The US is making a mistake in demonising Iran, says Patrick Seale. Obama should have seized the chance to engage.
It’s now widely accepted – and lamented – that US President Barack Obama failed dismally in attempting to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Defeated by Israel’s hard-line Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, and by Israel’s friends in the United States – lobbyists, lawmakers and neo-conservatives – the president simply threw in the towel.
What is less well understood is that Obama was also defeated in another major area of foreign policy – relations with Iran. When he came to office he vowed to ‘engage’ with the Islamic Republic, but this admirable objective was soon supplanted by a policy of threats, sanctions and intimidation aimed at isolating Iran, subverting its economy and overthrowing its regime.
Israel and its friends led the campaign against Iran, demonizing it as a threat to all mankind, and forcing the United States to follow suit. Israel has repeatedly, and very publicly, threatened to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities, and has done its best to drag the United States into war against it, in much the same way as pro-Israeli neo-conservatives at the Pentagon were alleged to have manipulated intelligence to push the United States into war against Iraq in 2003, with catastrophic consequences.
Why did they do it? Because they feared that, having survived the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq might just possibly pose a threat to Israel. It had to be destroyed. Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister at the time, was foolish enough to tag along. The war totally discredited him.
The neo-cons’ strategic fantasy wasn’t just to use American power to smash Iraq. Once Saddam had been dealt with, they are said to have wanted to use the US military again and again to ‘reform’ Syria, Hizbollah, Iran, the Palestinians and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Having brushed the Iraqi fiasco under the carpet, Israel and its friends are now doing it again. In recent weeks there has been a flurry of reports that Israel was planning to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities this September – a bluff clearly intended to pressure the United States into taking ever tougher measures against Iran so as to make it unnecessary for Israel to attack.
In addition to such a transparent propaganda ploy, Israel is believed by many over the past two years to have been behind the murder of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists – two were killed and one was seriously injured last year, and a fourth was killed last month.
Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear programme has been attacked through the introduction of the Stuxnet virus at its nuclear facilities. Not surprisingly, Tehran now views the United States and its Israeli ally as one and the same enemy.
Assassinations and other acts of state terrorism are short-term expedients that usually end up being paid for dearly. Countries have long memories. Hate isn’t easily expunged. The United States, and to a lesser extent Britain, are still paying for their clandestine overthrow in 1953 of Mohammad Mosaddeq, Iran’s democratically-elected prime minister, whose ‘crime’ was to seek to protect Iran’s oil from imperialist predators.
Photo Credit: Daniella Zalcman
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proquci
One of the most pathetic uneducated articles I have had the displeasure to waste my time reading. Clearly with an agenda and lack of knowledge,the writer fails, dismally to understand Iran has chosen for decades to use its islamic threats via the koran, to justify annihilating Israel. Israel is surrounded on all borders by folk who are racist, fascist, full of suppression for their own people never mind Israeli`s, crooked, criminal, murdering terrorists and when war breaks out on all borders for Israel, expect them to show absolutely no mercy.
Friend
This article is so off.
Obama has (foolishly) tried time and time again to ‘engage’ with Iran, but the Iranian regime only exploited our kindness to stall for time to hopefully complete its nuclear program. Iran never wanted and never accepted our engagement.
Iran continues to fund terrorists and terrorist organizations that fight the US in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and fight western influence all over the world (India, Israel, Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq, etc.).
Israel is the farthest thing from a problem for the United States. It is in fact a great friend to the US.