To fix Iran crisis, Trump must change course

By Seyed Hossein Mousavian*

US President Donald Trump has put the West on a collision course with Iran.

Since he was elected to the White House in 2016, Trump has consistently pursued an ill-advised policy of "maximum pressure" against Tehran, on the assumption the high levels of economic and political pressure will bring Iran back to the negotiating tables on its knees.

It has been unsuccessful, to say the least.

Not only has Trump's approach increased hostility between the two countries, it has also provoked both sides into pursuing unprecedented belligerent policies and actions. It's no wonder the international community is seriously concerned about the possibility of military confrontation.

If Trump continues to pursue his current course of action, he is doomed to failure. There will be no room for diplomatic negotiations between the two countries — even if he is reelected in next year's presidential election. And the implications for the region could be disastrous.

If there's any hope of a constructive resolution, the US president must abandon his bullying tactics and his sanctions policy.

Only a fundamental change of approach can yield a resolution to the escalating tensions. And yet there are a number of key obstacles to a positive diplomatic solution.

The first, and perhaps the greatest, challenge to any real dialogue between the two countries is that the US does not appear to have a coherent position. The views of several key US policymakers directly contradict the president's own views and course of action. National security adviser John Bolton, for example, has advocated over the past 40 years for a military confrontation and regime change in Iran. In Tehran, a majority of state officials believe that Trump, by contrast, simply wanted to destroy the legacy of his predecessor, Barack Obama, and create his own.

The second challenge to an agreement is the unprecedented influence that Israel and Saudi Arabia, both US allies, have in shaping the Trump administration's foreign policy. Iranian officials blame both for intensifying hostilities between Tehran and Washington.

Thirdly, no one believes the Trump administration can come up with a "better deal" in the next year and a half of its term, given the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action brokered in 2015 was the product of 12 years of intensive negotiations. After all, the deal is an international agreement whose inspection system the late director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, branded the world's most robust nuclear inspection effort.

And then, even if Iran and the United States were indeed to sit down at the negotiating table in the next year and half, there are no guarantees the Trump administration, or its successor, would end up holding up its part of the bargain.

The fourth obstacle to a successful negotiation is Trump's insistence on following self-defeating strategies and going against the diplomatic grain. His decision to sanction Iran’s Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif essentially sank any chances of constructive diplomacy with Iran.

And finally, perhaps the most obvious impediment is that the Trump administration is deeply unfamiliar with the dynamics of Iran's politics, culture and society. Iran is a proud country that cherishes its history as a civilization stretching back millennia. It is allergic to any policy it perceives as undermining its achievements and will refuse to succumb to bullying or attempts to bring its administration to its knees.

Instead, in the face of Trump's hostility, Iran has adopted a policy of "resistance" and "reciprocation of hostilities" toward the United States. It is becoming increasingly convinced that a policy of "constructive engagement" with the West — which was President Hassan Rouhani's platform when he campaigned for the election in 2013 — does not yield positive outcomes for the country. Tensions with Washington have also become an incentive to boost its alliance with its Eastern allies, namely China and Russia, whose governments appear committed to combating US dominance in the global order.

If there's any hope of a constructive resolution, the US president must abandon his bullying tactics and his sanctions policy in order to provide space for diplomacy. The most urgent task for the US administration is now to establish credible communication channels and to appoint a new team that has a better understanding of the political realities in Iran and across the region.

* Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. The above article was first published on politico.eu on August 12, 2019.

Scary Armageddon estimates

Island Daily Editorial

Thursday 28th February, 2019

 

Gripped by a gnawing fear of being blown up anytime, thanks to the nuke stockpiles at the disposal of belligerent nations, the world must have heaved a sigh of relief when US President Donald Trump and his North Korean counterpart Kim Jon-un agreed to have a second round of talks. It is a pleasant sight to see the volatile duo talk peace instead of bellowing rhetoric and threatening to push nuclear buttons on their desks; they have certain traits in common such as the volatility of their tempers and sartorial elegance despite their tonsorial peculiarities and ideological differences.

Alas, the relief that the world felt was short-lived. Hours before Trump and Kim met in Hanoi, Vietnam, to avert a nuclear war, India and Pakistan, two rival nuclear powers, started clashing once again. In retaliation for the killing of 40 of Jawans in a terrorist blast in Kashmir, the Indian Air Force pounded targets inside Pakistan after 48 years, and Pakistan responded in a similar manner. It was a terrible loss for India, but New Delhi should have acted with restraint. (After all, that is what Sri Lanka was asked to do while it was suffering heavy losses at the hands of the LTTE.) Heavy shelling across the Line of Control was reported at the time of writing.

Clashes between India and Pakistan erupted while Trump and Kim were reportedly getting ready to declare an end to the frozen war between their countries, which agreed to a truce in 1953. Kim seems to be the least of Trump’s problems, at present, given the prospect of the Indo-Pakistan clashes escalating into a full-blown war—absit omen! Perhaps, Trump should fly to New Delhi and Islamabad straight from Hanoi to help bring the situation under control.

Mutually assured destruction (MAD) is generally thought to act as a deterrent anent nuclear capable nations in spite of their belligerence and, therefore, border disputes among them may not invariably reach the level of nukes being fired. But the escalation of such clashes has to be prevented at all costs in that the Armageddon estimates are chillingly scary.

Experts fear that more than 20 million people would immediately perish in a nuclear war in this region. Researchers at Rutgers, the University of Colorado-Boulder, and the University of California-Los Angeles have warned that if India and Pakistan happened to explode 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs, their impact, within less than 10 days, would cause temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere to get too cold for food production in countries like Canada and Russia. ‘The resulting 10 percent drop in rainfall — especially in Asian locales that rely on monsoons — would exhaust worldwide food supplies, leading to the starvation of up to 100 million or more people.' Experts also warn that aside from the food crisis, a nuclear war in South Asia would destroy between 25 to 70 percent of the Northern Hemisphere’s ozone layer. This is a frightening proposition for the whole of the human race.

The United Nations has to swing into action to prevent conflicts like the current one between India and Pakistan before they develop into wars, without limiting its role to taking punitive action against only smaller member states embroiled in conflicts, championing human rights selectively and peacekeeping in countries which powerful nations plunge into chaos.

Beijing was the first to call upon both India and Pakistan to act with restraint though whether the two rivals will heed its call remains to be seen. China can play a pivotal role in defusing tensions in the region. However, no détente will be possible unless the vexed issue of cross-border terrorism is tackled effectively and the Kashmir problem resolved once and for all. Easier said than done, but the nettle has to be grasped if two traditionally hostile nuclear powers are to be reconciled and peace restored.

The Tyrant of Riyadh Knew Could Get Away with Journalist’s Gruesome Murder

TEHRAN (FNA)- US President Donald Trump is finally admitting what the world community has been saying for weeks that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is behind the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

In Trump’s words, “He is running things and so if anybody were going to be, it would be him.” He however goes on to claim that MBS had no advanced knowledge of the incident, and that “I really want to believe them,” though those denials are clearly losing credibility.

Few people doubt the fact that Khashoggi was killed by a 15-man kill team sent by Saudi Arabia to meet him at the consulate. The team included a number of members of the MBS's personal security team. But will this throw American plans in the Middle East into disarray?

1- Trump will still continue to subcontract policy in the region to Saudi Arabia and Israel as he lessens US commitments. But US forces are here to stay. They won’t leave the Muslim world alone. Trump says irrespective of the Khashoggi affair, American weapons will continue to flow into Saudi Arabia.

2- The “premeditated killing” has brought headaches for Washington in Yemen as well, where the United States is backing a Saudi-led bombing campaign against the poorest nation in the Middle East. MBS needs Trump and American weaponry and military support to continue his gross human rights violations. Despite the evidence and international pressure, Trump will make sure that will be the case for now.

3- MBS might (emphasis here) survive this crisis and might stay in power and become king, but he will be a permanently weakened and despised despot globally. He will show he is a solid US vassal by buying more American weapons, by pleasing Israel and Turkey, by repairing ties with Turkish ally Qatar, and by taking an even harder line against Iran, enemy number one for the Trump administration, or by enacting bogus reforms.

4- The taint of Khashoggi’s murder will be very hard to scrub from the hands of MBS - most definitely in the short to medium term and perhaps Trump will use this to milk Saudi Arabia. After decades of Saudi Arabia buying US weapons and enjoying Washington's protection, the regime won’t switch to another supplier such as Russia or China. 

5- Khashoggi’s gruesome murder pales compared to the brutality and gross human rights violations Saudi Arabia is committing in Yemen in collaboration with the US and some NATO countries. The Saudis are deliberately preventing food and medicine from reaching areas where children are dying from starvation and disease. Their indiscriminate bombings are killing thousands of innocent civilians. The saddest part of this unfolding tragedy is that despite international pressure and condemnation over the butchering of Khashoggi, the US and other Western powers are still supplying the Saudis with the weapons they need to massacre the Yemenis.

6- The gruesome killing of the journalist is but a manifestation of how vicious and cold-blooded the Saudis can be. Western governments must remember that silencing a journalist by slicing him to pieces is not only an assault on the freedom of the press, but an assault on all human beings. The illegal war on Yemen defies any logic as well, and this all makes Western governments complicit in Saudi war crimes.

7- The Khashoggi episode provides the US the opportunity to change the dynamics of multiple conflicts in the region by taking a new initiative that can end the merciless war on Yemen and save the lives of millions; abandon the Wahhabi regime; stop entertaining the illusion that public outcry resulting from illegal sanctions could affect regime change in Iran; and improve its position on the Israeli aggressions. Sad to say, it won’t happen because Trump says so.

The lesson in all this is that the West does in no way care about the Muslim world. Western governments just want to sell their weapons and fuel conflicts so they can continue to plunder the region’s energy resources. All the reason why Muslims could use the Khashoggi episode to stop killing each other. Also the lesson from Yemen is that the way out of that humanitarian crisis is reconciliation and peaceful coexistence across the Muslim heartlands. Not content with Khashoggi’s murder, Trump will never make that happen.

Quite the opposite, in the mire of recent events, Trump will help the Saudis to sweep the episode under the rug, use his network of enablers and lobbyists to empower tyrant MBS, polish his image and turn in thought criminals to cover his tracks. As is often the case, political impunity will continue to empower the despotic regime and cover up its crime because enough money is being thrown at it. No wonder, the Khashoggi operation was conducted with such staggering incompetence. The tyrant of Riyadh was confident that Trump would help him to get away with the gruesome murder.