Trump’s strategy toward Iran doomed to fail

Afsaneh Reshad*

Tehran, Oct 23, IRNA - Many US politicians have adopted hostile policies toward Iran since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. With Donald Trump coming to power, these policies have become more hostile.

The US withdrawal from the multilateral Iran nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and imposing stiff economic sanctions on Iran by accusing it of sponsoring terrorism are some such hostile policies – for which the US has failed forge an international consensus.

On October 4, 2018, the US government unveiled its National Strategy for Counterterrorism document that puts focus on Iran. 
The new strategy is the first issued since 2011 under former US president Barack Obama.
Although these two documents, published in a span of seven years, have many similarities, they have fundamental differences as well.

Iran was cited only once – on the penultimate page – of the 2011 counterterrorism strategy as an “active” state sponsor of “terrorism” [sic].

But the current document, which mentions Iran ten times, shows how the Trump administration has dramatically put Iran at the center of US concerns.

“We continue to face threats from Iran, the most prominent state sponsor of terrorism, through its global network of operatives and its ongoing support to an array of terrorist groups,” the new document claims.

Most parts of the document, though, have been developed based on unfounded allegations against Iran.
It is clear that the US considers Iran as the main obstacle impeding its hegemonic policies in the region.

Psychological warfare campaign

Washington has now tried to wage an economic war against Iran to make it difficult for ordinary people to meet ends meet. And then, through a psychological warfare campaign, holds Iran’s policies and officials accountable for the deteriorating economic situation.

Undoubtedly, recognizing the enemy’s schemes, policies, strategies, tactics, and techniques will be a necessary step to foil them.
The new US strategy for counterterrorism has been made up from six major steps that each has its own “priority measures.”
• Step one: tracking terrorist threats to their origins
• Step two: cutting off terrorists’ financial and logistic supports
• Step three: modernizing and integrating the US resources to counter terrorism and protecting the country
• Step four: protecting the US infrastructure and strengthening preparedness 
• Step five: stemming extremism and terrorists’ hiring
• Step six: strengthening the capacities of US international partners to counter terrorism

Different US governments have created, strengthened and dispatched terrorist groups to corners of the world so as to advance US grand strategies by destabilizing other countries and abuse the notion of fighting against terrorism.

Publishing such documents can be seen in the line of US diversionary tactics to clear its name by accusing the others – which shows the hypocritical nature of some of the US politicians during the past decades.

Currently the Trump administration has resorted to illegal sanctions to achieve on the two following goals: First: To force the Iranian government to give in to some of US demands and return to the negotiating table for reaching what Trump calls a more comprehensive deal.

The second option is to tighten US economic sanctions on Iranian people in order to drive a wedge between the people and the establishment. The public pressure would then make the establishment to return to the negotiating table and give in to the majority of the US demands.

It is worth mentioning that the US, in line with its policy of maximizing pressure against Iran, will strive to project Iran as a threat and make the false impression that this threat has to be countered.

The US list of states sponsoring terrorism is drawn up as a tool, rather than based on reality, to be used by the US to exert pressure on countries which are against its policies.

Meanwhile, analyzing the statements of the former and current officials of the US administrations after the Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA indicate that Washington faces certain challenges in imposing crippling sanctions on Iran.

The US has created an Iran Action Group, headed by Brian Hook, to come up with plans to counter these challenges.
Hook underlined two main missions for his group; organizing and coordinating US organizations within the US and also diplomatic consultations with other US partners for imposing sanctions on Iran.

The US strategy is that the sanctions on Iran would become biting before the reimposition of its oil sanction on November 4.
The Iranian government should try to explore all international venues to make the sanctions ineffective or less biting by using an active diplomacy and a ‘strategic patience’.

Although the enemy has staged an all-out campaign against Iran, what should not be ignored is that the permutation of forced on international level has undergone serious changes after the JCPOA was signed.

Before the conclusion of the JCPOA, some of the sanctions imposed on Iran had the backing of the UN, the then US administration had created a consensus against Iran, Washington had amicable and good relations with many partners. But, today, the sanctions are unilaterally imposed on Iran at a time when, due to Trump’s measures policies, US relations with many partners, including those in Europe, is conflictual.

The sanctions will not have the same effect that they had in the past. Trump will not achieve its goals. 
* Afsaneh Reshad is assistant professor at Islamic Azad University.

Three Decades Ago: US Fueled “Most Repressive Regime in the World”

31 years ago today, an article published by The Daily Iowan, “US Imperialism and the Shah,” lamented United States-sponsored terrorism against the Iranian people, which was nearing the breaking point. The author, a second-year law student who later became an attorney named Robin B. Potter, who at the time, was a member of the US-based Revolutionary Student Brigade (RSB), explained how the relentlessly brutal dictator, the Shah, acting as a puppet for US government interests, allowed the US economy to reap the harvests of Iran’s oil, while the people of Iran suffered under a torturous, totalitarian leader. Subjected to constant scrutiny, individuals and groups who opposed the Shah’s tyrannical rule drew the attention of the Shah’s secret police, known as SAVAK. They were used to torture political opponents and dissidents while imprisoning more than 100,000 Iranian citizens.

Iranian students attending college in the US in 1977 – the group named “Daneshjouian Irani”- in a letter to the editor carried by The Daily Iowan, wrote, “The CIA created the SAVAK in Iran in 1956 and over the last 25 years has created and controlled the most repressive regime in the world.”

At the same time that the SAVAK wreaked havoc on the free-thinking Iranian population, corporate US business interests, with the CIA’s backing, maintained 30,000 “advisers” in Iran in 1977 and provided millions of dollars in military arms and hardware. I suspect that many young people today in the US have no idea what a jagged, violent and deceitful path US politicians chose to follow in order to either harness Iran’s financial revenues, or seek its total destruction. Most do not know that the US instructed Saddam Hussein, another US puppet, to invade and occupy Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, which left 300,000 Iranian people dead, and they probably don’t know that the US Navy once blasted an Iranian airliner filled with hundreds of people out of the sky and then adamantly refused to accept guilt or accountability for the murderous act.

These are the events that shaped present-day relations between the United States and Iran today. Yes, Iran took many Americans hostage during the infamous “Hostage Crisis” in 1979, but it is also a fact that all were released alive. Still, the chagrin the Americans felt over that incident would be the reason for more unapologetic reprisals. Once US politicians lost the ability to profit from Iran, the country was immediately placed on America’s hit list.

Former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously revealed the truth when he said, “Lord knows what we’d do without Iranian oil.” Well Dwight, Americans would have had to live more humbly, they would have needed to drive economy cars like the rest of the world, instead of 6,000 pound beasts twenty feet long with engines often in excess of four liters. Americans would have had to listen to former US President Jimmy Carter when he told the nation on public television that they were living beyond their means; this even before credit card mania overtook Americans, causing them to all become like hamsters in a wheel, unable to get off, constantly worrying about paying off their growing debts.

In “US Imperialism and the Shah,” Potter wrote that the US government, “permits the SAVAK to spy openly on Iranian students and dissidents living in this country. Besides installing the ruthless dictator, the United States has assisted the Shah in building a complete intelligence network for the purpose of monitoring the Persian Gulf movements of foreign powers like the Soviet Union in the area, as well as to police his opposition.”

The same things gripping the state of the world in 2018, were well underway more than three decades ago. The article and attitude among progressive Americans at that time was that, “…the same investments, the same companies and moneybags who have their fingers in the Iranian economy and profit by the oppressive nature of its social system.”

Interestingly, at the time of the article, South Africa was still under full apartheid oppression and Black Africans were considered second-rate citizens as the Palestinians and African migrants are to the Israelis today. It’s as though they just keep trading positions instead of learning from mistakes. Greed, racial and religious superiority absolutely dominate the politics of the US and other oppressive regimes.

The article referenced here is republished on the Website, MohammadMossadegh.com. Mossadegh of course was Iran’s western educated democratically elected Prime Minister, who the US removed from power in a coup d’etat in 1953. Why? Because Mossadegh could read the writing on the wall and after many years of western governments and their corporate allies absolutely ripping Iran off over oil prices, he decided to nationalize oil and oust the Anglo Iranian Oil Company, today known as British Petroleum. This led the British to collaborate with the newly formed US CIA and overthrow Iran’s government, in order to install the Shah.

In fact The Economist reported 8 March, 1975, that the Shah was so oppressive, that he made an announcement about three principles that all Iranians must believe in: those were the monarchy, the constitution, and the Shah’s “white revolution.” He said those who accepted the principles he insisted upon, had to join the Shah’s new party. Those who refused to accept those tenets, the Shah said, should, “leave the country or go to jail.”

That is what the US government did to the Iranian people by forcibly removing their elected leader and installing the Shah. The US has been at odds with Iran since 1979 and while the US remains constantly engaged in unilateral overseas military engagements that claim many lives and brew endless controversy, Iran has not attacked a nation outside of its borders for hundreds of years.