Distance yourself from U.S. Iran policies or be responsible for the next catastrophe in the Middle East
Remember President Trump’s tweet and accompanying statements by the Trump administration officials concerning Iran – as reported here by CNN on May 19, 2019.
Trump’s statement amounts to a de facto declaration of war on Iran.
Objectively speaking, it is a lie that Iran threatens the US. It is a lie that the US sends aircraft carriers to the region in self-defence. It’s lies as blatant as the one about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.
You may think that this is just psychological warfare and positioning. It is not. Because: Over time, this type of statements develop its own dynamics and the US will not be able to back down from what it threatens to do without loosing face.
President Trump’s statement is a blatant violation of international law, the UN Charter’s Article 2.4 which states:
“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
In this extremely worrying situation of years of step-by-step US build-up to war with Iran, every and each government that does not issue a formal public protest distancing itself from this type of rogue state behaviour that endangers world security must be considered co-responsible for a war on Iran if and when it breaks out.
Check out whether your government has the statesmanship and courage to do so, no matter where you live. Protest if it doesn’t.
This is not the way the world’s strongest military and a world leader should behave – against a state that has, according to every report including US assessments, adhered to every word in the JCPOA, the Nuclear Deal with Iran of 2015.
The only – gross and repeated – violator of that agreement is the United States of America, by its withdrawal from it and thereby also violating international law since that agreement is embedded in a UN Security Council resolution.
Additionally, the US continues and has stepped up sanctions that amount to (economic) war crimes and collective punishment of 85 million completely and indisputably innocent civilian Iranians.
NATO and the EU – as collective organisations – must now distance themselves from this policy and, in the field of US Iran policies, defy any pressure exerted by Washington, issue statements to the effect that this type of policies by a friend and ally is completely unacceptable morally and a crystal clear violation of international law as well as civilised behaviour among members of the global society.
Secondly, each member state must practice civil disobedience against the US in this field, step up all types of cooperation with Iran and – in actions and not just words, words and more words – isolate the US.
Any government that keeps silent in this extremely dangerous situation are philosophically as well politically complicit in every violent action that may be directed at Iran and its people at any point in the future.
To quote Albert Einstein: “The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.”
When it comes to its Iran policies, the United States must now be made clearly and unequivocally aware that it does not have and will not have any support – ethically, politically, militarily or economically – from allies and friends – neither when making such statements not if it is mad enough to start a war on Iran and destroy one more civilisation and sovereign state in the Middle East.
This is in the service of the US itself: One more war will make the US the most hated country on earth. It will devastate the US economy further. It will weaken and spell the end of the US Empire. It will – like all the other wars – be what I have repeatedly termed a predictable fiasco on its own terms.
If you love America, act now. If you want to see it crumble and fall, keep silent and let it fall into its own – tendentially fascist, militarism-addicted – trap.
~ Jan Oberg, director of TFF - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research based in Lund, Sweden
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