TFF Blog

  President Barack Obama was not a war criminal despite US involvement in wars in Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and against ISIS. His predecessor George W. Bush was. Apart from anything else his administration tortured captives. Was the former British minister, Tony Blair, the closest ally of Bush, also a war criminal? And should he now be prosecuted and tried for war crimes? Did Blair lie over the reason for going to war with Iraq – the supposed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction that he alleged Iraq possessed? It depends on how you define lie. If you define lie as saying this cat is white when in fact it is black he didn’t on the big issues. But what he did do was give the impression the cat was assuredly white when it was in fact a sort of dark greyish white. As far as the public could tell from...

A review of the evidence points to Israeli and MEK disinformation, not an open-and-shut case. By Gareth Porter May 25, 2018   Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at UN in 2012. (You Tube)   Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which has set the stage for another Iran crisis, has opened a new round of domestic political struggle, as Democrats in Congress, the anti-Trump television networks, and the tattered remains of the old anti-war movement try to push back. But that effort has a fatal weakness at its core. It concedes to Trump and opponents of the Iran deal an effective argument: that the Iranians have been lying when they say they’ve never had a covert nuclear weapons program. Originally published by The American Conservative here The theme of Iran’s duplicity has been the emotional core of the assault on the JCPOA....

  About an hour after President Trump had announced another US withdrawal – this time from the Summit with North Korea on June 12 – I commented on RT (formerly Russia Today) and got quite a long time until we were broken off by Trump appearing in the White House lawn to speak about it.      

  Can you smell the whiff of smoke? You surely can. But the gunfire? Not yet. But it must start soon if the battle has any chance of success. President Donald Trump has to be faced down. Not only because of his sabotage of the Iran nuclear deal but also because of his attack on Europe’s export of steel and aluminum which breaks all the rules on tariffs set by the World Trade Organisation. This man should not be allowed to get away with his gross disturbance of the world political and economic order. Donald Tusk, the President of the Council of the European Union, said boldly last week, “Who needs enemies when you have friends like this?” Who indeed? Trump is, as David Goodhart wrote in Foreign Affairs, “a living fossil, the sort of ‘ugly American’ common enough in earlier eras”. Trump is leading America into a dark tunnel...

    By Farhang Jahanpour May 22, 2018 Mike Pompeo’s declaration of war on Iran makes the world less safe Speaking at the Heritage Foundation this morning, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo practically declared war on Iran. His unprecedented threats against Iran went even beyond what President Trump had said in the past. Commenting on the speech (full transcript here), JStreet wrote: “With their decision to violate the historic JCPOA arms control agreement, the president and his ‘war cabinet’ have created a strategic disaster of their own making and undone the major accomplishments of the previous administration. They have made the US, Israel and the world less safe.”   Short history of Iran’s nuclear activities: 1957 to the JCPOA After 12 years of intensive talks, initially between Britain, France and Germany (the EU-3), and finally between Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany (P5+1),...

  Lund, Sweden, May 21, 2018 Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s speech, held at the Heritage Foundation can be seen and heard here at The Transnational. And here is State Department’s full transcript. Here are some TFF Associate comments on it:   Stop the war on Iran now! By Farhang Jahanpour, TFF Board Speaking at the Heritage Foundation this morning, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo practically declared war on Iran. His unprecedented threats against Iran went even beyond what President Trump had said in the past. Commenting on the speech, JStreet wrote: “With their decision to violate the historic JCPOA arms control agreement, the president and his ‘war cabinet’ have created a strategic disaster of their own making and undone the major accomplishments of the previous administration. They have made the US, Israel and the world less safe.” Let us review what the US administration is demanding. After 12...

  By Jan Oberg Will Europe to continue to bow to US demands now that Trump has withdrawn from the Iran Deal? That’s the question John Wight asks of peace researcher Jan Oberg, on this week’s program. A conversation with John Wight of “Hard Facts” at Sputnik Radio, May 16, 2018.    

  – are worried stiff that this will lead to war between Iran and Israel, in which Trump will feel moved to intercede if Israel is being badly hurt. Such a war will not only cause immense damage to Iran it will, unlike when in 1973 Israel fought the combined Arab armies to a standstill well away from its borders, inflict an enormous amount of damage inside Israel. Despite the so-called iron-dome that protects Israel against rockets, enough will get through to cause immense loss of life. Europe doesn’t want to live cheek by jowl with that kind of inflammable neighborhood. It doesn’t want to see more chaos, as after the US military intervention in Iraq which helped trigger the civil war in Syria and gave birth to ISIS. The long-established unity of purpose and liberal, democratic, ideology is being incinerated by the day. Putting America first has meant elbowing...

  The violence in Syria has occupied the world since it broke out in 2011. The underlying conflicts and various explanations are still lost in the heated debate about the violence and who is to blame – both of which are much easier than understanding this hugely complex conflict formation in a longer time and space perspective. Teachers in international politics, activists and journalists would do wise in trying to find pedagogical examples of just how differently the same problem can actually be perceived. This edition of BBC’s “Hard Talk” could be used in classrooms – for a better understanding of why we still don’t understand much of the underlying issues in the case of Syria. This – indeed hard – discussion is between two men who both have knowledge, passion and self-esteem. They are also both arguing well their viewpoints – which are about as different as can be...

    Farhang Jahanpour Against the advice of practically the whole world, including many American scientists, politicians and diplomats, and contrary to the Security Council Resolution 2231 that has given the Iran Nuclear Deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) the backing of international law, last night President Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement. Not only did he withdraw America from the deal, but he also threatened to impose sanctions on all countries and companies that trade with Iran. He also issued a warning that he would do to Iran what that country has never experienced before. That statement by itself is in clear violation of International law. His short statement that was meant to justify his action was full of clear errors and inaccuracies and the reversals of known facts. He implied that Iran had violated the terms of the agreement. This is not true....

  , he draws the character of Madame Defarge. She along with other members of the Tricoteuse, the knitting women, perch every day next to the guillotine, knitting into hats and socks the names of those to be executed, while watching the upper aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie being dispatched to their death one by one. They were regarded as respected sisters of the revolution. I can’t help being reminded of her when I read the CV of the woman nominated by President Donald Trump to be the new head of the CIA, Gina Haspel, who is due to be cross examined at a Senate hearing on May 9th. She is a career officer who ran a CIA “black site” in Thailand. She implemented the torture policies of President George W. Bush. She also, according to The Economist, transmitted her boss’s orders to destroy video evidence of brutal interrogations. She ignored...

  – all about this agreement and its text here). Noteworthy is that the nuclear deal is incorporated into international law by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, even though the U.S. already at that point stated – as an exceptionalist state – that it did not consider the deal binding for it. With the exception of Germany, the deal was negotiated – cynically, of course – by countries which have themselves thousands of nuclear weapons. It never mentioned the only state in the region that possesses them, against international law in the form of UN resolutions and, additionally, has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That state is Israel whose nuclear weapons Western politicians and their loyal, politically correct media omit mention of – as systematically and uniformly as if orchestrated by an invisible hand from above. Back in 2014-15, many of us stated that the alternative to a negotiated...