Sanctions

Video comment The Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution says Iran has totally lost hope in the European powers as they have failed to fulfill any of their promises under the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran’s PressTV asked me to comment on that which I do below. It is crystal clear that the European Union has not lived up to the spirit and letter of the nuclear deal JCPOA) with Iran of 2015. By not lifting the sanctions and cooperating with Iran – as long as Iran sticks to its commitments – it violates international law. Why? Because the JCPOA is embedded in a UN Security Council resolution and, thus, is a piece of international law. But the EU could have acted otherwise these four years – had it been a bit more ethical, intellectual and independent-minded. But it chose to accept US diktat about the secondary sanctions and, in consequence, has...

Iran’s Foreign Minister Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif gave a speech at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). SIPRI is a highly respected research institute with a special place in the hearts of peace-lovers throughout the world. In a world where there are so many think thanks and organisations advocating war and conflict, the few peace institutes have a big role to play to fill the void and provide an alternative voice to the dominant clamour of corporate media that represent the establishment and its reliance upon conflict and the military-industrial complex. The sanctions on Iran violate international law The latest series of American extraterritorial sanctions on Iran have given rise to enormous hardships and food and medical shortages experienced by ordinary Iranians. The dispatch of military forces and warships to the Persian Gulf have brought the world to the verge of another devastating war in the Middle East that...

The Trump administration imposed sanction on Iran’s foreign minister, Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif last night – as if the present intensified sanctions – primary on Iran and secondary on, in principle, everybody else, were not enough already. Here is AlJazeera’s story which also includes Iranian President Rouhani’s and Zarif’s own – witty – response to the move. The Trump administration thereby continues its one-sided provocative tension escalation making it more and more difficult to envision a peaceful solution to what is, in a larger perspective, an ongoing harassment of major regional power and a 7000–year-old civilisation since the CIA-led coup d’etat against the first democratically elected Iran Prime Minister Dr. Mossadegh in 1953. Dr. Zarif – whom I happen to have had the honour of saying hello to at a conference in Tehran and whose work I have followed over several years – is not only one of the world’s...

There’s never been a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states. If Iran one day did cross the nuclear threshold the same deterrence will apply. No one rational would want to provoke their own incineration. Columbia University professor, Kenneth Waltz, the distinguished theorist on the conduct of war, wrote in Foreign Affairs that with Israel possessing over 200 nuclear weapons (which the US refuses to publically admit) Iran having a bomb would bring stability. I would never go as far as Waltz on that last point. The launch of nuclear weapons can always be done by accident or by the rogue action of one or two of the members of the launch team in the silo. It has nearly happened in the US a number of times, and probably in the Soviet Union too. Moreover, if Iran got really close to building a bomb, Saudi Arabia would follow in short order,...

It focuses on the U.S. call for an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, concerning Iran’s nuclear policy.

When I was in Moscow three weeks ago, I was briefing myself for an interview with the Soviet Union’s last president, Mikhail Gorbachev. As it happened he had to cancel it as he went into hospital for tests. One of the American academics I always read is Gordon Hahn, an ex fellow of the highly regarded Centre for Strategic and International  Studies. He wrote that American policy towards Russia is a runaway train without rails, driven by a troubling confluence of hubristic ideological influences and bureaucratized sectorial interests. I would add to that Republican members of the Senate who have allowed President Donald Trump small room to manoeuvre on Russian issues, even though there are some indications that he’d like to make peace with Russia.  I also re-read what President Bill Clinton’s secretary of defence, William Perry, has said on a number of occasions: “The US is as much to...

June 10, 2019 Mr. Amano, IAEA, indeed has good reasons to be worried – also today when the Germain foreign minister, Heiko Maas, visits Tehran and seems to have nothing new to convey to Iran’s foregin minister and president. Iran’s PressTV asked TFF’s director and co-founder, Jan Oberg, to comment on Amano’s statement, together with E. Michael Jones.

Some time ago, I wrote about the flood catastrophe in Iran which a) affects up to 10 million people and b) has gone virtually unmentioned in Western mainstream media: Stop the ongoing US humanitarian terrorism against Iran and help its people! Just in passing, not one of the more than 3000 media recipients of TFF PressInfo did, as far as I have been able to search, mention this issue in general, let alone refer to my analysis. The conspicuous uniformity in perspective of what hits the mainstream media headlines and the uniformity of what does not – omitted news – is today such, that it is hard to believe that it is not orchestrated and that self-censorship isn’t a normal, everyday practice among editors and reporters. So, on April 17, after having written the article, I did what I suggested at the end of it – I sent US$ 5...

Ukrainian priests lead a commemoration ceremony for Maidan activists or “Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred” killed during anti-government protests in Kiev this time last year. Photograph: Roman Pilipey/EPA By  Ivan Katchanovski May 24, 2019 The new Ukrainian government is faced with reopening an inquiry into evidence of an organized mass killing in Kiev that Poroshenko stonewalled. Ivan Katchanovski investigates. Five years ago, the Maidan massacre in Kiev, Ukraine, of Feb. 18-20, 2014, was a watershed event, not only for the politics and history of Ukraine but also for world politics generally. This mass killing in downtown Kyiv set the stage for the violent overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine and a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow. Therefore, it is remarkable that five years after this massacre shook the world, no one has been sentenced for any of the Maidan killings. This was the best-documented case of mass...

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.” In...

By Esfandyar Batmanghelidj and Nicholas Mulder April 16, 2019 Financial wars damage and disfigure economies as much as military ones. Countries ravaged by sanctions need reconstruction, too. The sanctions just keep on coming. The reactions were swift when the Trump administration designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, in a move heralded by the White House as “the first time that the United States has ever named a part of another government as a FTO.” In Tehran, leaders from across Iran’s political spectrum condemned the designation, with nearly all members of parliament showing solidarity by attending the next day’s session in combat fatigues. In Washington, experts saw the designation as a risky political provocation that would do little to add meaningful pressure to Iran—a country already targeted by dozens of executive orders and pieces of legislation such as the 2010 Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment...

You have certainly not heard much about this in the West. And it didn’t get a fraction of the media attention (and none of the hundreds of millions of Euro pledges by the perversely rich) that the Notre Dame fire did. However, if disastrous floods had hit 28 out of 31 provinces and affected 10 million people in some European country or in the US, I believe you would have heard about it from Day One. But now it is Iran. Only the Iranians. The situation is disastrous but not so much because thousands have died. Rather, because floods of this magnitude are likely to have terrible long-term consequences for agricultural and other production, infrastructure, energy production, transport and daily lives (see pictures below and on the links). The basic facts about 3 weeks into the disaster are: 28 of 31 provinces affected, the area around Shiraz the most. 78...