On 5 March, Moscow demanded written guarantees of sanctions waivers from US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken that would preserve Russia’s ambitious economic, scientific-technological and military collaboration projects in the pipeline with Iran.

While privately, Iranian delegation members in Vienna were undoubtedly miffed at this eleventh-hour wrench in the works, Tehran’s official position was stoic.

“Russia is a responsible member of nuclear negotiations, and it has always proven that, not like America,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokeman Saeed Khatibzadeh informed reporters on Monday.

“It is natural for us to discuss its [Russia’s] demands,” he continued, and bolstered Moscow’s position by adding: “What really matters is that the nuclear cooperation relations between Iran and various countries should not be subject to sanctions.”

March 5 also happens to be the anniversary of the date the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entered into force in 1970.

The fate of the NPT may now hinge on the US response. For, if the Biden administration rides the high horse, that will almost certainly be a deal-breaker for the current negotiations in Vienna to broker the US’ return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

On the other hand, a golden opportunity is now at hand for Iran too to hang tough on its remaining demands — that is, removing the US designation of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization; a firm guarantee that a future US government will not (again) renege on the nuclear deal; and, conclusively closing the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) case on Tehran’s nuclear program. Russia is firmly supportive of Iran’s demands.

The chances of Biden obliging Moscow with sanctions waivers are nil, as that would lethally damage US prestige and make a complete mockery of its ‘weaponization of the dollar’ (which is what sanctions are about). Without using sanctions as a weapon, the US is increasingly unable to force its will on other countries.

The “sanctions from hell” recently imposed on Russia demonstrate a new cutting edge, and include the freezing of Russia’s central bank reserves. It is a cynical move to the extreme which may come with significant unforeseen repercussions. For one, the US looks to be sending a powerful message to China as well, which holds something like 2-3 trillion dollars as US Treasury bonds.

China draws its own lines

The call from Blinken to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on March 5 — the same day Russia transmitted its demand for sanction waivers — suggests that China is no doubt closely observing developments. Wang told Blinken point-blank that Beijing has “grave concern over recent words and deeds of the US side,” especially with regard to Taiwan, and expects “concrete actions” by the Americans to shore up the relationship.

China has consistently opposed US sanctions. On the issue of Ukraine, Wang Yi cautioned Washington from taking further actions that “add fuel to the fire” (alluding to reported plans to dispatch foreign mercenaries to join the fighting), and importantly, “to engage in equal dialogue with Russia, face up to the frictions and problems accumulated over the years, pay attention to the negative impact of NATO’s continuous eastward expansion on Russia’s security, and seek to build a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism in accordance with the ‘indivisibility of security’ principle.”

Suffice to say, if China is not caving in, the strong likelihood is that the negotiations in Vienna may soon lose momentum. The latest Russian demand can even prove a deal-maker. The action-reaction syndrome used to be a staple of the superpower nuclear competition. But Russians seem to have now found an ingenious new dimension to it: counter US dollar weaponization by extending the countermeasure to the nuclear non-proliferation issue.

“Weaponizing the atom”

By doing so, Russia has elevated the American sanctions regime far beyond the crude money terms of seizing central bank dollar reserves — which is plain highway robbery — to an altogether new sublime level of “weaponization of atom.”

Iran has suffered immensely from the US’ weaponization of the dollar. Ever since its 1979 revolution, Iran has been under western sanctions aimed at stifling its growth and development — many of them cruel and humiliating. These hit a nadir, when at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the US even blocked Iran’s pathway to procure vaccines for its citizens.

So many such horrific episodes can be dredged up from Iran’s four-decade-long painful history as a victim of America’s “weaponization of dollar,” whereby, an immensely resource-rich country was forced to live far below its real potential, and one of the world’s greatest and oldest civilizations suffered humiliations at the hands of an uppity country with some 246 years of history.

It must then be tormenting for Washington that Iran is one of the countries that has immense potential to resort to “weaponization of atom” to counter America’s “weaponization of dollar.”

Whether it will do or not is a moot point. Certainly, Iran’s stated preference is to live without nuclear weapons. That is why it has come fully prepared to close the deal at the negotiations in Vienna. Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian even told EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Friday that he’s “ready to fly to Vienna” to sign the nuclear deal on Monday.

But the point is, if Iran wishes, it has the capability to meet the US on equal terms even without a nuclear deal in Vienna. In fact, if Biden refuses to provide Russia with a written guarantee to suspend the “sanctions from hell,” that deal may not go through in Vienna, since Russia, as an original signatory to the JCPOA, must sign off on it. Of course, the Americans are insisting that they will continue to work with Russia at Vienna within the matrix of their shared interest to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons.

Indeed, as it is, the remaining three demands by Iran also pose a big challenge to Biden. Lifting the ban on the IRGC is a bitter pill for the Washington elite to swallow; again, Biden is in no position to guarantee that a deal signed in Vienna will have any shelf life beyond his presidency.

Herein lies the catch. Until such time as an agreement is reached in Vienna, Iran’s centrifuges will be producing enriched uranium, which would mean that the so-called “breakout time” keeps shrinking and for all purposes, at some point, Iran will have transformed itself as a virtual nuclear weapon state whether it wants or not — and the very purpose of the deal that the US is frantically seeking at Vienna will be defeated.

For Iran too, this is a moment of truth. Things have come to such a pass in international politics that many countries, which willingly signed the NPT, probably regret their decision now. India, Pakistan and North Korea already broke the NPT shackle. The point is, in the final analysis, a nuclear weapon is the means to preserve a country’s strategic autonomy to pursue independent policies.

It provides a firewall against foreign interference in the internal affairs; it reduces the scope for Washington’s coup machine to overthrow the established government; it compels the US to abandon the highly immoral, cynical bullying via “weaponization of the dollar;” and, above all, it enhances plurality in the world order by strengthening a country’s freedom to choose its own unique path of development.

“Atoms for Peace” was the title of a famous speech delivered by US President Dwight Eisenhower to the UN General Assembly in New York City in 1953. In retrospect, it turned out to be a propaganda component of the US’ Cold War strategy of containing the former Soviet Union.

Eisenhower was launching a media campaign that would last for years aimed at “emotion management,” balancing fears of continuing nuclear armament with promises of peaceful use of uranium in future nuclear reactors.

Ironically, that catchy phrase acquires today an altogether new meaning: Atoms may offer the best means to an equitable world order.

thecradle.co

The UK’s new foreign minister has dropped a bombshell over a debt which the UK government should pay back to Tehran, which would no doubt mean the freedom of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. The only problem is that Liz Truss is an idiot.

A minor news event from the first week of December might give a hint as to whether the West is close to making a deal with Iran. Liz Truss, Britain’s new foreign minister, has said the £400 million that Britain owes Iran is a “legitimate debt” that the Government wants to pay.

The Foreign Secretary was asked about the amount at a London conference where she set out her foreign policy aims and although not a huge announcement, the mention of the debt is a sign that the UK is being pragmatic about where it stands with the new hardline regime in Iran and what western commentators are calling the last chance saloon in Vienna with the talks with Iran aimed at getting it to scale back its nuclear program and rejoin the so-called Iran deal – the JCPOA which it left the moment Donald Trump effectively retracted America’s commitment.

Iran wants the UK to pay back a debt which goes back to the 1970s when the Shah ordered military hardware from Britain and paid in advance for it. Truss, for the first time, acknowledged the debt saying that she was working to “resolve the issue” – relating to a cancelled order for 1,500 Chieftain tanks dating back to the 1970s – which has been linked to the continued detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other UK-Iranian dual nationals held in the country.

Iran is holding the dual national in a prison in Tehran and it is widely known that it wants the debt paid in exchange for the British teacher. There is an established format of keeping western hostages on trumped up spying charges to achieve an advantage when negotiating with the West. It is not widely reported but in 2015, U.S. President Obama handed over around 1.7 billion dollars in mixed currencies to the Iranian regime in exchange for a number of U.S. hostages being released – which all happened a few days after the ink dried on the JCPOA deal. The similarity of this and the UK case is striking as Obama estimated that America’s own 400m dollar debt to Iran – also for arms ordered and paid for in the 1970s – was worth close to 2bn dollars in today’s value.

Will Boris Johnson cough up the same huge amount adjusted to take into account inflation today? It’s likely he will have to, although the case of Nazanin is hugely embarrassing for him as she is partly in jail because of his own foot-in-mouth blundering which convinced the Iranians that the dual national was training Iranians in journalism.

But as the world’s attention turns once again to Iran as Tehran returns to Vienna to continue the talks is the shockingly outdated, arrogant and somewhat repugnant colonial attitude of both the U.S. and the UK towards Iran and the beleaguered nuclear deal itself. Truss exemplified this by adding at the Chatham House event that it was “Iran’s last chance” in Vienna adding that the UK is with the U.S. which has made indications that it is ready to take military action against the regime if it doesn’t take a more submissive role to the West’s demands.

This is itself is shocking. Put simply, it is Washington and London saying “look, if you’re not going to make any effort to agree to our terms, then we’re just going to bomb you”. It is akin to negotiating with gangsters with pistols stuffed down their trousers when you can’t pay back a loan. The West is always suggesting in its narrative about the Vienna talks that Iran is not serious or genuine. But the reality, when you analyse the threats of military action against Iran if it doesn’t tow the line, shows what a sham role Washington and London are playing. Do they really want a deal, or an excuse to bomb Iran? And perhaps more importantly, can we take their threats seriously when 100,000 rockets are pointed at Israeli cities by Hezbollah in Lebanon waiting for orders from Tehran. If Tehran is not taking Antony Blinken’s threats seriously, then why should anyone else? Iran holds all the cards in Vienna and is just doing what all Middle Eastern leaders do when negotiating: taking their time.

It’s the cultural gap which is really the issue. America is reacting like a spoilt child who can’t get its way and London is following with the mindset. We can talk to these people, but if they’re not willing to sign our deal, we need to hit them hard and show them who has the military might, seems to be the thinking. If only there was even some truth in the west having the power, we could try and understand why the talks have failed in Vienna, and Tehran has so much to gain by developing uranium and rebuilding its economy by investing in China and Russia as major players, while slowly edging back to what it raked in from oil sale pre-2015 Trump move.

The hypocrisy is stunning both with Truss and Blinken. Neither the U.S. nor UK can even come to terms with how we go into this crisis in the first place, convinced that playing the victim and pointing the finger at Iran will be an ace move in the end. Remarkably, the West continues to act as though Iran itself broke the terms of the JCPOA, rather than Trump pulling out of it – thus eliminating the main demand of enriching uranium. It’s hardly surprising after the Trump sanctions brought Iran’s economy to its knees that Tehran now has a tougher, hardball attitude towards western negotiations. It’s also hardly surprising that it manipulates the West’s weakness by ploughing ahead with enriching uranium and panicking Gulf Arab leaders who have recently been begging Joe Biden to go back to the JCPOA and not stick to keeping some of Trump’s sanctions. And it is certainly not surprising that Iran continues with its hostage taking as an effective way of hitting back and having the edge in negotiations when the West played such a dirty trick in the first place by pulling out of the Iran deal and desecrating the economy.

If Biden hasn’t got the guts to invade the Ukraine then it’s hard to see him picking a fight with Iran which would give U.S. forces in the region such a bloody nose that it would make the Afghanistan foray look like a badly organised picnic. Truss is not terribly bright and many questioned the wisdom of Boris Johnson to give her such an important dossier in a recent cabinet reshuffle. But warning Iran that time is up and that they’re about to be bombed for not signing a deal which gives them practically no benefits and no guarantees that the whole episode repeats itself at a later point? With such buffoons in control, it’s hardly surprising at all that the so-called Iran deal is never going to get done and what we really need is a new team of foreign policy wonks who can work without a script and see that a new approach entirely is needed if we want our hostages back. In the early 90s George Bush senior had to bluff and pretend that Ghadaffy was behind the Lockerbie bombing as he was so afraid of Iran not handing over the last few U.S. hostages in Beirut and Syria not supporting an invasion of Kuwait. We cannot make comparisons today as Iran and Hezbollah are so much stronger and have so much more power in the region that Biden should be terrified of Iran, if he is still compos mentis, that is. But we are all fooling ourselves if we believe the West’s take that America and Britain have the upper hand with Iran and that Tehran needs to get in line. Truss really does need to do some late night googling and learn about the history of the West’s entanglements with Iran to understand how this is going to play out.

It’s impossible to understand the resumption of the JCPOA nuclear talks in Vienna without considering the serious inner turbulence of the Biden administration.

Everyone and his neighbor are aware of Tehran’s straightforward expectations: all sanctions – no exceptions – must be removed in a verifiable manner. Only then will the Islamic Republic reverse what it terms ‘remedial measures,’ that is, ramping up its nuclear program to match each new American ‘punishment.’

The reason Washington isn’t tabling a similarly transparent position is because its economic circumstances are, bizarrely, far more convoluted than Iran’s under sanctions. Joe Biden is now facing a hard domestic reality: if his financial team raises interest rates, the stock market will crash and the US will be plunged into deep economic distress.

Panicked Democrats are even considering the possibility of allowing Biden’s own impeachment by a Republican majority in the next Congress over the Hunter Biden scandal.

According to a top, non-partisan US national security source, there are three things the Democrats think they can do to delay the final reckoning:

First, sell some of the stock in the Strategic Oil Reserve in coordination with its allies to drive oil prices down and lower inflation.

Second, ‘encourage’ Beijing to devalue the yuan, thus making Chinese imports cheaper in the US, “even if that materially increases the US trade deficit. They are offering trading the Trump tariff in exchange.” Assuming this would happen, and that’s a major if, it would in practice have a double effect, lowering prices by 25 percent on Chinese imports in tandem with the currency depreciation.

Third, “they plan to make a deal with Iran no matter what, to allow their oil to re-enter the market, driving down the oil price.” This would imply the current negotiations in Vienna reaching a swift conclusion, because “they need a deal quickly. They are desperate.”

There is no evidence whatsoever that the team actually running the Biden administration will be able to pull off points two and three; not when the realities of Cold War 2.0 against China and bipartisan Iranophobia are considered.

Still, the only issue that really worries the Democratic leadership, according to the intel source, is to have the three strategies get them through the mid-term elections. Afterwards, they may be able to raise interest rates and allow themselves time for some stabilization before the 2024 presidential ballot.

So how are US allies reacting to it? Quite intriguing movements are in the cards.

When in doubt, go multilateral

Less than two weeks ago in Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), in a joint meeting with France, Germany and the UK, plus Egypt and Jordan, told the US Iran envoy Robert Malley that for all practical purposes, they want the new JCPOA round to succeed.

A joint statement, shared by Europeans and Arabs, noted “a return to mutual compliance with the [nuclear deal] would benefit the entire Middle East, allow for more regional partnerships and economic exchange, with long-lasting implications for growth and the well-being of all people there, including in Iran.”

This is far from implying a better understanding of Iran’s position. It reveals, in fact, the predominant GCC mindset ruled by fear: something must be done to tame Iran, accused of nefarious “recent activities” such as hijacking oil tankers and attacking US soldiers in Iraq.

So this is what the GCC is volunteering to the Americans. Now compare it with what the Russians are proposing to several protagonists across West Asia.

Essentially, Moscow is reviving the Collective Security Concept for the Persian Gulf Region, an idea that has been simmering since the 1990s. Here is what the concept is all about.

So if the US administration’s reasoning is predictably short-term – we need Iranian oil back in the market – the Russian vision points to systemic change.

The Collective Security Concept calls for true multilateralism – not exactly Washington’s cup of tea – and “the adherence of all states to international law, the fundamental provisions of the UN Charter and the resolutions of the UN Security Council.”

All that is in direct contrast with the imperial “rules-based international order.”

It’s too far-fetched to assume that Russian diplomacy per se is about to accomplish a miracle: an entente cordiale between Tehran and Riyadh.

Yet there’s already tangible progress, for instance, between Iran and the UAE. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri held a “cordial meeting” in Dubai with Anwar Gargash, senior adviser to UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. According to Bagheri, they “agreed to open a new page in Iran-UAE relations.”

Geopolitically, Russia holds the definitive ace: it maintains good relationships with all actors in the Persian Gulf and beyond, talks to all of them frequently, and is widely respected as a mediator by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and other GCC members.

Russia also offers the world’s most competitive and cutting edge military hardware to underpin the security needs of all the parties.

And then there’s the overarching, new geopolitical reality. Russia and Iran are forging a strengthened strategic partnership, not only geopolitical but also geoeconomic, fully aligned to the Russian-conceptualized Greater Eurasian Partnership – and also demonstrated by Moscow’s support for Iran’s recent ascension to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the only West Asian state to be admitted thus far.

Furthermore, three years ago Iran launched its own regional security framework proposal for the region called HOPE (the Hormuz Peace Endeavor) with the intent to convene all eight littoral states of the Persian Gulf (including Iraq) to address and resolve the vital issues of cooperation, security, and freedom of navigation.

The Iranian plan didn’t get far off the ground. While Iran suffers from adversarial relations with some of its intended audience, Russia carries none of that baggage.

The $5.4 trillion game

And that brings us to the essential Pipelineistan angle, which in the Russia–Iran case revolves around the new, multi-trillion dollar Chalous gas field in the Caspian Sea.

A recent sensationalist take painted Chalous as enabling Russia to “secure control over the European energy market.”

That’s hardly the story. Chalous, in fact, will enable Iran  – with Russian input – to become a major gas exporter to Europe, something that Brussels evidently relishes. The head of Iran’s KEPCO, Ali Osouli, expects a “new gas hub to be formed in the north to let the country supply 20 percent of Europe’s gas needs.”

According to Russia’s Transneft, Chalous alone could supply as much as 52 percent of natural gas needs of the whole EU for the next 20 years.

Chalous is quite something: a twin-field site, separated by roughly nine kilometers, the second-largest natural gas block in the Caspian Sea, just behind Alborz. It may hold gas reserves equivalent to one-fourth of the immense South Pars gas field, placing it as the 10th largest gas reserves in the world.

Chalous happens to be a graphic case of Russia-Iran-China (RIC) geoeconomic cooperation. Proverbial western speculative spin rushed to proclaim the 20-year gas deal as a setback for Iran. The final breakdown, not fully confirmed, is 40 percent for Gazprom and Transneft, 28 percent for China’s CNPC and CNOOC, and 25 percent for Iran’s KEPCO.

Moscow sources confirm Gazprom will manage the whole project. Transneft will be in charge of transportation, CNPC is involved in financing and banking facilities, and CNOOC will be in charge of infrastructure and engineering.

The whole Chalous site has been estimated to be worth a staggering  $5.4 trillion.

Iran could not possibly have the funds to tackle such a massive enterprise by itself. What is definitely established is that Gazprom offered KEPCO all the necessary technology in exploration and development of Chalous, coupled with additional financing, in return for a generous deal.

Crucially, Moscow also reiterated its full support for Tehran’s position during the current JCPOA round in Vienna, as well as in other Iran-related issues reaching the UN Security Council.

The fine print on all key Chalous aspects may be revealed in time. It’s a de facto geopolitical/geoeconomic win-win-win for the Russia, Iran, China strategic partnership. And it reaches way beyond the famous “20-year agreement” on petrochemicals and weapons sales clinched by Moscow and Tehran way back in 2001, in a Kremlin ceremony when President Putin hosted then Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.

There’s no two ways about it. If there is one country with the necessary clout, tools, sweeteners and relationships in place to nudge the Persian Gulf into a new security paradigm, it is Russia – with China not far behind.

thecradle.co

Just how “special” is the so-called special relationship between oil-rich Gulf Arab states and Washington? One could argue, since Joe Biden became President, that relations have hit an all time low with many looking to broker better relations with Russia, China and even Iran. Royal elites in the GCC club know that in the event of a new Arab Spring sweeping across the region, that they cannot rely on Biden for any support whatsoever to cling onto power and so have taken an entirely new look at their foes and are asking themselves “are these people really our enemies?”

This partly explains why the shift in policy to welcoming Assad back into the fold, who will no doubt soon be a fully accepted member of the Arab League. And it also justifies why, since Biden took office, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are more open than ever before towards developing relations with Russia – even as far as, one day, defence procurement. In recent weeks, the lobbying in Washington from GCC states to convince Biden to cut Assad some slack is part of the trade-off, which no doubt the Syrian leader asked for. And to some extent this is happening.

The big thinking from Gulf Arab states is that the ethos behind the Trump move to pull out of the so-called Iran deal (JCPOA) which would have restricted Tehran’s abilities to develop nuclear weapons hasn’t achieved what it set out to do: bring Tehran to its knees begging for a respite to the crippling sanctions.

However, the cruel sanctions which Tehran has had to endure, has made the Gulf Arab leaders themselves beggars and Joe Biden in the awkward position of having to listen to their gripes. Just recently, the GCC made their case to Washington to do something about the Iran deal. And do it as soon as possible.

The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) on November 18^th joined Jordan, Egypt, France, Germany and the UK in calling for a return to the nuclear deal following a meeting with U.S. Iran envoy Robert Malley in Saudi Arabia.

According to reports, the 12 countries issued a joint statement noting that “a return to mutual compliance with the [nuclear deal] would benefit the entire Middle East, allow for more regional partnerships and economic exchange, with long-lasting implications for growth and the well-being of all people there, including in Iran”.

Several GCC states expressed scepticism when the nuclear deal was first negotiated under former president Barack Obama, with Saudi Arabia calling it “flawed”.

Yet, analysts have to wonder now if the Saudis and Emiraties regret the bullish move by Trump and would have the old deal back. The “flaw” now appears that the West has underestimated how Iran’s more recent activities in the region – from hijacking oil tankers to even attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq – are paying off, combined with the foot-dragging which we’ve seen with the Vienna talks.

The GCC call for a return to the deal comes on the eve of indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran scheduled for November 29.

It also follows a similar joint statement that the U.S. and its GCC partners issued in Saudi Arabia which called for an “urgent mutual return to full compliance” with the nuclear deal, while condemning a “range of aggressive and dangerous Iranian policies, including the proliferation and direct use of advanced ballistic missiles” and drones.

So the message is clear for Biden. The Gulf Arab states are now desperate to get the Iran deal back, fearing that Iran’s overtures are left unchecked and will only get worse. They are asking, bluntly, for Biden to drop the Trump sanctions, fearing that a conflict is imminent, if we are to believe the chest-beating statements from Anthony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State. The coming weeks now will put the relationship between the GCC and the Biden administration on tenterhooks if Biden doesn’t take the hint and take Obama’s notion of “soft diplomacy” to a new low.

Something odd is happening with Iran’s troubled relationship with Washington. Remarkably, the EU seems to be playing a useful role as a scapegoat. Both Washington and Iran are using Brussels as a conduit to talk to the Iranians after the Vienna talks, aimed at breathing new life into the so-called ‘Iran deal’ have effectively collapsed. In recent weeks a number of diplomatic back channels were used to try and convince the Iranians to return to the talks in the Austrian capital, but largely to no avail. Of course it doesn’t help that Biden’s administration comment to the press that the lion’s share of sanctions imposed on Tehran would largely stay in place in the event of a new deal; and, add to that a new regime entirely in Iran which sees more political capital in making the Americans the new evil to embrace rather than trying to cut a deal which would open huge sluices of foreign investment into the country and restore confidence in its currency.

But in the meantime, both the Biden administration and Tehran’s new hardliners want to keep the Vienna talks alive in name only as neither side wants to pull the plug entirely on the charade, cautious that this would be a justification for a further deterioration of relations and possibly a new wave of conflict in the Middle East, almost certainly directed at U.S. forces in Iraq.

Biden simply doesn’t have the true grit it takes to negotiate and doesn’t have the courage to declare the talks null and void. And so, enter the eurocrats in Brussels who have provided the ideal location for the farce to continue while the foot dragging reaches new comical levels and a new important role for the EU to play. It’s important to note that in 2015, senior EU officials deluded themselves by congratulating themselves on pulling the deal off, when in reality this was really John Kerry and his band of merry men and women, plus the foreign ministers of France and the UK who worked the magic. In fact, when Kerry’s plane touched down in Paris just hours after the deal was agreed in principle, it is worth noting that he called the foreign ministers of these two EU heavyweights but didn’t bother calling the EU’s own top diplomat herself.

The reason why the Iran deal is so close to the hearts of senior EU mandarins in Brussels is that it was the first real peace treaty of sorts which the EU could claim was theirs. For this reason, the EU has stayed close to the Iranians even to this day as a sense of loyalty to the fantasy. Your neighbour who keeps your dream alive will always be welcome in your house for coffee.

And now both the Iranians and the Americans are taking full advantage of the EU being the new intermediary as Tehran’s entourage of cheap suits fly into the Belgian capital to meet Josep Borrell, the EU’s so-called Foreign Policy chief.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that “talks with the 4+1 Group will restart on Thursday in Brussels,” MP Ahmad Alirezabeigui told the ultraconservative news agency Fars after a closed-door session with the minister.

The lawmaker was referring to four UN Security Council permanent members — Britain, China, France and Russia — along with Germany.

Borrell responded by saying he was “more optimistic today than yesterday”, which in classic euro-speak means really nothing at all.

Meanwhile in the same week EU envoy Enrique Mora was in Tehran to press for a firm date for resuming talks.

A great deal of activity for the EU which desperately needs to be seen as an important player in the talks. But in reality, using the EU as a main broker to liaise with those four countries plus Germany – so that they can lobby Washington – is unlikely to do anything at all, except keep the translators in the Belgian capital busy for months and even perhaps years with endless talks, workshops, committees. It’s what Brussels does. Talk. And if the intention of the Iranians is to keep up the farce that they are the victims of evil western imperialism, while they ramp up their uranium enrichment and demand more and more conditions to the Iranian deal, then Brussels was a genius idea.

For the Americans, it’s all about blaming others. It’s not enough for the Vienna talks to be dead, even if the Washington Post says so; it’s about preparing themselves for when the general public which follows the minutia of such international politics wakes up and realises that Biden is really a paper tiger who can’t remember what he had for lunch, let alone who Iran’s proxies are in the region. At this point, a blame game will be perfectly enacted and a Washington press pack, which is largely anti EU will be ready to be spoon fed the messages about the EU “not delivering” etc etc. You get the picture.

Never mind how the Biden administration could cut a deal with the new hardliners in Tehran, some of whom are on its own black list of villains and mass murderers; or for that matter how you negotiate with a regime which doesn’t really want a deal in the first place. Tehran must be playing a much longer game and with secondary sanctions not being enforced against a posse of countries (China being the biggest one). Oil revenues are giving the regime new hope for a new economic outlook which focuses on partners in the region and airbrushes America out of the picture altogether. For them, it is not that they have learned about U.S. presidents like Trump tearing up treaties. It’s more that no one seems have confidence in Biden even making it to the 2024 election race and so what value do sunset clauses have anyway?

Some might recall candidate Joe Biden’s pledge to work to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was a multilateral agreement intended to limit Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon. The JCPOA was signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, when Biden was Vice President, and was considered one of the only foreign policy successes of his eight years in office. Other signatories to it were Britain, China, Germany, France, and Russia and it was endorsed by the United Nations. The agreement included unannounced inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities by the IAEA and, by all accounts, it was working and was a non-proliferation success story. In return for its cooperation Iran was to receive its considerable assets frozen in banks in the United States and was also to be relieved of the sanctions that had been placed on it by Washington and other governments.

The JCPOA crashed and burned in 2018 when President Donald Trump ordered U.S. withdrawal from the agreement, claiming that Iran was cheating and would surely move to develop a nuclear weapon as soon as the first phase of the agreement was completed. Trump, whose ignorance on Iran and other international issues was profound, had surrounded himself with a totally Zionist foreign policy team, including members of his own family, and had bought fully into the arguments being made by Israel as well as by Israel Lobby predominantly Jewish groups to include the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Trump’s time in office was spent pandering to Israel in every conceivable way, to include recognizing Jerusalem as the country’s capital, granting Israel the green light for creating and expanding illegal settlements on the West Bank and recognizing the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel.

Given Trump’s record, most particularly the senseless and against-American-interests abandonment of JCPOA, it almost seemed a breath of fresh air to hear Biden’s fractured English as he committed his administration to doing what he could to rejoin the other countries who were still trying to make the agreement work. After Biden was actually elected, more or less, he and his Secretary of State Tony Blinken clarified what the U.S. would seek to do to “fix” the agreement by making it stronger in some key areas that had not been part of the original document.

Iran for its part insisted that the agreement did not need any additional caveats and should be a return to the status quo ante, particularly when Blinken and his team made clear that they were thinking of a ban on Iranian ballistic missile development as well as negotiations to end Tehran’s alleged “interference” in the politics of the region. The interference presumably referred to Iranian support of the Palestinians as well as its role in Syria and Yemen, all of which had earned the hostility of American “friends” Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Israel inevitably stirred the pot by sending a stream of senior officials, to include Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to discuss “the Iranian threat” with Biden and his top officials. Lapid made clear that Israel “reserves the right to act at any given moment, in any way… We know there are moments when nations must use force to protect the world from evil.” And to be sure, Biden, like Trump, has also made his true sentiments clear by surrounding himself with Zionists. Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Nuland have filled the three top slots at State Department, all are Jewish and all strong on Israel. Nuland is a leading neocon. And pending is the appointment of Barbara Leaf, who has been nominated Assistant Secretary to head the State Department’s Near East region. She is currently the Ruth and Sid Lapidus Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which is an AIPAC spin off and a major component in the Israel Lobby. That means that a member in good standing of the Israel Lobby would serve as the State Department official overseeing American policy in the Middle East.

At the Pentagon one finds a malleable General Mark Milley, always happy to meet his Israeli counterparts, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, an affirmative action promotion who likewise has become adept at parroting the line “Israel has a right to defend itself.” And need one mention ardent self-declared Zionists at the top level of the Democratic Party, to include Biden himself, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and, of course, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer?

So rejoining the JCPOA over Israel objections was a non-starter from the beginning and was probably only mooted to make Trump look bad. Indirect talks including both Iran and the U.S. technically have continued in Vienna, though they have been stalled since the end of June. Trita Parsi has recently learned that Iran sought to make a breakthrough for an agreement by seeking a White House commitment to stick with the plan as long as Biden remains in office. Biden and Blinken refused and Blinken has recently confirmed that a new deal is unlikely, saying “time is running out.”

And there have been some other new developments. Israeli officials have been warning for over twenty years that Iran is only one year away from having its own nukes and needs to be stopped, a claim that has begun to sound like a religious mantra repeated over and over, but now they are actually funding the armaments that will be needed to do the job. Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi has repeatedly said the IDF is “accelerating” plans to strike Iran, and Israeli politicians to include former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have regularly been threatening to do whatever must be done to deal with the threat from the Islamic Republic. Israeli media is reporting that $1.5 billion has been allocated in the current and upcoming budget to buy the American bunker buster bombs that will be needed to destroy the Iranian reactor at Bushehr and its underground research facilities at Natanz.

In the wake of the news about the war funding, there have also been reports that the Israeli Air Force is engaging in what is being described as “intense” drills to simulate attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. After Israel obtains the 5000 pound bunker buster bombs, it will also need to procure bombers to drop the ordnance, and one suspects that the U.S. Congress will somehow come up with the necessary “military aid” to make that happen. Tony Blinken has also made clear that the Administration knows what Israel is planning and approves. He met with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on October 13^th and said if diplomacy with Iran fails, the U.S. will turn to “other options.” And yes, he followed that up with the venerable line that “Israel has the right to defend itself and we strongly support that proposition.”

Lapid confirmed that one of Blinken’s “options” was military action. “I would like to start by repeating what the Secretary of State just said.  Yes, other options are going to be on the table if diplomacy fails.  And by saying other options, I think everybody understands here … what is it that we mean.” It must be observed that in their discussion of Iran’s nuclear program, Lapid and Blinnken were endorsing an illegal and unprovoked attack to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon that it is apparently not seeking, but which it will surely turn to as a consequence if only to defend itself in the future.

In short, U.S. foreign policy is yet again being held hostage by Israel. The White House position is clearly and absurdly that an Israeli attack on Iran, considered a war crime by most, is an act of self-defense. However it turns out, the U.S. will be seen as endorsing the crime and will inevitably be implicated in it, undoubtedly resulting in yet another foreign policy disaster in the Middle East with nothing but grief for the American people.  The simple truth is that Iran has neither threatened nor attacked Israel. Given that, there is nothing defensive about the actions Israel has already taken in sabotaging Iranian facilities and assassinating scientists, and there would be nothing defensive about direct military attacks either with or without U.S. assistance on Iranian soil. If Israel chooses to play the fool it is on them and their leaders. The United States does not have a horse in this race and should butt out, but one doubts if a White House and Congress, firmly controlled by Zionist forces, have either the wisdom or the courage to cut the tie that binds with the Jewish state.

The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, Najat Rochdi, is concerned about the crisis in the country and reports that “Extreme poverty rose threefold during the past two years. More and more Lebanese households are unable to afford basic services like food, health, electricity, water, internet, and child education.” One development, mentioned in the media on September 16, was that Iran had provided desperately-needed fuel oil to that stricken country.

There is more to the Lebanon oil-supply story than the apparently simple and seemingly generous action of Iran’s government, since as pointed out by the BBC’s Anna Foster in Syria, the operation makes a political statement because the oil came by road from Iran, via Syria and was transported by Hezbollah, the elected thug-government of Lebanon, and all three of these are subject to U.S. sanctions.

But as the BBC reports about Lebanon, “in recent months, power stations, hospitals, bakeries and other businesses have been forced to either scale back their operations or shut down completely due to the shortages”. So what are the humanitarians in Washington going to do? Will President Biden order further and fiercer economic action against a country that is supplying a product that will obviously save lives in Lebanon?

Further, there is growing international concern about the humanitarian effects of U.S. sanctions on the Iranian people. Certainly, Iran’s Supreme Leader, the unelected extremist cleric Ayatollah Khamenei declared in March 2021 that “we neutralized the effect of sanctions,” but went on to say that “for them to sanction a nation in such a way that it cannot import medicine and medical equipment is a crime, and this crime is coming from a country like America.” We can be certain that Khamenei and all other high-ups in Iran do not suffer in the slightest from lack of medicines or anything else, for that is always the way with sanctions. They are intended and usually specifically designed to hurt ordinary citizens who the sanctioneers hope will rise up and destroy the government being targeted.

The sanctions campaigns waged by the U.S. and some allies are part of what Washington calls the “rules-based international order” under which the United States is supposed to operate. Secretary of State Blinken made it clear that this is what guides the U.S. in all its international affairs when he declared that “Our administration is committed to leading with diplomacy to advance the interests of the United States and to strengthen the rules-based international order… The alternative to a rules-based order is a world in which might makes right and winners take all, and that would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us.”

But so far as many countries and events are concerned it is apparent that Washington’s might indeed makes right and no matter what is said in support of human decency there is only going to be one winner and that is going to be the United States. There is little wonder that the loony fundamentalists in Iran are running scared, no matter how much they may bluster, and that they are going to continue their aggressive stance.

The anti-Iran campaign reached a new low in 2018 when Trump unilaterally repealed one of the most critical international agreements of recent times, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), agreed by China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the UK and the U.S. and endorsed by Resolution 2231 of the UN Security Council that is part of the “rules-based international order.” The deranged Trump, whose legacy has been one of almost unredeemed disaster, domestically and internationally, told the world (and especially the Republican Party) that “This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made. It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”

As only too often, Trump was wrong. The treaty was not one-sided and it did bring calm and it would have ensured peace if it had been allowed to continue. Not only was his unilateral termination of a UN-approved treaty agreed by nations who considered they had been treated with imperial contempt (along the lines of Biden’s recent disdain for major ally France), but a message was sent to the world that the word of an American President cannot be relied upon. Trump was incapable of explaining the advantages of his ill-advised abrogation, as evident from a ludicrous exchange in which a reporter asked him “Mr. President, how does this make America safer? How does this make America safer?” and Trump replied “Thank you very much. This will make America much safer. Thank you very much.”

Trump neither knew nor cared about the mechanics of the nuclear deal, and his primary focus was on destroying a diplomatic triumph achieved by his predecessor, President Obama. Next came the intention to destroy Iran as a nation because, as he alleged, “At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program. Today, we have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie. Last week, Israel published intelligence documents long concealed by Iran, conclusively showing the Iranian regime and its history of pursuing nuclear weapons.”

Israel is hardly a reliable source concerning nuclear matters and has totally ignored the “rules-based international order” by itself creating an arsenal of approximately 80 nuclear weapons. Further, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “In December 2014 the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution on nuclear proliferation risks in the Middle East that urged Israel to renounce the possession of nuclear weapons, accede to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons ‘without further delay’ and place all of its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency comprehensive safeguards.”

But the rules-based international order — international law and custom, in other words — does not apply to Israel which intends to continue attacking Iran but would prefer to have its dedicated U.S. ally (as Biden declared on August 27, “the U.S. will always be there for Israel”) take the final steps to destroy the country. The point that Iran was abiding by the parameters of the nuclear agreement, as made clear by fact checking pieces in the Washington Post and the New York Times, was entirely irrelevant so far as Trump and Israel were concerned.

In September 2020 the future President Biden wrote that he would “offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy. If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.” But nothing has happened. Irrespective of the recent Iranian elections in which hardliner Ebrahim Raisi became president, it would have been simple for Biden to instantly revoke Trump’s order to leave the JCPOA and to waive associated sanctions. Subsequent negotiations would not have been easy, of course, and there is no point in trying to be optimistic about that, given the blinkered and bigoted nature of Iran’s leadership — but at least there would have been talking instead of bluster and insults.

In spite of Russia’s success in negotiating the visit to Iran on 11-12 September by the Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, and consequent agreement by the Tehran government to reset monitoring devices that help measure the progress of the country’s nuclear program, there has been no movement by the Biden administration to re-establish U.S. agreement to the nuclear JCPOA.

Washington considers that Iran is and always will be hostile to the U.S. (which is a regrettably accurate conclusion) and will continue its equally confrontational policy. There is no indication whatever of desire to initiate discussions and the state of relations can be summed up by the fact that President Ebrahim Raisi will not be permitted to attend the UN General Assembly on September 21-27 because he remains under U.S. sanctions. Iran’s future is looking dark.

U.S. foreign policy since World War II has been a screaming disaster. Coups, regime change operations and CIA-sponsored slaughters drowned the globe in blood. So did imperial wars, from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq – all of which, incidentally, were lost. Washington’s pursuit of its “interests” inexcusably piled tens of millions of corpses to the heavens. So when Biden, early in his presidency, cited those interests as guides to his foreign policy, it was only natural to expect the worst.

That expectation has proved correct, except for the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which paints a slightly more ambiguous picture of U.S. global relations. That retreat was a principled though painful diversion from the generally bellicose and dreadful trend. And even that became an unnecessary debacle – especially for the tens of thousands of Afghans who helped the U.S. Many observers warned that the Taliban were poised to sweep the country. The Biden team did not listen. It could have expedited the U.S. departure and the exodus of its Afghan employees back in winter. But it didn’t for one simple reason: fatal, imperial hubris. This flaw scars all of Washington’s awful policies. And that is the only way to describe Biden’s seamless continuation of Trump’s policies: abysmal. Just take China and Iran.

Sometime during the Trump administration, U.S. politicians and military honchos discovered to their horror that China is a communist country. Chinese commissars lifted over 850 million people out of poverty – how dare they! China takes pride in its centralized economic planning – anathema! Chinese leaders promote anti-colonialism by investing in infrastructure in the Global South, which they then hand off to the local governments – those brazen show-offs! China’s robust public health effort contained covid while it flamed out of control in the U.S. – they must be lying!

All this Chinese razzle dazzle success contrasts most shockingly with the image of corrupt, chaotic and destructive western capitalism. People might even get the idea that other economic systems are, well, superior; that maybe having, as the U.S. does, 500,000 vagabonds, millions of students indentured to the tune of nearly $2 trillion, a vast gulag caging over 2 million people, starvation wages for many, astronomical rents for all, no health care, lousy infant mortality and life expectancy stats compared to the rest of the industrialized world, 15 million people just a paycheck away from homelessness and, a global grasp causing the destitution of billions of people and the trashing of a habitable planet and a livable climate – maybe all this ain’t so great. Maybe there are other, better ways to do things besides the savagery of the American economic system. Maybe exporting that system around the globe, often at gunpoint, is a fiasco.

U.S. politicos and military bigwigs are determined to slam the brakes on this critique before it becomes action. The method of choice, mentioned in informed corners of the internet, involves arming Japan with nukes and then egging Japan, South Korea and India into attacking China. Our geniuses in the pentagon no doubt consider such a nuclear war “containable.” Our intellectual heavyweights in the CIA and state department, as Moon of Alabama has noted, probably salivate at the prospect of the U.S. stepping in after this mass murder and cleaning up financially, while enhancing Washington’s planetary power. Unfortunately for this grandiose scheme, China is already wise to it. Even now it expands its nuclear arsenal and builds new nuclear missile silos – the inevitable response to U.S. hostility and the apparent American appetite for a supposedly limited nuclear war.

This all seems like some wild fantasy to you? Consider this: For decades the One China policy has kept the peace not only between China and Taiwan, but between China and that perennial, compulsive aggressor, the U.S. China has made abundantly clear that attempted official Taiwanese severing from China is a casus belli. Since the reign of Richard Nixon, Washington has let this sleeping dog lie. But in July, the U.S. announced a $750 million weapons sale to the territory. This, predictably, infuriated China. That presumably was the intention, as the U.S. agitates for Taiwan to declare its independence and thus start a war.

To make sure everyone gets the message, Biden has stated that the U.S. is in “extreme competition” with China, which, economically, may be true, but it’s not true militarily. Or at least it wasn’t till this self-fulfilling prophecy started, with “extreme competition” serving as the perfect excuse for arming China’s neighbors and the Taiwanese territory to the teeth and goading them all into displays of martial prowess.

This lousy $750 billion arms deal had a record number of predecessors recently under – you guessed it – Trump. “These military transactions are a violation of Washington’s own avowed One China Policy,” wrote an Information Clearing House editorial on August 6, “which purports to acknowledge Beijing’s territorial sovereignty over Taiwan.” But Biden chose to ditch a policy that dates back to the 1970s, because clearly Trump, provoking clashes and ready to rumble with China and Iran, was a geopolitical brainiac. If that’s not Biden’s view, then he should prove it. But proving it involves a rational, peaceful policy toward China, not one driven by insecurities over whose whatever is bigger.

It’s not as if Washington isn’t constantly challenging Beijing. According to Connor Freeman, in the same publication, U.S. aircraft carrier group strike forces and warships roam the South China Sea. Reconnaissance planes skirt China’s coast – roughly three to five per day. What would Washington do if Beijing behaved thus in the Gulf of Mexico? Declare war. But the U.S. has ramped up even more provocations. The August 6 editorial notes that recently the seventh American warship travelled “between Taiwan and mainland China since Biden took office in January.” Seven U.S. warships. Is Biden drifting toward war? Ya think? “This week sees the U.S. navy engaging in huge military drills in the South China Sea,” the editorial continues, and then cites the many other NATO warships surrounding China. Either Biden wants war or he’s asleep at the wheel, while fanatical anti-China Dr. Strangeloves in the pentagon steer policy. My guess is the latter.

Over in Vienna, things aren’t going much better. That’s where negotiations jammed over the U.S. rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Biden surged to power claiming he intended to bring the U.S. back into compliance with the Iran nuclear pact, one of Obama’s few foreign policy successes, which Trump so highhandedly stalked out of. So how’s that going? Don’t even ask.

Once again, Biden seems mesmerized by Trump’s belligerence and unable to renounce it, despite Washington being clearly in the wrong. The U.S. had a deal, then showed itself as utterly untrustworthy as any gangster by reneging. That may go over great in Trump’s mafia-infested world of real estate, but on the international stage, it spells ruin. Biden, however, refuses to do the right thing, namely, end illegal U.S. sanctions on Iran. If he did, Iran would come back into compliance – a compliance that, it’s worth noting, prevented Iran, for the duration of the intact deal, from even approaching enriching uranium to weapons grade. Once Trump idiotically busted up the pact, guess what? Iran, unbound by JCPOA constraints, sped forward and now has attained a position where it could soon produce a bomb. Thus Trump’s oafish international bungling, which Biden just can’t wait to imitate.

The Biden negotiating team lives in the past, according to Moon of Alabama on August 7, in the fantasy that it has the upper hand that Washington held nine years ago. “But this is no longer 2012. Back then, China and Russia agreed with the U.S. to put pressure on Iran. That pressure led to the nuclear deal. But today the situation is much different. It was the U.S. that left the deal. Iran, China and Russia are all in a stronger position than they were a decade ago. Why would the latter two agree to support Biden’s malign foreign policy and unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran?”

In other words, if Biden doesn’t cease his additional and ridiculous demands, he’ll kill the Iran nuclear pact. This is in no one’s interest. It is certainly not in the interest of Washington and its Mideast allies. No deal could very well mean catastrophic regional war, which, by the way, would ensnare the U.S. All of Biden’s talk about extricating the U.S. from military adventures in that region would be exposed as hot air.

So there you have it. When not living in the past, Biden can’t bring himself to shed Trump’s insane and capricious aggressions. The result is no Iran deal and an American drift toward nuclear war with China. Both are calamitous. Neither will end well for the world or for Washington. Somebody, like maybe the president, needs to grab that steering wheel and change course, pronto.

counterpunch.org

Joe Biden came into the U.S. White House promising to change Donald Trump’s foreign policies, but didn’t even try to change them, and instead he has continued them, and has failed with them exactly as Trump did when he was the President. Here are some examples:

1. The nuclear agreement with Iran (the Obama-negotiated “JCPOA” for Iran to stop research that might be useful for developing nuclear warheads): At first, Biden demanded that Iran stop continuing to develop missiles (which was a demand that Trump had made), before Biden would even negotiate with Iran on anything, including the JCPOA. Iran stood firm on refusing to make any preliminary concessions, and insisting that America simply rejoin the JCPOA that America had signed-to under Obama and then abandoned under Trump. Biden started to negotiate with Iran in Vienna though Iran had refused to change its position on developing missiles. Biden was negotiating though he had said he wouldn’t unless Iran first complied with his (which had been Trump’s) demands. Biden lost.
2. Biden in the Vienna negotiations continued demanding that Iran halt its missile-program. Iran continued refusing to do any such thing. Biden dragged-out the negotiations, perhaps hoping that Iran would finally cave. Iran continued to stand firm. On August 4th, the Moon of Alabama blogger headlined “‘Maximum Pressure’ Against Iran Has Failed. What Will Biden Do Next?”, and reported that the longer those fake ‘negotiations’ continued, the more embarrassing the results would turn out to be for Biden. This is total failure of Biden’s (Trump’s) Iran-policy.
3. Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline: Biden started his Presidency by demanding that Germany not allow the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to be completed and begin supplying Russian gas directly to Europe. He threatened Germany with sanctions if Germany didn’t abandon the pipeline, and tried to get Germany to commit to buying the far costlier U.S.-produced canned-and-shipped gas instead of Russia’s directly-pipelined gas. Biden was continuing Trump’s policy on that gas-pipeline, too. Just as had happened under Trump, Germany refused to comply (just like Iran did on the JCPOA). Biden finally caved and didn’t impose any sanctions against Germany. On July 21st, the Washington Post headlined “U.S., Germany reach agreement on Russian gas pipeline, ending dispute between allies”, and delivered the U.S. Government’s spin on this capitulation (which was NATO’s spin on it): “In exchange for an end to U.S. efforts to block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Germany will invest in Ukraine’s green technology infrastructure, and Berlin and Washington will work together on initiatives to mitigate Russia’s energy dominance in Europe.” However, Germany’s alleged concession, or ‘commitment’, was purely nominal, and would be virtually inconsequential even if it were to become embodied in enforceable legal terminology. Again, it was simply lipstick on a pig.

On August 3rd, NATO’s main PR arm, the Atlantic Council, then issued, via Politico, a fluff-piece trying to present America’s humiliating defeat on the Nord Stream 2 matter as having been, instead, a victory for both America and Germany. The Atlantic Council’s John R. Deni headlined there “Why Central and Eastern Europe should be cheering on Nord Stream 2”, and he argued, basically, that the July 21st agreement — whatever it might turn out to be or to mean — was a win for Washington, because “The alternative, Washington’s unilateral sanctions on German businesses, only strengthened the voices of those in Berlin who favor a more ambivalent German policy toward great power competition — one that pursues an equal distance between the U.S. and Russia.” In other words, implicitly, Deni was saying that Biden’s objective of preventing the completion and operational start of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was stupid, and that NATO was just lucky that Biden had failed on it. This was therefore, implicitly, a statement by NATO praising Germany and criticizing the United States.

4. Israel & Palestine: On 11 May 2020, the Biden campaign had issued its vague ‘policy’-commitments regarding Israel and the Palestinians, such as these:

“JOE BIDEN AND THE JEWISH COMMUNITY: A RECORD AND A PLAN OF FRIENDSHIP, SUPPORT AND ACTION”

11 May 2020

A Biden Administration Will:

• •Sustain our unbreakable commitment to Israel’s security – including the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation pioneered during the Obama-Biden administration, and the guarantee that Israel will always maintain its qualitative military edge. 
• •Work with the Israeli and Palestinian leadership to support peacebuilding efforts in the region. Biden will urge Israel’s government and the Palestinian Authority to take steps to keep the prospect of a negotiated two-state outcome alive and avoid actions, such as unilateral annexation of territory and settlement activity, or support for incitement and violence, that undercut prospects for peace between the parties. 
• •Reverse the Trump Administration’s destructive cutoff of diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority and cancellation of assistance programs that support Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation, economic development, and humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, consistent with the requirements of the Taylor Force Act, including that the Palestinian Authority end its system of compensation for individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism.
• •Urge Arab states to move beyond quiet talks and take bolder steps toward normalization with Israel.
• •Firmly reject the BDS movement — which singles out Israel and too often veers into anti-Semitism — and fight other efforts to delegitimize Israel on the global stage. 
• •Hold Iran’s government accountable and rejoin a diplomatic agreement to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, if Iran returns to compliance with the JCPOA, using renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend the Iran deal, and push back against Iran’s other destabilizing actions. 
• •Ensure that support for the U.S.-Israel alliance remains bipartisan, reversing Trump’s exploitation of U.S. support for Israel as a political football, which harms both countries’ interests. 
• •Support the critical economic and technological partnership between the United States and Israel, further expand scientific collaborations and increase commercial opportunities, and support cooperation on innovation throughout the region.

For example: regarding “Reverse the Trump Administration’s destructive cutoff of diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority and cancellation of assistance programs that support Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation, economic development, and humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza”:

the only thing that Biden has done thus far on this is:

“Blinken announces US plans to reopen Jerusalem consulate”

25 May 2021

“Blinken did not give a precise date for reopening the consulate but said it would be ‘an important way for our country to engage with and provide support to the Palestinian people’.”

America’s foreign policies are bipartisan, at least 95% neoconservative (i.e.: supporting U.S. imperialism) in both of America’s political Parties. The permanent-warfare state is America. And the continuation of the warfare-state after WW II (post-1945) in America is what made it permanent here. When World War II — the war against the Axis powers (the fascist powers) — ended in 1945, the military-industrial complex took control in America, and instead of waging war to preserve democracy (which had been FDR’s objective), the goal of America (starting on 25 July 1945) has been waging war to spread the U.S. empire everywhere. In this, both of America’s political Parties are united. It’s the American sickness, which infects all successful U.S. politicians. (It does so because America’s billionaires profit enormously from expanding the U.S. empire, and won’t support any politician who opposes imperialism.) There’s no actual market for peace, in America, because America’s (that is, its actual rulers’, its billionaires’) aim is global conquest — not national security, and not peace.

War is America’s business; and, after WW II, it’s all based on lies, and this is how it’s sold to the American public (by lies), so that, other than “small business,” the military is the most trusted institution in America (and “the military” used to be clearly the #1 most trusted American institution). Neoconservatism (U.S. imperialism) has replaced patriotism, in America, ever since the end of WW II. America is on the warpath.

We lost in Vietnam and many other places, but America’s billionaires keep on winning, and so the lies for yet more wars keep on coming, and they apparently never stop. (But, perhaps now that “small business” is as trusted by Americans as “the military” is, that might now start to change.)

This is why (for example) on 6 August 2021, an eloquent and accurate op-ed by Maitreya Bhakal at RT headlined “The richest and most war-mongering nation on Earth is still addicted to bombing poor, defenseless nations”, and he opened: “A nation-state version of a psychopath, the US refuses to give up its addiction to bombing innocent people. In just over a month, it’s bombed Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan – and shows no signs of developing a conscience.” Nothing he said there was an exaggeration. And the U.S. regime’s top rule is: Never apologize. It didn’t apologize to Vietnam. It didn’t apologize to Iraq. It didn’t apologize to Syria. It didn’t apologize to any of its many victim-nations. It doesn’t apologize any more than Hitler’s regime did.

Psychopaths don’t apologize — unless they’re forced to. That’s because they have no conscience. And Biden, like all recent American Presidents, is a representative of that reality, and of the arrogance of America’s billionaires, the people who are being served by the permanent-warfare state: the U.S. Government.

Maybe the reason why “small business” became, in 2020, at least as respected by Americans as is “the military” (the socialized — that is, taxpayer-funded — servants to America’s billionaires) is that the covid-19 pandemic, which has done so much to increase the wealth of America’s billionaires, decimated America’s small businesses. Joe Biden still represents the billionaires. He has never changed. But maybe America, for the first time since 1945, is about to change. Maybe, finally, this psychopathic country will start to apologize for what it has been since 1945. But this is very unlikely to happen on Joe Biden’s watch. He has been part of America’s problem for as long as he has been in American politics.

Six rounds of negotiations in Vienna over reviving the 2015 JCPOA have yielded no agreement. The Implementation Committee of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) therefore has concluded that these rounds of indirect talks have been unsuccessful, as Washington has not been persuaded to lift all sanctions, nor provide a guarantee not to withdraw from the accord once again.

Yet many policymakers and observers in the West believe that, at the end of the day, the Iranian leadership remains interested in securing a deal. This has led to an almost universally-held narrative of optimism, that ultimately, the deal will be revived; that Iran wants it; demonstrably has been engaging the U.S. indirectly in Vienna; and equally demonstrably showed pragmatism in 2015. And that it would benefit from a deal, both economically and through the ability to develop its nuclear program over the long term.

The new Administration in Iran will begin its term on 5 August. It seems that a new round of talks therefore, is improbable before September. That earlier mood of optimism in Washington, however, is souring fast. “Our message is: more time is not Iran’s friend, even if they think it is”, a senior U.S. official told Laura Rosen in an interview this week. “[Blinken] has been pretty clear that our enthusiasm for the JCPOA wanes every passing day … now, we are putting our backs into what it looks like – if there is no return. Ultimately, it is going to look a lot like the past – sanctions pressure, other forms of pressure, and a persistent offer of negotiations. It will be a question of how long it takes the Iranians to come to the idea that they will not wait us out”.

The U.S. official said the team around Raisi may be miscalculating the pressures Iran could face: “Some of the people who are coming in with Raisi … believe they have taken the best punch the Americans can give – and that now it will be ok”, he said. “Their critical analytical error, is maximum pressure under the previous administration will not look like it, under this one. If we are back in the situation [where there is an international consensus] that there is no deal because of Iran – they will face the situation of 2012, and not 2019: That is not good for them. They are fundamentally misreading”.

Raisi and his foreign policy team, clearly face very serious obstacles in the way of achieving the ‘proper implementation’ of the JCPOA, which Raisi has repeatedly stated is something that has been lacking from the outset. According to him, only a powerful government in Iran can achieve this. Raisi’s team will adopt a tough stance in any further talks, with a policy of insisting on Iran’s demands; offering few concessions; and continuing with the evolution of the nuclear program. Implicit in this approach is that any agreement would require futher concessions from the U.S..

The point here, is that we seem fast approaching a point whereby the restoration of the JCPOA is no longer on anyone’s agenda. Such a scenario clearly would increase the risk of war and tension. Iranians are strategic thinkers and will have taken this prospect fully into consideration. So, just as Israel is developing its “Raisi file” and looking at deniable action to derail the nuclear programme, so Iran and its allies will be planning their deterrent riposte.

The recent accounting of obstacles on the negotiation track listed by Iran’s envoy to the IAEA indeed seems a daunting catalogue of moveable U.S. and EU goalpost: From the original ‘no uranium enrichment’ doctrine; then to a ‘breakout’ horizon of less than one year; and now to that same threshold demand, plus the instance on assurances that Iran will immediately enter into regional and missile talks with the U.S., with any return to JCPOA.

A full post-mortem of the errors leading to this point must await the future. But, for now, U.S. officials insist that it is Iran that misreads its situation; but equally, it may be argued that the U.S. has misread how much the strategic situation in the region – and indeed the world – has changed; and the extent to which the mood of the Iranian people has shifted towards the Principal-ists’ viewpoint, over the period of the last four years.

The premises on which the ‘narrative of optimism’ that a deal was a foregone outcome rested were never critically addressed in the West. Indeed, they were not addressed at all. Why should it be assumed that Iran simply would walk back its negotiating demands (when that earlier instance pertained to a very different Iranian era?); that an incoming Iranian President of a different hue, would not affect the negotiation calculus – when the domestic political pendulum in Iran has changed so decisively?; and that the economic situation could only be ameliorated through a return to JCPOA (when we have such a tiny window of vision into Iran’s economic exchanges and plans with China and Russia)? No, the West has been locked into simplistic narratives that have showed themselves unfit for present purposes.

One senior Iranian commentator however, perhaps encapsulated well why the six rounds failed: The U.S. side, he says, looks to an updated version of the nuclear deal. And it expects Iran to accept even more restrictions than it agreed in 2015, yet the U.S. does not want to make concessions, even as much as it did in 2015.

Additionally, since its 2018 withdrawal from the deal, the U.S. has fortified its sanctions wall by adding multiple layers to the secondary nuclear sanctions in violation of the JCPOA paragraph 25: “which means that even if the [specifically nuclear] sanctions are lifted [and not just suspended by Executive Order], it will not affect our economy, but rather makes our economy hostage to the U.S. formula”.

The prevailing sentiment within the Team Raisi camp can be summarized, one commentator on the ground suggests, with a remark by Raisi’s liaison to the foreign ministry, Ali Baqeri-Kani: that “only a subjugated government would have agreed to the restrictions that Iran accepted in the JCPOA”.

So, what does it mean if the Vienna negotiation window, now barely a finger’s-width open, soon slams fully shut? Well, the unnamed U.S. official quoted by Laura Rosen, touted renewed pressures being imposed on Iran (even before the talks end): “There is not much left to sanction in Iran’s economy”, one U.S. official said last week: “Iran’s oil sales to China is the prize: One plan would choke off Iran’s crude-oil sales to China. And should the talks fail, the next steps would include the aggressive enforcement of current sanctions already banning dealings with Iran’s oil and shipping industry – through new designations or legal actions”, the officials said.

But what was not said by the official is the option for the U.S. to put military action on the table. Implicitly, it was there all along.

Except … the world has changed. And with it, the strategic military balance has changed too: Israel and the U.S. still have military muscle; their Air Forces can turn cities into rubble. It may all seem to be the same; yet everything is different. It is not as it used to be. Israel and the U.S. no longer have the ‘edge’.

The Israelis have freedom of the skies over Gaza, but elsewhere, that ‘freedom’ is circumscribed by air defence systems. More fundamentally, Israeli military power is hugely deterred by the tens of thousands of smart, ground-hugging cruise missiles, and AI-coordinating swarm drones – both of which can evade radar and air defences – surrounding Israel and U.S. Middle East bases. Israeli security officials already acknowledge that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be ‘problematic’.

It would. That is because Iran’s missiles are concealed; dispersed across complicated terrain, and deeply buried. And because conflict with Iran likely would trigger a long, multi-front war in the Middle East. Would Israel be able to sustain such a ‘rain’ of missiles onto its homeland population?

Is then, the U.S. threat of an international consensus against Iran – similar to that of 2012 – more plausible? Consensus …? In a recent article in Asia Times authored by ‘Spengler’ – Wake up, America: The world just isn’t that into you – Goldman, who served on Ted Cruz’s foreign policy team during the 2016 campaign, writes” “it’s pointless to complain when America’s allies ask, in so many words, “What have you [the U.S.] done for us lately? To much of the world America looks like a declining power – precisely because it is a declining power”.

What then of international consensus 2012-style? Hasn’t Washington noticed that there isn’t one: not even for Washington’s aspiration to stop Russia from bringing its gas to Europe, via Nordstream 2? Haven’t they noticed the fracture in global politics? Yes, Europe is spineless, and will go with U.S., come what may, but that does not amount to a global consensus.

In the Middle East, people read news. They know that the U.S. Establishment wants to brush-off the sand from the sandals of its ‘Old War’: the ‘great war on terrorism’ (centred around the Islamic Middle East), and to pivot to something quite different (and more comfortable) – to the shiny new/old project of ‘Big Power Competition’ (i.e. confronting China).

Iran will not ‘wait us out’, the U.S. official thunders. Really? Perhaps Iran will take a sojourn in the East, for a while, until America takes leave of the Middle East. The U.S. eventually will go ‘yes’, but Israel can’t. What happens there? Now that is a question …