"This outraged our foreign partners, particularly the European Union, which threatened retaliatory action and referral to the World Trade Organization and passed its own law prohibiting companies from complying. The largest oil companies of Europe and Asia stayed in Iran until, more than a decade later, we built a global consensus around the threat posed by Iran and put forward a realistic diplomatic means of addressing it." ("The High Price of Rejecting the Iran Deal," New York Times)
The Obama administration did not sign the Iranian nukes agreement because it wanted to, it signed it because it had to. Iranian negotiators made a number of crucial concessions that not only intensified the ongoing inspections regime, but also agreed that Iran would be treated more harshly (and unfairly) then any other nation that had ever signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. "The agreement subjects Iran to greater restrictions and more intrusive monitoring than any state with nuclear programs." Simply put, the US insisted that Iran accept a number of special protocols which in effect treat Iran like a second-class citizen. Iran accepted these terms so the US would stop its relentless economic strangulation which has persisted almost-continuously since 1979.
It is worth noting, that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program nor is there any evidence that they were trying to develop one. Like Saddam's fictitious Weapons of Mass Destruction, "Iran's nukes" are largely a myth created to justify nonstop US-Israeli aggression. Check it out:
"It is essential to recognize that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program, nor does it possess a nuclear weapon. On February 26, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, ended his country's nuclear weapons program in 2003 and 'as far as we know, he's not made the decision to go for a nuclear weapon.'
"This repeats the 'high-confidence' judgement of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) that was first made in November 2007." (Micah Zenko, "Putting Iran's Nuclear Program in Context," Council on Foreign Relations)
Iran has no nukes, no nuclear weapons program, and no sinister nuclear project aimed at blowing up Israel or the United States. It's all 100 percent bunkum conjured up by the same propagandists in the establishment media who concocted the mobile weapons labs, the yellowcake uranium, the aluminum tubes, curveball and the myriad other cockamamie fabrications that preceded the invasion of Iraq.
It's also worth noting that "Forty-five US military bases encircle Iran, with over 125,000 troops in close proximity" and that both Republican and Democratic presidents have repeatedly expressed their support for regime change in Tehran. Moreover, the vast majority of Senators and Congressmen have frequently expressed their contempt for Iran while supporting covert activities to destabilize the government or punish the people. Ideally, Trump and his lieutenants would like to replace the Islamic clerics who currently rule Iran, with a puppet like the Shah who privatized oil production, ruled the country with an iron fist, and faithfully followed Washington's diktats to the letter.
The Shah's reign of terror lasted a full 40 years during which time his CIA-trained secret police, the SAVAK, rounded up and tortured millions of innocent Iranians who were then systematically subjected to "whipping and beating, electric shocks, extraction of teeth and nails, boiling water pumped into the rectum, heavy weights hung on the testicles, tying the prisoner to a metal table heated to a white heat, inserting a broken bottle into the anus, and rape." This is how the United States brought freedom and democracy to the people of Iran under the Shah.
Is it any wonder why the Iranians are skeptical of Trump's so called "supportive" tweets (such as):
"The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime...The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food and freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!" Donald Trump
Trump's outspoken support for the protestors has many critics believing that Washington might be orchestrating events on the ground, but that doesn't appear to be the case. In an excellent article at the World Socialist Web Site, Keith Jones, explains that the massive demonstrations are reaction to neoliberal policies that have exacerbated inequality while fueling social tensions. "Liberal reforms" and austerity have negatively impacted living standards in Iran just as they have everywhere else they've been implemented. In other words, the social explosion we are seeing unfold in Iran is not a Washington-engineered color revolution, but the emerging signs of a class war. Here's an excerpt from the WSWS article:
"Since Dec. 28, tens of thousands have defied the Islamic Republic's repressive apparatus and taken to the streets in cities and towns across the county. They have done so to voice their anger over food price rises, mass unemployment, gaping social inequality, years of sweeping social spending cuts and a pseudo-democratic political system that is rigged on behalf of the ruling elite and utterly impervious to the needs of working people.
"The scope and intensity of this movement and its rapid embrace of slogans challenging the government and the entire autocratic political system have stunned Iranian authorities and western observers alike. Yet, it was preceded by months of worker protests against job cuts and plant closures and unpaid wages and benefits...
"The trigger for this explosion of popular discontent was the government's latest austerity budget. It will further slash income support for ordinary Iranians, raise gas prices by as much as 50 percent, and curtail development spending, while increasing the already huge sums under the control of the Shia clergy...
"The claim that the current protests are akin to those mounted by the Green Movement in 2009 is a base slander meant to justify a bigger crime. The Green challenge to the results of the 2009 Iranian presidential election was a long-prepared political operation that followed the script of similar US-orchestrated 'color revolutions' in the Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon and elsewhere. It was aimed at bringing to power those elements of the Iranian elite most eager to reach a quick rapprochement with US and European imperialism. It drew its popular support almost exclusively from the most privileged layers of the upper middle class, who were mobilized on the basis of neoliberal denunciations of the populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for "squandering" money on the poor...
"The current challenge to the Iranian regime is of an entirely different character. It is rooted in the working class, including in smaller industrial cities and district towns; draws its greatest support from young people who face an unemployment rate of 40 percent or more; and is driven by opposition to social inequality and capitalist austerity...The period in which the class struggle could be suppressed is coming to an end." ("Working class opposition erupts in Iran: A harbinger for the world in 2018," World Socialist Web Site)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
