It's hard to believe we're back again at the brink of disaster. Weren't Vietnam, Iraq, Libya and Syria (just to mention a few) sufficient to teach us a lesson?
The Trump administration, egged on by supposed allies Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Israel, created this conflict by tearing up a perfectly good nuclear weapons agreement, erecting a warlike economic barricade around Iran, and threatening economic warfare against any nation daring to violate our edict. We seem determined to push Iran until war breaks out.
Our dictatorial actions bring real suffering to 81 million Iranians: During the past year the value of their currency plummeted 60 percent, inflation is up 37 percent, while food and medical costs have soared 50 percent. Thus we have already attacked Iran diplomatically and economically, with more to come.
The administration expects Iran to come to the table and negotiate their own defeat in the 40-year war between the Saudi-backed Sunni Islamic tribes and the Iran-backed Shiite Islamic tribes. I doubt Iran will comply.
What do we expect Iran to do? If they do nothing, our sanctions will crush them. Our threats make negotiation impossible. We've backed them into a corner from which they can only lash out by, for example, sabotaging shipping through the Gulf of Hormuz. We are on the road to escalation and a war that will dwarf those in Iraq and Syria.
A little history: Iran is home to one of the oldest continuous civilizations, with settlements dating to 7000 BC. The Persians, whom some scholars call the "first historical people," unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC.
Jumping to modern times: At the end of World War II, Shah (King) Mohammad Pahlavi ruled Iran in what was supposed to be a constitutional monarchy along the lines of today's Jordan, Morocco or Kuwait. But the shah gradually assumed dictatorial powers.
In 1951, his Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq received sufficient support to nationalize the British-owned oil industry. In 1953, a popular uprising supporting Mosaddeq forced the shah into exile. But Mosaddeq was soon arrested in a coup organized by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency with active support from Great Britain. The shah was re-installed as ruler of an undemocratic autocracy from 1953 through 1978. Shah Pahlavi allowed a consortium of foreign companies to run Iran's oil facilities, splitting profits with Iran but not allowing Iran to audit their accounts or have a vote on consortium affairs.
Economic conditions remained poor and domestic resistance emerged in 1963. Leftist and Islamic religious resistance was violently repressed by the shah's internal security service. The resistance smoldered and finally broke out into large demonstrations under the leadership of Ayatollah (Shiite religious leader) Ruhollah Khomeini and others in 1978, sending the shah again into exile. The revolution was victorious in 1979 when the entire Iranian people overwhelmingly approved a referendum to adopt a populist, nationalist, strongly Shiite Islamic Constitution with Ayatollah Khomeini as supreme leader.
Khomeini ruled during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, when Iraq's Sunni Islamic dictator Saddam Hussein launched a surprise attack in hopes of defeating the fledgling government. Iran lost between 500,000 and 1,000,000 civilians and soldiers, including 100,000 victims of Iraq's chemical weapons. International agencies have unanimously confirmed that Iran never used chemical weapons. Iraq was financially backed by Egypt, the Sunni nations of the Persian Gulf, the Soviet Union, USA, France, Britain, Germany and China.
On his deathbed in 1989, Khomeini appointed a "council of elders" which then named Iran's president, Ali Khamenei, as the next supreme leader. The transition was smooth and Khamenei has ruled during a succession of elected presidents, including at least one (Mohammad Khatami, two-term president during 1997-2005) whom Khamenei opposed. The current president, Hassan Rouhani, was elected in 2013 with a vote of 19 million out of 37 million votes cast.
In 2015, following 12 years of diplomatic negotiations involving Iran, USA, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini hailed a "decisive step": a comprehensive agreement limiting Iran's nuclear program. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed to abandon this nuclear deal. As president, he announced U.S. withdrawal from the agreement on May 8, 2018.
Two lessons emerge: Iran has suffered at the hands of the U.S. and other nations intent on its oil riches. And Iran is more democratic than most Mideast nations, far more so than our ally Saudi Arabia.
We need to end our economic blockade and return to the Iran nuclear deal.
Commentary on 07/02/2019