Middle East conflict formation

    By Farhang Jahanpour September 20, 2018   1. An ally in warfare and torture Although the tragic events in Syria are too close to us to pass a definitive judgement about what has happened there and we need some perspective before we can make any definitive statements, nevertheless, some of the outlines of what led to that catastrophe are already clear for all to see. When the United States invaded Kuwait in order to dislodge the Iraqi forces that had occupied that country, Syria was one of the countries that joined the US-led coalition. Shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Syria was one of the main destinations for rendered suspects to be tortured in Syrian black sites. In the chilling words of former CIA agent Robert Baer in 2004: “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured,...

    By Farhang Jahanpour September 20, 2018   On 20 March 2018, the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was taken into police custody in Paris to be questioned over allegations that he received millions of Euros in illegal funding from Qadhafi for his presidential campaign. Investigators were examining claims that Qadhafi’s regime secretly gave Sarkozy €50 million overall for the 2007 campaign. Such a sum would be more than double the legal campaign funding limit and also violates French rules against foreign financing of elections. (See: “Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy in police custody over investigation into Gaddafi funding”, The Independent, 20 March 2018. Sarkozy entertained Qadhafi lavishly at the Elyse Palace, even allowing him to pitch his tent in the grounds of the palace. Yet, later on, Sarkozy was the cheerleader for the attack on Libya, which resulted in the brutal murder of Qadhafi and the destruction of...

    By Farhang Jahanpour September 18, 2018   1. Some omitted facts and perspectives Prior to the Iraq war, the only thing that one heard on most Western channels about that country was Saddam Hussein and his alleged chemical and nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein became synonymous with Iraq. Nothing was said of Iraq’s long history as a cradle of civilisation or its people who, like people all over the world, simply wished to live in peace and pursue a normal life. The same was done to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, when the Taliban, Mu’ammar Qadhafi and Bashar al-Assad were continuously demonised – while it was omitted and forgotten that the West had befriended, and in some cases supported, and sponsored those rulers in the past. Initially, Saddam Hussein was supported by the CIA to fight against Abd al-Karim Qasim who had toppled the Hashemite monarchy and had formed an...

    By Farhang Jahanpour September 18, 2018   1. The Carter Doctrine, Brzezinski and the Stinger missiles

 After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Day 1979, President Jimmy Carter issued his Carter Declaration, stating that the Persian Gulf was part of America’s vital interest and America would defend it by all means possible. A policy proclaimed by President Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on 23 January 1980 stressed that the United States would use military force, if necessary, to defend its “national interests” in the Persian Gulf. The statement that came to be known as the “Carter Doctrine” concluded: “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any...

    By Farhang Jahanpour September 18, 2018   1. Israel: The policy’s background As a small country with a tiny population surrounded by large and hostile countries, Israel’s policy ever since its establishment has been to rely on some external forces, the British Empire at the beginning of its creation and later on the American superpower to protect herself. It has also involved the creation of a nuclear arsenal in contravention of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (the NPT) and by means of lies and deception, while being the most vociferous opponent of any other country in the Middle East to even have a peaceful nuclear programme for producing energy. Another aspect of this policy of self-preservation has been to divide and partition the neighbouring countries so that they would lose their advantage of larger size and greater population vis-à-vis Israel. As early as 1982, the Israeli scholar Oded Yinon authored...

    By Farhang Jahanpour September 17, 2018   1. The western demonization of Islam We have often heard about Osama bin-Laden’s outrageous remarks about the West (if not Christianity), but we often seem to ignore the remarks made by some influential writers, thinkers and politicians in the West about Islam, which are as harsh and outrageous to Muslims as the remarks of Muslim fanatics seem to us. Here are just a few examples: Influential columnist Ann Coulter wrote: “We should invade [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” See National Review Online, September 13, 2001. It seems that the NRO no longer has her column on its website but here is how the column made NRO drop her as a columnist). And the quotation inside this article. And here). Senator Clarence Saxby Chambliss, former chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland security, in a...

    By Farhang Jahanpour September 17, 2018 1. Islam as the new post-Cold War enemy The journalistic attitudes towards Islam that we referred to above have their counterparts in the academic writing on the Middle East and Islam. In recent years there have been many academic writings portraying Islam as the new enemy of the West. After the end of the Cold War, the increasing intensity of this historical antagonism has again emerged by portraying Muslims as inherently different from Western people. Almost immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many scholars started writing about a new era of hostility between Islam and the West, and Muslims have assumed a prominence on the security agenda that they have not held since before the establishment of the modern European states system. For instance, Barry Buzan, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and...

Photo: Hassan Rouhani of Iran, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey   September 12, 2018 By Seyed Hossein Mousavian* As the military phase of the Syrian conflict reaches its final stages, the leaders of Russia, Iran, and Turkey met in Tehran on September 9 and reiterated in a joint statement that a political solution to the Syrian conflict requires inclusive, free, and fair elections with the participation of all eligible Syrians under appropriate UN supervision. They further reaffirmed their determination to cooperate to eliminate the Islamic State, the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda, and associated groups in Syria. When the civil war in Syria began in 2011, the U.S.-led bloc and its regional allies, including Saudi Arabia, devoted their resources to removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, as the result of Iranian-Russian cooperation to buttress the Assad’s government, they failed to achieve their goals. The addition to this...

    By Farhang Jahanpour September 12, 2018   1. The rise of Fascism and Totalitarianism Just over 100 years ago, Britain, France, Germany and Russia ruled half of the world – most of Europe, all of Africa, South Asia, most of Southeast Asia, and most of the Pacific region. They dominated China and were of course influential everywhere else. During the past century, including the two devastating World Wars when the West resorted to mechanised butchery and industrialised slaughter, more than 170 million people, mainly civilians, were killed. The West introduced unprecedented levels of totalitarianism and oppression by inventing and ruling through Communism, Fascism, Nazism, slavery and apartheid. Some six million Jews perished as the result of the Holocaust, in the same way that European adventurers and settlers had carried out the genocide of tens of millions of native populations of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. After the end...

    By Farhang Jahanpour September 6, 2018   1. The US Iran policy aims at nothing but conflict-building followed by economic, political and military violence From all the remarks made by President Donald Trump and his senior officials, it is clear that the United States is trying to manufacture another regime change in the Middle East, this time in Iran. It does so by making use of the tried and tested tactic of demonising Iranian rulers and the Iranian people and by finding false pretences and pretexts for implementing their destructive goals. We have already had an inkling of these tactics by Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal and his allegation that Iran has not been abiding by the terms of that deal, despite clear evidence of Iranian compliance provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is in charge of inspecting and certifying Iran’s compliance. In 11...

  Part 1. Preface – Background and forthcoming book on Iran   By Farhang Jahanpour September 1, 2018   Background I am a British national of Iranian origin. I was born in Shiraz, near Persepolis, the capital of Pars Province in Iran, which gave its name to Persia and to two ancient Persian Empires, the Achaemenid and the Sassanian. Shiraz is famous as an Iranian cultural centre, being the birthplace of two of Iran’s greatest poets, Hafiz and Sa’di, and many philosophers, saints and scholars. My former tutor at the University of Cambridge, the late Professor A. J. Arberry, who was one of the greatest experts on Iran and Islam wrote a fascinating book on “Shiraz, the Iranian City of Saints and Poets”. I studied Persian literature at Shiraz University, and as I graduated with the highest grades in my year, I was given a scholarship to continue my studies...

  By Miko Peled July 23, 2018