried to threaten diplomats to convince them not to attend the meeting, but was unsuccessful. Jorge Arreaza, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, described the successful summit as “a failure of US diplomacy” driven home by “120 countries [that] are not aligned with the US… they want to be free, they want to be independent.” He described the Non-Aligned Movement as a “vaccine against unilateralism.”

President Maduro spoke at the meeting. He underscored the march of history toward freedom and the end of US empire describing the 21st Century as “the century of freedom, it is the century of the end of empires, and it is just beginning in 2019…nothing, nor anyone will stop us…no one can stop the course of the new story that is making its way!”

People’s Movements Organizing Against US’ Violations of International Law

The US blockade against Venezuela and continued threats of military attack galvanized worldwide protests this weekend. Popular Resistance joined with other social movements and civil society organizations in denouncing the blockade.

In addition to the Non-Aligned Movement’s renewed commitment to the United Nations Charter, popular movements are organizing along similar lines. This week, we launched the Global Appeal to Save International Law, an effort to create a global network of people and social movements to demand respect for the United Nations Charter and its use as a tool for maintaining peace, guaranteeing human rights and protecting the sovereignty of nations.

Sign on to the Global Appeal to Save International Law here.

From September 20-23, a coalition of organizations is holding the People’s Mobilization to Stop the US War Machine and Save the Planet. The Mobe will highlight the role of US militarism as the largest polluter on the planet during the Global Climate Strike on Friday, September 20 and join in calling for decolonization at the Puerto Rico Independence March on September 21. The People’s Mobe will hold a rally at Herald Square at 2:00 pm on Sunday, September 22. On Monday the 23rd, we will hold an evening event: “A Path To International Peace: Realizing the Vision of the United Nations Charter,” which will feature social movements and government representatives working for an end to US violations of international law. Registration is free, but is required. Register here.

Sign up to get updates about the People’s Mobilization to Stop the US War Machine and Save the Planet!

Opposition to US violations of international law were also evident at the Sao Paulo Forum held in Caracas from July 25-28 with the participation of 190 organizations, political parties, social movements, workers’ movements, parliamentarians and intellectuals from Latin America, the Caribbean and several continents. Seven hundred people participated in the four-day event showing unity across Latin America against US aggression.

A dozen members of the Venezuelan Embassy Protection Collective attended the forum, spoke to the conference and were received with standing ovations for their work to uphold international law. The Collective had challenges getting to the Forum, due to US airlines no longer flying to Venezuela, and one member was harassed at the US border when he returned.

A Final Declaration was issued by the Forum in support for Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and other progressive governments under attack by US imperialism and for a demand to free Lula and other left-wing leaders imprisoned for political reasons.

Members of the Embassy Protection Collective in Caracas.

Rising Resistance

People are standing up to US interventions in many other countries. In Honduras, there are widespread protests against the US-installed coup president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was indicted last week in the US for drug trafficking. US-trained police are responding to protests with violence.  A hunger strike by political prisoners turned into a call for Hernandez’s resignation. Embassy Protector Adrienne Pine is there and reporting via Twitter.

In Nicaragua, peace has prevailed after a US coup attempt last year. A US-funded Human Rights Director was accused of massive theft of US regime change dollars and inflating death tolls. To understand Nicaragua, read this excellent book by social movement leaders. There is a great deal happening in Cuba, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and other countries responding to US domination. Stephon Sefton writes that the next five years will be pivotal for the Left in Latin America.

Another top target is Iran where the US has escalated its economic war after Trump violated the nuclear arms agreement. Iran is being very strategic in responding to US aggression in the Strait of Hormuz and the US has been unable to get traditional allies like France and Germany to join with it, causing concerns within the US foreign policy establishment. The US economic war is undermining the Iranian economy and causing tens of thousands of deaths annually.

Iran has never attacked another country nor invaded a country to steal its resources. They are proud of their skills in diplomacy and negotiation, as a veteran of the Iraq-Iran war wrote to President Trump in an open letter. He warns that the initiator of war is the loser, and attacks on Iran will backfire. Foreign Minister Zarif made a similar point with regard to the unilateral coercive measures saying US economic terrorism will backfire against the US.

High level officials at the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Caracas, 2019. By the Grayzone Project.

The Loss of US Supremacy

Aggressive US actions being put in place by Trump, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo are backfiring. Responses are being put in place that will unravel US economic power, which is more fragile than it seems.

Foreign Minister Zarif summarizes the situation saying, “Last year we did 35 percent of our bilateral transactions with Turkey in our own currencies. And this is happening between us and China, between us and India, between us and Russia, and between us and the countries in the region.”

Countries are responding to dollar domination by trading without the US dollar. JP Morgan’s private bank advised clients that “the US dollar could lose its status as the world’s dominant currency” and urged investors to diversify their currency holdings. New financial structures are being created by Europe, Russia, Iran, China, and others to trade without the dollar. The value of the dollar is in decline and last month Credit Suisse predicted it would continue to fall.

The US political leadership seems unable to change course. The bi-partisans in Washington, DC passed a record-setting two-year military budget that continues to misspend US resources on an arms race and never-ending war rather than on critical needs at home. The failure to rebuild infrastructure, make education from pre-school through college free and available to all, confront the lack of investment in cities and rural areas and confront the crisis of healthcare with national improved Medicare for all will cause a downward US spiral.

The myth of American Exceptionalism is being exposed, as we discuss with Danny Haiphong on Clearing the FOG. We need to prepare for a new era as the 2020’s offer potential for significant social and political transformation if we work at it.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flower are directors of Popular Resistance

Iran has lawful right to nuclear energy program

In accordance with the international treaty JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), and as testified by inspectors of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran’s uranium enrichment project is for peaceful purposes.

Stay with us for an article on the ‘Globetrotter’ site, titled “Iran has lawful right to nuclear energy program”, by Vijay Prashad, an Indian historian and journalist, who is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including “The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World”.

During the recent Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ministerial meeting in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif charged the United States with “economic terrorism.”

He was referring to the unilateral US sanctions that have clobbered Iran, which, like most countries, is reliant on the financial system that remains dominated by the US.

The United States has had a sanctions regime in place against Iran for decades, almost since the victory of Islamic Revolution in 1979. The US, France and Germany later reneged on their nuclear-energy contracts with Iran and kept billions of dollars of Iranian money. Matters sharpened in 1996, when the US administration of Bill Clinton signed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. Since then, the US pressure on Iran has increased, then decreased, and increased again – but it has never been withdrawn.

The United States, since 1979 but more firmly since 1996, has alleged – without any shred of evidence – Iran is trying to produce a nuclear weapon.

Iran has rejected this accusation – especially in view of the fatwa or religious edict of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, that Islam prohibits manufacture of all weapons of mass destruction.

Iran points out that it is merely acting within what is permitted by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed in 1968. The NPT allows its members to develop a nuclear energy program, which includes the enrichment of uranium into fuel for nuclear reactors. Iran began its nuclear power program in 1957. The United States of America – alongside France and Germany – provided nuclear plants and fuel for the development of nuclear energy in Iran.

Article IV of the NPT clearly states that all signatories have the right to “participate in … the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” This includes the enrichment of uranium, at a threshold much below nuclear-weapons grade.

After victory of the Islamic Revolution, the West ended support for Iran’s nuclear energy program. Iran only restarted the program in the 1980s, but this time with limited access to technology and fuel.

It was from this period – when Iran restarted its nuclear energy program – that the United States has made the claim that Iran is not obliged to enrich uranium.

The US says that Iran’s requirement to enrich uranium – at any level – is the pathway to nuclear weaponization – an allegation that Tehran firmly rejects.

Iran says the NPT allows it to enrich uranium. Here is the real gap between the two countries. This alternative perception of what Iran is legally allowed to do is at the root of the problem.

When Iran signed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it agreed to freeze uranium enrichment at a low level. This was a major concession, which permitted the deal to be signed.

When President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the JCPOA, Iran argued that it was no longer obliged to freeze its uranium enrichment at 3.67%. Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, announced this July that Iran had exceeded this cap, reaching 4.5%.

In response, the US government rushed to push for new, harsh sanctions on Iran’s nuclear supply network, which includes sanctions on companies in Belgium, China and Iran. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused the Iranians of being “weapons of mass destruction proliferators” – despite the regular reports of the IAEA that there is no diversion.

Though Iran has exceeded the cap placed by the JCPOA – after a two months ultimatum, a year following the US breach – it has only reached 4.5%, which is far below the 90% enrichment level needed to produce a nuclear weapon.

In 2010, Iran had offered to freeze its enrichment level at 5%, just above where it has now reached. That offer was rejected. In 2011, the Russians proposed a “step-by-step” plan, which once more proposed the 5% enrichment level as well as a comprehensive plan for transparency (including the full array of International Atomic Energy Agency surveillance) and a limitation on centrifuge research and production. This was also rejected by the United States and its European partners.

The head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, argues that the US and Iran have different views on the NPT. That treaty allows countries to enrich uranium as long as it is at a level merely for nuclear energy and not for nuclear weapons. Iran insisted that the JCPOA affirmed Iran’s right to enrich uranium.

That was “Tehran’s condition for entering the negotiations,” Shamkhani said earlier this month.

The JCPOA has the imprimatur of international law with UN Security Council resolution 2231 of 2015. That resolution says that the initial restrictions on Iran “will be followed by a gradual evolution, at a reasonable pace, of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, including its enrichment activities, to a commercial program for exclusively peaceful purposes, consistent with international non-proliferation norms.” The full array of restrictions were to end in 2023.

Iran is a signatory of all the major treaties against weapons of mass destruction: the NPT (1968), the Biological Weapons Convention (1996), and the Chemical Weapons Convention (1997). Based on these conventions and treaties, Iran claims the right to a peaceful nuclear program. The United States denies Iran the right to develop a peaceful nuclear energy program. That is the basic problem.

The US has weaponized the NPT and the International Atomic Energy Agency to fulfill its political goals.

India, unlike Iran, is not a signatory of the NPT. India not only has a nuclear energy program, but it has a declared nuclear weapons program (having tested such weapons in 1974 and 1998). The United States has circumvented the NPT to arrange for the delivery of enriched uranium to India.

Israel has a nuclear weapons program. The United States fully backs Israel and has never called for IAEA inspections inside Israel. This shows that the US objection to Iran is not based on international law, but merely on its political objectives.

At the Caracas meeting, the mood in the Non-Aligned Movement was against the US view. The NAM has regularly affirmed Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear energy program. Zarif pointed to the “new wave of extreme one-sided adventurism” of the United States, which, he said, is “threatening peace and stability all around the world.” Iran’s “peaceful nuclear program,” Zarif said, is being disallowed by the United States, which has breached the JCPOA and violated the UN Security Council resolution.

There is no exit here. The United States, however isolated, refuses to accept that Iran has the right – under international law – to a nuclear energy program (which includes enrichment).

As long as the US holds this view, and as long as the other countries sit back and allow the US to throw its weight around, there will be no solution to the standoff around Iran.