Category: Iran

Score Card

Three weeks ago, Israel detonated pagers and walkie-talkies in Syria and Lebanon that killed 37 people (including two children) and injured thousands. A week ago, Israel bombed Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut, killing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, much of its senior leadership and thousands of Lebanese civilians. Israeli soldiers entered Lebanon on September 30 in a limited ground offensive against Hezbollah forces.

In retaliation Iran sent 200 or so missiles to Israel “targeting military installations and critical infrastructure.” While most were intercepted a few struck military airbases and killed one person.

Israel promises to retaliate for this vicious attack. “Donald Trump has said that Israel should ‘hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later’ in response to an Iranian missile attack on Tuesday.” https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-says-israel-should-hit-irans-nuclear-first-1964268

Need I say more???

Collateral damage (deaths of innocent bystanders) is unavoidable in war. But Iran seems to recognize that taking some care to minimizing it is not only humane but also wise for not creating more enemies to fend off in the future.  On Oct 7, 2023, Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis in their attack from Gaza. In retaliation Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinians according to the official reports of Hamas authorities many of whom were women and children. However, some aid works claim that the true number is much higher. Around 670 Palestinians, including 150 children, have been killed by Israelis in the occupied West Bank over this period.

According to Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, this is not carelessness on Israel’s part, but rather the deliberate policy of removing Palestinians (one way or another) from the River to the Sea. One way or the other, Israel is committing suicide. Anyone who cares about the future of Israel should demand an immediate end to this fighting. Anyone who cares about the standing of the U.S. in the world, and how our tax dollars are being spent, should demand the same.

Playing by the rules

This morning’s NYTimes proclaimed that:“The Biden administration, responding to the death of Aleksei A. Navalny, unveiled its largest sanctions package to date as the war in Ukraine enters its third year.”

On November 30, 2023, Phillip Dean Hancock was executed in Oklahoma. As the death penalty has been eliminated in most countries and such killing is considered immoral by millions of people around the world, what sanctions would be appropriate for them to impose on the U.S.?

A quite different case arises from killing an enemy in someone else’s country (aside from in war, where anything seems to be “allowed.”)  On February 13 of this year, Maxim Kuzminov, a former Russian military pilot who defected to Ukraine, was found dead with multiple bullet wounds in Villajoyosa, a city on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. The murder is suspected to have been organized by Moscow. What measures should Spain take against Russia in response (hopefully the U.S. will keep its nose out of other people’s business—fat chance)?

On January 3, 2020, the U.S. assassinated Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general and the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, in Baghdad. More recently, on February 7, 2024, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, a senior commander in Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad. What measures should Iraq (and Iran) take against the U.S.?

The rule of law is a fundamental aspect of our freedoms and the prosperity it has made possible. The international rules based order is an extension of those principals internationally and has served, though imperfectly, the same purposes globally. The U.S. has become an Imperial power who doesn’t obey the rules it tries to impose on others. Thus, American influence in the world is declining rapidly. We will all suffer as a result.

The Iran Deal

I have yet to understand how the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran (the Iran Deal) was supposed to prevent Iran’s development of atomic weapons better than would the Iran Deal itself. But hopefully today’s deal with Iran is a step toward reentering the JCPOA.

Quoting the Crisis Group:

“The Biden administration has just completed implementing… agreement that secures the freedom of five American hostages in Iran in return for the release of an equivalent number of Iranian prisoners in the United States.

“In parallel, the Biden administration has also agreed to unfreeze nearly $6 billion worth of Iranian oil revenue stuck for years in South Korean banks that Tehran can use to purchase food and medicine. “