Tag Archives: JCPOA

Afghanistan, JCPOA, Middle East, Nuclear, Persian Gulf, Uncategorized

Illusions of Hard Power: Trump as Father of Iran’s Nuclear Bomb?…..

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Events during the past two decades have shown the limitations of Western military power in shifting the trajectory of history in the Middle East and the regions around it. Yet it apparently takes time to understand that lesson. Then it takes time to develop a consensus on that understanding and to act on it.

Much of today’s news headlines are dominated by the same topics of a quarter century ago. War or new war or threat of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Persian Gulf. Now Syria and Lebanon  can be added to the mix. Looking back at the old headline, some are almost the same these days: 

Last Days of the Taliban, 2001. Read a cover of Time Magazine in 2001. It was a reasonable conclusion at the time. The abhorrent Taliban had lost power and were on the run. Al Qaeda was pushed toward the Pakistani border, then across the border into the bosom of its barely-deniable allies.

Mission Accomplished in Iraq, 2003 (I believed that at the time).

Yemen and Sana’a will fall to Saudi bombings in two weeks, 2015. Yemen did not fall, and it looks like the war has turned decisively against the Saudi (alliance). They are suing for an easy peace, except that there is no easy peace for the loser of a conflict. There never is. Especially if the loser is the original aggressor.

For decades the mantra has been that Iran and her ruling ayatollahs will collapse under the tough sanctions backed by the vocal threats of “all options are on the table” under Clinton, Bush, Obama. Except that “all options” were not really on the table, nor are they now. That was just political cover.

Then along came Trump, willing to rent out US foreign policy for billions of petrodollars. Trump’s maximum pressure failed, and its major byproduct was that Iran’s nuclear program is now the closest it has been to a bomb capability. Certainly sufficient enriched uranium is all that stands between them and a nuclear device now. Trump can be called the Father of the Iranian Nuclear Bomb, if it comes to that. And how do you denuclearize the scientific and military nuclear knowledge and the skills Iranians have acquired? Now Biden has inherited Trump’s failed maximum pressure siege. Some are advising him to adopt it as his own, and he seems reluctant to give it up.

Lebanon, historically dominated by a quasi-feudal elite still trying to cling to vestiges of power. Allied to Western powers and a few ruling Arab potentates. Now under financial/economic siege from the West and some Persian Gulf rulers focused on forcing political change in favor of the same elites. Expected to fall to war at some point like the rest did?

And that beat goes on.

Cheers

M Haider Ghuloum

Biden, Iran, JCPOA, Nuclear, Nuclear Deal, Uncategorized

Trump Redux? Can Biden and Europe Push Iran Toward the North Korean Nuclear Model?

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Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal claimed “confidential” IAEA report says that Iran has started producing Uranium metal. The material can be used to form the core of nuclear weapons. Report said that Iran claimed it is producing it for research purposes…

Two days earlier, Ali Khamenei drew what seemed like a line in the sand. “Americans and Europeans have no right to set any conditions as they violated their JCPOA commitments” Iran’s Leader said the country will only retrace its nuclear countermeasures once the United States lifts its sanctions.

Before that, many reports that Biden is being advised to unilaterally remove “some” financial sanctions on Iran. Possibly indirect ones through European allies. Then what? Will the Ayatollah bite? His statements seem to indicate that he will not. And if they refused an old Trump offer, as Zarif says, why should they accept a new Trump offer?

So, some Iranian officials think Biden is being tempted by his advisers to take advantage of the effects (meaning successes?) of the Trump pressures. Effectively continuing the failed policy of “Maximum Pressure”, as he waits for the Iranians to buckle. They don’t seem ready to buckle yet. So how is this different from the Trump approach? Which is a punishment by starvation approach that was encouraged by three of Trump’s despotic Persian Gulf pals.

So, we may have the usual schoolyard standoff: Who hit or cussed the other first? Which one preceded (that one is obvious)?

Israeli PM Netanyahu has been predicting since the 1990s that Iran is a few weeks away from making a nuclear bomb. He hasn’t been saying so lately, which in itself is an ominous silence. Some European signatories, who have spent four years urging Trump to go back to the nuclear deal, now prefer pushing Biden to adopt Trump’s policy. Predictably, the Trump policy as urged on my some Arab potentates and Netanyahu has brought Iran closer to a bomb capability than ever before. If the Iranians see that the Western powers are united in reneging on the JCPOA, they will likely have two options:

(1) buckle down to the same pressures that Trump applied, or (2) be tempted to go for the next viable alternative. The fear now is, or should be, that Biden is pushing them toward an alternative. The Iranians, if the hardliners win the presidency next summer, may contemplate the extremist and dangerous North Korean path. The latter may be used as a casus belli, pushing Biden (and the Israelis) to war. So, back to a more destructive war than the regional wars that everybody claims they want to avoid. 

That would be terrible for the Persian Gulf region and the wider Middle East region.

 

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Blockade of Iran, Donald Trump, Iran, Oil Tankers, Piracy, Uncategorized

Oil Saga on the High Seas: Is Trump Seeking to Recruit Pirates?

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“US offers cash to tanker captains in bid to seize Iranian ships. Washington mixes bait and threats as ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Tehran becomes unorthodox ….” Financial Times

Iran‘s foreign Minister (M. Javad Zarif) tweeted to day:

“Having failed at piracy, the US resorts to outright blackmail—deliver us Iran’s oil and receive several million dollars or be sanctioned yourself. Sounds very similar to the Oval Office invitation I received a few weeks back. It is becoming a pattern…..”.

Trump and his administration have resorted to unprecedented, Somali-Pirate style near thuggish measures to strangle the Iranian economy. Something Trump no doubt learned in his shady New York real estate business. First they urged Britain to illegally seize and hold an Iranian oil tanker at Gibraltar then asked them to hand the tanker over to the US government. The Iranians quickly seized a British tanker near the Persian Gulf as a bargaining chip. That forced the British to do the right thing and release the Iranian tanker.

This kind of practice by Trump, forcing or bribing third countries to commit piracy by expropriating an oil tanker and/or its contents, has not been done before by any regime. Even other rogue regimes. Only time will tell how low they will go in trying to strangle the Iranian economy by blackmailing third countries.

Cheers

M. Haider Ghuloum

Donald Trump, IAEA, Iran, JCPOA, North Korea, nuclear Iran, U.S. Foreign Policy, US Foreign Policy

Korean Nuclear Diplomacy: Flim Flam La La Land Approach and Roosting JCPOA Chickens……

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North Korea: we reject gangster-like unilateral denuclearization demands..

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: talks on denuclearization of North Korea going well…..

Donald Trump (tweeting): I have confidence that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we signed, and even more importantly, our “handshake”. We “agreed” to the denuclearization of North Korea. China, on the other hand, may be exerting negative pressure on a deal….

Yours Truly: but you did not honor the previous Nuclear Deal that the USA and Europe and the UN Security Council agreed to with Iran. You reneged on an international agreement signed on by the UN and Europe (and the USA). Why should Kim Jong Un trust you now? You will not be able to separate the two cases. Iran Deal chickens coming home to roost, Donald.

Yours Truly: this is “Flim Flam La La Land Nuclear Diplomacy“

Cheers

M. Haider Ghuloum

Donald Trump, Europe, European Union, Iran, JCPOA, Middle East Nuclear, nuclear Iran

Iran Nuclear Deal: Is Europe Going Back to its Historic ‘Plan B’ of Appeasing a Bully?……..

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“It looks as though Britain, France, and Germany have decided to appease President Donald Trump to discourage him from withdrawing the United States from the July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA). “After meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May… and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said they had agreed to set up a working group of experts on fixing flaws in the landmark 2015 agreement that President Trump has warned he will walk away from this spring unless adjustments are made to his liking.” (PBS)….. “France’s foreign minister said on Sunday he would visit Iran on March 5 to discuss its ballistic missile program and the nuclear deal agreed with world powers in 2015.” (Reuters)…. “Germany is lobbying among European allies to agree new sanctions against Iran …………”

So, there are some early signs of fissure. Weak signs so far, but ominous. Are the Europeans, sans Russia, going back on their own commitment to the nuclear deal (JCPOA)? Are they going to unwittingly nickle and dime it to death by chipping away at its credibility? Are they going to yield, gradually, to the new loud-mouth bully in the White House?
Are they falling back on their perennial Plan B  when facing pressure from bullies? Are they going back to their own old pattern of appeasement of bullies who threaten war?
Appeasement eventually leads to what it was hoped to prevent, just as it did in Europe decades ago. The war the Europeans have tried to avoid.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Donald Trump, IAEA, Iran, Jackasses, JCPOA, MENA, Muslim Wars, North Korea, nuclear Iran, U.S. Foreign Policy

Donald Trump’s Obama Complex: Creating Fake News, Domestic and Global Chaos, New Muslim Wars……

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Media reports and official statements (General John Kelly) indicate that Kim Jong Un (Trump’s Rocket Man of North Korea) is close to developing a re-entry system for his long-range nuclear delivery missiles.

Donald Trump is studiously avoiding action on this serious potential threat to the West Coast of the United States. He will continue to fight Kim sporadically with words and tweets while he focuses on what he thinks is an easier target, the country that is not seeking nuclear weapons, more significantly the country that has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, renounced nuclear weapons and does not have them. Iran.

Trump is making daily noises about destroying the international JCPOA deal that keeps Iran from going nuclear. If later today, as widely expected, he declares Iran non-compliant, nobody anywhere in the world will believe him. Not even his own cabinet members and top Pentagon generals. Not even his reprehensible foreign cheerleaders: mainly his co-serial-liar Netanyahu and the usual couple of absolute Arab kings who are urging him to go to war (in exchange for billions of dollars). No doubt he himself does not believe what he says about it. It could be even worse if he actually believed his own ‘facts’. The Iranians are already milking Trump’s noise and threats for all their worth, and it is working in Europe and Asia and in Turkey and several Arab countries.

For Trump this is not so much about Iran or nuclear weapons, not even about Fox News warmongering. It is part of a pattern now: it is all about Barack Obama, about undoing everything that ‘uppity’ black president did while in the White Office.
It is about the birther Trump’s obsession with his Obama Complex.
It might eventually lead to the second time since 2003 that the USA goes to a messy war of choice in the Middle East, based on a self-created lie.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Donald Trump, IAEA, Iran, MENA, Middle East Nuclear, North Korea, nuclear Iran, Trump, U.S. Foreign Policy, United Nations International Organizations

Nuclear Bluffing and Bullying: a Silly Question by Nikki Haley, a Stern Warning by Iran……..

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“The United States wants to know if the United Nations atomic watchdog plans to inspect Iranian military sites to verify Tehran’s compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said on Tuesday. Haley will meet with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials in Vienna on Wednesday for what she described as a fact-finding mission, which is part of President Donald Trump’s review of the deal Iran made with world powers to curb its nuclear program in return for the lifting of most sanctions. “If you look … at past Iranian behavior, what you’ve seen is there have been covert actions at military sites, at universities, things like that,” Haley, a member of Trump’s cabinet, told Reuters in an interview. ……… She said she was traveling to Vienna to ask questions, not to push the IAEA to do anything……….”

What a silly lady Nikki Haley can be when pressed by Donald Trump. Traveling to Vienna to pressure the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to “do anything”. Anything like what?
It is shocking that apparently nobody in the Trump administration knows if the Nuclear Deal does or does not cover conventional military sites. It does not. Doesn’t anybody over there read these agreements? Don’t these ambulance chasers have lawyers in international law among them?


It is so obvious the Trump Administration has “decided” that Iran is breaking the nuclear deal, even as they know that it is not. Trump (or his son in law Jared Kushner) is pressuring Nikki Haley, and she is pressuring the IAEA, which is an international organization not beholden to Trump. The Europeans have already made it clear they want no part of Trump’s new ploy: they sent their foreign minister, Federica Mogherini to Tehran for the inauguration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

The Iranians are apparently fed up with the silly bluffing and attempts at cheap bullying by the Trump Administration. They took a page from the North Korea book: they warned that they need only 5 days to ramp up uranium enrichment usable for nukes.

In this game, it is like a Washington race between Donald Trump and the United States Congress to see which one of them can wreck the Iran Nuclear Deal through increased sanctions and military threats in the Persian Gulf. Neither one can: JCPOA is an “international” deal.

Meanwhile, in Pyongyang, the other omnipotent leader Kim Jong Un is watching these machinations and plots cooked up by the novice hustler in the Oval Office. Can you guess what he is thinking?

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Iran, Middle East Nuclear, Muslim Wars, North Korea, Nuclear, Persian Gulf, U.S. Foreign Policy, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Tale of Two Hostile Cities: Trump’s Losing Game of Poker with Pyongyang and Tehran……….

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Kim Jong Un has launched another ballistic missile. He is completely ignoring the hand-wringing and the tepid warnings from Washington. North Korea, a small poor country ruled by one nasty family, has several nuclear warheads, and is probably on its way to develop a delivery system that can threaten the American West Coast. Yet North Korea does not seem impressed with Donald Trump’s vague entreaties. Nor do Trump’s threats seem designed to truly impress.


Switch to the Middle East, to my Persian Gulf clogged with American and other Western warships from faraway places. The Iranian regime has signed a deal with world powers (including UN, IAEA, EU) that curtails its nuclear program and restricts it to peaceful purposes. Even their leading theocrat, Ali Khamenei, has approved it while grumbling about the ‘evils of dealing with Washington’. Now the Iranians still develop missiles that are aimed at deterring any attack on their cities by Western powers or their expensively-armed tribal royal customers. Not a breach of the nuclear deal if they are not warhead-capable. An insurance against the vast foreign imported arsenals surrounding their country.

Yet the invective in Washington is focused on Iran while Pyongyang is almost beseeched to (please) behave. Daily threats hinting at, nay threatening of, another war in the Persian Gulf region are now almost part of the National Anthem in Washington. (The current Congress may add a new stanza to the Star–Spangled Banner, it’s not that far-fetched). Administration officials, paid think tanks, and senators compete with each other in this ongoing warmongering. The major media are as cooperative in this new drumbeat of a new war of choice as they were for Iraq in 2002/2003. As if they can’t learn from the past, some arrogant fools in the USA are even talking, again, of regime change in Tehran as a gift from Washington.

There are several reasons for this dichotomy, what someone (not me) once called the Iran Derangement Syndrome in Washington. Two of the reasons are obvious: the omnipotent and generous Israeli right-wing lobby and the inflow of Gulf royal money for expensive weapons/toys. Plus the history since the end of the last world war.

But perhaps the most important and crucial reason is also well known to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: he already has his defense in the form of nuclear weapons as well as deadly conventional artillery aimed at South Korea. As I explained recently here in this post on the Thinking of Kim Un.
So he just deals with Donald Trump as other world leaders should: he knows his background, and he ignores his warnings, his bluff, just as any mediocre Poker player would.

Recent reports in US media now indicate Trump may try to provoke the Iranians into abandoning the nuclear deal. Oddly he is supposed to do that by himself breaking the nuclear deal first thus pushing the Iranians into reacting, the new logic of the regime in Berlin Washington. The blustering New York Poker player trying to bluff masters of their own game of chess.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Revolutions, Barack Obama, Blockade of Iran, Donald Trump, Iran, Iraq, JCPOA, Libya, North Korea, U.S. Congress, U.S. Foreign Policy, WMD

The Logical Thinking of Kim Jong Un: Heeding the Lessons of Iraq, Libya, and Iran……..

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In the beginning…..
Donald Trump ignored North Korea and its petulant young dictator. Mr. Trump has been focusing on his “other” foreign policy issues. In fact up to recently he has been taking a long victory lap celebrating his own alleged self-styled loot of billions of Saudi oil money during his coronation by desperate Arab and Muslim princes and potentates in Riyadh last May. All he had to do was tell them that he does not care about human rights and that Iran exports terrorism (but apparently not the nice Wahhabi type of terrorism of ISIS and Al Qaeda and AQAP and Nusra).

Trump has also been focusing on the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), since before the election. Trump of course does not know much about it, that it is a good deal for all sides according to international consensus (with the exception of the ruling princes of Saudi Arabia, the Empire of Bahrain, Israel, and the paid-for US Congress). Apparently the one draw-back of the Iran deal for Trump, the Republican Party, (and hawkish Democrats) is that it is a signature achievement of President Barack Obama. So Mr. Trump had promised to revisit the deal, perhaps to “withdraw” the USA from it. His first National Security Chief Mike Flynn, a Turkish agent and possibly a Russian agent as well, threatened more serious action against Iran. Before Trump was forced to fire him.

Among the Iranians themselves there are many who are also disappointed by how the nuclear deal has turned out. And by the ratcheted up threats from Washington and the nearly monthly new sanctions being voted by the US Knesset Congress and Senate. They also remember what happened in Iraq and Libya.

Back to Kim Jong Un: he could not be denied his share of American attention for long. He is that kind of dictator. Not long after Trump was inaugurated Kim started tossing around warhead-capable medium-range and long-range missiles. He or his henchmen also murdered a young American student-captive in Pyongyang.
And one more thing that can be unforgivable from my point of view: he gave Dennis Rodman another opportunity to be seen on network news.

Kim Jong Un also certainly well remembers what happened to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.  Apparently Saddam had given up his WMD, but Iraq was invaded and he was overthrown anyway.

Libyan dictator Gaddafi gave up his WMD and paid billions in “compensation” to Western citizens and corporations. He was attacked and overthrown by NATO. He and one of his sons were allowed to be tortured and killed by some rebels. Now Libya is a failed and divided state.

Kim must have started thinking:

  • Gaddafi (of Libya) gave up WMD. He also gave up billions of dollars to Western countries and to victims of the Pan Am airliner bombing over Lockerbie in 1988. But what did he get? His new friends in NATO overthrew him then got him killed as soon as they got a chance. He and one of his sons were tortured and murdered by possibly the same people who later murdered four American diplomats in Benghazi. His country is now a failed state beset by Islamic Fundamentalists of the Wahhabi sect and by tribal infighting.
  • Iran heeded world power demands and reduced its nuclear program- and according to IAEA and world intelligence services it is abiding by the JCPOA Nuclear Deal. And Iran now is being seriously threatened by Donald Trump who is also hopelessly trying to form a futile alliance of hapless Arab and Muslim despots and potentates against it. These are mostly the countries whose citizens have actually committed terrorism in the Middle East and in the West. And both houses of the US Congress keep piling up sanctions against Iran, Kim knows….

If I were Kim, I would possibly perhaps per chance think that it is not just the WMD and nuclear stuff that the West, and the US government, has a beef with. Maybe it goes beyond that. If Iraq and Libya were attacked after they gave up their WMD, and if Iran is being threatened after it reduced its nuclear capability……
You get the drift: Kim will think that as soon as he gives up his nuclear and missile program, he might as well give up the ghost….

And it is hard to blame him for thinking along these lines, if you think about it (or you can start reading this post from the beginning)……..

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Iran, Israel, JCPOA, Middle East, Persian Gulf, Persian-American Gulf, Trump, U.S. Foreign Policy

Trump Middle East Policy Confusion: America First? New Muslim Wars First?…….

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The slogan America First implies focusing on internal US affairs: the economy, trade, infrastructure, even immigration.
Yet the Trump administration is already being pulled into a new morass in the Middle East (the Muslim World in case you didn’t know). It is falling for the trap of an Iranian missile test that is apparently unrelated to the Nuclear Deal (JCPOA). Perhaps it is a test by the mullahs of a new administration that is already shooting itself in the foot in domestic matters (healthcare, immigration). The new alleged ballistic missile test, which at least Russia and China certainly consider unrelated to the Nuclear Deal, came quickly after reports of a phone call between Trump and the Saudi King that mentioned containing Iran.
The Iranians most likely look on their ballistic missiles as defensive weapons, since hey don’t have the threatening Western-made sophisticated warplanes that their potential regional enemies have. Part of their deterrence that would prevent a repeat of an attack similar to the Iraqi Baathist invasion of their country.

Or maybe the mullahs in Tehran were giving Mr. Trump and Netanyahu something to discuss when they meet next month. The latter would be eager to sell Trump the snake-oil of another Muslim war/quagmire that neither Bush (W) nor Barack Obama would buy from him. The Trump administration probably won’t get far in the UN Security Council: even the European allies may oppose them. New President Trump has no reservoir of goodwill in Western Europe, or in most of the world, to draw on. He never had any beyond his own base and his own party.

In fairness, the Trump administration apparently have discarded the silly notion of “tearing up” the Nuclear Deal. It is not really a “piece of paper” as experienced right-wing hawks like John Bolton still think. They now seem to realize that it can’t be undone beyond campaign rhetoric.

In response to reports of the recent Iranian missile test, the White House NSC issued a tough statement mainly attacking Barack Obama for it (Obama, not the UN). A very retro reaction. Expect a Trump tweet to follow soon. Also expect more muscle-flexing in the Persian-American Gulf region by both sides, something even allied regional governments worry about.

Cheers
M. Haider Ghuloum