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Writing for TheAmericanConservative.com, Daniel Larison penned an excellent article entitled The Iranian People Are Not Our Enemy. Yes, I liked the title so much, I borrowed it for this column. Larison quotes Ardeshir Zahedi and Ali Vaez in an op-ed piece for the Washington Post. Zahedi is Iran’s former foreign minister (1966-1971) and ambassador to England (1962-1966) and the United States (1960-1962 and 1973-1979). Vaez is the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, based in Washington.
Larison begins by quoting Zahedi and Vaez:
Bullying and crude threats will achieve little beyond entangling the United States and the region in another senseless war while deepening the two countries’ 40-year estrangement. The United States should strive for an Iran that is stable with a strong middle class and highly educated youths connected to the moderating influence of the outside world. The Iranian people want to restore the friendship between Iran and the United States, two countries that enjoyed 123 years of cordial ties before 1979. But the path to their hearts and minds is not through sanctions and military intervention.
Larison then writes:
The Trump administration should follow these recommendations, but I fear it is so far down the path of belligerence and confrontation that the president and his officials wouldn’t know how to stop at this point. Most U.S. administrations are loath to give up on failed policies even when it is obvious to everyone else that they cannot succeed, and the Trump administration is more resistant to admitting failure than most. If the president opts for de-escalation and climbing down from the unrealistic and excessive demands that his administration has made, we should encourage him in making that change and support that effort at de-escalation. If he continues to follow the toxic advice of Iran hawks to intensify the pressure campaign, he should be opposed every step of the way.
If we are capable of burying the hatchet with Vietnam, China, Japan, Italy, and Germany within 20 years of fighting them or less, and if we could have normal relations with the Soviet Union and its communist allies throughout the Cold War, we can certainly have normal relations with Iran after all this time.
That last paragraph makes so much sense a fifth grader could understand it. But we don’t have a fifth grader in the White House; we have a kindergartener who only knows what his mommy and daddy tell him—and his mommy and daddy are Zionist Israel and its American surrogates: evangelical Christian Zionists. And neither Israel nor America’s Christian Zionists want peace with Iran.
Larison quotes Zahedi and Vaez again:
The administration’s list of public missteps toward the Iranian people is as long as it is regrettable. It includes preventing almost all Iranians from visiting the United States; misstating the historic name of the Persian Gulf; failing to express sympathy with Iranians after terrorist attacks by the Islamic State and separatist groups; and, perhaps most consequentially, withdrawing from the nuclear deal that remains popular in Iran and to which many there had pinned their hopes for a better life.
These mistakes have helped transform top-down anti-Americanism in Iran into a bottom-up phenomenon. Nothing spurs a rally-around-the-flag effect among 83 million Iranians more than humiliation and threats of foreign aggression.
Of course, the U.S. government isn’t going to express sympathy with Iran after terrorist attacks by the Islamic State and separatist groups. The U.S. government (along with Israel, Saudi Arabia and Great Britain) created, armed, financed and provided military assistance to those terrorist groups.
Larison continues:
The Iranian people are not and never have been our enemy, but our Iran policy doesn’t reflect that in practice. When the Iranian government was aligned with the U.S., our government backed the regime despite the harm that it was doing to the people. After the revolution, our government reflexively backed Iran’s enemies in the hopes of getting at their government. The effect was to cause massive suffering and death among the people. Our government regularly claims that our quarrel is not with the people, but it is always the people that bear the brunt of our policies. One of the main themes in U.S.-Iranian relations over the decades has been our government’s inability or unwillingness to treat Iranians with respect, and under the Trump administration that lack of respect has turned into contempt. We see that with the travel ban and the indulgence of the Mujahideen-e Khalq by prominent U.S. officials and politicians, and we see it with the suffocating oppression of sanctions imposed on the entire country. Iranians are not our enemy, but our government has insisted on treating them as enemies all the same.
Our policy should never be to suffocate the civilian population of another country with ruinous sanctions. In addition to being unjust and cruel, it hardens attitudes against the U.S. and provokes stronger resistance. No genuine U.S. interests are served by immiserating tens of millions of people for the actions of their government, and by inflicting collective punishment on an entire nation our government commits a terrible injustice that should shame us all. If the Iranian people are not our enemy, we must halt the economic war our government is waging against them and pursue a course of diplomatic and economic engagement instead.
Amen and Amen, Daniel.
Tell me, folks, when did the terrible “terrorist” state of Iran shoot down a U.S. passenger jet and murder nearly 300 innocent civilian passengers? You can’t remember? Well, you can’t remember, because Iran did NOT shoot down an American passenger jet; it was America that shot down an Iranian passenger jet.
The date was July 3, 1988. The Iranian passenger jet was Iran Air Flight 655. The military vessel that shot down that Iranian passenger jet was the guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, which fired two SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles—from inside Iranian territorial waters, no less. All 290 people on board were killed, including 66 children.
How’s THAT for an act of terrorism?
And just as Israel never apologized for attacking and trying to sink the USS LIBERTY on June 8, 1967 (killing 34 American sailors and Marines and wounding 174), the U.S. government never apologized for downing Iran Air Flight 655 (killing all 290 on board).
Folks, which country is sending spy drones and Raptor attack drones into another country’s airspace, Iran or America? Which country is sailing military ships into another country’s territorial waters, Iran or America? Which country is flying military attack aircraft into another country’s airspace, Iran or America? Which country has built dozens of military bases within a few miles of another nation’s borders, Iran or America? Which country is sending covert armies into another sovereign nation to disrupt communications and cyber security and blow up facilities and assassinate government officials and scientists? You know the answer: the United States (and Israel, of course).
And despite all we hear from the propagandists in the federal government and mainstream media promoting America’s “War on Terror,” Muslims in Iraq, Iran or anywhere else had absolutely NOTHING to do with the attacks on 9/11.
I hear people say that Trump should attack Iran because that country shot down one of our drones. Really? That drone had no business being in Iran’s territorial airspace. It was an act of aggression on America’s part. What, pray tell, would America do if another country flew a drone into our air space? If America has the right to defend itself from acts of aggression (and it does), why does Iran not have the same right? It does.
Folks, all of the hatemongering and fearmongering against Iran aside, the Persian nation has not invaded any country in an act of unprovoked aggression in over 200 years. Iran was not even involved in Israel’s Six Day War in 1967. And not only has Iran not attacked the United States (or Israel either, for that matter), Iran poses absolutely NO threat to the United States. And the only threat Iran poses to Israel is a defensive threat as Israel constantly attacks Iranian assets across the region. If Israel was not such a fanatical militaristic apartheid state, the PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah would not even exist.
Israel has launched hundreds (maybe thousands) of missile attacks against Iranian assets in Syria and Lebanon. And please remember that Iran’s forces are in those countries lawfully, having been invited by the respective governments of those countries to help defend their people against the constant attacks by Israel.
Do you not find it more than interesting that Iran is home to more Jews than any other Middle Eastern country outside of Israel? And do you not find it even more interesting that those thousands of Jews in Iran believe themselves to be freer and safer in Iran than they would be in Israel, the United States or Europe?
This war against Iran is not about the safety and security of the United States, and it’s not about protecting the world against a “terrorist” state. It’s all about war for Israel and the Federal Reserve. Iran is the last major Middle Eastern country that has refused to submit to the Federal Reserve international banking cartel. That’s what the war in Iraq (under G.W. Bush) and the war in Libya (under Barack Obama) were about; and that’s what this war in Iran (under Donald Trump) is about. As USMC Major General Smedley Butler said, war is nothing more than one giant money racket.
Plus, Rep. Justin Amash is exactly right: Donald Trump does NOT have the authority under our Constitution to attack Iran without direct authorization from Congress. But who cares about the Constitution anymore? Not Donald Trump, that’s for sure.
Paul Craig Roberts opines about the traitorous Zionists in our government (Pence, Pompeo and Bolton) who are directing America’s foolish and unconstitutional war against Iran and the fact that America doesn’t have a leader (read “president”) with the understanding or guts to stop it. Right on, Paul.
Trump’s decision to not launch air strikes against Iran after it downed the U.S. drone in its airspace was NOT an attempt at peace; it was a war tactic. Trump knows the last thing the American people want is another war in the Middle East. What Trump said about not wanting to kill 150 Iranians in those air strikes is complete balderdash.
Donald Trump drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Every 12 minutes! That means, Donald Trump has dropped over 44,000 bombs each year in office. That means, Trump has dropped over 110,000 bombs during his 2½ years in office. And the vast majority of the victims of these bombings were innocent civilians. Only 2%—that’s right, 2%—of those bombs killed so-called enemy combatants on the DOD “kill list.” 90% of the time, his bombs killed innocent civilians. Astonishingly, the CIA’s own documents report that 80% of the time, the people killed in America’s bomb attacks are completely unidentified. In other words, they have no idea who they are killing. But they keep killing them nonetheless. If only one innocent person was killed in each of those 110,000 bombs that Trump dropped since being in office, he has murdered at least 110,000 innocent people. Do you really think that an additional 150 people dying in another U.S. air strike would mean anything to this president? Hardly.
You watch: What Trump will do is authorize the Israeli/Saudi terror groups in the Middle East to launch another false flag attack—one too big to be overlooked—that will be blamed on Iran and that will “force” Israel into a war with Iran. Then, Trump will announce to the American people that the United States must enter the war to defend its “great ally” Israel. And Trump’s warmongering (and Muslim-hating) evangelical Christian Zionist base will absolutely LOVE it.
Of course, where this war will lead and what Russia and China will do is anybody’s guess. Dr. Roberts says we are facing Armageddon. He might be right. If he is, won’t these Christian Zionists be shocked when they discover that they weren’t raptured to heaven ahead of time after all?!
Folks, the Iranian people are not our enemy. Our enemy is those warmongering miscreants in Washington, D.C., Tel Aviv, Riyadh and London.
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