Friday Mezze: Trump. Bibi. Israel. Iran: What's Rationality Got To Do With It? + Nezza’s National AnthemMezze - المزة - a wide selection of small dishes served as appetizers, including such delicacies as hummus, cheese, eggplant, brains, stuffed grape leaves, calamari, and much more
Good Morning Family, Friends, Colleagues, This is a long piece so I’ll keep this introduction short: I fear America is being dragged into a war against its best interests. Israel started this conflict with Iran as a war of choice presenting no more evidence than it had over 20 years ago when it was making similar charges about Iran’s nuclear capacity. Iran is a beautiful nation ruled by really nasty beings - there is no apology for who they are - and we all know who the Ayatollahs are. I write today, though, not to consider regime change but about what I believe the United States should consider as it moved forward in the Persian Gulf theater. A strike on Fordow, if America was does it on Israel’s behalf, will not be an end in itself but possibly the beginning of a long, asymmetric conflict with both Americans - and American interests - at immediate risk. We have a military that can pull off the military stuff. I worry about everyone else in the chain of command, starting with our President and Secretary of Defense. I continue to worry, also, about Gaza, where Israel’s massacres and genocidal attacks have only increased in violence since the world’s attention has increasingly shifted to the Gulf. Read a lot, pray a lot, stay close to loved ones. Trump. Bibi. Israel. Iran: What's Rationality Got To Do With It?Prologue: Prime Minister Netanyahu and the State of Israel - under the cover of their war of choice against Iran - have stepped up their genocidal attacks on Gaza, deliberately targeting and massacring vulnerable starving and malnourished Palestinians. This morning alone, as I prepare to post this column, AlJazeera reports at least another 35 Palestinians have been killed and several others wounded by Israeli fire while waiting for humanitarian aid... ~~~~~~~~ I had not intended to write about Iran this week, but that news from Gaza, alongside reports from Tehran and Washington - each day's news reflecting increasing belligerence on all sides - have further heightened my fears of potentially cataclysmic conflict. I think not. Not because Iran and the Ayatollahs are the good guys - they're not - but because this war threatening to drag American interests into its cross-hairs is mainly based on Israel's unsubstantiated claims about Iran's current nuclear capabilities - claims contradicted even by many American and Western intelligence sources. Be careful what you wish for. It doesn't just matter what you think about Iran: I'm here today because I just want you to know more of the backstory. Let's start six years ago tomorrow - June 21, 2019 - when President Trump declared he was cocked & loaded. On that day he sent a historic tweet - of epic length - that he was cancelling the JCPOA agreement: President Obama made a desperate and terrible deal with Iran – Gave them 150 Billion Dollars plus I.8 Billion Dollars in CASH! Iran was in big trouble and he bailed them out. Gave them a free path to Nuclear Weapons, and SOON. Instead of saying thank you, Iran yelled… Death to America. I terminated deal, which was not even ratified by Congress, and imposed strong sanctions. They are a much weakened nation today than at the beginning of my Presidency, when they were causing major problems throughout the Middle East. Now they are Bust!… On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights (sic) when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not… proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD! Today, I would imagine, most of the world - with the exception of Trump (who never admits he was wrong) and Bibi (who needs the war to continue so he can stay out of jail) - still mourns Trump's irrational act of terminating the JCPOA. Cocked & loaded? What did that even mean? That cancellation put America in a tough spot, one entirely of Trump's making. Trump’s precipitous and rash withdrawal from the nuclear accord with Iran – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – without having a fallback position or alternative plan precipitated today’s crisis. The JCPOA - a detailed agreement reached by Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) on July 14, 2015 - was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231 on July 20, 2015. The JCPOA was working. Trump never gave it a chance: Cocked and loaded. Today, he knows nothing about Iran. I believe he just wants to come out as a military winner or peacemaker; that he still envies Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize and will act, in the end, in a manner he believes will personally favor his own interests. I know quite a lot about Iran and I loved my visits there. While based in Beirut, I first went to Iran in 1969 on assignment for USIS. It was there, in the shop of an Iranian Jew, David Somekh - deep in the shadows of Tehran’s bazaars - I bought my first Persian carpet. It was stunningly beautiful, an antique tribal Afshar. I forget what I paid for it but I’m certain it was probably more than I could really afford at the time. Over the years, from Qum to Tabriz, from the Caspian to Abu Musa, I had opportunity to travel across the storied Persian landscape, reading Rumi and Hafiz and photographing sites of transcendent beauty in Shiraz and Isfahan; all the while developing a nearly insatiable taste for a laced with saffron-laced pan-fried Basmati rice with a crust called tahdig, which translates in Farsi to “bottom of the pot!" It's important to recognize that America's history in Iran does not start in 1979 - that we haven't always been antagonists. I believe Trump doesn’t know about Princeton graduate Howard Baskerville, 25, an American teacher at the American Presbyterian Mission in Tabriz who was killed while fighting on behalf of the Persian Constitutional Revolution alongside his students during the siege of Tabriz on April 19, 1909. Iranians know, and remember. His memory and grave are tended still. He doesn’t know that when the Persian government appealed, in 1910, to America for help reorganizing its financial system, American William Morgan Shuster was chosen to head a team of experts; that Shuster so antagonized the colonial interests of Russia and Great Britain - who had financial interests in Persia - that he was forced to end his mission in 1912. Upon being forced to resign, Schuster wrote in a memoir The Strangling of Persia* that: Only the pen of a Macaulay or the brush of a Verestchagin could adequately portray the rapidly shifting scenes attending the downfall of this ancient nation - scenes in which two powerful and presumably enlightened Christian countries played fast and loose with truth, honor, decency, and law; one, at least, hesitating not even at the most barbarous cruelties to accomplish its political designs and to put Persia beyond hope of self-regeneration. Shuster wrote about Great Britain and Russia in 1912 - today, I believe, he would write about America and Israel. Iranians know, and remember: They read and remember. Trump also either doesn’t know or care that in 1953, under President Eisenhower, CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt successfully launched a coup against Iran’s democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadagh and installed a tyrannical and corrupt Shah, who ruled Iran - with America’s support - until overthrown in 1979 by Iran’s Islamic Revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, whose pattern of tyrannical and despotic rule continues to this day. Iran remembers, too, that President Carter gave sanctuary to the Shah in 1979. And Trump also either doesn't know or care that in the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988) perhaps one million Iranians died, many from chemical and biological weapons supplied to Iraq by America. Did you know that? Trump's in a tough spot because he doesn’t know that after 9/11 hundreds of Iranians spilled into Tehran’s streets, holding a candlelight vigil while chanting We are all Americans. Did you know that? Iranians remember Iran Air Flight 655, an international scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on July 3, 1988 by two surface-to-air missiles fired by USS Vincennes, a US Navy warship, killing 290 Iranians. According to American reports the Vincennes misidentified IR655, despite it transmitting civilian identification codes. In 1996 the US agreed to pay $61.8 million to the victims' families. The US did not admit liability for the shoot-down! I knew that. This week, as I read of possible American strikes on Iran, I think of David Somekh and wonder if he and his family are safe. I wonder who is worrying about the 5,000 - 10,000 Jews who continue to live in Iran. Do I like the idea of an Iran with nukes? No. Do I like the idea of its neighbors Pakistan, India, Israel and Russia having nuclear weapons? No, of course not. That’s not the point. In 2011, when asked by Charlie Rose on PBS whether, if he was in Iran's shoes ... wouldn’t he want a nuclear weapon, Ehud Barak, a former Israeli Prime Minister, and Defense Minister under Netanyahu, answered: Probably, probably. I don’t delude myself that they are doing it just because of Israel. They have their history of 4,000 years. They look around and they [also] see the Indians are nuclear. The Chinese are nuclear, Pakistan is nuclear as well as South Korea, not to mention the Russians. That may be the point. President Trump, through bullying, bluster - and bunker-busting - may win some matches but it's a long game and as long as he remains deliberately ignorant of Iran and the Middle East, American interests and security remain vulnerable. In 2003 America broke the Middle East - irrevocably, I believe - when it invaded Iraq based on lies and deceptions, including false assertions - including from Israel - that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Today, I don't want them to make the same mistake about Iran. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - who to Trump, Bibi, and MAGA is today's incarnation of Saddam Hussein - this week issued a defiant response to President Trump’s call for unconditional surrender: "War will be met with war, bombing with bombing, and strike with strike. Iran will not submit to any demands or dictates ..." Today, it's important that we also recognize that it’s Israel that actually possesses multiple nuclear weapons, that it's Israel which refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and refuses IEA inspections. In closing I caution everyone to remember what US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz - an advocate for invasion of Iraq - said in a response to a question from Vanity Fair Magazine about why the invasion failed:** I think the greatest mistake [we made] is assuming that people will behave, well it's a version of mirror imaging, I guess. People will be rational according to our definition of what is rational. Rational? What's rationality got to do with it? __________________________________________________ *https://dn790000.ca.archive.org/0/items/stranglingofper00shusuoft/stranglingofper00shusuoft.pdf **http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/trachtenberg/useur/wolfowitztanenhaus.html Also check out: Anthony Bourdain in Iran in 2014: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=832406203561145 Nezza’s anthem in Spanish at Dodger Stadium ignites debate over team’s immigrant supportAs fans removed their caps and stood for the national anthem Saturday night at Dodger Stadium, they were met with a surprising rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Latin pop and R&B singer Nezza stood in front of the crowd, closed her eyes and belted the song out — in Spanish. https://apnews.com/article/dodgers-spanish-national-anthem-nezza-3abcadca76f996612aaefe2dc579afe2 Take care of yourselves and your loved ones. 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