Trump
draws back
from
war with Iran – twice
On 14 July 2015, the US signed a
nuclear agreement with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The other four permanent members of the
Security Council – China, France, Russia and the UK – plus Germany, were also
party to the agreement.
Iran: one of the original signatories
to the NPT
Iran was one of the original
signatories to the Treaty
on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the internationally
accepted rules-based system governing nuclear activity by states. It signed the NPT as a ‘non-nuclear-weapon’ state on 1 July 1968 and, by so doing,
undertook not to develop nuclear weapons.
It hasn’t done so. As required by the NPT, Iran’s nuclear
facilities are and always have been under IAEA supervision. The IAEA has never detected any diversion of nuclear material from
these nuclear facilities for possible military use.
Iran’s leaders have
repeatedly denied that they have any ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. What is more, in a speech to nuclear
scientists on 22 February 2012, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei,
declared the possession of such weapons a “grave sin”. There was nothing new in this statement: in
2005, he issued a fatwa – a religious edict – saying that “the production,
stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the
Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons”.
Of course, this is not an
absolute constraint on Iran developing nuclear weapons, but it’s unlikely that
the religious authorities in Iran would modify this principle unless Iran was
perceived to be under an existential threat, most plausibly, after having been
attacked by the US and/or Israel.
George Bush “angry”
In
November 2007, a US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) entitled Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities landed on President
Bush’s desk. This concluded that Iran
hadn’t got an active nuclear weapons programme.
One
might have thought that a President, who was supposedly dedicated to preventing
Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, would have been delighted by this news
that the central aspect of his Iran policy was working. But instead he was
“angry”. He told us so in his memoir Decision
Points. He was “angry” because it
cut the ground from under his efforts to maintain international support for
what he termed “dealing with Iran”, which clearly went beyond ensuring that it
did not possess nuclear weapons.
Crucially,
the NIE made it impossible for him to take military action against Iran:
“The NIE didn’t just
undermine diplomacy. It also tied my
hands on the military side. … But after
the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear
facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear
weapons program?”
The
President should have been pleased that Iran was not developing nuclear
weapons. Instead, he was angry that this
evidence from his own intelligence services had undermined the
his campaign to maintain international pressure on Iran and had removed
any justification for US military action against Iran.
The US
had then and has now an interest in saying that a nuclear-armed Iran is
imminent. And the same is true of
Israel.
An ‘inalienable right’ to uranium
enrichment
In return for surrendering their right
to develop nuclear weapons, the NPT grants ‘non-nuclear-weapon’ states like
Iran the right to develop nuclear facilities for peaceful purposes. Article IV(1) of the Treaty
makes this clear:
“Nothing
in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all
the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear
energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with
Articles I and II of this Treaty.”
So, on the face of things, the NPT
gives all ‘non-nuclear-weapon’ states what it calls an ‘inalienable right’ to
uranium enrichment on their own soil so long as they conform to Article II,
that is, so long as enrichment is not for weapons manufacture. Argentina,
Brazil, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands are all in the same position as
Iran. They are all ‘non-nuclear-weapon’ state parties to the NPT. And all of them have uranium enrichment
facilities without being accused of breaching the NPT.
John Kerry was Chairman of the US
Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2009 to 2013, when he became President
Obama’s Secretary of State and led for the US in the JCPOA negotiations. He told the Financial Times on 10 June 2009 that Iran had “a
right to peaceful nuclear power and to enrichment in that purpose” and he went
on to describe the Bush administration’s “no enrichment” approach to
negotiations as “bombastic diplomacy” that “wasted energy” and “hardened the
lines”.
US tried to force Iran to cease
enrichment
Nevertheless, for a decade prior to
the signing of the JCPOA in 2015, the Bush and Obama administrations tried,
with the backing of the EU, to force Iran to cease uranium enrichment. If the US/EU had gotten their way, Iran would
have been the only state in the world which was banned from having uranium
enrichment facilities on its own soil.
As part of this enforcement campaign,
from January 2012 onwards the Obama administration unilaterally imposed severe
economic sanctions on Iran which sought to prevent it from engaging in
international trade, especially the export of oil. These sanctions owed their
existence to legislation passed by the US Congress in December 2011 at the
behest of the Israeli lobby in the US, legislation which was accepted by
President Obama. The EU joined in, unilaterally
banning imports of Iranian oil from June 2012 onwards.
These
US/EU sanctions halved
Iran’s revenue from oil to $5 billion annually and caused Iran’s GDP to fall by
about 6% in 2012 (see BBC The impact of Iran sanctions). In
October 2012 during his re-election campaign against Mitt Romney, President
Obama boasted Trump-like that he had “crippled”
Iran’s economy.
However,
despite applying this extraordinary economic pressure, the US/EU failed to
force Iran to cease enrichment. On the contrary, whereas in 2005 there were
no centrifuges enriching uranium in Iran, by 2015 around 19,000 centrifuges were
installed and about 10,000 of them were in operation.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA)
In early 2013 or thereabouts, the
Obama administration did a U-turn and abandoned its attempt to force Iran to
cease uranium enrichment on its own soil. That's why the US negotiations with
Iran about its nuclear activities, which began secretly in Oman in March 2013,
ended successfully in Vienna on 14 July 2015 with agreement on the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Without
that reversal of policy, there would have been no deal, because retaining
enrichment facilities on its own soil has always been Iran’s bottom line and it
was prepared to endure years of wholly unjustified sanctions in order to defend
that bottom line.
The JCPOA is an extraordinarily
wide-ranging and complex agreement (see, for example, JCPOA Key Requirements, Arms Control
Association).
Aside from no longer demanding that
Iran cease uranium enrichment, the deal required the lifting of all
nuclear-related sanctions against Iran, those imposed unilaterally by the US
and EU in 2012 plus the earlier rather mild UN sanctions. It even went beyond ending sanctions into the
area of trade promotion: in Section 29, the US and the EU are required to “refrain
from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the
normalisation of trade and economic relations with Iran” and in Section 33 the
EU commits to “agree on steps to ensure Iran’s access in areas of trade,
technology, finance and energy” and “consider the use of available instruments
such as export credits to facilitate trade, project financing and investment in
Iran”. In Section 22, the US agreed to
“allow for the sale of commercial passenger aircraft and related parts and
services to Iran”.
However, the US sought to constrain
Iran’s nuclear programme in other ways.
In particular, it insisted that the JCPOA imposed very severe, albeit
time-limited, restrictions on Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities and its
enriched uranium stockpile and on many other aspects of its nuclear programme.
On the former, for example:
(a) For the next 10 years, the number of
uranium enrichment centrifuges installed is limited to about 6,000 (that is,
13,000 had to be de-installed);
(b)
For
the next 15 years, the level of enrichment is capped at 3.67% uranium-235, the
level appropriate for power generation reactors;
(c) For the next 15 years, the stockpile
of enriched uranium is capped at 300kgs of 3.67% uranium-235, a 98% reduction
in its stockpile prior to the JCPOA (to achieve this, Iran has had to sell the
excess, or ship it abroad for storage, or dilute it to natural uranium levels).
There was no justification for imposing
these extraordinary restrictions on Iran’s civil nuclear programme: as a
‘non-nuclear-weapon’ party to the NPT, Iran is forbidden to acquire nuclear
weapons, but the NPT places no limits on civil nuclear activity, providing it
is under IAEA supervision. No other
party to the NPT has had limitations placed on its civil nuclear programme.
Iran agreed reluctantly to the JCPOA
to get rid of crippling sanctions by the US/EU and in the hope that after the
US-imposed restrictions had expired they would have a civil nuclear programme
of their own choosing, which is their right under the NPT.
JCPOA endorsed by the Security Council
On 20 July 2015, the JCPOA was
endorsed unanimously by the Security Council in Resolution 2231 and thereby became an international
agreement, to which all UN member states had a duty to adhere.
Resolution 2231 also charged the IAEA
with the task of monitoring Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA. To enable it to fulfil that task, the
agreement itself prescribed that Iran be subjected to the most comprehensive
inspection and verification regime that has ever been operated by the
IAEA.
On 16 January 2016, the IAEA certified that
Iran had taken the steps necessary to restrict its nuclear programme and put in
place appropriate arrangements for increased monitoring of the programme. This triggered the lifting of US, EU and UN
sanctions.
From
then on, the IAEA issued quarterly reports on Iran’s compliance with the
JCPOA. Its tenth such report on 9 May
2018, like all its predecessors, confirmed Iran’s compliance, the IAEA Director
General Yukiya Amano stating:
“Iran
is subject to the world’s most robust nuclear verification regime under the
JCPOA, which is a significant verification gain. As of today, the IAEA can
confirm that the nuclear-related commitments are being implemented by Iran.”
The
US violates Security Council Resolution 2231
The
day before, on 8 May 2018, President Trump had announced
that the US intended to violate Security Council Resolution 2231.
Annex
II B of the JCPOA states:
“The
United States commits to cease the application of, and to seek such legislative
action as may be appropriate to terminate, or modify to effectuate the
termination of, all nuclear-related sanctions as specified in Sections 4.1-4.9
below … “ (p43 of Resolution 2231)
On
8 May 2018, the President signed a presidential memorandum showing that the US
intended to breach that commitment and “begin reinstating U.S. nuclear sanctions
on the Iranian regime”. It stressed that
the US “will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction”.
Reinstating
sanctions against Iran is a clear violation of Resolution 2231 and a very
significant one at that, which has almost led to military conflict between the
US and Iran. Yet it is highly unlikely
that you will have read that the US is violating Security Council Resolution
2231 by reinstating sanctions, since the mainstream media constantly refer to
this outrageous act as “withdrawal from the nuclear deal”.
There’s
a much better chance that you will have read that Iran is violating Resolution
2231. Iran is regularly accused of developing
ballistic missiles in violation of 2231, which “calls upon” Iran not to
“undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of
delivering nuclear weapons”. If that is
true (which Iran rejects), it’s a much less serious violation of 2231 than that
of the US, which has had very serious consequences for the Middle East.
US
reinstatement of sanctions
First
and foremost, the US reinstatement of sanctions has had very serious
consequences for Iran, where it has created widespread human misery. According to the BBC, Six
charts that show how hard US sanctions have hit Iran, 9 December 2019
(1)
As
a result of the sanctions, Iran's gross domestic product (GDP) contracted an
estimated 4.8% in 2018 and is forecast to shrink another 9.5% in 2019,
according to the International Monetary Fund.
(2) The Statistical Centre of Iran
reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) 12-month rate of inflation for
households stood at 42% in late October 2019. Food and beverage prices were up
by 61% year-on-year and the price of tobacco was up by 80%.
(3)
As
regards oil production, OPEC data suggest that at the start of 2018, Iran's
crude oil production reached 3.8 million barrels per day (bpd) of which about
2.3 million bpd were being exported.
However, by October 2019, Iran's crude oil production had fallen to 2.1
million bpd on average, of which only 260,000 bpd on average was being exported.
Human
Rights Watch published a report, ‘Maximum Pressure’: US Economic
Sanctions Harm Iranians’ Right to Health,
on 29 October 2019. It documents how
broad restrictions on financial transactions, coupled with aggressive rhetoric
from United States officials, have drastically constrained the ability of
Iranian entities to finance humanitarian imports, including vital medicines and
medical equipment.
Pompeo’s ultimatum
On 21 May 2018, shortly after President Trump
announced that the US was going to reinstate sanctions, his Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo issued an ultimatum to Iran
making 12 demands that it must satisfy before sanctions are lifted:
“First,
Iran must declare to the IAEA a full account of the prior military dimensions
of its nuclear program, and permanently and verifiably abandon such work in perpetuity.
“Second,
Iran must stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing. This
includes closing its heavy water reactor.
“Third,
Iran must also provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout
the entire country.
“Iran
must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further launching or
development of nuclear-capable missile systems.
“Iran
must release all U.S. citizens, as well as citizens of our partners and allies,
each of them detained on spurious charges.
“Iran
must end support to Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hizballah,
Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
“Iran
must also end its military support for the Houthi militia and work towards a
peaceful political settlement in Yemen.
“Iran
must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of
Syria.
“Iran,
too, must end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and
the region, and cease harboring senior al-Qaida
leaders.
“Iran,
too, must end the IRG Quds Force’s support for terrorists and militant partners
around the world.
“And
too, Iran must end its threatening behavior against
its neighbors – many of whom are U.S. allies. This
certainly includes its threats to destroy Israel, and its firing of missiles
into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It also includes threats to
international shipping … and destructive cyberattacks.
“That
list is pretty long, but if you take a look at it, these are 12 very basic
requirements. The length of the list is simply a scope of the malign behavior of Iran. We didn’t create the list, they did.”
Pat Buchanan remarked that Pompeo’s speech
“read like the terms of some conquering Caesar dictating to some defeated tribe
in Gaul, though we had yet to fight and win the war, usually a precondition for
dictating terms”.
Pompeo was kind enough to say that
“once this is achieved” (that is, once Iran has fulfilled all 12 demands) the
US is prepared “to end the principal components of every one of our sanctions”
(which presumably doesn’t mean all sanctions), “to re-establish full diplomatic
and commercial relationships” and even “to permit Iran to have advanced
technology”.
Predictably, Iran’s response to Pompeo’s
demands was to disregard them.
E3 ineffectual
Iran continued to abide by the terms of the
JCPOA even though the US intended to violate them and it looked to Germany,
France and the UK (aka the E3) for political support and for help in countering
US sanctions – but it has looked in vain.
Theoretically, France and Germany and
the UK are still in favour of maintaining the JCPOA. But the three of them have provided the US
with an excuse for violating it by continuously echoing the US complaints that
it doesn’t cover the full range of Iran’s alleged sins and therefore needs to
be modified.
They have done nothing to help Iran
trade with the outside world, meekly accepting the damage to their own trade
with Iran as a result of US sanctions.
True, over a year ago, on 31 January
2019, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the UK announced the
creation of INSTEX, the Instrument for Supporting Trade Exchanges, to
facilitate the exchange of goods between Iran and the EU without the direct
transfer of money.
Originally, it was pitched as a means
of getting around US sanctions, but now it’s going to be used for trade in
humanitarian goods - pharmaceutical, medical and food products only – which are
exempt from US sanctions, but difficult for Iran to acquire from abroad because
banks are reluctant to have any dealings with Iran. Plans to facilitate the trade of oil and gas
via INSTEX have been abandoned lest such unfriendly sanctions busting annoy the
US.
However, no goods have thus far been
exchanged through INSTEX over a year after its creation was announced (see EU-Iran Instex
trade channel remains pipe dream,
DW, 31 January 2020).
Iran adopts a more aggressive stance
A year or so after the US
reinstatement of sanctions, with the three European states proving to be of no
help, the prospects for Iran looked bleak: US sanctions were hurting and there
was no obvious way out. So, Iran decided
to adopt a more aggressive stance.
On 8 June 2019, it announced that it
would no longer be bound by the JCPOA's limits on heavy water and low-enriched
uranium, while emphasising that the steps it proposed to take were easily
reversible if the other parties to the JCPOA came into compliance.
Earlier, on 12 May 2019, four commercial ships (3 oil tankers, 2 registered in Saudi
Arabia and 1 in Norway, and an Emirati registered bunkering ship) were damaged
off the coast of the UAE in the Gulf of Oman.
There were no casualties. On 13
June, two more oil tankers were attacked in the Gulf of
Oman. Again, there were no
casualties. The US and most of its
allies blamed Iran for all these incidents, but no action was taken against
Iran. The UAE stood out by refusing to
blame anybody. Iran denied
responsibility.
Whoever delivered it, it appeared to
be a message to the world from Iran saying that, as long as it is barred from
exporting oil, it would be unwise to assume that other states would be able to
export their oil unhindered from the Gulf.
On 20 June, Iran shot down an unarmed (and
unmanned) US military surveillance drone, which Iran said had entered Iranian
airspace but the US said was over international waters. The drone was a RQ-4A Global Hawk reputedly the largest used by the US
military and costing $176 million. US military
retaliation against Iranian radar and missile sites was planned but, according
to President Trump, he called it off at the last minute, having been told that
it was likely to kill 150 people. He did
so against the wishes of his chief advisers John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.
Had the US retaliation gone ahead,
Iran might have felt obliged to respond, especially if 150 Iranians were
killed, which could have led to a prolonged military exchange if not all out
war. Trump nipped that possibility in
the bud by not retaliating at the outset.
For that, we should be grateful.
He hasn’t started another US war in the Middle East - yet.
That’s what he promised in the
platform on which he was elected. But if
he is serious about forcing Iran to submit to demands along the lines specified
in Pompeo’s ultimatum then war with Iran is inevitable.
(The Iranian authorities claimed that a US P-8A manned aircraft also
intruded into Iranian air space at the same time as the drone and they could
have shot it down but didn’t because it was manned. The US military has confirmed that a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol
aircraft was close to the drone when it was shot down, so the Iranian account
may be correct. The president, himself, seemed to think so, and expressed appreciation to the
Iranians for saving the lives of the 38 people on board. There’s little doubt that, had the P-8A been brought
down with the loss of American lives, Trump would have retaliated big time with
unknowable consequences.)
Saudi Arabia: making peace with Iran?
On 14 September, two of Saudi Arabia's
major oil facilities, Aramco's Abqaiq and Khurais,
suffered a major attack using drones and cruise missiles (but nobody was
killed). The Houthis claimed
responsibility, but the US and Saudi Arabia said Iran did it. Trump said it was up to Saudi Arabia to
respond, but the US might help if the Saudis paid for it. No retaliation took place.
Saudi Arabia had suffered a serious
military attack and was apparently defenceless against more of the same but,
instead of rushing to its aid as an ally should, the US was seemingly
uninterested in punishing the party whom it said was responsible. This was a clear indication to Saudi Arabia
that the US cannot be relied upon to have their back in relation to Iran while
Trump is in charge. Whether that becomes
a permanent feature depends on the outcome of November’s presidential
election. Also, Iran has been at pains
to point out to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States that if they assist the US
in taking military action against Iran, for example, by allowing their
territory to be used, they would be sure to suffer the wrath of Iran
All this seems to have convinced Saudi Arabia
that a better course of action would be to make peace with Iran. In the not very distant past, the Crown
Prince Mohammad bin Salman was outrageously
belligerent
towards Iran: in November 2017, he described
the Supreme Leader of Iran as “the new Hitler of the Middle East”, who needs to
be confronted, not appeased, and earlier in 2017 he said that the kingdom (of
Saudi Arabia) would make sure any future struggle between the two countries “is
waged in Iran”.
He was a different person when interviewed on CBS on 29
September 2019. Asked if Saudi Arabia
was going respond militarily against Iran for the attack on its oil
infrastructure, he replied “I hope not” saying that “a political and peaceful
solution is much better”. Asked if
President Trump should sit down with President Rouhani and craft a new deal, he
said that’s what we are all asking for.
Whether
this leads to some form of a non-aggression pact between Saudi Arabia and Iran
remains to be seen, but we do know that an embryonic dialogue is going on
between them, with Iraq acting as a mediator.
Abdul Mahdi, the former Prime Minister of Iraq, had been expecting to
meet with Qasem Soleimani on the day he was assassinated. Abdul Mahdi said:
“He came to deliver me a message from
Iran, responding to the message we delivered from Saudi Arabia to Iran.”
Rouhani says no to meeting with Trump
Heads of state gather in New York in
late September every year to speak at the UN General Assembly. Last September, President Macron tried to
take advantage of this to arrange a meeting between President Trump and
President Rouhani (see Macron says conditions in place for
Trump, Rouhani talks,
Al Jazeera, 25 September 2019).
Trump was very keen. Rouhani was not. Speaking to the General Assembly, Rouhani said:
“On
behalf of my nation and state, I would like to announce that our response to
any negotiation under sanctions is in the negative. …
“If
you require a positive answer, and as declared by the leader of the Islamic Revolution,
the only way for talks to begin is return to commitments and compliance. …
“A
memorial photo is the last step of negotiation; not the first one.”
Understandably, Iran is not going to
negotiate with the US while it is violating the existing deal.
Trump orders killing of Qasem
Soleimani
On 3 January 2020, President Trump
ordered the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who was a US ally in the fight
against ISIS in Iraq. He was killed by a
drone strike near Baghdad airport, along with four members of the Iran-backed
Shia militia, Kata'ib Hezbollah, including its
commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. President Bush designated the Quds Force a
foreign terrorist organization in 2007; President Trump designated the IRGC as a whole a “foreign
terrorist organisation” on 8 April 2019.
A few days earlier, on 29 December
2019, President Trump authorised the bombing of five locations, three in Iraq
and two in Syria, belonging to the Shia militia Kata'ib
Hezbollah, which is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces backed by Iran. 25 members of Kata'ib
Hezbollah were reportedly killed and 51 wounded. The US justified the bombing on the (questionable)
grounds that Kata'ib Hezbollah was responsible for an
attack on the K-1 air base, which killed an American civilian contractor and
wounded four American military personnel.
These murderous actions by the US were
carried out against the wishes of the Iraqi Government and were therefore gross
violations of Iraq sovereignty.
The former Iraqi Prime Minister, Abdul
Mahdi, was told in advance by the US Defense
Secretary Mark Esper about the Kata'ib Hezbollah
bombings and tried to have them stopped but Esper refused. Mahdi said he asked the US for the
intelligence that Kata'ib Hezbollah were responsible
for the attack on the K-1 air base but his request was refused. Mahdi said he tried to warn Kata'ib Hezbollah about the upcoming US military action.
The Iraqi Government wasn’t told in
advance about the killing of Qasem Soleimani and his companions.
In response to the killing of Qasem
Soleimani and his companions, on 8 January 2020 Iran fired ballistic missiles at
two air bases in Iraq, Ayn Al Asad and Erbil, where US and other military
personnel are located. Twenty-two in all
were fired, says Iran; 12 reached their target, says
US. There were no serious casualties,
which appears to have been Iran’s intention.
Later, the US military said that 110 of their troops had been diagnosed with “mild
traumatic brain injury” due to blast, 77 of whom had already returned to duty.
War avoided – for now
Did these US attacks, authorised by the
President, demonstrate a shift away from his stance in June 2019 when he halted
planned military action against Iran in retaliation for the shooting down the
US drone? That indicated a definite
preference for avoiding war with Iran.
Now he has taken military action against
a militia supported by Iran and, much more seriously, killed a senior military
officer of the Iranian state. That
certainly risked war with Iran, but thanks to Iran responding in a manner
calculated not to kill Americans, war seems to have been avoided – for now.
A few hours after Iran responded,
surrounded by his Chiefs of Staff, he addressed the American people:
“… no
Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime. We
suffered no casualties, all of our soldiers are safe, and only minimal damage
was sustained at our military bases.
Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties
concerned and a very good thing for the world.”
John Bolton’s legacy
But why did he authorise the killing
of Qasem Soleimani? NBC News gave a possible explanation on 13 January 2020:
“After
Iran shot down a US drone in June, John Bolton, Trump's national security
adviser at the time, urged Trump to retaliate by signing off on an operation to
kill Soleimani, officials said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also wanted
Trump to authorize the assassination, officials said.
“But
Trump rejected the idea, saying he'd take that step only if Iran crossed his
red line: killing an American. The president's message was ‘that's only on the
table if they hit Americans’, according to a person briefed on the discussion.
Then, when an American civilian was
killed on the K-1 air base on 27 December 2019, according to NBC News, Defense Secretary Mark Esper presented Trump with a series
of response options, including killing Soleimani after he arrived at Baghdad
airport – his travel plans were known.
Esper recommended killing Soleimani, as did Pompeo, and Trump agreed.
A few hours later, his re-election campaign was
boasting about killing terrorist leader Soleimani, in addition to al-Baghdadi
the leader of ISIS. Perhaps, he had his
re-election campaign in mind when making his choice.
Qasem Soleimani’s role in the defeat
of ISIS
Qasem Soleimani played a very
important role in the defeat of ISIS in Iraq in alliance with the US. The following snippets from his Wikipedia
page give some idea of his importance:
·
Soleimani
had a significant role in Iran's fight against ISIL in Iraq. He was described
as the "linchpin" bringing together Kurdish and Shia forces to fight
ISIS, overseeing joint operations conducted by the two groups.
·
Amirli
was the first town to successfully withstand an ISIS invasion, and was secured
thanks to an unusual partnership of Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers, Iranian-backed
Shiite militias and US warplanes.
·
A
senior Iraqi official told the BBC that when the city of Mosul fell, the rapid
reaction of Iran, rather than American bombing, was what prevented a more
widespread collapse
·
Soleimani
played an integral role in the organisation and planning of the crucial operation
to retake the city of Tikrit in Iraq from ISIS
This contribution by Qasem Soleiman
has been largely written out of history by the US and its allies and therefore
by the mainstream media. But, near the
end of his remarks on 8 January, President Trump seemed to suggest to Iran that
the US and Iran should renew their alliance against ISIS and “other shared
priorities”. Here’s what he said:
“Tens
of thousands of ISIS fighters have been killed or captured during my
administration. ISIS is a natural enemy of Iran. The destruction of
ISIS is good for Iran, and we should work together on this and other shared
priorities.”
A few days earlier he had ordered the assassination
of a man who had made a major contribution to the destruction of ISIS. This is bizarre.
Iran: the major destabilizing
influence in the Middle East
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo regularly
asserts that Iran is “the major destabilizing influence in the Middle East”. He did so in an interview on CNBC on 11 May
2019. Think about that! This is the same Mike Pompeo, who a year
earlier issued a 12-point ultimatum to Iran and threatened it with economic
strangulation if it didn’t obey. That
couldn’t possibly be destabilizing, could it?
A few weeks later, in June 2019, Iran shot
down a US military drone and a military response by the US was called off at
the last minute. In September 2019,
Saudi oil infrastructure was attacked.
We don’t know for sure who did it, but we do know for sure that neither would
have happened if the US hadn’t reinstated sanctions and issued an ultimatum
against Iran, in violation of Security Council Resolution 2231 in May 2018.
To be fair to Mike Pompeo, he seems to accept
that – on his way to Jeddah on 18 September 2019, he told the press travelling
with him:
“I
would argue that what you are seeing here is a direct result of us reversing
the enormous failure of the JCPOA.”
He was speaking to journalists about the
attack on Saudi oil infrastructure a few days earlier, which he seems to be
saying was a direct result of reversing the JCPOA.
There have been some other examples of US destabilisation in the Middle East in recent times,
notably the invasion of Iraq (with a little help from the UK) in 2003 on the
false premises that (a) it possessed “weapons of mass destruction” and (b) its
leader Saddam Hussein had a hand in the 9/11 attacks on the US.
The invasion and
its aftermath cost the lives of perhaps a million Iraqis, certainly hundreds of
thousands. The precise number will
never be known. In March 2015, Physicians for Social Responsibility
published a review of the various
estimates and concluded that “the war has, directly or indirectly, killed
around 1 million people in Iraq” (p15) from the invasion in March 2003 until
December 2011 when US troops were withdrawn.
It wrecked the Iraqi state and transformed what was an al-Qaeda free
zone into a territory in which al-Qaeda, and later ISIS, flourished.
In January 2019, the US Army published
a two-volume report on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It concluded:
“At
the time of this project’s completion in 2018, an emboldened and expansionist
Iran appears to be the only victor.” (p639)
Other examples of US
destabilising in the Middle East in recent times are Libya 2011 and Syria
2011-2020 – and then there’re the ones we don’t know about.
You can see why in a speech in Cairo on 10 January 2019, Pompeo
felt able to be “very blunt and direct” and assert “America is a force for good
in the Middle East”.
David Morrison
6 March 2020