John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN MOON OF ALABAMA
“Why Is Europe Trying To Sabotage Iran's Nuclear Deal?”
“It seems that Germany, Britain and France are inclined to make it increasingly difficult for Iran to stick to the JCPOA deal. They are playing into the hands of the neoconservative hawks in the U.S. who want Iran to exit the deal to then claim to have reason to attack it.”
There are inconsistencies in the efforts of major European countries around the Iran Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA) because there are two powerful forces at work inside those countries.
First, there is general recognition by the leaders of Germany and France and others that the Iran Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA) was a good sound achievement. It worked, as everyone knows. They wanted it maintained.
But second, in these same countries there is a powerful Israel Lobby, just as in the United States, and Israel is entirely responsible for Trump's impulsive tearing-up of the Agreement and his making all kinds of new, almost irrational demands. Netanyahu has even bragged about the achievement.
Demanding measures like adding Iran’s missile technology to the Agreement are completely arbitrary (In what other countries do we find such demands imposed? And we are in the age of space and satellites, too, making such technology vital for every significant country), having nothing to do with the original purpose of the Agreement. They are the work of the Israel Lobby and its chief Western mouthpiece today, Donald Trump.
There is nothing rational at work in any of this.
Israel wants Iran reduced as competitor for influence in the region. It wants its 8 million to dominate instead of Iran's 80 million.
A rather odd way of looking at things. As though Luxembourg were entitled to dominate Germany, but then there is almost nothing rational coming out of any demands today from Israel, on any matter, the situation’s most volatile and dangerous element.
It has nothing to do with genuine threats from Iran. There are none. Although Israel has made many threats and charges against Iran, all without justification. It even, in Obama’s day, spent many millions of dollars on secret planning for a massive surprise attack on Iran, something it proved to itself would not go well and something Obama spoke strongly against.
Anyway, how does a non-nuclear nation like Iran threaten a nuclear one like Israel, one moreover with a huge arsenal of the latest weapons supplied by its patron, the US? It cannot happen. It’s close to ridiculous to say that it can.
The claim is as silly as some of the presentations Netanyahu has given before the UN and other places, presentations complete with laughably childish bomb charts and red lines and phony displays of Mossad-manufactured Iranian secret data. The man often borders on the lunatic.
The Iranians, despite having a religious state, are quite rational people. They start no wars, but do seek to position themselves against someone else starting one. And they are not about to attack an (illegal) nuclear state whose leaders regard Iran with poisonous hatred.
Iran knows firsthand the horrors of war from the largely American-induced Iraq-Iran War, eight years of fighting with losses comparable in scale to a world war.
Israel uses the tiresome line about "existential threat” about the same way it uses "anti-Semitism" against anyone criticizing its often-appalling behavior. There is nothing there, but the leaders of France and Germany cannot be seen by the Lobby as saying so. That way lies serious political risk.
Just ask Donald Trump, who hired himself on as Israel’s chief Western advocate and breaks a new international law every week trying to show how good he is at the job.
