Only days after American Vice President Joe
Biden made a very public and tantalizing offer of
bilateral talks between the US and Iran, there then
follows another round of punitive trade sanctions
imposed by Washington on Iran’s vital oil industry.
What
to make of this seemingly contradictory US position?
Some
commentators say that the above anomalous attitude reflects
a carrot-and-stick policy in Washington, by which incentives
dangled in front of Iran are quickly followed by a blow of
hardship, with the objective of forcing an end result.
The supposed end result in this case is that the Americans
and their Western allies want Iran to demonstrate
definitively to the rest of the world that it will never
develop capability for nuclear weapons. This demonstration
would be achieved, according to Washington, if Iran were to
somehow give a cast-iron guarantee that it has circumscribed
its nuclear technology and the crucial uranium-enrichment
process.
So, this argument goes, if Iran were to comply with this
desired objective by severely limiting its nuclear research
and industry, then certain “carrots” will follow: a lifting
of the crippling economic sanctions and a normalization of
diplomatic relations.
That is the charitable view of the US position, a view that
has been bolstered by the expectation that President Barack
Obama in his second and final term in the White House is
edging towards a more reasoned, less-hawkish and less
Zionist-pandering foreign policy in the Middle East.
But there is another way of interpreting the US position
towards Iran.
Borrowing a phrase coined by the Native
Americans who were continually deceived and dispossessed, it
is more plausible that Washington is simply “speaking with a
forked tongue” with regard to Iran.
From this perspective,
there are no intended concessions forthcoming from the US to
Iran, in contradistinction to what Biden suggests, but
rather all that will follow are unremitting hardships.
In this scenario of the US position, any concessions that
might be made by Iran, in a reasonable expectation of
reciprocation, will be cynically pocketed by Washington and
its Western allies with nothing in return except more
punitive demands.
How do we judge whether the US is adopting the more benign
carrot-and-stick position or the pernicious forked-tongue
approach to Iran?
History. Decades of American aggression and malfeasance
towards Iran point to a beast that cannot simply change its
predatory and nefarious habits over night. Last weekend,
Iranian leaders responded to Biden’s words with the
magnanimous caution that actions must speak louder than
rhetoric.
While Biden arrogantly demanded that Iran has to show “good
faith” for any putative negotiations to take place, the
reality is that the onus is preponderantly on the US to
decommission its arsenal of policies and practices of
aggression towards Iran in order for the latter to treat any
offer from Washington as being remotely sincere and worthy
of respect.
The precedents do not bode well. Recall that in his first
inaugural address in January 2009, Obama made a big play of
rhetorical reconciliation towards Iran, promising that
America would “extend a hand of friendship” if others would
“unclench their fist”. What followed in practice was hardly
a series of goodwill gestures, when American death squads
assassinated several Iranian nuclear scientists.
Under Obama moreover, the US has unleashed three rounds of
savage economic sanctions on Iran - on top of the
decades-long embargoes that were already in place.
Washington has press-ganged Europe and the rest of the world
to comply with its crippling sanctions that have placed
millions of Iranian lives at risk from shortage of essential
medicines and other basic goods.
Obama has also overseen the increased use of
surveillance drones over Iranian territory and the
deployment of cyber warfare on Iranian society. The
Stuxnet and Flame virus attacks on Iran that Washington
launched in collusion with Israel can be seen as merely
the first shots in a bigger onslaught with the
declaration last week that the Obama administration
intends to wage cyber war “preemptively”.
This
history of overt and covert war of aggression on Iran by
Washington - all of which is criminal - is the context in
which the recent overtures for talks between the two
countries must be evaluated. How is one expected to talk
rationally with a demented, barbarous criminal who insists
on a self-righteous right to attack the other party,
including with the use of nuclear weapons?
To enter into such a framework of negotiations is delusional
and indeed by doing so sets up a dangerous dynamic of
one-sided concessions that will serve to embolden the
aggressor.
The only proper framework for negotiations to take place
between the US and Iran is for Washington to immediately
halt all aggression towards the people of Iran.
Primarily,
this requires the reversal of all sanctions, American and
European, imposed on Iran. Then, and only then, should Iran
consider negotiations as being conducted with a modicum of
good faith.
However, it is doubtful that such a reasonable criterion for
talks will be met. This is because the problem that
Washington and its Western allies have with Iran is not its
alleged nuclear program. The real problem for these
imperialist powers is Iran itself.
The Americans and their European puppets cannot abide the
mere fact of an independent Iran - a country that believes
in harnessing its resources for the development and benefit
of the Iranian people, as opposed to the exploitation by
Western capital and the Western-dominated global banking
system; a country that is critical of Western militarism in
the Middle East and Africa and other impoverished parts of
the world; a country which defends the rights of Palestinian
people who are being subjected to slow-motion genocide by
the Western-backed Zionist regime.
These are some of the real issues why Washington is trying
to defeat the Islamic Republic of Iran, the current leader
of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
And Washington is using
the spurious concern over Iran’s alleged “nuclear ambitions”
as the pretext for what is, in plain truth, criminal
imperialist aggression.
This is another reason why the carrot-and-stick
characterization of US policy towards Iran is flawed.
That concept is based on the false premise that
Washington’s desired end result is the surrender of
Iran’s right to nuclear technology. Not true. In
reality, Washington wants the surrender of Iran as an
independent country. That’s why America speaks to Iran
with forked tongue.
Despite this seemingly bleak - albeit realistic - scenario
in US-Iranian relations, there is nevertheless a positive
note.
Every effort to demonise Iran has backfired to elevate
that country in the eyes of the world, while US standing has
degenerated to gutter status. The unanimous support for Iran
from more than 120 nations at the NAM summit in Tehran last
August is symptomatic of the shift in international
perceptions.
Iran is building partnerships on every
continent while the US is incinerating bridges.
Furthermore, as the surge in oil prices over the latest
Washington sanctions on Iran portend, the American policy of
aggression to vanquish Iran will more likely end up
rebounding to wipe out what’s left of the imploding American
and European economies.
Iran should therefore resist any
supposed overtures from the US. The empire, with its
venomous forked tongue, is destroying itself. Let it writhe
and wriggle all it wants.
Finian Cunningham
(born 1963) has written extensively on international
affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is
a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as
a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry,
Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism.
He is also a musician and songwriter. The author and media
commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his
critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights
violations by the Western-backed regime.
This article was originally posted at
Press TV
Some public comments on this article:
* Washington's "carrot and stick" policy is real... Washington's policy
involves beating you with a stick until you give them all your carrots.
* ... I think that Iran is a remarkable country and I do appreciate its
history and its citizens. If Iran were an evil empire would 25,000 Jews
be living there freely practicing their religion?
Israel should
conform to the humanity of Iran; you don't see the Iranians treating
the Jews the way that Israel treats the Palestinians.
If one
were to look at countries as individual personalities, it might make the
behavior more clear. The playground bullies (U.S. and Israel) threaten
everyone who does not do their bidding. They seem to go out of their way
to start fights.
Impressively, Iran did not retaliate even
when Israel and the U.S. took credit for the computer virus attacks
against Iran. Iran responds as an adult and seeks dialogue, although
they seem to be rebuffed with mumbo jumbo monologues.
Besides, China, India and Russia are more than happy to trade with Iran, as it benefits all those nations....
* These moves by the U.S. are acts of war. Our Congress has not declared
war on Iran and would have no justification to do so. Iran has attacked
no one. It has harmed no one. Are the Amerikan people so ignorant that
they don't know this is a clear violation of the Constitution? Please,
people of the World, help us to get our country back. Oppose the
bullying of other nations by the U.S. and its parasite, Israel.
* At 79 yrs. I'm amazed that for 65 of those years, I absolutely knew, that
we were the good guys. I was wrong. For the next 14 yrs, I am
understanding, that there is no way to change that!
One way to "change that" is to be well-informed about what is really going on in our world, beyond the official lies & mainstream news propaganda.
.