A year after a US military operation rid this world of Iranian terrorist general Qasem Soleimani, the same tired voices repeat the same tired message, even on the eve of their return to power: ‘The Trump administration is on the brink of the war with Iran! ”
‘Trump is a very wounded and very angular animal in an endgame scenario. He has a few weeks left, and we know he is capable of extremely volatile behavior, ‘says Professor Danny Postel of the North-West University. After the events of last Wednesday, it is difficult to argue with Postel’s assessment of the president’s psyche. But I still doubt that the fact that the country is being overtaken in a war is just as high on the president’s to-do list.
Trita Parsi, a spokesman for the Islamic Republic of Iran and executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, also weighed in on a predictably irresponsible manner. Parsi speculates that Trump may lead the U.S. into a war with Iran to oust Sheldon Adelson (who has since died), evangelists (whom he smears as interested in Israel’s security just to bring about events in the Book of Revelation), and other supporters of the Jewish state. Forget that Trump has always wanted to reject “eternal wars” in the Middle East; the Jews and Christians will have him wage a holy war in Persia on their behalf!
Parsi’s theory is just as offensive as unconvincing. Deterrence, not war, has always been the goal of the Trump administration’s approach to curbing the rogue state. But he showed no signs of returning to his conspiratorial thinking, motivated by a stubborn ideology for the government. In a tweet on January 3, he claims to have spoken to a “former U.S. military official” who told him that the war with Iran before Joe Biden’s inauguration was “likely.” Idrees Ali, a Reuters correspondent covering the Pentagon, reacted rightly so that “this is not the current thinking in the military.”
The emphasis on deterrence, in another way, can also be traced back to the Obama administration, which, in its quest for something that could at least become a signature of foreign policy, has done everything in its power to ‘ to sign an agreement, any transaction with the Iranians. Obama’s team eventually succeeded, but his desperation led to the capitulation known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Agreement (JCPOA), which released billions of dollars to the Iranians, did nothing to stop their global terrorist network and on their best just delayed their path. to a nuclear weapon.
Worst of all, none of the non-Iranian signatories to the agreement were willing to enforce it when the Iranians inevitably decided to break its terms. Opponents of the JCPOA predicted this would happen before it was finalized. They proved right this fall when France, Germany and the United Kingdom all voted to lift the ban on arms sales to Iran, despite the well-documented violations of the Islamic Republic. Even UN Secretary-General António Guterres had to admit the transgressions as early as 2017, when he handed over a report on Iran’s supply of ballistic missiles to Houthi rebels in Yemen to the Security Council. Two years later, in July 2019, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani immediately came out and announced that Iran would violate the provisions of the JCPOA. As Zachary Laub and Kali Robinson of the Council on Foreign Relations noted, Tehran did so by ‘exceeding the agreed limits of its low-enriched uranium stock’. By that November, the government had transferred that he would also start spraying uranium gas in the centrifuges at his Fordow nuclear facility.
To excuse this short-sighted agreement, the rapprochement with Iran should generally be seen as an article of faith in a quasi-religion, and the only alternative to it should be said to be a bloody war in the Middle East. This false choice has been repeated time and time again by the Obama administration and President Obama himself. In one speech, Obama maintained that ‘the congressional rejection of this agreement leaves behind any US government that is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon with one option – another war in the Middle East. . . . I state a fact. “Convenient, that.
While Parsi and his kind insist that the Trump administration is the party responsible for the rising tensions, Iran is further increasing its nuclear program. Earlier this month, the regime announced that it would begin enriching uranium at the 20 percent level, almost enough to produce a nuclear weapon. It also stated that if there is again a nuclear deal with the United States and other JCPOA signatories, there will be no sanction clauses for snapback. In other words, Iran does not want to be held accountable if it violates this hypothetical second agreement like the first.
No war is going on with Iran, and despite the media story, the Trump administration has never been particularly close to open hostilities with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism – even in the aftermath of the Soleimani operation. However, if war were to break out somehow, you might just think that Parsi et al. would blame the United States despite the Iranian regime’s support for radical Islamic terror, blatant blame on the JCPOA, attempts to acquire nuclear weapons, the desire to use such weapons to threaten or exterminate Israel, and heinous abuses of his own people. And there can hardly be a more damning accusation from them than that.