US and Iran Stuck on Negotiation Ground Zero
By Pepe Escobar (Page 1 of 2 pages) 3 comments
(189 fans)
From Consortium News
All bets are off in the geopolitical insanity stakes when we have the President of the United States (POTUS) glibly announcing he could launch a nuclear first strike to end the war in Afghanistan and wipe it "off the face of the earth" in one week. But he'd rather not, so he doesn't have to kill 10 million people.
Apart from the fact that not even a nuclear strike would subdue the legendary fighting spirit of Afghan Pashtuns, the same warped logic ordering a nuclear first strike as one orders a cheeseburger could apply to Iran instead of Afghanistan.
Trump once again flip-flopped by declaring that the prospect of a potential war in the Persian Gulf "could go either way, and I'm OK either way it goes," much to the delight of Beltway-related psychopaths who peddle the notion that Iran is begging to be bombed.
No wonder the whole Global South not to mention the Russia-China strategic partnership simply cannot trust anything coming from Trump's mouth or tweets, a non-stop firefight deployed as intimidation tactics.
At least Trump's impotence facing such a determined adversary as Iran is now clear: "It's getting harder for me to want to make a deal with Iran." What remains are empty cliche's, such as Iran "behaving very badly" and "the number one state of terror in the world" the marching order mantra emanating from Tel Aviv.
Even the illegal all-out economic war and total blockade against Tehran seems not to be enough. Trump has announced extra sanctions on China because Beijing is "accepting crude oil" from Iran. Chinese companies will simply ignore them.
Okay With "OK Either Way"
"OK either way" is exactly the kind of response expected by the leadership in Tehran. Prof. Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran confirmed to me that Tehran did not offer Trump a "renegotiation" of the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, in exchange for the end of sanctions: "It's not a renegotiation. Iran offered to move forward ratification of additional protocols if Congress removes all sanctions. That would be a big win for Iran. But the US will never accept it."
Marandi also confirmed "there is nothing big going on" between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and tentative Trump administration negotiator Sen. Rand Paul: "Bolton and Pompeo remain in charge."
The crucial fact is that Tehran rejects a new negotiation with the White House "under any circumstances," as expressed by Hossein Dehghan, the top military adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
Dehghan once again made it very clear that in case of any sort of military adventure, every single base of the U.S. Empire of Bases across Southwest Asia will be targeted.
This neatly ties in with Iran's by now consolidated new rules of engagement, duly detailed by correspondent Elijah Magnier. We are well into "an-eye-for-an-eye" territory.
And that brings us to the alarming expansion of the sanctions dementia, represented by two Iranian ships loaded with corn stranded off the coast of southern Brazil because energy giant Petrobras, afraid of U.S. sanctions, refuses to refuel them.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a fervent Trump groupie, has turned the country into a tropical U.S. neo-colony in less than seven months. On U.S. sanctions, Bolsonaro said, "We are aligned to their policies. So we do what we have to." Tehran for its part has threatened to cut its imports of corn, soybeans and meat from Brazil $2 billion worth of trade a year unless the refueling is allowed.
This is an extremely serious development. Food is not supposed to be illegally sanctioned by the Trump administration. Iran now has to use mostly barter to obtain food as Tehran cannot remit through the CHIPS-SWIFT banking clearinghouse. If food supplies are also blocked that means that sooner rather than later the Strait of Hormuz may be blocked as well.
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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia (more...)
Related Topic(s): Food; Iran; Iran Embargo; Iran War; Negotiation; Oil; Pentagon; Sanctions, Add Tags
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