UN Secretary-General António Guterres visiting a shelter hosting displaced people from areas affected by the ongoing conflict in the Dekwaneh area of Beirut during his visit to Lebanon in March 2026. Credit: UN Photo/Haider Fahs

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 9 2026 (IPS)

On April 8, Israeli military forces launched the deadliest series of airstrikes on Lebanon since hostilities escalated in early March, resulting in the deaths of at least 254 civilians. This latest incident threatens to further complicate humanitarian efforts in Lebanon that are already under immense pressure.

This latest escalation occurred just as a two-week ceasefire deal between the United States and Iran was announced the night prior on April 7, more than a month after the United States, Iran and Israel began engaging in military strikes against each other, which also led to Arab States in the Gulf getting caught in the crossfire. The parties targeted military bases and civilian infrastructure in Iran and Gulf states allied with the United States. Israeli and Lebanese armed forces exchanged fire across borders, which has resulted in a new wave of civilian casualties and mass displacement in a continuation of the conflict between the Israeli military and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Israeli strikes on Lebanon have resulted in nearly 1,530 deaths since March 2, including more than 100 women and 130 children.

While the temporary ceasefire was welcomed, including by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, questions were raised about where it extended, even among major players in the negotiation process. Iran and Pakistan, a mediator in the peace negotiations, have stated that the deal includes Lebanon. Meanwhile, Israeli leadership initially claimed that the ceasefire did not include Lebanon and that the airstrikes specifically targeted Hezbollah-owned strongholds. Wednesday’s airstrikes targeted residential and commercial neighborhoods in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon.

Humanitarian actors expressed concern and alarm over the airstrikes and urged the parties involved to consider the safety and dignity of civilians in Lebanon.  The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was “outraged” by the “devastating death and destruction” in Lebanon.

Displaced families at a makeshift shelter in a parking lot in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Credit: WFP Arete/Ali Yunes

Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar welcomed the news of a ceasefire but said in a statement that until there was an end to the hostilities across the entire region, “no one will feel truly safe.”

“This pause must become a stepping stone for wider peace,” Behar said.

The war in Iran and the Middle East has put greater strain on humanitarian aid workers on the ground, including UN agencies.

Imran Riza, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, explained that even before the latest escalation, the UN and its partners were aiming to support 1.5 million vulnerable people and that they have been forced to scale up their response with fewer resources than in previous years.

Less than a third of the emergency flash appeal for USD 308 million has been funded as of now. Yet despite these challenges, the UN and its partners have been able to provide more than four million meals and distribute more than 130,000 blankets and 105,000 mattresses to shelters. Multi-purpose cash assistance has also been provided to households as well.

Briefing reporters virtually from Beirut mere hours after the airstrikes, Riza commented on how civilians reacted to the news of a ceasefire.

“This morning, many people across Lebanon were cautiously optimistic about returning home—some even began to move. The events of the past hours, however, are likely to have triggered further displacement,” said Riza.

Also briefing from Lebanon was UNFPA Arab Regional Director Laila Baker, who described how the city of Beirut slowed to a standstill in the wake of the airstrikes. Cars are lining the streets while tents spread across the city as families seek shelter, she noted. She warned that the initial sense of unity that the Lebanese government and its partners had been working towards was now under threat due to the month-long “devastating aggression” from military forces.

“The risk is not only humanitarian collapse but also renewed fragmentation at a time when unity is most needed,” said Baker.

Displacement is already at an “unprecedented scale”, Riza said, as more than 1.1 million people—or one in five people in Lebanon—are internally displaced. More than 138,000 civilians, of which a third are children, are sheltering in 678 collective sites. The majority are dispersed across informal settings and host communities, which Riza noted leaves them with limited access to basic services. Overcrowding in shelters and limited sanitation services will likely lead to increased health risks.

The health system has also been overwhelmed and “under severe pressure.” Many facilities have been forced to close or have been damaged. Riza reported at least 106 attacks on healthcare, which have resulted in more than 50 deaths and 158 injuries among health workers.

Women and children are particularly vulnerable in this situation. Baker estimates that at least 620,000 women and girls have experienced displacement. Among them are at least 13,500 pregnant women who have been cut from essential maternal health services. At least 200 pregnant women will be delivering babies without essential support from midwives or nurses or with access to maternal and neonatal healthcare.

More than 52 primary healthcare facilities are no longer facilities and are forced to close. Among the six hospitals forced to close, five of them had maternity wards.

“These are not just statistics. They are grave violations of international humanitarian law – direct assaults on life, health, and dignity,” said Baker. “This is not only a humanitarian crisis – it is a crisis of humanity. It is a crisis of trust in the international system and in the principles meant to protect civilians.”

The UN and other humanitarian agencies urge for a permanent end to the fighting and call for international law to be upheld by all parties. Under the ceasefire agreement, all parties are urged to pursue diplomatic dialogue and work toward a long-term solution to the war.

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Máximo Torero, Chief Economist of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), briefs the Security Council meeting on Conflict-related food insecurity: Framing the global dialogue: addressing food insecurity as a driver of conflict and ensuring food security for sustainable peace. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 27 2026 (IPS)

The current conflict in Iran and the Middle East region threatens to disrupt the global energy and agri-food sectors, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz affects oil and fertilizer exports for farmers during critical harvest seasons.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that if the war does not come to an immediate end, global markets could collapse from the high demands for oil and crops.

Within the next two weeks, global markets may be able to absorb the shocks brought on by the war thus far and could therefore minimize the risks of food insecurity, said FAO’s chief economist Máximo Torero.

“If this crisis continues for the next three to six months, then yes, it will have an impact not only on the food security sector; of course, energy will impact all other sectors and all other inputs that have been affected,” Torero said.

The Strait of Hormuz carries up to 30 percent of international trade fertilizers and up to 35 percent of global crude oil and natural gas. Premiums on the costs of these resources are increasing as the war continues in the region. Torero told reporters on Thursday that farmers face the “double choke” of higher prices on fertilizers and rising fuel prices, the latter of which is used by the value chain to produce the food available in markets. With limited supplies, farmers may be forced to adapt their crop cycle by reducing the amount of fertilizer or switch to crops that require less nitrogen fertilizer.

Credit: UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Torero remarked that the immediate impact will be on the next season of crops, which will likely have fewer yields than before the war started. If the fighting concludes within a month, countries with higher reserves of fertilizers and fuels may mitigate shocks to the global markets. If the fighting lasts three months and the Strait of Hormuz stays closed, the shocks will be global and harder to manage. The consequences could include fewer yields from crops and more pressure on global exporters such as the United States, Brazil and Australia. As oil prices increase, this may encourage farmers to switch to biofuels to help meet the demands for crops. Yet such actions may also cause higher consumer prices.

When it comes to the war’s impact in the region, Torero reported that Iran was already dealing with high food prices before the fighting began, which it has only exacerbated. Meanwhile, for Gulf states such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, they are largely reliant on food imports and will face more challenges as there are no ships carrying imports through the channel.

Beyond the Middle East, FAO identified certain countries that will be impacted by fertilizer and fuel shortages, such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which are currently in their respective rice harvest seasons, and sub-Saharan countries like Kenya and Somalia, which rely on 22 to 31 percent of fertilizer imports.

One area that will also be affected by the conflict is remittances. Migrant workers from South Asia and East Africa live and work in the Gulf states, including at airports and places of business that have been targeted by military strikes. Torero explained that if these workers cannot send money back to their households in their home countries, the resulting decline in remittance inflow will affect many countries where remittances make up a “significant share” of their GDP.

“There’s a significant amount of labor employment that comes from this region,” Torero said. “Now, if the airplanes are not flying… If the operations that used to flow through the airports are not happening, that will impact of course their economies, and that will impact all these temporary laborers that are working in those locations.”

The rich economies that attract migrant labor could be impacted, Torero said, and the workers whose families rely on remittances would also be severely affected.

While the war in the Persian Gulf continues to threaten the global energy, fertilizer and food markets, the international community is encouraged to take short- and long-term measures to mitigate the shock and protect vulnerable populations.

Torero and FAO recommended developing alternative trade routes to reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz. Vulnerable import-dependent countries, including low-income states, need support through emergency food aid, balance-of-payment support and targeted subsidies. Farmers should also be financed to maintain agricultural production and to prevent liquidity constraints.

Torero also recommended that states should diversify their import sources and promote regional coordination. He added that states need to build resilience in the future, which means investing in sustainable domestic agriculture and alternatives to fertilizers and preparing for structural market shifts that may result from prolonged instability.

“We need to treat food systems with the same strategic importance as energy and transport sectors and invest […] accordingly to minimize those shocks.”

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Kaveh Madani, Director of the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health and lead author of the report entitled “Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era” briefs reporters at UN Headquarters. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Umar Manzoor Shah
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 25 2026 (IPS)

Professor Kaveh Madani of Iran has been named the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize laureate. The award will be formally presented by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in August during World Water Week in Stockholm.

The Stockholm Water Prize is widely regarded as the highest global honour in water science and policy. Often called the Nobel Prize for water, it recognises individuals and institutions for exceptional contributions to the sustainable use and protection of water resources. This year’s selection stands out for both scientific impact and the extraordinary personal journey of the laureate.

At 44, Madani is the first Muslim and the youngest recipient in the prize’s 35 year history. He is also the first United Nations official and the first former politician to receive the award.

Madani currently serves as Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. Once a senior official in Iran’s government, he later faced arrest, interrogation, and a sustained smear campaign that forced him to leave his country.

Born in Tehran in 1981, Madani grew up in a family deeply connected to Iran’s water sector. His early exposure to the country’s mounting water challenges shaped his academic direction. He studied civil engineering at the University of Tabriz before moving to Sweden to pursue a master’s degree in water resources at Lund University. He later earned a PhD from the University of California, Davis, followed by postdoctoral research at the University of California, Riverside.

By his early 30s, Madani had established himself as a leading systems analyst. He joined Imperial College, London, where his work focused on the mathematical modelling of complex human water systems. His research combined hydrology, economics, and decision sciences to improve policymaking in water management.

In 2017, he made a decisive move. Leaving a prestigious academic career in London, he returned to Iran to serve as Deputy Vice President and Deputy Head of the Department of Environment. Many viewed his appointment as a signal of reform and a bridge between Iran and its scientific diaspora.

During his tenure, Madani pushed for transparency and structural reforms in water governance. He used innovative public campaigns to raise awareness about environmental degradation. However, his efforts challenged entrenched interests.

State-aligned media accused him of espionage and labelled him a “water terrorist” and “bioterrorist”. Conspiracy theories circulated, linking him to foreign intelligence agencies and even to alleged weather manipulation schemes. His advocacy for international environmental agreements further intensified opposition.

In early 2018, a broader crackdown on environmental experts began. Madani was detained and interrogated multiple times. Several of his colleagues were arrested. One of them, Kavous Seyed Emami, died in custody under contested circumstances.

Facing mounting pressure, Madani left Iran and entered a period of exile. He joined Yale University, where he continued his research and advocacy. He began to focus more on bridging science and policy at the global level.

Madani’s academic contributions have been widely recognised. He is known for integrating game theory into water resource management. His work challenged traditional models that assumed cooperation among stakeholders. He demonstrated that individual incentives often lead to uncooperative behaviour, which makes many engineering solutions ineffective in practice.

This approach provided new tools to understand conflicts over shared water resources. It has been applied to transboundary water disputes and to policy design in regions with limited trust among stakeholders.

One of his most influential contributions is “water bankruptcy.” He introduced the term to describe a condition where water systems can no longer recover to their historical levels. Unlike a crisis, which implies a temporary disruption, water bankruptcy signals a long-term structural failure.

In a recent United Nations report, Madani argued that the world entered an era of global water bankruptcy in January 2026. The report highlighted that many river basins and aquifers have lost their capacity to regenerate. This framing has sparked debate among policymakers and researchers.

Madani uses simple financial language to explain complex ecological realities. He argues that humanity is no longer living off renewable water flows but is depleting long-term reserves. This framing has made the concept widely accessible and influential.

Beyond academia, Madani has built a strong public presence. With a large following on social media, he has used digital platforms to communicate scientific findings in accessible ways. His work includes documentaries and public campaigns aimed at increasing awareness and accountability.

He has also played key roles in international diplomacy. As Iran’s lead environmental diplomat, he participated in global negotiations and served as Vice President of the UN Environment Assembly Bureau in 2017. At the COP23 climate conference in Bonn, he called for greater attention to water in global climate agreements.

Today, as head of the United Nations water think tank, he continues to advocate for integrating water into climate and development policies. He has particularly focused on the Global South, where water stress closely links with food insecurity, migration, and conflict.

The Stockholm Water Prize Committee cited his “unique combination of groundbreaking research, policy engagement, diplomacy, and global outreach, often under personal risk” in awarding him the 2026 prize.

In an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service, Madani recalled the intense pressure and fear that defined his final days in Iran. He described repeated interrogations, surveillance, and a growing sense that his work had placed him in direct confrontation with powerful institutions.

Here are edited excerpts from the interview: 

IPS: You introduced the idea of “water bankruptcy.” How does this change how governments must act today?

Madani: Water bankruptcy is defined as a post-crisis state of failure in which the system is suffering from insolvency, meaning that water use has been more than the available water for an extended period, and also irreversibility, meaning that there are some damages to the ecosystem and the machinery of water production that are irreversible and cannot be fixed.

What that means is that some of the things that used to be just anomalies and abnormal conditions are now the new normal, and we’re no longer experiencing only a temporary deviation from what we are used to, but we have a situation that we have to get used to. Crisis management is about mitigation.

Bankruptcy management is about mitigating what can still be mitigated and adapting to new realities with more restrictions. Bankruptcy management calls for an honest confession, the admission of a confession that a mistake has been made, and the current business model is not working, so it calls for honestly admitting to the mistakes made and transforming the business model, that calls for a fresh new start and a change of course.

It is bitter. Bankruptcy is not a pleasant condition but admitting to it helps us prevent further irreversible damages and enables a future that is less catastrophic.

IPS: You faced arrest, exile, and serious accusations in Iran. What kept you going during that period?

Professor Madani: Hope. Hope is what kept me going because I had gone back there to help and at least at the start, I was trying to take what was happening to me as part of the job and as part of the adventure because I was there to make a positive impact, and if I had given up too quickly, then that would not have matched my essential motivation to help.

I knew that it would not be a very smooth path, but it turned out to be much more bumpy than what I had anticipated, and I think many also, you know, those who made that situation bumpy for me, also regret that today, but by the time they realised mistakes were made, it was too late to do anything about it.

Can you recall your arrest and interrogation? What do you remember most from that experience, and how did it affect you personally?

I think arrests and interrogations are very frustrating, especially when you haven’t done anything wrong.

What kills you is constantly worrying about what others think of you and coming up with different scenarios and conspiracy theories. Dealing with conspiracy theories and proving them wrong is not easy. Those were very hard times for me, but as you know, my background is in behaviour analysis. I was trying to put myself in the shoes of those who were suspicious of me, understand their concerns, and address them so I could help my homeland.

IPS: Many countries still treat water stress as a temporary crisis. What are the biggest policy mistakes they continue to make?

Madani: Yes, crisis management is all about mitigation. Those who deny the crisis and enter the bankruptcy state continue to borrow more from nature, build more infrastructure, dig deeper wells, add additional reservoirs and storage capacity, implement more water transfer projects and build more, and construct more desalination plants. Continuing to add to their supply, on the other hand, they think things would be temporary, and through some sort of rationing, things would be solved, but the continuation of that behaviour and the denial of that reality makes the problem worse.

They get drained into a deepening problem, and again, like the financial world, if your business model is not working and you’re in denial, you continue taking more loans and your expenses and your debt become higher and higher. By the time that people realise that there is no way out of that chaos and that failure, the cost is much, much higher. Remaining in denial would result in major significant irreversible damages that generations would have to pay for.

IPS: You combined science with diplomacy and public outreach. Which of these has had the most real impact on decision-making?

Professor Madani: It’s very hard to really say which one has the most impact, because they’re very complementary. The science is very good, but it’s not enough for decision-making. You still have to understand what the real world looks like and how incentives shape behaviour and actions and how interests promote conflicts and cooperation to be able to act.

Science, of course, opens doors and puts more solutions on the table, but still, without understanding the politics or navigating through politics, it would not work. Diplomacy is another one when it comes to the international scale; even when it comes to negotiating with stakeholders, that’s a skill that would be extremely helpful. So, in a way, these are the things that you need.

And on top of these, public outreach educates you about perceptions, how people and societies understand problems, how they judge different situations, and how their emotions and their perceptions shape their beliefs, and that tells you what you need to do when it comes to communicating your science better, changing their opinion, impacting their opinion, and even negotiating with them or convincing them that things might be different or a different pathway is required. I think they all help you create a recipe for something that might work.

IPS: Your work focuses on human behaviour in water management. Why do technical solutions alone often fail?

Madani: A lot of times, technical solutions developed by our computer models or in our labs don’t take into account the full elements of reality. When humans are involved, we deal with different motives, incentives, emotions, and psychologies, and that makes – that creates – some essentially unexpected realities that might tweak things. Simply put, a lot of times when it comes to developing a solution for a water problem or an environmental solution or a sustainability solution, we think that everyone agrees to making short-term sacrifices for the sake of long-term resilience, but that is not the case in reality because different stakeholders, different groups, farmers, urban users, and industrial users also have short-term goals.

They maximise profit, make sure that the quality of life is not impacted, and so on, which makes them non-cooperative to an extent. And if you miss this reality, then you think that the solution, the optimal solution, is very practical and everyone would cooperate, but then you get very disappointed.

Yet, you can take that into account to the extent possible, try to understand the behavioural element and incorporate those into your assessment and projections to be able to align those incentives and motives with the long-term interest to offer a solution that is more attractive and win-win.

IPS: You now advise governments globally. What is the one urgent action every water-stressed country must take in the next five years?

Madani: I think that by now, countries must understand the importance of water as an essential resource for establishing peace, national security, justice, prosperity, and development. I mean, it supports human development, health, and long-term resilience in society. So, countries must not take it for granted and understand that technological solutions would not be sufficient to address shortages.

They must revisit their practices. They must do a proper accounting to understand what, what’s, and how water is currently being spent and if it’s strategic – strategically speaking, that is the right way of doing things when it comes to matters of national security and long-term resilience. Bankruptcy management starts with accounting and transparency.

That’s something that is missing in many water-stressed and non-water-stressed countries, and I think that’s something that we can focus on, put the lens of science on, and not be afraid of accounting and measuring and monitoring what is happening in the system because that knowledge is required if you want to make improvements.

IPS: Thank you very much for taking the time and speaking to IPS  and congratulations again for the well-deserved award.

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Excerpt:

The Sindh government has started distributing solar home systems to 200,000 low-income households under the Sindh Solar Energy Project to improve electricity access. Credit: Sindh People’s Housing for Flood Affectees

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Mar 20 2026 (IPS)

Energy expert Vaqar Zakaria believes solar power makes “excellent economic sense” – and he lives by it. For over five years, his rooftop panels have slashed his bills, sometimes to zero, even allowing him to sell surplus electricity back through net metering.

Last month, he took it further. After buying two electric vehicles, he has almost “declared independence” from the national grid. With more panels and doubled batteries, even his cars run on sunshine. “I am moving away from their fuel, and I don’t need their power,” said the CEO of Hagler Bailly, Pakistan, an Islamabad-based environmental consultancy firm, over the phone from Islamabad.

“I call it the hand of God driving my car,” Zakaria said.

He is already seeing economic gains from his investment. “The electricity I generate, including battery costs, comes to about Rs 12 (USD 0.043) per unit, while it can be sold to the Islamabad Electric Supply Company at around Rs 26 (USD 0.092) per unit.” However, he adds that he does not currently claim this benefit, as it requires considerable follow-up.

Doing some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, he compared the petrol-run vehicles he used until a few months back to the EV he purchased a month ago. “The total cost of operating the EV comes to about Rs 2 (USD 0.0071) per km using power generated at home, compared to the Rs 27 (USD 0.096) per km I was paying earlier for running vehicles on the fossil fuel.”

This figure does not include the regular maintenance costs his earlier cars required—lubricating oils, oil and air filters, and brakes.

“An EV requires near-zero maintenance,” he added.

Vaqar Zakaria’s white EV charges under rooftop solar panels at his home — powered by the sun. Credit: Vaqar Zakaria

While Zakaria can afford a full shift off the grid, most households cannot.

“The solar landscape will remain unchanged unless power companies introduce profit-sharing models that turn consumers into ‘prosumers’ – both producers and users of energy – supported by microfinance to help cover upfront costs,” he said. Achieving this would require the privatisation of utilities.”

For now, with or without batteries, solar energy has become a popular alternative for many households. “What’s happening in Pakistan is quite significant, as electricity consumers’ dependence on the national grid is falling,” explained Rabia Babar, data manager at Renewables First, an Islamabad-based think-and-do tank for energy and environment.

Grid-based electricity demand, she pointed out, dropped 11 percent in FY25 compared to FY22 levels, largely because more people and businesses are switching to solar.

“During the day, far less electricity is being drawn from the grid, which means gas-fired power plants are being used much less than before.”

More than 100 young Pakistani women from across the country have been trained in and certified in solar roof installation by LADIESFUND Energy Pvt Ltd through Dawood Global Foundation’s Educate a Girl programme. They have solarised a women’s shelter, a church and an orphanage. Credit: LADIESFUND Energy (Pvt.) Ltd

The Turning Point

Haneea Isaad, an energy finance specialist at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, recalled the time in 2022, as the turning point when people realised they needed a cheaper alternative. “The prices of liquefied natural gas shot up after Russian forces entered Ukraine and the country faced a gas shortage, resulting in widespread power outages. Electricity prices almost tripled in just a couple of years.”

Those who could afford to, Isaad said, opted for a one-time investment in installing solar panels instead of paying for expensive and unreliable electricity.

According to EMBER,  an independent clean energy think tank, solar’s share in the energy mix has risen from 2.9 percent in 2020 to 32.3 percent by the end of 2025.

It is this quiet solar revolution that may help ride out the current energy crisis triggered by the United States-Israel war on Iran, which led to the shutting of the Strait of Hormuz, according to a report by Renewables First and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, published earlier this week.

“Pakistan’s solar revolution is quietly redrawing the country’s energy map, cutting grid dependence, reducing LNG exposure, and building a buffer against global market shocks that most of its neighbours are yet to find,” said Babar, one of the co-authors of the report.

A house in rural Gilgit with solar panels. Credit: SHAMA Solar.

In fact, the report says that Pakistan has avoided over USD 12 billion in oil and gas imports since 2020 due to its rapid solar growth – and could save another USD 6.3 billion in 2026 alone at current prices.

Lead analyst Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of CREA, said the solar boom has cut import bills and now acts “like an insurance policy” against oil and LNG shocks from the Gulf.

Industries are also turning to solar, significantly reducing their need for LNG significantly.

“This shift has had a direct impact on government policy. Pakistan has gone back to its LNG suppliers to renegotiate long-term contracts for the diversion of surplus cargoes to international markets, which are now oversupplied due to the sharp reduction in gas consumption,” said Babar.

Pakistan has been importing LNG since 2015, after domestic reserves declined. It has been mainly used in the power sector – accounting for nearly a quarter of Pakistan’s electricity supply – followed by the industrial sector.

Supplied from Qatar via the Strait of Hormuz, LNG has become less attractive due to high prices for industry and the growing shift to solar in homes. With some LNG landing in Pakistan before the conflict began and domestic gas filling the gap from affected cargoes, supplies may be enough to last until mid-April.

“Pakistan has historically been vulnerable to volatile global LNG prices, which strain on foreign exchange reserves when prices spike,” Babar said.

Isaad agreed. “Solar has provided a buffer. With the power sector also relying on coal imports from Indonesia and South Africa, supply pressures are unlikely to pose a problem in the near term. Seasonal hydropower and mild weather are also likely to prevent an immediate spike in LNG based power demand. For now, Pakistan has been spared – unlike Bangladesh and India, which have been hit the hardest in South Asia.”

Not Out of the Woods Yet

But the solar panels have not shielded Pakistanis from the rising oil prices. The country saw a 20 percent jump – the highest in its history – with petrol and diesel costing USD 1.15 and USD 1.20 per litre, respectively. As transport drives the economy, higher oil prices quickly pushed up fares and the cost of groceries.

In response, Zakaria said the crisis highlights a clear path forward: embrace EVs, reduce diesel dependence, and expand renewables. “Begin with two-wheelers,” he suggested, though a full EV mass transit system would be ideal for Pakistan. He added that shifting freight from trucks to rail could significantly cut fuel costs.

He said he supports the oil rationing and austerity measures taken by the government.

Last week, addressing the nation, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced these measures on television.

“The entire region is currently in a state of war,” he said, outlining steps, including a four-day workweek for government employees and spring holidays for schools from March 16 to the end of the month. He also said 50 percent of government staff would work from home on a rotating basis and recommended similar arrangements for the private sector.

Higher education institutions have shifted to online classes to save fuel, as have meetings across federal and provincial governments. Fuel allowances for government offices have also been reduced.

Under the government’s austerity measures, federal and provincial cabinet members will forgo two months’ salaries and allowances, while lawmakers’ pay will be reduced by 25 percent. Ministers, parliamentarians, and officials may travel abroad only when essential — and must fly economy. Weddings will be capped at 200 guests, served with a single-dish meal.

The Human Cost

But these measures have brought little relief to Saba Nasreen’s household finances. The 52-year-old mother of two, who works as a domestic help, said, “Rising fuel prices have literally crippled us; when fuel costs go up, food prices follow. We hardly buy fruit or meat; now even milk and vegetables are beyond our range,” she said.

With Eid ul-Fitr—the Muslim festival marking the end of Ramadan—just days away, she said, “This will be the first Eid in as long as I can remember that I won’t be making sheer khurma for my daughters,” referring to the traditional sweet vermicelli dish prepared in many Muslim households across the subcontinent. “The price of a box of vermicelli has doubled this year, from Rs 150 (USD 0.53) to Rs 300 (USD 1.07),” she said, adding, “In any case, the attack on Iran has already dimmed our festivities; I’m not happy inside, my heart feels heavy.”

For many, the solar revolution offers hope — but for households like Nasreen’s, the struggle continues.

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Secretary-General António Guterres attends the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe.

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 2026 (IPS)

The United States and Israel launched a joint military strike on Iran on February 28. Iran followed with military strikes on Israeli bases and on Arab Gulf states, including Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. The realized threat of a new war has caused alarm for the security situation in the Middle East and its impact on civilian populations.

While the latest outbreak of fighting unfolded in the Middle East, the UN Security Council in New York convened an emergency meeting to deliberate over the military attacks in Iran. The session was convened at the request of Iran and members of the Security Council.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres briefed the Council on the situation up to that point and condemned the escalating hostilities. “We are witnessing a grave threat to international peace and security. Military action carries the risk of igniting a chain of events that no one can control in the most volatile region of the world,” he warned.

Under Article 2 of the UN Charter, all member states shall “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” Guterres reminded the Council. He reiterated that there would be no “viable alternative to the peaceful settlement of international disputes” and that “lasting peace” could only be accomplished through diplomatic negotiations.

Guterres also noted that the U.S.-Israeli strikes took place following the latest round of indirect negotiations between the U.S. and Iran mediated by Oman, which were expected to lead into further political talks. “I deeply regret that this opportunity of diplomacy has been squandered.”

According to Iran, the U.S.-Israeli strikes constituted a clear violation of the UN Charter and a threat to international peace and security. Sayed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s Foreign Minister, said in a letter addressed to Guterres that in response to the aggression, Iran was invoking its right to self-defense under Article 51 of the Charter. This outlines that the Charter shall not “impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense,” and that any actions taken by member states to exercise their right to self-defense must be “immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and the responsibility” of the Council to take actions as it “deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

“The United States and the Israeli regime shall bear full and direct responsibility for all ensuing consequences, including any escalation arising from their unlawful actions,” Aragchi said. Noting the “grave and far-reaching consequences” of a regional conflict, Aragchi wrote of the collective responsibility of the UN and the Security Council to take immediate action and to “discharge their duties without delay.”

Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani of Iran reiterated the point before the Security Council, remarking on the threat to the country’s sovereignty and that actions taken by the U.S. and Israel were in violation of the UN Charter. There is also the added context that the first round of U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Some members of the Council spoke against Iran’s military actions on Saturday and against the regime under Khanmenei as it related to its nuclear program and its “appalling violence and repression against its own people.” The U.K., France and Germany jointly condemned the regime and its attacks on countries in the region.

Acting Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom James Kariuki remarked that the present was a “fragile moment for the Middle East.” As the president of the Security Council for the month of February, Kariuki noted that Iran “repeatedly ignored calls” for a solution to its nuclear program and the seeming lack of cooperation with the IAEA. He stated that Iran “must refrain from further strikes, and its appalling behavior, to allow a path back to diplomacy. ”

“My country, which is a champion of peace and coexistence, never expected to be targeted by wanton aggressions without any justification,” said Bahrain Ambassador Jamal Al Rowaiei. Bahrain was one of the Gulf states targeted by Iranian military forces and currently sits on the Security Council as an elected member. Al Rowaiei condemned Iran for its attacks on residential areas and vital facilities—including a U.S. Navy base—and called for all in “containing this crisis” to protect the stability of the region.

Other member states remarked on the threats to international peace and security. In condemning the military attacks on Iran and the Arab Gulf states, Pakistan Ambassador Asim Ahmad regretted that “diplomacy has once again been derailed,” referring to the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. “These military actions undermine dialogue and further erode trust that was already in short supply,” said Ahmad.

Echoing Guterres’ sentiments, other UN entities and leaders reiterated calls to continue negotiations and to respect international law. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), said that he was “deeply troubled” by the situation in the Middle East and expressed that world leaders should choose the “challenging path of dialogue” over the “senseless route of destruction.”

“My heart goes out to the civilians trapped in the crossfire. Regardless of borders, everyone deserves to live without the threat of violence around them,” he said.

Across Iran, civilian infrastructures have been destroyed, leading to scores of casualties. Of note, schools have been bombed by Israeli airstrikes, including a girls’ elementary school in Minab in Hormozgan province in southern Iran. As of March 1, the death toll from this strike has risen to 165, according to state sources.

UNICEF issued a statement shortly after the school bombings, warning that the “weekend’s military escalation in the Middle East marks a dangerous moment for millions of children in the region.” They called for an immediate end to the hostilities and for all parties to uphold their obligations to international humanitarian and human rights law, including the protection of children. “Targeting civilians and civilian objects, including schools, is a violation of international law.”

“Bombs and missiles are not the way to resolve differences but only result in death, destruction and human misery,” said Volker Türk, the UN Human Rights Chief. He added that all parties must de-escalate and return to the negotiating table and warned that failing to do so would only lead to further “senseless civilian deaths” and “destruction on a potentially unimaginable scale.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that they were “closely monitoring” developments, urging restraint to “avoid any nuclear safety risks.”

The U.S. will take over as president of the Security Council in March. It will be a matter of waiting to see the role that this institution will play in protecting the principles of international law and preventing further loss of civilian lives.

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Roya shares her story with our journalist in Parwan province, describing the fear and uncertainty she faces after being deported from Iran. Credit: Learning Together.

By External Source
PARWAN, Afghanistan, Nov 13 2025 (IPS)

When Roya, a former police officer under Afghanistan’s Republic government, left the country with her family, she felt a great sense of relief, having escaped from the horrors of Taliban rule. She never imagined that less than three years later she would be forced back into the same conditions, only worse.

She now spends sleepless nights, terrified of being identified as a former police officer, a label that carries dire consequences.

Roya, 52, is a mother of four. During the Republic years, she worked in the women’s search unit of Parwan province, earning enough to support her family.

When the government collapsed and the Taliban returned to power in 2021, she, like hundreds of other women in uniform, became the target of direct and indirect threats. Fear for her life and dignity pushed her onto the path of migration. She fled to Iran, where she and her six-member family spent a few years in relative safety.

“In Iran, I worked in a tomato paste factory”, she recalls. “We had a house, we ate well, and above all I had peace of mind because we lived in relative security”, says Roya.

Street life in Parwan provice, Afghanistan. Credit: Learning Together.

Her daughters also found work. “Zakia, 23, who had completed her first year at Kabul University prior to our departure, found a job in a large home appliances store as a salesclerk and computer operator. Setayesh, who turned 21 this year, threw herself enthusiastically into a job at a beauty salon, specializing in hair braiding. Everyone had something to do and earned an income.”

But that stability did not last. Escalating political tensions between Iran and Israel soon triggered harsh crackdowns on Afghan migrants in Iran.

“At two in the afternoon, Iranian officials entered our home without any warning”, says Roya. “We had no time to gather our belongings, and even much less to recover the lease for the house we were living in, she says.”

She and her daughters were forcibly deported back to Afghanistan while the men were still at work. A week later, one of her sons called from the Islam Qala border, and the family was finally reunited.

Roya now lives in Afghanistan under extremely difficult conditions. She has no job, no support, and carries a constant fear that her past work with the police could put her and her family in danger.

“Every night I go to sleep in fear, worried that my identity might be exposed. I don’t know what will happen if they find out I previously worked in the police service.”

A market scene in Parwan province, where women navigate restricted public spaces under Taliban rule. Credit: Learning Together.

She is one of several hundred women who were forcibly expelled from Iran, back into a country where women who had previously worked in the security forces are treated like criminals and where the memory of their uniform has become a nightmare of imprisonment.

Under Taliban rule, former military and civil service women are forced to hide their identities. Some have even burned their work documents. Others, like Roya, stay inside their homes, avoid social contact, and spend their nights haunted by the fear of being recognized.

“We decided to escape to Iran to rid ourselves of the strict laws of the Taliban. But now we are caught in the same restrictions again, this time, with empty hands and even more exhausted spirits,” Roya says.

Roya and her family now live temporarily in a relative’s home in Parwan province, facing an uncertain future.

The widespread deportation of Afghan migrants from Iran is particularly consequential for women whose situation has progressively worsened under Taliban rule. Job opportunities for them and participation in public life are shrinking by the day.

The Taliban have stripped women of the right to work, education, travel, and even the simple freedom to visit parks. Women who once served their government are now treated as second-class citizens in their own homes.

Roya’s story mirrors the life experience of hundreds of women – the repercussion of a combination of dysfunctional regional politics across the borders and domestic religious extremist government intolerant of women’s rights.

Roya also recounts the story of her neighbor, Mohammad Yousuf, a 34-year-old construction worker, who was violently beaten by Iranian officials. He was thrown into a vehicle without receiving his wages for several months or allowing him to collect his belongings from the small room where he had been living.

Meanwhile, the pace of deportations of Afghan migrants from Iran has accelerated sharply in 2025, according to several domestic and international media outlets, including Iran Time, Afghanistan International, and Iran International, as well as international organizations.

The International Organization for Migration has reported that since early May 2025, a wave of forced mass deportations has taken place, primarily affecting families unlike previous trends, which mostly involved single men.

In the first five months of 2025, more than 457,100 people returned from Iran. Of these, about 72% were deported forcibly, while the rest returned voluntarily.

In one year, over 1.2 million people were deported from the Islam Qala border into Afghanistan.

The deportation campaign’s peak coincided with a rise in Iran-Israel tensions in June this year. More than 500 000 people were deported in just 16 days between June 24 and July 9. In total, by early July 2025, over 1.1 million people had been forcibly returned. Daily deportation rates of up to 30,000 people were reported.

Iran has employed harsh and often violent methods to expel Afghan migrants. These measures include workplace inspections, nighttime arrests, home raids, and the destruction of legal documents, even passports and valid visas. Numerous cases of violence, mistreatment, and deprivation of basic services such as healthcare and food have been reported.

International humanitarian and human rights organizations have described these actions as violations of the principle of non-refoulement and a serious threat to refugees and have called for an immediate halt to forced deportations and respect for legal rights.

Reports from the United Nations and human rights organizations indicate that Afghan returnees especially women, minorities, and those who worked with the previous government face a high risk of arbitrary detention and torture.

Iran has stated that it intends to deport a total of 4 million Afghan migrants, of which around 1.2 million have already been sent back.

Iranian officials have claimed that the deportations will be “dignified and gradual,” but evidence shows that pressure, threats, and arrests without consent have been widespread.

The health, social, and security consequences of these returns have placed a heavy burden on Afghanistan, overwhelming border crossings and reception camps. Many are enduring extreme heat of up to 50°C, without access to water or shelter.

According to a UN report published in July, 1.35 million Afghan refugees have been forced to leave Iran in recent months. Many were arrested and deported, while others returned voluntarily for fear of arbitrary arrest.

Excerpt:

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the UN, is holding public hearings on the request for an advisory opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change. Mr. Nawaf Salam, President of the court, is preciding. Credit: ICJ

By Umar Manzoor Shah
THE HAGUE & SRINAGAR, Dec 5 2024 (IPS)

Developing nations should not bear the brunt of the climate crisis caused by the industrialized world’s historical emissions. This was the resounding message as the Solomon Islands, India, and Iran, among others, presented their cases before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The submissions from three nations—Solomon Islands, India, and Iran—converged on one critical point: climate change is a global crisis requiring collective action. The Solomon Islands highlighted the intrinsic link between climate justice and human rights, urging urgent global efforts to protect vulnerable populations.

At the request of Vanuatu, the UN General Assembly asked the ICJ to issue an advisory opinion on the obligations of UN member states in preventing climate change and ensuring the protection of the environment for present and future generations. While its advisory opinion will not be enforceable, the court will advise on the legal consequences for member states that have caused significant harm, particularly to small island developing states. Hearings are ongoing at the court in The Hague.

India stressed the need for international cooperation based on the principles of equity and the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDRRC); however, it cautioned against any overreach that could compromise developmental priorities. Iran agreed, asserting that effective climate action depends on the fair treatment of developing nations and the removal of barriers to cooperation.

Solomon Islands: A Cry for Justice
Representatives Attorney General John Muria, Junior and counsel Harj Narulla from the Solomon Islands elaborated on the threats posed by rising sea levels, urging the ICJ to affirm the moral and legal obligations of industrialized nations to support vulnerable states.

“Our people face displacement, loss of livelihoods, and threats to their cultural heritage, yet we have contributed negligibly to global emissions,” said Muria. He called for the court to prioritize the principle of “climate justice,” asserting that nations historically responsible for greenhouse gas emissions bear a greater obligation to mitigate climate impacts and assist affected countries.

The Solomon Islands demanded enhanced financial and technological support for small island and least-developed states. They argued that this assistance is not an act of charity but a legal and ethical necessity rooted in international law.

India Pleads for Equity and Differentiated Responsibilities
India’s representative, Luther Rangreji, said that the complexities of climate change as a global challenge disproportionately affect developing nations. Rangreji highlighted the inherent inequities, noting that developing nations, like India, contribute less to emissions but bear the brunt of climate impacts.

“Developed countries, historically the largest contributors to climate change, have the resources to address it. Yet, they demand that developing nations limit their energy use. This is inequity at its core,” Rangreji said.

India’s submission reinforced the principle of CBDRRC as enshrined in international agreements such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Rangreji said that developing nations’ developmental priorities, including poverty eradication, must not be compromised in the name of climate action.

Legal Frameworks and Unmet Financial Obligations
Both India and the Solomon Islands highlighted the necessity for robust legal frameworks to address climate change. The Solomon Islands referenced previous ICJ cases, such as the Pulp Mills and Nuclear Weapons advisory opinions, to underline states’ obligations to prevent transboundary harm.

India, while advocating for the frameworks established by the UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol, and Paris Agreement, cautioned against imposing new obligations. Rangreji emphasized the significance of fulfilling current commitments, specifically the USD 100 billion annual climate finance pledge from developed nations, a promise that provided minimal benefits to developing countries.

“USD 100 billion pledged at the Copenhagen COP in 2009 by developed country parties and the doubling of the contribution to the adaptation fund have not yet been translated into any concrete actions,” Rangreji said.

“Climate finance is not charity; it is an obligation.”

He argued that developing nations can scale up climate actions only if adequately supported.

Furthermore, India provided data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to highlight disparities. Rangreji noted that developed nations, despite comprising only 16 percent of the global population, contributed 57 percent of cumulative emissions between 1850 and 2019. This historical responsibility, India argued, necessitates a differential approach to climate obligations.

Similarly, the Solomon Islands stated that small island nations bear a disproportionate burden of climate impacts. “Justice demands that those who benefited most from industrialization should bear the greater burden of rectifying its consequences,” stated their representative.

Iran Urges Equity and International Cooperation
Sayyid Ali Mousavi, representing the Islamic Republic of Iran, emphasized the principles of equity, CBDRRC, and international cooperation. Mousavi emphasized the significant challenges that developing nations like Iran, despite their limited emissions, face due to climate change.

Mousavi criticized unilateral coercive measures imposed by developed nations, arguing that these measures hinder the transfer of financial support and technology critical for climate mitigation in developing countries. He called on the ICJ to recognize such restrictions as violations of international cooperation principles.

“Developed countries must lead in reducing emissions and supporting developing nations through financial resources, technology transfer, and capacity building,” Mousavi stated, referencing the UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol, and Paris Agreement as foundational frameworks.

Iran’s representative stated that the CBDRRC principle is significant, as it differentiates obligations based on historical emissions and current capacities. Mousavi argued that developed nations’ leadership in addressing climate change should include financial contributions, technology transfer, and capacity-building efforts for developing countries.

“Without access to technology and resources, developing countries cannot effectively participate in global climate mitigation efforts,” Mousavi told the court.

He criticized trade policies such as the carbon border adjustment mechanism, describing them as disproportionate measures that unfairly burden developing economies.

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Excerpt:

The Iranian/Pakistani gas pipeline likely to top agenda for the visit of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to Pakistan. The visit takes place in an atmosphere of renewed tensions in the Middle East and a threat of US sanctions. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Apr 21 2024 (IPS)

When Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visits Pakistan this week (April 22, 2024), experts say the two issues topmost on his mind that he will want to discuss with his Pakistani counterpart, President Asif Ali Zardari, will be border security and the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline.

“This visit comes at the most troubling time for the region,” said Senator Mushaid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the Islamabad-based Pakistan-China Institute, pointing to the war in Gaza and the resurgence of terrorism from Afghanistan, which borders both Pakistan and Iran. Added tension comes after retaliatory strikes by Israel and Iran. A suspected Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate in Syria at the beginning of the month was followed by a retaliatory attack by Iran on Israel on April 13. US officials say Israel responded, despite a plea by UN Secretary-General António Guterres for restraint. 

The gas pipeline will be an uneasy conversation to hold for Zardari, but with the lives and livelihoods of over 240 million Pakistanis tied to this fuel, finding a solution is of paramount importance for the rulers.

Hassan Nourain, consul general of Iran.

Pakistan needs gas more for residential, commercial, and industrial purposes now than for power generation, said energy expert Vaqar Zakaria, heading the Islamabad-based Hagler Bailley Pakistan, the environment consultancy company.

“Domestic consumers will be the immediate beneficiaries from the Iranian gas supply,” agreed leading sustainable development practitioner Abid Suleri, heading the Islamabad-based Sustainable Development Policy Institute. He also said the country’s economy will flourish manifold if the industry receives a steady supply of this gas.

Zakaria had been part of the negotiations some 25 years ago, in the 1990s, when conversation on importing gas from Iran through an Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline first started due to the fact that “our gas reserves were fast depleting because we were using up this finite resource as if there was no tomorrow. People would leave the stove on for hours instead of turning off the gas,” Zakaria said, blaming the lackadaisical attitude of the people and the visionless government policy of selling it at “dirt cheap rates to keep the voters happy.”

There was a third partner, India, which decided to exit in 2009, “citing pricing and security issues, and after signing a civilian nuclear deal with the United States in 2008,” Zakaria recalled.

“Iran has huge energy reserves such as crude oil and natural gas and is ready to meet the needs of friendly and neighboring countries,” said Hassan Nourain, the consul general of Iran in Karachi, in an interview to IPS. In 2021, it was estimated that Iran had close to 1,203 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the second largest after Russia.

Pakistan and Iran continued negotiating, and on May 24, 2009, the project was signed by the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, and the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for the supply of gas ranging from 750 million ft3/d to around 1 billion ft3/d, for 25 years, from the South Pars gas field in Iran and delivered at the Pakistan-Iran border, near Gwadar.

The project, having a pipeline length of 1,150-km within Iran and 781-km within Pakistan, was to be constructed by each country in their respective territories. Iran completed its side of pipeline construction by 2012 and was ready to transport gas to Pakistan by 2015, the Nourain said. Pakistan did not start until 2013.

A year later, in 2014, Pakistan’s petroleum minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, told the Iranian government that due to sanctions on Iran, banks and contractors were unwilling to go ahead with the project on Pakistan’s side.

Natural Gas Consumption

Natural gas situation in Pakistan.

Ten years later, Pakistan is toying with the idea of building the pipeline again and in February of this year, Pakistan’s caretaker government approved the construction of the first 80-kilometer stretch from the Iranian border to Gwadar in Balochistan.

Donald Lu, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, immediately censured Pakistan for its plans to import gas from Iran, as it would expose Pakistan to US sanctions.

“If a neighbor is giving us gas at competitive rates, then it is our right [to buy it],” Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told the media earlier this month.

“The threat of these unilateral sanctions imposed on Iran by the US is illegal,” said Nourain. “In 2006, the United Nations Security Council demanded Iran halt its uranium enrichment programme and imposed certain sanctions but after monitoring it, in 2016, most sanctions were lifted for at least ten years.”

But, pointed out Arif Anwar, an international development practitioner: “The US is entitled to do what it wants with USAID and or any banks, businesses and insurance companies that operate in the US. The sanctions on Iran and on countries trading with it have been around for decades and may even have some UN legitimacy cover.”

Moreover, warned Anwar, given that Pakistan needs support from the International Monetary Fund, which would also require US support, “Pakistan needs to tread a careful path.”

“Pakistan needs gas,” said Lahore-based lawyer Ahmad Rafay Alam, terming the US warning “an unfair US policy.”

“The pipeline is pivotal for Pakistan’s energy independence,” pointed out Sayed. “It cuts costs as it is 40 percent less than imported LNG (liquefied natural gas),” he said.

“The US no longer has the moral authority to impose sanctions on either Iran or Pakistan if both countries exercise their sovereignty and agree to buy and sell anything to one another, not after its support of the Gaza genocide,” Alam said, echoing the sentiments of a vast majority of the South Asian nation of over 240 million that remain staunch supporters of Palestine.

Some analysts believe that the Pakistani population will benefit from a steady supply of gas. This photo was taken at the LPG filling station in Clifton, Karachi. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

But, said Anwar, the Pakistani government needs to reflect on how it arrived at this difficult predicament. “The sanctions against Iran were in place well before the contract was signed. Why didn’t the government insert suitable safeguards in the contract?” and then responded to his own question: “Because political expediency takes priority.”

He was referring to the quandary that Pakistan is in right now—if it does not build the pipeline, Iran can slap a fine of USD 18 billion. The deadline expires in September this year. And if it goes ahead, the US may place sanctions on Pakistan.

“The government of Pakistan asked Iran to extend the timeline in 2014 for ten years and that expires this year,” the Nourain pointed out.

Seeking Waivers

However, there is one option left for Pakistan. “We start with the Pakistani side of the pipeline, and in the meantime, we officially seek a waiver as well,” offers Sayed.

Former Law and Justice Minister Ahmad Irfan Aslam said taking the diplomatic route and seeking support from Saudi Arabia and the UAE may secure Pakistan a waiver, but warned: “In return, the US will have its own set of demands.” It will mean treading smartly and “constructing a package that works for both sides,” he told IPS.

But with the hostile US-Iran relations, Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute in Washington, said Washington may not be in a charitable mood with countries engaging commercially with Iran.

“It won’t be inclined to give Pakistan a sanctions waiver,” he said.

“Some countries are allowed to import gas and petroleum products from Iran; why can’t Pakistan get the waiver?” countered the Nourain.

China, Greece, Italy, South Korea, Japan, Turkey, Iraq, and Taiwan were given waivers by the US in the past for importing oil from Iran but not extended beyond April 2019, leading to a significant drop in Iran’s oil exports. However, China has continued to import Iranian crude oil and has made it clear that it is not willing to comply with US sanctions against Iran.

“The US applies a double standard,” said Nourain, adding: “When the US warns Pakistan of sanctions, it is not on the government, but on the people of Pakistan.”

“We should insist on the same rules for Pakistan as there are for others regarding importing energy from Iran,” Sayed said.

The US mission in the country told IPS that Pakistan has not requested a waiver.

But if Pakistan pursues the pipeline project, Zakaria pointed out that it may find it difficult to look for funders.

Kugelman believed Beijing could be wooed, but Moscow could also be an option. “With Russia enjoying friendly relations with Iran, if the former can help Pakistan on this, Pakistan-Russia relations will also gather strength,” he added.

Anwar had an alternative perspective. “If countries can engage their private sector for space travel, surely Pakistan can do it for a gas pipeline,” he said. “The agreement may be government-to-government but the private sector could manage construction and operation,” he said. “The government should not try everything itself, but rather create an environment for the private sector to invest and deliver goods and services.”

Or, pointed out Kugelman, “Pakistan may focus more attention on legal avenues that bring down the risk of facing a massive fine if it doesn’t end up building it.” He admitted that none of the options were good or easy. “It’s one more policy conundrum for a new government grappling with plenty of them.”

Imported Gas or Domestic Renewables?

Pakistan is getting LNG at USD 13/MMBTu through long-term contracts, while the spot market is currently trending around USD 8/MMBTu. So, Pakistan should negotiate firmly with Iran on pricing to buy it at a “considerably cheaper price for it to make sense for Pakistan to build the pipeline and transport the gas across Pakistan,” said Haneea Isaad, energy finance specialist at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

And with predictions of a “supply glut” from 2025 onwards, she pointed out, the price of LNG is expected to continue the downward trend.

Suleri had the same advice. “Securing affordable LNG, irrespective of its source, is Pakistan’s best bet.”

However, Isaad warned that an unprecedented hot or cold spell in Europe and East Asia may “lead to a hike in LNG prices right back in and should be factored in.”

Others ask that if Iran goes off the charts again, perhaps Pakistan can look to Central Asia for supplies of natural gas, to which the US should have no objections. Last year, Islamabad and Ashgabat signed a joint implementation plan to revive the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project, which aims to export up to 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year through a proposed approximately 1,800-kilometer pipeline from Turkmenistan to India. “TAPI will not take off until Afghanistan and India do not come on board, and frankly, in the current geopolitical mess that we’re in, this is not going to happen anytime soon,” said Suleri.

With the challenge of ensuring a steady supply of gas at an affordable price and the looming threats of sanctions and penalties from Iran, Suleri also reminded us that Pakistan’s pledge to shift to 60 percent renewable energy by 2030 was just six years away.

“We can switch to solar water heating in homes, like it is done in Kathmandu, instead of using natural gas, with backup electric water heating when the weather is cloudy,” suggested Zakaria. Electricity can also be generated in homes using solar panels, he added. “And instead of expanding the gas network to smaller towns at a high cost, LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) can be cross-subsidized with gas to provide cleaner fuel to houses at an affordable price.”

“Pakistan should look into investing in REs,” agreed Suleri, but pointed out that it may not be commercially viable to supply at a scale that meets the country’s requirements.

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In Iran, which has seen some of the highest COVID-19 infection and death rates in the world, a number of reporters are now facing jail after being detained earlier this month for challenging official statistics about the outbreak of the disease in the country. People in Rasht, Gilan Province, Iran, taking precautions to prevent infection by wearing masks in public. mojtaba mosayebzadeh

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Mar 20 2020 (IPS)

Growing intimidation and repression of journalists reporting on the coronavirus is threatening public health in some countries, press freedom monitors have warned.

Repressive regimes desperate to control the narrative around the disease’s spread have stepped up their harassment of journalists challenging official information on cases and their handling of the outbreak, they say.

And by cracking down on those trying to report accurately on the disease, these regimes are jeopardising the dissemination of essential facts the population may need to keep themselves safe, the groups argue.

“When the truth is repressed, everyone’s lives are put in danger, not just journalists,’” Robert Mahoney, deputy executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS.

Since the emergence of the disease at the end of last year in China and its subsequent transformation into a global pandemic, there have been growing concerns over the treatment of reporters covering virus outbreaks in some states.

In China, there have been reports of local journalists who criticised the government’s response to the virus being harassed by security forces. Some have even vanished, presumed taken by police and detained in an unknown location.

Meanwhile, last month, three Wall Street Journal reporters were expelled from China over an article about the impact of the virus on the Chinese economy. And just this week 13 journalists working for The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post had their credentials revoked by Chinese authorities.

Beijing said this followed United States authorities’ tightening of rules for Chinese media outlets operating in the country, but the editors of the three newspapers all condemned the decision. Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, said it was “especially irresponsible at a time when the world needs the free and open flow of credible information about the coronavirus pandemic”.

But it is not just China where journalists are facing problems for not toeing the government line.

In Iran, which has seen some of the highest COVID-19 infection and death rates in the world, a number of reporters are now facing jail after being detained earlier this month for challenging official statistics about the outbreak of the disease in the country.

Fardin Moustafai, the editor of a news channel on the Telegram instant messaging app, was this month formally charged with publishing figures contradicting official information about the epidemic’s progress, according to press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

It says two journalists were detained for questioning in Rasht, one of the Iranian cities worst hit by the disease, after publishing information about the situation in the city and the number of victims while four journalists were questioned over official information about the epidemic.

Reza Moisi, head of the Afghanistan-Iran Desk at RSF, told IPS that some journalists who had been brought in for questioning over their reporting will now stand trial and could face jail sentences.

He said though that the regime’s approach to such journalists would “do nothing to help combat the coronavirus epidemic, quite the contrary.”

“The repression of press freedom in Iran is systematic and therefore the control of information there is implacable. This repression targets journalists, of course, but also the public’s right to be informed. Researchers and journalists themselves have said this is one reason why situations, especially in a crisis, worsen.

“In the current crisis, the concealment of information and lack of complete and independent information has clearly put the population in danger,” he said.

The crackdown on journalists in Iran, and in other places such as China, is little surprise, said Mahoney.

“We have seen journalists face repression in places like China and Iran in the past. There are governments which want to control the narrative when something embarrassing, something they appear to be dealing badly with, or has got out of their control, like a pandemic, happens,” he said.

“The apparatus of censorship is already in place, this is just another time that it has been turned on to control the flow of information,” he added.

But concerns over the press’s ability to report accurately on the crisis are not confined solely to countries seen to have repressive regimes.

In the U.S., for instance, there has been criticism about the way the White House has informed about the disease. Critics say there has been a litany of scientifically baseless, false, misleading or confusing statements from President Donald Trump and other officials for months.

U.S. media also reported that Trump tried to have at least one health expert, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases, muzzled after she publicly contradicted the President’s statements and that the White House tried to gag health officials who wanted to warn elderly people to avoid air travel.

Officials have also openly attacked media for their reporting on COVID-19. At the end of last month, acting White House chief of staff David Mulvaney said the media was overplaying the dangers of the disease as a way to “bring down the president”.

Mahoney said that in situations where governments effectively bypass the press and speak directly to the people, or do not give them proper access to relevant officials and experts, incorrect or misleading information can end up being passed out to the population unchecked.

“Look at the US where the White House was telling people for weeks that the coronavirus was just like seasonal flu, and then suddenly it’s an emergency,” he said.

“The work journalists do in uncovering things, such as corruption or political scandals, is important but often does not have an immediate impact on normal people’s lives. But their work now has real-time consequences – it could be a matter of life and death. This is why journalists need to have, and be able to disseminate, correct information. If the truth is repressed, the correct information is not getting out,” he explained.

The importance of ensuring accurate information is relayed to not just the public but healthcare workers and scientists has recently been pointed out by health professionals.

Last month, dozens of public health scientists wrote in The Lancet medical journal of their concerns that misinformation about COVID-19 could be hindering efforts to contain the disease.

Previous studies, including on recent Ebola outbreaks on Africa, have shown that misinformation can worsen infectious disease outbreaks.

To this end, governments around the world have taken action to stop the spread of hoaxes and fake news about the disease. Some of this has been drastic, including criminalisation and long jail terms for people found guilty of posting or sharing misinformation about the virus and its spread.

This has led to fears that in some countries these measures are being used to silence critical voices, including journalists.

In China alone, as of February 21, China’s Ministry of Public Security had registered more than 5,500 cases of people “fabricating and deliberately disseminating false and harmful information”.

In Malaysia, for example, dozens of people, including a journalist, have been arrested for allegedly spreading false information about the virus via social media. There have been similar arrests across Asia, including in India, Thailand and Indonesia, in recent weeks.

Moiri told IPS that in Iran, more than 130 people have been arrested since the end of February for publishing false information. “Not all these people are journalists, but many of them are probably citizen journalists who have published something that contradicts official information,” he said.

Journalism experts have cast doubt over the effectiveness and motivations behind such measures.

Lynette Leonard, Associate Professor at the Journalism and Mass Communication Department of the American University in Bulgaria, told IPS: “Censorship is always a concern even with ‘fake news’. There is rarely a clear way of distinguishing the political goals of criminalising information dissemination from public health goals.

“Fake news, the intentional spread of false information to gain influence or power, is a real problem but the term has been manipulated so much that any legislation that is enacted quickly will likely lack the precise definitions needed to be useful in the fight [against it].”

With no end expected to the pandemic anytime soon, it is unclear what further threats journalists in some countries will face for challenging their governments’ handling of the crisis.

But in at least one country they are unlikely to be effective in completely suppressing critical reporting.

During a string of crises over the last year, including floods in March 2019, popular protests last November, the shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner in in February, and now the coronavirus outbreak, the regime has made increasing use of censorship and repression, particularly to control the population, according to Moisi.

“But the question is, will the Islamic Republic of Iran win this war on information? The country’s recent history shows that repression and imprisonment have not kept journalists quiet,” he said.

This week, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) complained that U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran is also stopping key assistance to flood victims and refugees there. Courtesy: Iranian Red Crescent Society

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 6 2019 (IPS)

Two major humanitarian groups have warned that United States sanctions on Iran are stopping cash flows for vital humanitarian work in the country, adding another complication to the growing rift between Washington and Tehran.

This week, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) complained that U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran is also stopping key assistance to flood victims and refugees there.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the NRC and a former United Nations official, warned that support to some 82,000 people in Iran could be cut off by mid-August because his group cannot get funds in to the Islamic Republic.

“We have now, for a full year, tried to find banks that are able and willing to transfer money from Western donors to support our work for Afghan refugees and disaster victims in Iran, but we are hitting brick walls on every side,” said Egeland.

“The sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Iran are so comprehensive that banks are unwilling to facilitate transfers for humanitarian work. If all bank channels are blocked, then so is the delivery of critical aid to vulnerable people.”

Meanwhile, the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has collected funds from a global flood appeal that it cannot transfer to its local outfit, the IRCS.

“Due to the U.S. sanctions, IRCS has not been able to receive three million euro cash contributions that the Red Cross Red Crescent Societies, governments and organisations have donated to Iran’s flood-hit people through the IFRC emergency appeal,” it said in a statement Sunday.

Last year, Trump pulled the U.S. out of a nuclear deal with Iran and key world powers that had been agreed in 2015, and then ramped up sanctions to pressure Tehran and to lock it out of the global economy.

Trump said the landmark accord negotiated by his predecessor did not go far enough in preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons or do anything to halt its support for foreign militias and ballistic missile development.

White House officials say the sanctions are aimed at Iran’s energy sector and regime hardliners, and do not apply to essential items like food, medicine and humanitarian relief, even while these may have been indirectly affected.

The United Kingdom, Germany and France have taken steps to resist Washington, including setting up a barter-based trade scheme called the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (Instex) to allow business between Iran and Europe that is beyond the U.S. financial system.

However, reports indicate that fears over U.S. sanctions have caused western financiers to shy away from Instex and just a trickle of money has flowed in from European firms, leaving Iran scrabbling for revenue. 

According to Egeland, Europe’s bankers are just too scared to move money to Iran despite carve-outs to the sanctions regime.  

“Norwegian, European and other banks are too afraid of U.S. sanctions to transfer the money that European governments have given for our vital aid work,” Egeland said in a statement that was released Monday.

“We will run out of cash in two weeks and will no longer be able to provide relief to poor Afghan families,” he added, referencing the more than three million Afghans who fled conflict, poverty and natural disasters at home to neighbouring Iran. 

The potential shutdown of aid operations in Iran is just the latest spill-over from an escalation of tensions between Washington and Tehran, amid widespread fears that it could spiral into a military showdown.

At the peak of the crisis, Trump called off air strikes against Iran at the last minute in June after the Islamic republic’s forces shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone in the Gulf with a surface-to-air missile.

Trump has said publicly several times that he is willing to hold talks with the Iranians even as he bashes the cleric-run government as incompetent, graft-ridden, dangerous and a threat to Israel, regional security and U.S. interests.

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jul 7 2017 (IPS)

Iran hawks suddenly have a new mantra: the Islamic Republic is the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, and the Trump administration should work to hasten the regime’s impending collapse.

It’s not clear why this comparison has surfaced so abruptly. Its proponents don’t cite any tangible or concrete evidence that the regime in Tehran is somehow on its last legs. But I’m guessing that months of internal policy debate on Iran has finally reached the top echelons in the policy-making chaos that is the White House these days. And the hawks, encouraged by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s rather offhand statement late last month that Washington favors “peaceful” regime change in Iran, appear to be trying to influence the internal debate by arguing that this is Trump’s opportunity to be Ronald Reagan. Indeed, this comparison is so ahistorical, so ungrounded in anything observable, that it can only be aimed at one person, someone notorious for a lack of curiosity and historical perspective, and a strong attraction to “fake news” that magnifies his ego and sense of destiny.

This new theme seemed to have come out of the blue Tuesday with the publication on the Wall Street Journal’s comics—I mean, op-ed—pages of a column entitled “Confront Iran the Reagan Way” by the South Africa-born, Canada-raised CEO of the Likudist Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), Mark Dubowitz. I wish I could publish the whole thing (which is behind a paywall), but a couple of quotes will have to suffice:

In the early 1980s, President Reagan shifted away from his predecessors’ containment strategy toward a new plan of rolling back Soviet expansionism. The cornerstone of his strategy was the recognition that the Soviet Union was an aggressive and revolutionary yet internally fragile regime that had to be defeated.

Reagan’s policy was outlined in 1983 in National Security Decision Directive 75, a comprehensive strategy that called for the use of all instruments of American overt and covert power. The plan included a massive defense buildup, economic warfare, support for anti-Soviet proxy forces and dissidents, and an all-out offensive against the regime’s ideological legitimacy.

Mr. Trump should call for a new version of NSDD-75 and go on offense against the Iranian regime.

…the American pressure campaign should seek to undermine Iran’s rulers by strengthening the pro-democracy forces that erupted in Iran in 2009, nearly toppling the regime. Target the regime’s soft underbelly: its massive corruption and human-rights abuses. Conventional wisdom assumes that Iran has a stable government with a public united behind President Hassan Rouhani’s vision of incremental reform. In reality, the gap between the ruled and their Islamist rulers is expanding.

….The administration should present Iran the choice between a new [nuclear] agreement and an unrelenting American pressure campaign while signaling that it is unilaterally prepared to cancel the existing deal if Tehran doesn’t play ball.

Only six years after Ronald Reagan adopted his pressure strategy, the Soviet bloc collapsed. Washington must intensify the pressure on the mullahs as Reagan did on the communists. Otherwise, a lethal nuclear Iran is less than a decade away.

Dubowitz, who clearly has allies inside the administration, asserts that parts of this strategy are already being implemented. “CIA Director Mike Pompeo is putting the agency on an aggressive footing against [the Iranian regime’s terrorist] global networks with the development of a more muscular covert action program.” Dubowitz predictably urges “massive economic sanctions,” calls for “working closely with allied Sunni governments,” and argues—rather dubiously—that “Europeans …may support a tougher Iran policy if it means Washington finally gets serious about Syria.” As for the alleged domestic weaknesses of the regime, let alone its similarity to the USSR in its decline, he offers no evidence whatever.

Takeyh Joins In

I thought this was a crazy kind of one-off by FDD, which, of course, houses former American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Freedom Scholar Michael Ledeen, who has been predicting the imminent demise of the Islamic Republic—and Supreme Leader Khamenei—for some 20 years or so. Ledeen also co-authored former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s bizarre 2016 autobiography and no doubt tutored the NSC’s 31-year-old intelligence director, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, whose conviction that the regime can be overthrown has been widely reported.

But then a friend brought to my attention a short piece posted Wednesday on The Washington Post’s website by Ray Takeyh, a Council on Foreign Relations Iran specialist who in recent years has cavorted with Dubowitz and FDD and similarly inclined Likudist groups, notably the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). Entitled “It’s Time to Prepare for Iran’s Political Collapse,” it also compared Iran today with the Soviet Union on the verge.

Today, the Islamic republic lumbers on as the Soviet Union did during its last years. It professes an ideology that convinces no one. It commands security services that proved unreliable in the 2009 rebellion, causing the regime to deploy the Basij militias because many commanders of the Revolutionary Guards refused to shoot the protesters.

…Today, the Islamic republic will not be able to manage a succession to the post of the supreme leader as its factions are too divided and its public too disaffected.…

The task of a judicious U.S. government today is to plan for the probable outbreak of another protest movement or the sudden passing of Khamenei that could destabilize the system to the point of collapse. How can we further sow discord in Iran’s vicious factional politics? How can the United States weaken the regime’s already unsteady security services? This will require not just draining the Islamic republic’s coffers but also finding ways to empower its domestic critics. The planning for all this must start today; once the crisis breaks out, it will be too late for America to be a player.

Once again, actual evidence for the regime’s fragility is not offered. Indeed, although he claims that the 2009 “Green Revolt” “forever delegitimized the system and severed the bonds between state and society,” he fails to note that May’s presidential election resulted in a landslide win for President Hassan Rouhani with 73 percent voter turnout, or that reformist candidates swept the local council polls in most major cities, or that the leader of the reformist movement, leaders of the Green Movement, and prominent political prisoners encouraged participation. Nor does he address the question of whether Washington’s intervention in Iran’s internal politics—in whatever form—will actually help or harm efforts by the regime’s “domestic critics” to promote reform, particularly in light of the recent disclosures of the extent and persistence of U.S. intervention in the events leading up to and including the 1953 coup that ousted the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadeq. Or whether last month’s terrorist attack by ISIS in Tehran might have strengthened the relationship between society and state.

This is not to deny that the regime is both oppressive and highly factionalized, but why is it suddenly so vulnerable—so much like the Soviet Union of the late 1980s—compared to what it was five or ten or 20 or 25 years ago? Only because Khamenei is likely to pass from the scene sooner rather than later? That seems like a weak reed on which to base a policy as fraught as what is being proposed.

Again, I’m not sure that this Iran=USSR-at-death’s-door meme is aimed so much at the public, or even the foreign-policy elite, as it is toward the fever swamps of a White House run by the likes of Steve Bannon or Stephen Miller or Cohen-Watnick. But here’s why a little more research into the new equation really got my attention.

And Also Lieberman

Dubowitz’s article, it turns out, was not the first recent reference. The most direct recent reference was offered by none other than former Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who incidentally is one of three members of FDD’s “Leadership Council,” in a speech before none other than the annual conference of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and its cult leader, Maryam Rajavi, outside Paris July 1. Seemingly anticipating Takeyh (plus the Rajavi reference), Lieberman declared:

Some things have changed inside Iran, and that’s at the level of the people. You can never suppress a people, you can never enslave a people forever. The people of Iran inside Iran have shown the courage to rise up… To just talk about that, to just talk about that, to hold Madam Rajavi’s picture up in public places, is a sign of the unrest of the people and the growing confidence of the people that change is near. The same is true of the remarkable public disagreements between the various leaders of the country…It is time for America and hopefully some of our allies in Europe to give whatever support we can to those who are fighting for freedom within Iran.

He then went on, “Long before the Berlin Wall collapsed, long before the Soviet Union fell, the United States was supporting resistance movements within the former Soviet Union”—an apparent reference, albeit not an entirely clear one — to the Reagan Doctrine and its purported role in provoking the Communist collapse.

And, in a passage that no doubt expressed what at least Dubowitz and his allies think but can’t say publicly at this point:

The Arab nations are energized under the leadership of King Salman and Crown Prince [Mohammed] bin Salman. [Saudi Prince (and former intelligence chief) Turki Al Faisal Al Saudi addressed the “Free Iran Gathering” just before Lieberman.] They’re more active diplomatically and militarily as part of a resistance against the regime in Iran than we’ve ever seen before. And of course for a long time the state of Israel, because its very existence is threatened by the regime in Iran, has wanted to help change that regime. So you have coming together now a mighty coalition of forces: America, the Arab world, and Israel joining with the Resistance, and that should give us hope that we can make that [regime] change.

Putting aside the question of just how popular or unpopular Madam Rajavi is in Iran for a second, there are a number of truly remarkable things about Lieberman’s speech. How much will it help “the resistance” in Iran to be seen as supported by the Saudis and the “Arab nations?” And how will it help to boast about Israel’s assistance when most Iranians already appear to believe that the Islamic State is a creation of the Saudis and/or Israel? Is there any “mighty coalition” more likely to permanently alienate the vast majority of Iranians? Is it possible that the MEK has become an IRGC counter-intelligence operation? It’s very clear indeed that the group is lobbying heavily—and spending lavishly—to become the administration’s chosen instrument for achieving regime change. But advertising Saudi and Israeli support for the enterprise will likely make that goal more elusive. The MEK’s reputation in Iran was bad enough, but this is really over the top.

Lieberman no doubt received ample compensation for saying what he said. Other former prominent US officials, including John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, and Gen. Jack Keane—all of whom probably have closer ties than Lieberman to the White House – also spoke at the MEK event, which, incidentally, makes me think that the White House is indeed seriously considering supporting the group as at least one part of its Iran policy. I suspect we’ll find out soon enough.

This piece was originally published in Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy Lobelog.com

Journalist and asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani is detained indefinitely by the Australian government on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island. Credit: Aref Heidari.

By Andy Hazel
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 29 2016 (IPS)

Despite being locked up in an Australian detention centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani has continued reporting – gaining bylines and media attention around the world.

Journalism is the reason Boochani was forced to flee his home country of Iran, and – like the other 900 men detained indefinitely on Manus Island – seek refuge in Australia.

“When the Australian government exiled me to Manus Island I found out that they are basing their policy on secrecy and dishonesty,” Boochani told IPS.

“In my first days here I started to work to send out the voice of people in Manus. Why did I start? Because the Australian government’s policy of indefinite detention is against my principles and values, and against global human values.”

Boochani worked as a freelance writer in Iran and founded the magazine Werya, devoted to exploring Kurdish politics, culture and history. In February 2013 the offices of Werya were raided by the paramilitary agency the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also known as Sepah, classified by the US government as a terrorist organisation.

Boochani was in a different city when 11 of his colleagues were arrested. The story he wrote about the raid on the website Iranian Reporters quickly went global and put him in the government’s sights and he fled.

Boochani spent his first two years in detention writing and publishing articles under a fake name, for fear of losing the mobile phone that has been his lifeline since arriving on Manus Island.

“We were not allowed to have phones until April this year,” he explains. “The guards twice searched my room looking for my phone. After two years of sending out my work in this way I felt that I had become part of Australian society and with the support of (international organisations) PEN International and Reporters Without Borders, I started to use my real name. I would never say that I’m not scared, but I say that fear is not powerful enough to stop me or prevent me from working on my mission. It’s my duty to document all of what happens here.”

What has been happening on Manus Island has attracted global condemnation. In May the UN Human Rights Council condemned the detention centre and Papua New Guinea affirmed that it would be shut down. Since then, the Australian government have declared the centre ‘open’, meaning that inmates can come and go freely though they cannot leave the island. Boochani and other detainees have spoken of being encouraged to accept residency in Papua New Guinea, despite attacks on detainees from both local residents and police forces. Returning to Iran, Boochani says, is not an option.

“The political situation in Iran does not change especially for Kurdish people. There are about 20 journalists still in prison there. In November, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution against the Iranian regime for violating human rights. Last year they hanged more than 1,000 people. How can I go back?”

Since arriving in Manus Island, Boochani has written for Australian and international newspapers and radio programs and co-directed the feature length documentary about life on Manus Island Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time. He has continued to write articles about Kurdish culture and politics for Kurdish media, published poetry and essays, contributed to two forthcoming books and completed his first novel, due in mid-2017.

One of the greatest challenges facing Boochani is what he calls “the refugee concept”, the willingness of Australian and international media to use his insight and words but to cast him as a “broken man” or a refugee.

“This is a big form of censorship,” he says. “I know that I am a refugee but I’m a journalist and writer too. I have been denied my identity as a journalist because of this refugee concept and most of the media don’t care about that. When I have found a subject for a story and provided information and documents to other journalists sometimes they have ignored me, or other times they published a story on the basis of my information but denied my identity by referring to me only as a refugee. I’m doing the same job as other journalists in Australia or anywhere else, but I am always called a refugee.”

Overcoming the international concept of Australia as a peaceful, law-abiding nation with a relaxed attitude to life also presents a difficulty to Boochani as a journalist. “We are being tortured by a western country and the media and human rights organisations find it hard to believe that a country like Australia is implementing policies that are the same in many ways as Iran or Saudi Arabia,” he says. “I am a prisoner like the others here. It’s hard to work in this situation. I have to endure prison and torture and at the same time work as a journalist or human rights defender.”

The Manus Island detention centre holds around 900 men, most of whom are refugees intercepted en route to Australia having fled conflicts in countries such as Sudan or Syria, or persecution as is the case with Rohingyas from Myanmar.

The detention centre is a key part of a multi-billion-dollar bilateral agreement between the Papua New Guinean and Australian governments. Condemnation of Australia’s offshore detention of asylum seekers has come from several branches of the United Nations including the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Committee Against Torture, the High Commissioner for Refugees, the Special Rapporteur on torture and the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.

While identifying as a journalist and writer, Boochani is not motivated by profit.

“If I do work for money, I will lose my way. The important thing is to send out a voice from Manus and let people know the reality.”

“I am a journalist, I am a writer, I am a prisoner. The history of this prison is written in my hand … I am here with only a phone and my tongue and say:  I am more than you know. The Australian government made a mistake exiling a journalist to this prison and keeping him as hostage.  Writing is my mission, my work, it is me.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article said that the UN Human Rights Council had declared Manus Island Detention Centre illegal. The council condemned the centre, and in response the PNG government declared it illegal.

By Eli Clifton and Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Nov 10 2016 (IPS)

Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton threatens to mainstream the Islamophobia, misogyny, racism, and anti-Semitism that swirled around his candidacy and supporters. On the foreign policy front his comments were no less shocking. But the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump hasn’t discussed in any depth beyond his promise at AIPAC’s March conference that his “number-one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran,” may stand as an early litmus test for his relationship with NATO allies.

Although Republican opponents of the deal frequently talked about unilaterally reneging on the agreement, they were never faced with the real likelihood of a president who might go along with the proposal or, possibly, even take the lead in such an action.

A key argument for the deal, which will no doubt be made to Trump’s foreign policy team as well as members of the House and Senate, is that reneging on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will do far greater damage than just a deterioration in relations with Iran, a possible resumption of Iran’s production and buildup of medium-enriched uranium, and a setback in potential areas of cooperation with Iran particularly with respect to the war on the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq as well as efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

Breaking the deal could also be a fundamental breach of trust between the U.S. and the other P5+1 countries—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Iran signed the agreement with these countries to curtail its enrichment activity in exchange for sanctions relief that largely came in the form of trade deals with European countries and access to European banking systems.

He has questioned whether the U.S. should continue to offer security guarantees for countries that had not “fulfilled their obligation to U.S.” and threatened to withdraw U.S. military forces from European and Asian NATO partners if those allies fail to pay more for Washington’s protection
Maintaining good relations and pursuing confidence-building measures with NATO allies have been bipartisan policies since NATO’s founding in 1949. But Trump has already hinted that he’s not averse to shoving historical allies in Europe and Asia to the curb.

He has questioned whether the U.S. should continue to offer security guarantees for countries that had not “fulfilled their obligation to U.S.” and threatened to withdraw U.S. military forces from European and Asian NATO partners if those allies fail to pay more for Washington’s protection.

Those comments, and his questioning of whether the U.S. should seek better relations with Russia, have already given NATO’s leadership reason for concern. Following Trump’s victory, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg offered congratulations but also a reminder of U.S. treaty obligations. “NATO’s security guarantee is a treaty commitment,” said Stoltenberg. “All allies have made a solemn commitment to defend each other. This is something absolutely unconditioned.”

Indeed, if Trump is seeking to extricate the U.S. from NATO, much of that discussion might occur behind closed doors during negotiations over how much each NATO member contributes in financial and military resources.

But the JCPOA offers an early, very public test of where the Trump administration’s intentions may lie vis-à-vis Washington’s transatlantic allies.

There is, no doubt, pressure on Trump to consider a unilateral breaching of the nuclear agreement. His largest single campaign donor, casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, is adamantly opposed to the deal. Adelson funded many of the groups and politicians who sought to derail negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran and proposed launching a nuclear attack on Iran as a negotiating tactic. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is touted as a leading candidate for secretary of state and whose candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination during the 2012 primary campaign was sustained virtually singlehandedly by Adelson’s $15 million in contributions, has called for the JCPOA to be torn up on inauguration day. Another possible pick for the job, John Bolton, has repeatedly called for the agreement to be scrapped.

And the Republican Party, which has benefited greatly from Adelson’s largesse, has repeatedly sought to introduce unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic since it was reached in 2015. Although Trump may not himself be inclined to immediately abrogate (or “renegotiate”) the six-party accord, there will certainly be a move by Republican lawmakers to do so in which case he will have to decide whether to go along or push back.

On January 20, foreign policy analysts in the U.S. and NATO allies in Europe and Asia will be watching closely to see how a newly inaugurated President Trump approaches his predecessor’s signature foreign policy achievement, a deal brokered with the closest U.S. allies and biggest trading partners.

It will be a key test for how the Trump administration plans to work alongside or against members of the treaty organization, the most important and successful pillar of U.S. foreign policy in the post-World War II era. And, of course, if a Trump administration tears up the deal, other key Washington allies such as Japan and South Korea—as well as potential allies that have developed renewed commercial ties with Iran, notably India—are sure to take note.

Jim Lobe served for some 30 years as the Washington DC bureau chief for Inter Press Service and is best known for his coverage of U.S. foreign policy and the influence of the neoconservative movement.

This piece was originally published in Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy Lobelog.com

By Johan Galtung
OSLO, Jan 12 2016 (IPS)

Baher Kamal, in … And All of a Sudden Syria!: “The “big five,” the United Nations veto powers, have just agreed United Nations Resolution 2254 of 18-12-2015, time to end the Syrian five-year long human tragedy; they waited until 300,000 innocent civilians were killed and 4.5 million humans lost as refugees and homeless at home, hundreds of field testing of state-of-the-art drones made, and daily U.S., British, French and Russian bombing carried out.” No Chinese bombing.

Johan Galtung

One term in the resolution, road map, already spells failure. There is another reason: missing issues. But something can be done. Roads twist, turn and may be far from straight. Traveling a road is a linear, one step or mile-stone after another, process, by the map. The West loves linearity; as causal chains, (falling dominoes,) from a root cause; as deductive chains from axioms; as ranks from high to low.

However, is that not how the world is, moving in time, causes-effects, axioms-consequences, rank, power, over others? Are roads not rather useful? They are. Is there an alternative to a road map? There is.

One step after the other in time is diachronic. An alternative would be synchronic; at the same time. Let us call it a cake map.

A cake is served, cut in slices, each party takes a slice, waits till all are served to start together. By the road map, first come first served first to eat. Or, highest rank eats first, down the line. The cake map stands for togetherness, simultaneity, shared experience. Not necessarily good: it was also used by the West to carve up Africa.

The cake is an issue; the slices are aspects. How it is defined, how it is cut, who are invited is essential. Basic to the cake map is equality among parties and slices: all get theirs at the same time.

For the Syria issue the Resolution lists the aspects on the road:
• 25 January 2016 (in two weeks) as the target date to begin talks;
• immediately all parties stop attacking civilians;
• within one month: options for a ceasefire monitoring mechanism;
• within 6 months “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance”;
• within 18 months “free and fair elections–by the new constitution”.

Kamal mentions many actors and crucial problems with this agenda. The focus here is on the linearity: ceasefire-governance-constitution-free and fair elections. Why stop attacking civilians who can become or are combatants? Why should actors agree to a ceasefire before their rights are guaranteed in a constitution? Why non-sectarian “governance” in a sectarian country? Each step presupposes the next. The “peace process” can be blocked, at any point, by any one party. Like a road.

Proposal: On 25 January, appoint four representative commissions– one for each of the four aspects–with mechanisms of dialogue for all six pairs and plenaries. Then report on all aspects on the agenda.

Back to the cake, “Syria.” Does “Syria” exist? Once much of the Middle East, the name was used for the French “mandate” carved out of the vast Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1916 when ended by Sykes-Picot. A commission on the Ottoman period, exploring millets for minorities, is indispensable. So is a commission on the Sykes-Picot trauma, also with Turkey as a member; hopefully with UK-France-Russia apologizing.

We have seen it before. The US was a major party to the conflict and the UN conference manager 2013-14. There are now more parties: Jordan has identified up to 160 terrorist groups (Kamal), probably not counting state terrorists. And today the UN is the conference manager.

This column at the time (27 Jan 2014) identified seven Syria conflicts:
1 Minority/majority, democracy/dictatorship, Assad/not Assad in Syria;
2 Sunni/Shia all over, also with “Sunni Islamic State Iraq-Syria ISIS”;
3 Syrians/minorities “like Turks and Kurds, Maronites and Christians”;
4 Syria/”those who, like USA and Israel, prefer Syria fragmented”;
5 Syria/Turkey with “neo-Ottoman expansionist policies”;
6 USA-UK-France/Russia-China “determined to avoid another Libya”;
7 Violent perpetrators of all kinds/killed-bereaved-potential victims.

All seven are still there. They have become more violent, like the second, between Saudi Arabia–also financing IS–and Iran. But the resolution focuses on the first and the last. All parties mentioned should be invited or at least consulted publicly. Last time Iran was excluded, defined as the bad one; this time IS(IS), today called Daesh.

A process excluding major process parties is doomed in advance.

However, imagine that the cake is defined as, “the conflict formation in and around Syria”; that the slices are the seven conflicts indicated with one commission for each; that around the table are the actors mentioned, some grouped together. The Resolution aspects are on their agendas; with commissions on the Ottoman Empire and Sykes-Picot.

What can we expect, what can we reasonably hope for, as visions?

“Mandate”, “colony”: there is some reality to Syria (and to Iraq). The borders are hopeless and should be respected, but not for a unitary state. For something looser, a (con)federation. Basic building-blocs would be provinces from Ottoman times, millets for smaller minorities, and cantons for the strip of Kurds along the Turkish border. The constitution could define a national assembly with two chambers: one territorial for the provinces, and one non-territorial for nations and faiths with some cultural veto in matters concerning themselves.

There is also the Swiss model with the assembly being based on territorially defined cantons, and the cabinet on nations-faiths: of 7 members 3 speak German, 1 Rheto-roman, 2 French and 1 Italian (4 Protestant and 3 Catholic?). Not impossible for Syria. With the Kurds as some kind of Liechtenstein (that is where con-federation enters).

In addition to parallel NGO fora. There is much to articulate.

Assad or not? If he is excluded as punishment for violence, there are many to be excluded. A conference only for victims, and China?

Better see it as human tragedy-stupidity, and build something new.

The violent parties will not get what they want. The victims can be accommodated peacefully in this looser Syria. Moreover, the perpetrators should fund reconstruction proportionate to the violence they wrought in the past four years. As quickly as humanly possible.

Syria offered a poor choice between a minority dictatorship with tolerance and a majority dictatorship–democracy–without. Violence flourished, attracting old suspects for proxy wars. “Bomb Syria” was the panacea, after “bomb Libya”. What a shame. Bring it to an end.

*Johan Galtung’s editorial originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 11 January 2016: TRANSCEND Media Service – TMS: Syria (Minding the Minds II)

Excerpt:

The “big five” – i.e., the most military powerful states on earth (US, UK, France, Russia and China) have just agreed that it would be about time to end the Syrian five-year long human tragedy.

Baher Kamal

Before reaching such a conclusion, they waited until 300,000 innocent civilians were killed; tons of bullets shot; 4.5 million humans lost as refugees or homeless at home; hundreds of field testing of state-of-the-art drones made, and daily US, British, French and Russian bombing carried out.

So, with these statistics in hand, they on 18 December 2015 adopted United Nations Resolution 2254 (2015) endorsing a “road map” for peace process in Syria, and even setting a timetable for UN-facilitated talks between the Bashar al Assad regime and “opposition” groups.

They also set the outlines of a “nationwide ceasefire to begin as soon as the parties concerned had taken initial steps towards a political transition.”

“The Syrian people will decide the future of Syria,” the Resolution states.

The UN Security Council also requested that the UN Secretary-General convenes representatives of the Syrian Government and opposition to engage in formal negotiations on a political transition process “on an urgent basis”, with a target of early January for the initiation of talks.

“Free and Fair Elections”

The “big five” then expressed support for a Syrian-led political process facilitated by the United Nations which would establish “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance” within six months and set a schedule and process for the drafting of a new constitution.

Furthermore, the Security Council expressed support for “free and fair elections, pursuant to the new constitution, to be held within 18 months and administered under United Nations supervision,” to the “highest international standards” of transparency and accountability, with all Syrians — including members of the diaspora – eligible to participate.

And they requested that the UN Secretary-General report back on “options” for a ceasefire monitoring, verification and reporting mechanism that it could support within one month. They of course also demanded that “all parties immediately cease attacks against civilians.”

The road-map says that within six months, the process should establish a “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance,” with UN-supervised “free and fair elections” to be held within 18 months.

The whole thing moved so rapidly that the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan di Mestura, has already set the 25 January 2016 as the target date to begin talks between the parties.

All That Is Fine, But…

… But the resolution gives no specific answer to a number of key questions:

To start with, the Syrian National Coalition (SCN) has dismissed the whole idea as “unrealistic,” Deutsch Welle reported. The Coalition objects to a fact that the Security Council’s Resolution carefully “omits”: what future President Assad has.

According to Deutsch Welle, the SNC expressed annoyance that the UN language talked of ISIS terrorism but not of the “terrorism” of the Assad government. Russia has called for the transition to leave the question of governance up to the Syrians, while France and at times the US have demanded Assad’s immediate ousting as a condition of the deal.

If so, which “opposition” should sit to talk with the Syrian regime? While the US, UK and France support what they decided to consider as “rebel” or “opposition” groups, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia would have different criteria.

In this regard, it was decided to work out a mechanism for establishing which rebel groups in Syria will be eligible to take part in the peace process. For this purpose, Jordan, which was tasked with listing terrorist organisations in Syria, has reportedly presented a document that includes up to 160 extremist groups.

Even though, would President Bashar al-Assad be able to run for office in new elections?

How will the UN monitor the requested ceasefires, and control so many different sides involved in the armed fighting, including the US, UK, France and Russia? And what if the ceasefires do not work? More Syrian civilians to die, flee, migrate? How to control DAESH and so many diverse terrorist groups operating there? What to do with those millions of Syrian refugees, scattered in the region, mainly in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, while hundreds of thousands of them are being “trafficked” by organised crime bands, reportedly including DAESH itself?

And last but not least, which Syria will exist at the end of the 18 months which has been fixed as a target to hold free, fair elections?

Will it be the current Syria or a new, refurbished one after cutting part of it to establish a brand new “Sunni-stan” that US neo-con, neo-liberal, Republican “hawk” and former George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has recently recommended to create on the territories to be “liberated” from DAESH in Syria and Iraq?

Too many key questions without and clear answers. And too may gaps for this road-map to gain credibility. Unless the idea is to implement a Libyan-style solution, that’s for another Western-led military coalition, under NATO’s umbrella, to attack Syria, let Assad be murdered, and leave the people to their own fate. Exactly what happened in Libya in 2011.

(End)

Queuing up to vote in Cairo. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS.

By Derek Davison
WASHINGTON, Dec 14 2015 (IPS)

A new public opinion survey undertaken in six Arab countries, Iran, and Turkey finds that people are more likely to blame “corrupt, repressive, and unrepresentative governments” and “religious figures and groups promoting extremist ideas and/or incorrect religious interpretations” for the rise of violent groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State than they are to blame “anger at the United States.”

These findings are the result of a series of face-to-face polls conducted by Zogby Research Services on a commission from the Sir Bani Yas Forum in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and released at a Middle East Institute-sponsored event on Wednesday. In September, ZRS interviewed a total of 7,400 adults across eight countries—Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE—on a broad range of topics, including the ongoing conflicts in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen; the Israel-Palestine situation; the Iranian nuclear deal; and the threat of religious extremism. Respondents in Iran and Iraq were also asked a separate series of questions about internal affairs in those countries.

the two most commonly cited factors in the development of religious extremism were “corrupt governments” and “extremist and/or incorrect religious ideas"
With respect to Israel-Palestine, the poll found that people in five of the six surveyed Arab nations are less likely to support a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace deal now than they were back in 2009, when Zogby International’s “Six-Nation Arab Opinion Poll” asked a similar question of respondents in those five countries. In Egypt, which has seen the sharpest decline in support for a peace deal, almost two-thirds of respondents said that they would oppose a peace deal “even if the Israelis agree to return all of the territories and agree to resolve the refugee issue,” compared with only 8% who answered similarly in the 2009 survey. This represents a potential risk for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has worked to improve Egyptian-Israeli relations despite the apparent feelings of most of the Egyptian public. Similar, albeit smaller, shifts were seen in Jordan (where 24% oppose a deal today, compared with 13% in 2009), Lebanon (30% vs. 18%), Saudi Arabia (36% vs. 18%), and the UAE (19% vs. 8%). Iraq was not part of the 2009 survey, but 59% of respondents in this survey said that they would also oppose a comprehensive peace deal with Israel.

On Iran and the P5+1 nuclear deal, the poll reveals several divergences in terms of the way Arabs and Iranians approach the deal’s terms. Majorities in Egypt (63%), Jordan (53%), Saudi Arabia (62%), and the UAE (91%) said that the deal would be “only good for Iran, but bad for the Arab states,” and that they were “not confident” that the deal will keep Iran from developing a “nuclear weapons program.” Large majorities in Egypt (90%) and Saudi Arabia (66%) predicted that any additional revenue that Iran sees as a result of sanctions relief would primarily go to “support its military and political interference in regional affairs.”

Inside Iran, on the other hand, 80% of respondents said that they “supported” the deal, but 68% agreed that it was a “bad idea” for the Iranian government to accept limits on its nuclear program—or, as ZRS managing director John Zogby put it at the poll’s roll-out event, “they’re for the deal, but they don’t like it.” On the question of whether Iran should have nuclear weapons, roughly 68% of Iranians said that it should, either because Iran “is a major nation” or because “as long as other countries have nuclear weapons, we need them also.” However, the percentage of Iranians saying that their country should have nuclear weapons “because it is a major nation” declined from 49% in 2014 to only 20% this year, and the percentage of Iranians who said that “nuclear weapons are always wrong and so no country, including my own, should have them” rose from 14% last year to 32% this year.

Meanwhile, in contrast with Arab fears about Iranian expansionism, Iranians themselves seem to be growing increasingly isolationist. Just 19% of Iranian respondents agreed with the statement “my country should be the dominant player in the Gulf region,” while a plurality, 44%, agreed with the statement “my country should not be involved in the Gulf region; it should focus on internal matters.” And whereas majorities of Iranians agreed that Iran should be involved in Syria (73%), Lebanon (72%), Iraq (64%), and Bahrain (57%), those numbers each declined sharply (by 10% or more) from last year, and a majority of Iranians (57%) now oppose Iran’s involvement in Yemen (which had 62% support last year). For Iranians, “the first priority is always economic, followed by greater political freedom,” the Atlantic Council’s Barbara Slavin pointed out, “there is not and has never been a huge enthusiasm for intervention in what Iranians call ‘Arab causes.’”

Still, it was in the area of extremism and its causes where the poll generated its most interesting findings. When asked to rate eight factors on a 1-5 scale (where 1 means “very important factor”) in terms of their importance as a driver of religious extremism, respondents in all eight countries gave “anger at the U.S.” the fewest number of ones and twos, although that factor was still rated as important by a majority of respondents in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Turkey. Zogby argued that this was a sign that Barack Obama’s attempt to leave a “softer U.S. footprint in the region pays off.” However, when asked whether the United States is playing a positive or negative role in combating extremist sectarian violence, large majorities in each country said that the U.S. was playing a negative role.

Instead, the two most commonly cited factors in the development of religious extremism were “corrupt governments” and “extremist and/or incorrect religious ideas.” Other commonly cited factors, like “lack of education,” “poverty,” and “youth alienation” also speak to a consistent sense that extremism is an internal problem stemming from poor governance. Majorities in each of the eight countries except Iran agreed that “countering the messages and ideas promoted by recruiters for extremist groups” and “changing the political and social realities that cause young people to be attracted to extremist ideals” were “most important” in terms of defeating violent extremist groups like the Islamic State. Within Iraq, majorities from all three of the country’s major ethno-religious groups (Sunni Arabs, Shi’a Arabs, and Kurds) agreed that “forming a more inclusive, representative government” is the best way to resolve the conflict there, but even larger majorities from each group said that they were “not confident” that such a government will be formed within the next five years.

As with any public opinion poll, these results must be considered with the caveat that respondents may have different ideas about the concepts in question. One respondent in one country may define “corrupt government” or “extreme religious ideas” much differently than another respondent in another country. Theoretical public support for a “Joint Arab Force,” which the poll showed was consistent across all six Arab countries surveyed, could break down very quickly if such a force were really to be formed and then deployed in an actual conflict zone. Middle East Institute scholar Hassan Mneimneh noted that “even when elements seem to align, we’re not necessarily in alignment.”

This piece was originally published in Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy Lobelog.com

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Sep 9 2015 (IPS)

Iran has had a nuclear programme since 1959 when the United States gave a small reactor to Tehran University as part of the “Atoms for Peace” programme during Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s reign.  When the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was introduced in 1968 and entered into force in 1970, Iran was one of the first signatories of that Treaty.

Farhang Jahanpour

The Shah had made extensive plans for using nuclear energy in order to free Iran’s oil deposits for export and also in order for use in petrochemical industries to receive more revenue. The Shah had planned to build 22 nuclear reactors to generate 23 million megawatts of electric power.  By 1977, the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) had more than 1,500 highly paid employees, with a budget of 1.3 billion dollars, making it the second biggest public economic institution in the country.

In 1975, the Gerald Ford administration in the United States expressed support for the Shah’s plan to develop a full-fledged nuclear power programme, including the construction of 23 nuclear power reactors.

President Gerald Ford has been reported as having “signed a directive in 1976 offering Tehran the chance to buy and operate a U.S.-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. The deal was for a complete ‘nuclear fuel cycle’.”“Iran has had a nuclear programme since 1959 when the United States gave a small reactor to Tehran University as part of the “Atoms for Peace” programme during Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s reign”

The Shah donated 20 million dollars to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to train Iranian nuclear experts, many of whom are still working for Iran’s Nuclear Energy Organisation, including the current head of the organisation and one of the chief negotiators, Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi.  In 1975, Iran also paid 1.18 billion dollars to buy 10 percent of Eurodif, a French company that produces enriched uranium. In return, Iran was supposed to receive enriched uranium for its reactors, a pledge that the French government reneged on after the Iranian revolution.

In 1975, Germany’s Kraftwerk Union AG started the construction of two reactors in Bushehr at an estimated cost of 3-6 billion dollars. Kraftwerk Union stopped work on the Bushehr reactors after the start of the Iranian revolution, with one reactor 50 percent complete, and the other 85 percent complete. The United States also cut off the supply of highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel for the Tehran nuclear reactor.

After the revolution, the Islamic Republic initially stopped all work on the nuclear programme. However, in 1981, Iranian officials concluded that after having spent billions of dollars on their programme it would be foolish to dismantle it. So, they turned to the companies that had
signed agreements with Iran to complete their work. Nevertheless, as the result of political pressure by the U.S. government, all of them declined. Iran also turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for help to no avail.

In the late 1980s, a consortium of companies from Argentina, Germany and Spain submitted a proposal to Iran to complete the Bushehr-1 reactor, but pressure by the United States stopped the deal. In 1990, U.S. pressure also stopped Spain’s National Institute of Industry and Nuclear Equipment from completing the Bushehr project.  Later on, Iran set up a bilateral cooperation on fuel cycle-related issues with China but, under pressure from the West, China also discontinued its assistance.

Therefore, it was no secret to the West that Iran was trying to revive its nuclear programme.

Having failed to achieve results through formal and open channels, Iranian officials turned to clandestine sources, and using their own domestic capabilities.  A major mistake was to receive assistance from A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme.  In 1992, Iran invited IAEA inspectors to visit all the sites and facilities they asked. Director General Hans Blix reported that all activities observed were consistent with the peaceful use of atomic energy.

On Feb. 9, 2003, Iran’s programme and efforts to build sophisticated facilities at Natanz were revealed allegedly by Iranian dissident group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political wing of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation (MKO), for years regarded as a terrorist organisation by the West. It has been strongly suggested that MKO had received its information from Israeli intelligence sources.

President Mohammad Khatami announced the existence of the Natanz (and other) facilities on Iranian television and invited the IAEA to visit them. Then, in late February 2003, Dr. Mohammad El-Baradei, the head of IAEA, accompanied by a team of inspectors, visited Iran.  In November 2003, the IAEA reported that Iran had systematically failed to meet its obligations under its NPT safeguards agreement to report its activities to the IAEA, although it also reported no evidence of links to a nuclear weapons programme.

It should be noted that at that time Iran was only bound by the provisions of the NPT, which required the country to inform the IAEA of its nuclear activities only 180 days before introducing any nuclear material into the facility.  So, according to Iranian officials, building the Natanz facility and not declaring it was not illegal, but the West regarded it as an act of concealment and violation of the NPT’s Additional Protocol, which Iran had not signed. In any event, the scale of Iran’s nuclear activities surprised the West, and it was taken for granted that Iran was developing nuclear weapons.

In May 2003, in a bold move, the Khatami government in Iran sent a proposal to the U.S. government through Swiss diplomatic channels for a “Grand Bargain”, offering full transparency, as well as withdrawal of support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and resumption of diplomatic relations, but the offer went unanswered.

In October 2003, the United Kingdom, France and Germany undertook a diplomatic initiative to resolve the problem. The foreign ministers of the three countries and Iran issued a statement known as the Tehran Declaration, according to which Iran agreed to cooperate with the IAEA and to implement the Additional Protocol as a voluntary confidence-building measure. Iran even suspended enrichment for two years during the course of the negotiations.  On Mar. 23, 2005, Iran submitted to the EU Troika” a plan of “objective guarantees” with the following elements:

(1) Spent reactor fuels would not be reprocessed by Iran.

(2) Iran would forego plutonium production through a heavy water reactor.

(3) Only low-enriched uranium would be produced.

(4) A limit would be imposed on the enrichment level.

(5) A limit would be imposed on the amount of enrichment, restricting it to what was needed for Iran’s reactors.

(6) All the low-enriched uranium would be converted immediately to fuel rods for use in reactors (fuel rods cannot be further enriched).

(7) The number of centrifuges in Natanz would be limited, at least at the beginning.

(8) The IAEA would have permanent on-site presence at all the facilities for uranium conversion and enrichment.

In early August 2005, the EU Troika” submitted the “Framework for a Long-Term Agreement” to Iran, recognising Iran’s right to develop infrastructure for peaceful use of nuclear energy, and promised collaboration with Iran. However, as the result of extreme U.S. pressure, the EU Troika was unable to respond to Iran’s call for nuclear collaboration, and subsequently Iran withdrew its offer and resumed enrichment.

The rebuff by the West to President Khatami’s outstretched hand resulted in the weakening of the Reformist Movement and the election of hardline candidate Mahmud Ahmadinezhad as the next president of Iran in June 2005. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Sep 4 2015 (IPS)

Iran’s nuclear programme has been the target of a great deal of misinformation, downright lies and above all myths. As a result, it is often difficult to unpick truth from falsehood. 

Farhang Jahanpour

As President John F. Kennedy said in his Yale University Commencement Address on 11 June 1962: “For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliché of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of the opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

In order to understand the pros and cons of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed by Iran and the P5+1 (United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, France and Germany) on 14 July 2015, and the subsequent U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 passed unanimously on 20 July 2015 setting the agreement in U.N. law and rescinding the sanctions that had been imposed on Iran, it is important to study the background to the whole deal.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regulates the activities of the countries that wish to make use of peaceful nuclear energy. The NPT was enacted in 1968 and it entered into force in 1970. Its objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, while promoting the peaceful use of nuclear technology. Iran was one of the first signatories to that Treaty, and so far 191 states have joined the Treaty.“Iran’s nuclear programme has been the target of a great deal of misinformation, downright lies and above all myths. As a result, it is often difficult to unpick truth from falsehood”

It has been one of the most successful disarmament treaties in history. Only three U.N. member states – Israel, India and Pakistan – did not join the NPT and all of them proceeded to manufacture nuclear weapons. North Korea, which acceded to the NPT in 1985, withdrew in 2003 and has allegedly manufactured nuclear weapons.

This treaty was a part of the move known as “atoms for peace”, which allowed different nations to have access to nuclear power for peaceful purposes, but prevented them from manufacturing nuclear weapons.

The treaty was a kind of bargain between the five original countries that possessed nuclear weapons (all the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council) and the non-nuclear countries that agreed never to acquire nuclear weapons in return for sharing the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology.

The Treaty is based on four pillars:

Pillar One – Non-Proliferation:  Article 1 of the NPT states that nuclear weapon state countries (N5) should not transfer any weapon-related technology to others.

Pillar Two – Ban on possession of nuclear weapons by non-nuclear states: Article 2 states the other side of the coin, namely that non-nuclear states should not acquire any form of nuclear weapons technology from the countries that possess it or acquire it independently.

Pillar Three – Peaceful use of nuclear energy: Article 4 not only allows the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, but even stresses that it is “the inalienable right” of every country to do research, development and production, and to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, without discrimination, as long as Articles 1 and 2 are satisfied.

It further states that all parties can exchange equipment, material, and science and technology for peaceful purposes. It calls on the nuclear states to assist the non-nuclear states in the use of peaceful nuclear technology.

Pillar Four – Nuclear disarmament: Article 6 makes it obligatory for nuclear states to get rid of their nuclear weapons. The Treaty states that all countries should pursue negotiations on measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race and “achieving nuclear disarmament”.

While nuclear powers have worked hard to prevent other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons, they have not abided by their side of the bargain and have been reluctant to give up their nuclear weapons. On the contrary, they have further developed and upgraded those weapons, and have made them more capable of use on battlefields.

Sadly, 37 years after its final ratification, the number of nuclear-armed countries has increased, and at least four other countries have joined the club.

After it was realised that unfettered access to enrichment could lead some countries, such as Iraq and North Korea, to gain knowledge of nuclear technology and subsequently develop nuclear weapons, the NPT was amended in 1977 with the Additional Protocol, which tightened the regulations in order to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

According to the Additional Protocol, which Iran has agreed to implement as part of the JCPOA, “Special inspections may be carried out in circumstances according to defined procedures. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) may carry out such inspections if it considers that information made available by the State concerned, including explanations from the State and information obtained from routine inspections, is not adequate for the Agency to fulfil its responsibilities under the safeguards agreement.” 

However, as the above paragraph makes clear, these inspections will be carried out only in exceptional circumstances when there is valid cause for suspicion that a country has been violating the terms of the agreement, and only if the IAEA decides that the explanations provided by the State concerned are not adequate. Also, such inspections will be carried out on the basis of “defined procedures”

The countries that have ratified the Additional Protocol have agreed to “managed inspections”, and the Iranian authorities have also said that such managed and supervised inspections can be carried out. This of course does not mean “anytime, anywhere” inspections, but inspections that are in keeping with the provisions of the Additional Protocol as set out above.

Meanwhile, in addition to the nuclear states, there are 19 other non-weapons states which are signatories to the NPT and which actively enrich uranium. They have vastly more centrifuges than Iran ever had. Iran’s array of 19,000 centrifuges (only 10,000 of them were operational) prior to the agreement was paltry compared with the capabilities of other countries that enrich uranium.

During the talks between Iran and the P5+1, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali  Khamenei said that Iran wanted to have at least 190,000 centrifuges in order to get engaged in industrial scale enrichment.

It should be remembered that the sale of nuclear fuel is a lucrative business and the countries that do not have enrichment facilities but which have nuclear reactors, are forced to purchase fuel from the few countries that have a monopoly of enriched uranium. Iran had openly stated that it wished to join that club, or at least to be self-sufficient in nuclear fuel.

However, under the JCPOA, Iran has given up the quest for industrial scale enrichment and is even reducing the number of its operational centrifuges from 19,000 to just over 5,000. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

The recent destruction of this 2,000-year-old temple – the temple of Baal-Shamin in Palmyra, Syria – is yet another grim example of how the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS) uses conventional weapons to further its agenda – but what has fuelled the growing IS firepower? Photo credit: Bernard Gagnon/CC BY-SA 3.0

By Marek Marczynski
CANCUN, Mexico, Aug 27 2015 (IPS)

The recent explosions that apparently destroyed a 2,000-year-old temple in the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria were yet another grim example of how the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS) uses conventional weapons to further its agenda.

But what has fuelled the growing IS firepower? The answer lies in recent history – arms flows to the Middle East dating back as far as the 1970s have played a role.

Marek Marczynski

After taking control of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June 2014, IS fighters paraded a windfall of mainly U.S.-manufactured weapons and military vehicles which had been sold or given to the Iraqi armed forces.

At the end of last year, Conflict Armament Research published an analysis of ammunition used by IS in northern Iraq and Syria. The 1,730 cartridges surveyed had been manufactured in 21 different countries, with more than 80 percent from China, the former Soviet Union, the United States, Russia and Serbia.

More recent research commissioned by Amnesty International also found that while IS has some ammunition produced as recently as 2014, a large percentage of the arms they are using are Soviet/Warsaw Pact-era small arms and light weapons, armoured vehicles and artillery dating back to the 1970s and 80s.

Scenarios like these give military strategists and foreign policy buffs sleepless nights. But for many civilians in war-ravaged Iraq and Syria, they are part of a real-life nightmare. These arms, now captured by or illicitly traded to IS and other armed groups, have facilitated summary killings, enforced disappearances, rape and torture, and other serious human rights abuses amid a conflict that has forced millions to become internally displaced or to seek refuge in neighbouring countries.“It is a damning indictment of the poorly regulated global arms trade that weapons and munitions licensed by governments for export can so easily fall into the hands of human rights abusers … But world leaders have yet to learn their lesson”

It is a damning indictment of the poorly regulated global arms trade that weapons and munitions licensed by governments for export can so easily fall into the hands of human rights abusers.

What is even worse is that this is a case of history repeating itself. But world leaders have yet to learn their lesson.

For many, the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq drove home the dangers of an international arms trade lacking in adequate checks and balances.

When the dust settled after the conflict that ensued when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s powerful armed forces invaded neighbouring Kuwait, it was revealed that his country was awash with arms supplied by all five Permanent Members of the U.N. Security Council.

Perversely, several of them had also armed Iran in the previous decade, fuelling an eight-year war with Iraq that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Now, the same states are once more pouring weapons into the region, often with wholly inadequate protections against diversion and illicit traffic.

This week, those states are among more than 100 countries represented in Cancún, Mexico, for the first Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which entered into force last December. This Aug. 24-27 meeting is crucial because it is due to lay down firm rules and procedures for the treaty’s implementation.

The participation of civil society in this and future ATT conferences is important to prevent potentially life-threatening decisions to take place out of the public sight. Transparency of the ATT reporting process, among other measures, will need to be front and centre, as it will certainly mean the difference between having meaningful checks and balances that can end up saving lives or a weakened treaty that gathers dust as states carry on business as usual in the massive conventional arms trade.

A trade shrouded in secrecy and worth tens of billions of dollars, it claims upwards of half a million lives and countless injuries every year, while putting millions more at risk of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations.

The ATT includes a number of robust rules to stop the flow of arms to countries when it is known they would be used for further atrocities. 

The treaty has swiftly won widespread support from the international community, including five of the top 10 arms exporters – France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The United States, by far the largest arms producer and exporter, is among 58 additional countries that have signed but not yet ratified the treaty. However, other major arms producers like China, Canada and Russia have so far resisted signing or ratifying.

One of the ATT’s objectives is “to prevent and eradicate the illicit trade in conventional arms and prevent their diversion”, so governments have a responsibility to take measures to prevent situations where their arms deals lead to human rights abuses.

Having rigorous controls in place will help ensure that states can no longer simply open the floodgates of arms into a country in conflict or whose government routinely uses arms to repress peoples’ human rights.

The more states get on board the treaty, and the more robust and transparent the checks and balances are, the more it will bring about change in the murky waters of the international arms trade. It will force governments to be more discerning about who they do business with.

The international community has so far failed the people of Syria and Iraq, but the ATT provides governments with a historic opportunity to take a critical step towards protecting civilians from such horrors in the future. They should grab this opportunity with both hands.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Nora Happel
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 14 2015 (IPS)

As Iranian-American journalist Jason Rezaian awaits his verdict, human rights advocates and press freedom groups continue to condemn the trial and call for his immediate release.

It has been over a year since the Washington Post’s Tehran Bureau Chief, Jason Rezaian, was jailed on charges including espionage for the United States and anti-Iranian propaganda. On Monday, Rezaian spoke in his own defence at a final closed-door hearing. His verdict is expected to be announced next week.“Mr. Rezaian’s case exemplifies the challenges facing journalists in Iran. At least 40 journalists are currently detained in the country not including at least 12 Facebook and social media activists who were either recently arrested or sentenced." -- Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed

Following a midnight raid on July 22, 2014, Rezaian and his Iranian wife, Yeganeh Salehi, a journalist for the Abu Dhabi newspaper The National, were detained along with two American photojournalists. Unlike his wife and the two journalists, who were released after a short time, Rezaian remained in custody at Tehran’s Evin Prison where he was “subjected to months of interrogation, isolation, and threats”, his brother Ali Rezaian told The Atlantic.

In a previous article on Jason Rezaian’s incarceration, Ali Rezaian told IPS about his brother’s endeavour to show his readers a different side of Iran and encourage people to visit the country.

Indeed, Jason Rezaian, who is also a former IPS correspondent for Iran, used to move beyond the typical coverage of the most critical topics such as the Iranian nuclear programme, focusing instead on social and cultural issues. This is why his detention was all the more met with astonishment and dismay.

Iranian-American academic Haleh Esfandiari, Director of the Middle East Programme at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who was herself detained by Iranian security authorities in 2007, told IPS: “I truly cannot understand why they went after Rezaian because he avoided critical issues and kept to social issues. But as a foreign journalist in Iran, he must have been under surveillance and they were following him.

“When the judiciary decided to arrest him, it was a way for hardliners to do harm to the government who was negotiating the Iranian nuclear deal. So my understanding is that Jason’s detention is due to domestic issues rather than to Jason having done something outrageous.”

In a recent New York Times article, Esfandiari considered Rezaian’s detention in the context of negotiations between the Iranian government and the P5+1 (the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany) on the Iranian nuclear programme “a ploy to weaken Rouhani”.

A moderate reformer, President Hassan Rouhani has sought to improve American-Iranian relations and facilitate the reintegration of Iran into the international community, she explained. However, since Rouhani’s election, hardliners including Iran’s intelligence services, the judiciary and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have been critical of Rouhani’s reforms and – regarding the nuclear programme – have been pushing for confrontation with Western governments instead of concessions, she added.

Esfandiari told IPS: “The detention of Rezaian probably came as much of a surprise to Rouhani and his cabinet members as to all of us and I’m sure that behind the scenes, his government tries to pressure the judiciary to release Rezaian.”

The Washington Post editorial board also evoked the context of the nuclear negotiations as a major reason for Rezaian’s custody, but rather considers Rezaian a means of pressure for the regime: “It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that he is being used as a human pawn in the regime’s attempt to gain leverage in the negotiations.”

Hopes have been expressed that the Iran nuclear deal could prove helpful in achieving Rezaian’s release as Iran’s image abroad would be even more at stake and the supposed reasons for Rezaian’s arrest no longer relevant.

Yet, despite the international accord on Iran’s nuclear programme achieved last month and currently awaiting approval by the U.S. Congress, Rezaian has remained in prison.

All eyes are now on the verdict which might be delivered as early as next week, according to Rezaian’s lawyer Leila Ahsan. Iranian law provides for verdicts to be announced within one week of the last hearing. However, no official date for the verdict has been released yet.

Esfandiari mentioned three possible outcomes. The luckiest scenario would be for Jason Rezaian to get sentenced to time served, meaning he will be freed immediately either on bail or on his own recognizance. Other possibilities involve a sentence of 15 or 16 months, meaning two additional months in prison or, in the worst case, a much longer sentence which he will be able to appeal.

Human rights advocates and press freedom groups condemn not only the unjustified and politically motivated incarceration itself but also the entire conduct of the trial and especially the delays in the judicial proceedings.

Sherif Mansour, MENA Programme Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS, “According to Iranian law, no person may be detained at an Iranian prison for more than a year, unless charged with murder. This means Rezaian should have been released by July 22, 2015. This did not happen. We continue to condemn the trial and call for Rezaian’s unconditional release.”

Last month, The Washington Post formally appealed to the U.N. for urgent action in the Rezaian case by filing a petition with the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions. The petition denounces the unlawful trial, including Rezaian’s solitary confinement, strenuous interrogations and insufficient medical treatment.

Earlier this year, Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, along with other high-profile human rights experts, also expressed serious concerns about the trial.

“In May… [we] recalled that Mr. Rezaian’s trial on charges of ‘espionage, collaboration with hostile governments, gathering classified information and disseminating propaganda against the Islamic Republic’ began behind closed doors following his detainment for nearly 10 months without formal charges, and following a number of months in solitary confinement.”

“Concerns, therefore, about fair trial standards in this case persist, and I continue to hope that the arbitrary nature of Mr. Rezaian’s detention and charges will be confirmed by the court,” Shaheed told IPS.

According to Shaheed, the human rights situation in Iran, especially regarding freedom of expression, continues to be worrisome.

“Mr. Rezaian’s case exemplifies the challenges facing journalists in Iran. At least 40 journalists are currently detained in the country not including at least 12 Facebook and social media activists who were either recently arrested or sentenced.

“Journalists, writers, netizens, and human rights defenders continued to be interrogated and arrested by government agencies during the first half of 2015, and the Judiciary reportedly continues to impose heavy prison sentences on individuals for the legitimate exercise of expression. Thirty of those currently detained are charged with ‘propaganda against the system,’ 25 with ‘insulting’ either a political leader or religious concept, and 12 are charged with harming ‘national security’,” he said.

“The human rights situation in Iran remains quite concerning. Despite small steps forward in some areas of concern, the fundamental issues repeatedly raised by the international human rights mechanisms for the past three decades persist. This includes issues with the independence of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s judiciary and its legal community.”

“Of particular alarm is the surge in executions, which amounted to 694 hangings as of early last months, a rate unseen in 25 years. The majority of these executions were for offense not considered capital crimes under international human rights laws.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

By Jan Oberg
LUND, Sweden, Aug 7 2015 (IPS)

It’s absolutely necessary to remember what happened 70 years ago in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see the movies from then, listen to the survivors, the hibakusa. But it isn’t enough for us to rid the world of these crimes-against-humanity weapons. And that we must.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are history and are also the essence of the age you and I live in – the nuclear age. If the hypothesis is that by showing these films, we create opinion against nuclear weapons, 70 years of ever more nuclearism should be enough to conclude that that hypothesis is plain wrong.

Jan Oberg

There is a need for a frontal attack on not only the weapons but on nuclearism – the thinking/ideology on which they are based and made to look ‘necessary’ for security and peace.

Nuclear weapons – only for terrorists

At its core, terrorism is about harming or killing innocent people and not only combatants. Any country that possesses nukes is aware that nukes can’t be used without killing millions of innocent people – infinitely more lethal than Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and so.

Since 9/11 [attack on the Twin Towers in New York], governments and media have conveniently promoted the idea that terrorism is only about small non-governmental groups and thus tried to make us forget that the nuclear ‘haves’ themselves practise state terrorism and hold humanity hostage to potential civilisational genocide (omnicide).

Dictatorship

No nuclear state has ever dared to hold a referendum and ask its citizens: “Do you or do you not accept to be defended by a nuclear arsenal?” Nuclear weapons with the omnicidal ‘kill all and everything’ characteristics is pure dictatorship, incompatible with both parliamentary and direct democracy. And freedom.

Citizens generally have more, or better, morals than governments and do not wish to see themselves, their neighbours or fellow human beings around the world burn up in a process that would make the Holocaust look like a cosy afternoon tea party. In short, nuclear weapons states either arrange referendums or must accept the label dictatorship.“Citizens generally have more, or better, morals than governments and do not wish to see themselves, their neighbours or fellow human beings around the world burn up in a process that would make the Holocaust look like a cosy afternoon tea party”

The idea that a few hundred politicians and military people in the world’s nuclear states have a self-appointed right to play God and decide whether ‘project humankind’ shall continue or not belongs to the realm of the civilisational perverse or the Theatre of the Absurd. Such people must run on the assumption, deep down, that they are Chosen People with a higher mission. Gandhi rightly called Western civilisation diluted fascism.

Unethical

Why? Because – simply – there can be no political or other goal that justifies the use of this doomsday weapon and the killing of millions of people, or making the earth uninhabitable.

Possession versus proliferation

The trick played on us all since 1945 is that there are some ‘responsible’ – predominantly Christian, Western – countries that can, should, or must have nuclear weapons and then there are some irresponsible governments/leaders elsewhere that must be prevented by all means from acquiring them. In other words, that proliferation rather than possession is the problem.

However, it is built into the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that those who don’t have nuclear weapons shall abstain from acquiring them as a quid pro quo for the nuclear-haves to disarm theirs completely.

That is, the whole world shall become a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ).

Those who have nuclear weapons provoke others to get them too. Possession leads to proliferation.

The recent negotiations with Iran is a good example of this bizarre world view: the five nuclear terrorist states, sitting on enough nukes to blow up the world several times over and who have systematically violated international law in general and the NPT in particular, tell Iran – which abides by the NPT and doesn’t want nuclear weapons – that it must never obtain nuclear weapons.

Simultaneously, they turn a blind eye to nuclear terrorist state, Israel’s 50+ years’ old nuclear arsenals.

And it is all actively assisted by mainstream media which seem to lack the knowledge and/or intellectual capacity to challenge this whole set-up – including the racist belief structure that “we have a God-given right and are more responsible than everybody else – particularly non-Christians…”

But what about deterrence?

You’ve heard the philosophical nonsense repeatedly over 70 years: nuclear weapons are good to deter everyone from starting the ‘Third World War’. That nukes are here to never be used. That no one would start that war because he/she would know that there would be a mass murder on one’s own population in a second strike, retaliation. But think! Two small, simple counterarguments:

• You cannot deter anyone from doing something unless you are willing to implement your threat, your deterrent. If A knows that B wouldnever use his nukes, A would not be afraid of the retaliation. Thus, every nuclear weapons state is ready to use nukes under some defined circumstance; if not there is no deterrence whatsoever

• The United States has long ago done two things (as the only one on earth): decided on a doctrine in which the use of small nukes in aconventional role is fundamental, thus blurring the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons; and said that its missile defence (which it also wants in Europe) is about preventing a second strike back – shooting down retaliatory missiles – so it can start, fight and win a nuclear war without being harmed itself. Or so it can hope.

Hope

Let’s rid the world of this civilisational mistake. Nuclearism and nuclear deterrence are the world’s most dangerous ideologies comparable to slavery, absolute monarchy and cannibalism that we have decided – because we are humans and civilised and can think and feel – to put behind us.

There is no co-existence possible between nuclear weapons on the one hand and democracy, peace and civilisation on the other.

It’s time to regain hope by looking at all the – civilised – non-nuclear countries and follow their example. Thus, 99 percent of the southern hemisphere landmass is nuclear weapons-free with 60 percent of its 193 states, with 33 percent of the world’s population, included in this free zone.

The West, the United States in particular, which started the terrible Nuclear Age, should now follow the great majority of humanity, apologise for its nuclearism and move to zero.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

The Security Council unanimously adopts resolution 2231 (2015), following the historic agreement in Vienna last week between the E3+3 (France, Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as the European Union; plus China, Russia and the United States) on one hand, and Iran, on the other, on a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regarding Iran’s nuclear programme. Credit: UN Photo

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 20 2015 (IPS)

When all 15 members of the Security Council raised their collective hands to unanimously vote in favour of the recently-concluded nuclear agreement with Iran, they were also defying a cabal of right-wing conservative U.S. politicians who wanted the United Nations to defer its vote until the U.S. Congress makes its own decision on the pact.

By U.N. standards, in a relatively early morning nine a.m. vote on Monday, the Security Council gave its blessings to the international agreement crafted by its five permanent members – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, plus Germany (P5+1) – which was finalised in Vienna last week after months of protracted negotiations.“Some people just can't accept the fact that we are in an increasingly pluralistic and complex world in which the United States simply cannot assert its will whenever and wherever it feels like." -- Stephen Zunes

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and Coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS the United States is the only one of the seven signatory countries (P5+1 and Iran) where there is serious opposition to the agreement, which a broad cross-section of strategic analysts worldwide recognise as the best realistically possible.

“Some people just can’t accept the fact that we are in an increasingly pluralistic and complex world in which the United States simply cannot assert its will whenever and wherever it feels like,” he added.

Successful negotiations require compromises from both sides rather than simply capitulation by one side, said Zunes, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, one of the prime negotiators of the agreement, responded over the weekend to demands by some U.S. Congressmen that the United States should take political and diplomatic precedence over the United Nations – even on an agreement that was international, not bilateral.

“It’s presumptuous of some people to suspect that France, Russia, China, Germany and Britain ought to do what the (U.S.) Congress tells them to do,” he said during a TV interview.

“They have the right to have a vote,” he said, “but we prevailed on them to delay the implementation of that vote out of respect for our Congress, so we wouldn’t be jamming them,” Kerry added.

According to the New York Times, Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, a ranking Democrat on the panel, sent a joint letter to President Barack Obama last week asking him to postpone the Security Council vote until the U.S. Congress has taken its own decision.

Norman Solomon, executive director of the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS “it’s often a difficult concept to get across to many members of Congress, but the U.S. government can’t run the world — and sometimes official Washington can’t even run the U.N. Security Council.”

This comes as a shock, or at least an affront, to Republicans and quite a few Democrats on Capitol Hill who may never use the word hegemony but fervently believe that the U.S. is a light onto all nations and should not hide that light under such a dubious bushel as international law, he pointed out.

“In this case, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or scream at the dangerous U.S. congressional arrogance that is seeking to upend the Iran deal,” said Solomon, who is also founder and coordinator of RootsAction.org, an online action group with some 600,000 active supporters.

Historically, U.S. government policies have been responsible for a great deal of nuclear proliferation in the world, he said.

“Washington still won’t officially acknowledge that Israel now possesses nuclear weapons, and U.S. leaders have turned aside from any and all proposals to seek a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East,” said Solomon.

On Monday, the 28-member European Union (EU) also approved the Iran nuclear deal paving the way for the lifting of Europe’s economic sanctions against Tehran.

“It is a balanced deal that means Iran won’t get an atomic bomb,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. “It is a major political deal.”

The permanent representative of Britain to the United Nations, Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, expressed similar sentiments Monday when he said “the world is now a safer place in the knowledge that Iran cannot now build a nuclear bomb.”

Solomon told IPS the United States is among the leading countries that have promulgated commercial nuclear power in dozens of nations, steadfastly denying the reality that nuclear energy for electricity generation is a major pathway for the development of nuclear weapons.

“We have seen no acknowledgement of this fact in Washington’s high places, let alone steps to move the world away from such dangerous nuclear-power extravaganzas,” he said.

The Iran nuclear agreement now on the table is one of the few big diplomatic achievements that the Obama administration can legitimately claim some credit for, he argued.

But many of the most chauvinistic forces in Washington, he noted, are now doing their best to undermine it.

“In the context of the United Nations, as well as in political arenas of the United States, this dynamic should be fully recognised for what it is — a brazen attempt by, frankly, warmongers in the U.S. Congress to rescue their hopes for war with Iran from the jaws of a peaceful solution.”

After the vote, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Security Council Resolution 2231, adopted Monday, will ensure the enforcement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on the Iran nuclear agreement.

He said it establishes procedures that will facilitate the JCPOA’s implementation, enabling all States to carry out their obligations contained in the Agreement.

“The resolution provides for the eventual removal of all nuclear-related sanctions against Iran. It guarantees that the International Atomic Energy Agency will continue to verify Iran’s compliance with its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA.”

The United Nations, he assured, stands ready to provide whatever assistance is required in giving effect to the resolution.

Zunes told IPS as nuclear treaties between the United States and the Soviets demonstrated, you can be geopolitical rivals and strongly oppose the other’s system of government and still recognise there is such a thing as a win/win solution on arms control.

Most agreements regarding nuclear weapons have required reciprocity, but none of Iran’s nuclear-armed neighbours — Israel, Pakistan, or India — will be required to eliminate or reduce their weapons or become open to inspections despite the fact that they continue to be in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions regarding their nuclear programmes, he added.

And none of the other nuclear powers, including five of the six nations that led the negotiations, will be required to reduce their arsenals either.

“Any notion that Iran could somehow be gaining an unfair advantage through this agreement is utterly absurd,” declared Zunes.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

By Arul Louis
NEW YORK, Jul 20 2015 (IPS)

The Vienna agreement between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council acting in concert with Germany has the potential to remake international relations beyond the immediate goal of stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Courtesy of Arul Louis/ICFJ

Its impact could be felt at various levels, from United States engagement in the Middle East to the interaction of the competitive global powers, and from the economics of natural resources to the dynamics of Iranian society and politics.

President Barack Obama has invested an inordinate amount of political capital on the deal, challenging many in the United States political arena and Washington’s key allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia in hopes that a breakthrough on Iran would be his presidency’s international legacy along with his Cuba opening.

Obama is gambling on the nation’s war-weariness after the Afghanistan and Iraq wars that took a total toll of 6,855 casualties and, according to a Harvard researcher, is costing the nation at least $4 trillion. He presented the nation with a stark choice: War or Peace.

“There really are only two alternatives here,” he said, “either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically, through a negotiation, or it’s resolved through force, through war.”Even if Washington and Tehran don't recapture the closeness of the Pahlevi era, the U.S. will increase its options in the Middle East, a region posing a growing to the world threat from the Sunni-based Islamic State or ISIL.

Though the deal has been denounced by Republicans and some Democrats, and, earlier, the opponents had taken the unprecedented step of inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make their case before Congress, Obama expects to carry the day. Even if Congress votes against the agreement, Obama reckons the opposition will not be able to able to get the two-thirds majority to override his threatened veto.

Obama’s Iran legacy, if it works according to plan, will not have the impact of Richard Nixon’s opening to China, but it still could mark the end of 36 years of virulent hostilities. Even if Washington and Tehran don’t recapture the closeness of the Pahlevi era, the U.S. will increase its options in the Middle East, a region posing a growing to the world threat from the Sunni-based Islamic State or ISIL. Right now Washington is hamstrung by unsure Sunni allies in the region.

Already in Iraq, the U.S. and Iran have been working with different elements on parallel tracks against ISIL. Obama has been blamed for pulling out U.S. troops from Iraq, although it was largely in keeping with his predecessor George W. Bush’s timetable, and for failing to reach an agreement with Baghdad on stationing some troops beyond the pullout deadline. These have been mentioned as factors leading to the rise of ISIL.

Now, there is a chance for Obama to redeem himself through the cooperation of Iran, even if they will not go to the extent of a formal agreement.

In the other ISIL flashpoint to the west of Iraq, there seems to be implacable differences on Syria. Tehran stands firmly by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom Washington considers the irreconcilable foe of peace in that civil war ravaged country. Bridging this gap even if by face-saving measures would be the true test of a diplomatic shift.

The Iran nuclear issue takes the inevitable colour of a Shia-Sunni conflict. In the first place, the unspoken impetus for Tehran’s nuclear ambitions was Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and the threat from its Sunni fundamentalists against Shias.

Now Pakistan’s stock will rise in Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations as hedge, a Sunni-dominated nuclear power ranged against Iran, which they mistrust.

Add to this mix Israel, which has developed an unlikely alliance with Saudi Arabia. For Israel, the threat comes from fears of the millenarian trends among some Shia Muslims that could cancel out the insurance that Jerusalem, sacred to the Muslims, provides and Teheran’s venomous, ant-Semitic rhetoric.

But a more immediate issue for Israel is Tehran’s support for the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah. The sanctions against Iran limited its potential financial and material backing for these organisations and the flow of funds after sanctions are lifted could boost Tehran’s adventurism, directly and through proxies, Israel fears.

On the global diplomatic front, the Iran deal is a break from the incessant U.N. Security Council squabbles that have hobbled it as issues like Ukraine, Syria, the South China Sea and assorted hotspots in Africa burn. Russia and China showed they could work intensively with the West. Moscow even earned plaudits from Obama for its role in facilitating the deal.

Russia and Iran share some common interests in places like Syria, Central Asia and the caucuses. An unbridled Tehran could more effectively cooperate with Moscow in these areas.

Economically, Russia, like other oil producers, may be hit by falling oil prices, but the diplomatic congruence and future arms sales could compensate.

For the European Union and China, the deal opens up business opportunities in a nation with tremendous economic potential along with lower oil prices.

Iran has the fourth largest known reserves of oil and its current production of 1.1 million barrels could soar to four million within a year. For most of the developing world, further reduction in oil prices will be a great help, even as it increases political and social pressures in some oil-producers.

The picture for India is mixed . It has been paying for Iranian oil imports in rupees while it has been exporting limited amounts of machinery and chemicals. The bilateral trade is in Iran’s favor and is estimated at about 14 billion dollars, with Indian imports at about 10 billion and exports at about 4 billion.

Now India may be able to buy more oil, but it will have to pay in rupees and its exports will have to compete with the rest of the world. With the prospects sanctions going away, India is already facing Tehran’s truculence in oil and gas and railway projects they had agreed on.

The Chabahar port project remains the strategic cornerstone of India’s ambitious engagement with Iran The port on the Gulf of Oman would give India access to Afghanistan and Central Asia bypassing Pakistan.

Chabahar is also a counterweight to Beijing’s Gawadhar project in Pakistan that would provide another sea outlet for China, Afghanistan and Central Asian countries.

On the nuclear nonproliferation front, the Iranian agreement chalks up a small victory after North Korean blatantly developed nuclear weapons. The world has been unable to confront Pyongyang diplomatically or militarily because of its mercurial nature leadership that borders on the insane.

For the Iranians themselves, the deal could ease up their lives and bringing back some normalcy. The bigger question is how it would play in the dynamics of Iranian politics. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approved the deal, but he has since expressed mistrust of the West in keeping its end of the bargain. That may be rein euphoria and send a message to the moderates.

Would the deal lead to a lessening of the paranoia among the religious and nationalist elements in Iran and in turn strengthen the moderates and push the present day heirs of the ancient Persian civilisation towards a relatively liberal modernity? If that were to happen Iran would have truly emerged from the shadows of international isolation.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini with with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and American Secretary of State John Kerry at the Palais Coburg Hotel, the venue of the nuclear talks in Vienna, Austria on July 9, 2015. Credit: European External Action Service

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 17 2015 (IPS)

The single biggest misunderstanding about the nuclear agreement with Iran is that it is a bilateral deal with the United States.

Not true.“Beware of American and Israeli politicians and commentators who claim this agreement will enable Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, or that if the U.S. Congress rejects the deal, more negotiations will deliver a better one. Sticking this non-proliferation pudding back in the oven at a higher heat is more likely to get us all burned." --
Dr Rebecca Johnson

The agreement involved the U.N.’s five big powers, namely, the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, plus Germany (P5+1).

But still, right-wing conservatives and U.S. legislators want to dissect and delegitimise an international agreement, whose clauses include the phased removal of U.N. sanctions on Iran.

The Security Council, where the P5 have veto powers, will meet next week to adopt a resolution and thereby give its blessings to the agreement.

But pro-Israeli groups and some members of the U.S. Congress want it delayed, arguing the United States should take political precedence over the United Nations.

At a press conference early this week, Wendy Sherman, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and a member of the U.S. negotiating team, told reporters: “Well, the way that the U.N. Security Council resolution is structured, there is an interim period of 60 to 90 days that I think will accommodate the congressional review.”

And it would have been a little difficult, she said, “when all of the members of the P5+1 wanted to go to the United Nations to get an endorsement of this since it is a product of the United Nations process, for us to say, ‘Well, excuse me, the world, you should wait for the United States Congress.’”

“The proof of the Iran nuclear deal will be in its results,” Dr Rebecca Johnson, director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy and member of Princeton University’s International Panel on Fissile Materials, told IPS.

“I’ve spent time talking with American and Iranian scientists, diplomats and also human rights defenders. None of us is naive about the hurdles still to be overcome, and yet we are convinced this agreement is a positive step forward – and much better than more years of stalemate and hostility,” she added.

“But we also have to be honest that preventing nuclear proliferation and promoting human rights doesn’t stop with that. We welcome that Iran was one of 112 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) states parties to sign the humanitarian pledge initiated by Vienna this year, to ‘fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons’.”

Dr Johnson said “multilateral negotiations to ban nuclear weapons as well as efforts to rid the
Middle East of all nuclear and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have to keep going forward if we want to avoid further proliferation and nuclear threats in the future.”

Responding to the strong negative reactions from Israel, Hillel Schenker, Co-Editor, Palestine-Israel Journal, told IPS that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to think the deal between the global powers and Iran is “the end of the world.”

His house organ, the Yisrael Hayom freebie, financed by the right-wing Las Vegas-based casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who is active on both the Israeli and American political playing fields, greeted the deal with the headline “An Eternally Disgraceful Deal”.

The leaders of the opposition, on the other hand, have declared that the agreement is a “bad deal”, only criticising Netanyahu for ruining Israel’s relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama and the U.S. government.

“What we are actually witnessing however is the failure of Netanyahu’s policy of fear, and the triumph of President Obama’s policy of hope,” Schenker added.

He also said, “Netanyahu was nurtured in a home dominated by his father, the late Prof. Benzion Netanyahu, whose analysis of the Spanish Inquisition led him to conclude that no matter what we, the Jews and the Israelis, do, the whole world will continue to be against us, and we can only rely on ourselves.”

This approach, he argued, is totally contrary to the approach of the founding fathers of modern Zionism, all of whom understood the importance of creating alliances with global powers.

Dr M.V. Ramana, a physicist and lecturer at Princeton University’s Programme on Science and Global Security and the Nuclear Futures Laboratory, told IPS the confrontation with Iran has been built up with very little evidence open to the public, allowing for all kinds of claims to be made.

“I hope that this deal will put an end to such Iran-bashing. In any case, I think the deal is an important step in the right direction,” he said.

The next step is for all the countries in the region to accept the same nuclear limitations as Iran – in particular, Israel, he added.

“It is high time the international community turned its attention to Israel and demand that the country eliminate its nuclear arsenal and the nuclear facilities that allow it to manufacture nuclear weapons,” said Dr Ramana, author of “The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India” and a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the International Panel on Fissile Materials.

Dr Johnson told IPS that negotiations, like baking, involve craft as well as science – getting the timing as well as the ingredients right is crucial.

She said diplomatic persistence made the time right for this deal to be brokered, but Americans, Israelis, Iranians, Arabs, Europeans and the rest of the world have to commit to going forward or it won’t succeed.

“Beware of American and Israeli politicians and commentators who claim this agreement will enable Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, or that if the U.S. Congress rejects the deal, more negotiations will deliver a better one,” she warned.

“Sticking this non-proliferation pudding back in the oven at a higher heat is more likely to get us all burned.”

She said such erroneous claims just feed into the hard-line minority in Iran – rump factions close to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – that would also benefit if this deal is rejected.

“I don’t think those commentators are so naive that they actually believe their criticisms of the deal. They don’t want Iran to come in from the cold because – for whatever political or financial reasons of their own – they have a vested interest in stoking outdated rivalries and continuing to demonise and isolate Iran.”

She also said sanctions are a blunt instrument of coercion, usually causing most harm to the most vulnerable – women and children – and playing into authoritarian cliques who want to suppress human rights and democracy.

“It will be a tragic lost opportunity if these U.S. and Iranian hard-liners succeed in derailing this constructive nuclear agreement,” she declared.

Schenker told IPS said Netanyahu’s entire political career has been based on fear-mongering, and the need for “a strong leader” to confront the dangers.

In the recent election, this was typified by his last minute declaration that “the (Israeli) Arabs are going to the polling stations in droves, being bused-in by left-wingers.”

But during his past three terms, the ultimate source of fear was the threat of the Iranian bomb, which was picturesquely presented at the U.N. General Assembly session two years ago, and with his speech before U.S. Congress last year.

The headline in today’s Ma’ariv daily (Friday, June 17), is that “47 percent of the Israeli public favour a military attack on Iran following the signing of the agreement”, despite the fact that virtually the entire leadership of the Israeli military and security establishment is opposed to such an attack.

The survey results are clearly the product of the fears generated by Netanyahu and his allies, and much of the mainstream media commentators. However, alternative, calmer voices are also being heard, Schenker noted.

Many Israeli observers wonder why Netanyahu thinks he can still go against the entire international community, with the aid of his Republican allies in the U.S., given that they have no chance to overturn a presidential veto of any obstructionist resolution that they may pass.

As President Clinton once said after his first meeting with Netanyahu back in 1996, “Who does he think he is? Who’s the superpower here?”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets one-on-one with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif amid nuclear talks in Vienna on July 1. Credit: State Department

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Jul 14 2015 (IPS)

A historic deal on Iran’s controversial nuclear programme was announced today during the early morning hours in Vienna over a decade after talks between Tehran and world powers began.

“This deal demonstrates that American diplomacy can bring about real and meaningful change,” said U.S. President Barack Obama from the East Room of the White House.

“Put simply, no deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East,” he said. “This is the beginning of what could be a process of the U.S. and Iran developing a better and more normal relationship. I don’t expect that to be instant…but you have to begin some place, and it’s a good beginning.” -- Gary Sick

“This is a historic day also because we are creating the conditions for building trust and opening a new chapter in our relationship,” Iran’s top negotiator, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, said in Vienna.

The “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA), drafted during 18 consecutive days of intensive negotiations in the Austrian capital by Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany), freezes Iran’s nuclear programme for the next decade in exchange for gradual sanctions relief.

The agreement “establishes a strong and effective formula for blocking all of the pathways by which Iran could acquire material for nuclear weapons,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association.

“When implemented, the P5+1 and Iran agreement will establish long-term, verifiable restrictions on Iran’s sensitive nuclear fuel cycle activities—many of these restrictions will last for 10 years, some for 15 years, and some for 25 years,” he added.

New Era

The process that led to the deal signed today by Iran and world powers took 12 years.

Three Western European countries, known then as the EU-3 (France, Germany, U.K.), began the negotiations with Iran in 2003 before the U.S., along with China and Russia, finally joined the talks in 2006 and formed the E3+3 (or P5+1).

It would take five more years of on-and-off talks, threats of war, a crippling sanctions regime, sabotage, assassinations, cyber warfare, and a change of presidents in Tehran and Washington before an interim agreement was finally reached in 2013.

The deal was made between Iran and six world powers, but direct U.S.-Iranian engagement proved to be the key ingredient of success.

Tehran and Washington have been enemies since 1979 when Iranians brought down their U.S.-backed monarch in a domestically supported revolution premised on the notion of independence from Western exploitation.

The 1979 Iranian student takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, which led to 52 American diplomats and citizens being held hostage for 444 days, and Washington’s support of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein while he launched an 8-year war with Iran in 1980, are still cited as major grievances by both sides.

But the August 2013 presidential election of Hassan Rouhani—a centrist, moderate cleric known as the “diplomatic sheik” in Tehran—resulted in a new era of U.S.-Iran relations.

With the tacit support of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Rouhani cautiously accepted Obama’s outreach to Tehran from his first month in office, beginning with the phone call—the first U.S.-Iran direct presidential contact in more than 35 years—that occurred between the two leaders during the Iranian president’s first visit to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2013.

The presidents have yet to meet face-to-face, but direct, high-level U.S.-Iranian meetings during the talks—once taboo—became unremarkable in the last 18 months of the negotiations after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met directly with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif at the UNGA during Rouhani’s visit.

This is not the first time Tehran and Washington have cooperated since the Iranian revolution. Iran’s assistance—led by Zarif when he was ambassador to the U.N.—proved crucial to the U.S. mission to establish a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001.

But it is the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution that Tehran and Washington have negotiated during an extended period of time, openly and respectfully at the highest level to bring about an internationally sanctioned accord.

“That’s what they mean by confidence-building measures,” said Gary Sick, a former national security official and Columbia University scholar who has been studying U.S.-Iran relations for decades.

“This is the beginning of what could be a process of the U.S. and Iran developing a better and more normal relationship,” he added. “I don’t expect that to be instant…but you have to begin some place, and it’s a good beginning.”

Critics voice discontent

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been warning about an impending Iranian nuclear weapon since 1995, called the deal “a bad mistake of historic proportion” today.

“Our concern, of course, is that the militant Islamic state of Iran is going to receive a sure path to nuclear weapons,” he said, adding that Iran, which he has repeatedly likened to the Islamic State—a terrorist group operating in Iraq and Syria—would get a “jackpot of cash bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars.”

The Iranian parliament, which has expressed consistent criticism of the negotiations, will also review the deal though no timeframe has been set.

But the accord will likely face its harshest criticism in the U.S. Congress where lawmakers have 60 days to review it after the official date of submission.

Influential Republicans have already threatened to block it.

“This ‘deal’ will only embolden Iran – the world’s largest sponsor of terror – by helping stabilize and legitimize its regime as it spreads even more violence and instability in the region,” said House Speaker John Boehner in a statement.

“We will fight a bad deal that is wrong for our national security and wrong for our country,” he added.
President Obama vowed, however, to veto any bill that delays its implementation.

“This is not the time for politics or posturing,” he said Tuesday. “The world would not support an effort to permanently sanction Iran into submission.”

Rapprochement?

Even before the final deal was announced, officials on both sides were already hinting that a successful conclusion to the talks could lay the groundwork for further U.S.-Iranian cooperation.

“It’s clear to me that if an agreement is successfully reached, satisfactory to everybody, a conversation might be able to begin,” Secretary of State John Kerry told the Boston Globe three days before the deal was announced.

“[The] #IranDeal is not a ceiling but a solid foundation,” wrote Foreign Minister Zarif on Twitter the day the accord was announced. “We must now begin to build on it.”

But while official statements from both countries have become increasingly suggestive in the last two years, hopes for a Nixon-to-China historical replay between the long-time adversaries are likely premature.

“Thirty-five years of mistrust and hostilities cannot be resolved through only the nuclear issue,” Hossein Mousavian, who served as the spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiating team when Rouhani was its chief, told IPS.

“A deal is a success and big step toward lessening tension…but the wall of mistrust is so thick that breaking it down would take some years,” he said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Iran's lead negotiator and foreign minister, Javad Zarif, was greeted by a cheering crowd back home in Tehran after a framework for a final nuclear deal was reached Apr. 2 in Lausanne, Geneva. Credit: ISNA/Borna Ghasemi

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Jun 26 2015 (IPS)

A final deal on Iran’s nuclear programme wouldn’t only make non-proliferation history. It would also be the beginning of a better life for the Iranian people—or at least that’s what they’re hoping.

Iranians, who are keeping a close eye on the talks, which resumed Saturday in Vienna amidst the looming June 30 deadline, believe that significant economic improvements would result from a final accord in the near term, according to a major new poll and study released here last week.“It may take a while, but the aligning of Rouhani's promises with the people’s expectations regarding the resolution of the nuclear issue will give him more tools to pursue his other agenda items regarding cultural and political opening and economic liberalisation.” -- Farideh Farhi

Majorities of the Iranian public expect to see better access to foreign medicines and medical equipment, significantly more foreign investment, and tangible improvements in living standards within a year of the deal being signed, according to the University of Tehran’s Center for Public Opinion Research and Iran Poll, an independent, Toronto-based polling group working with the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (CISSM).

Asked how long they believed it would take for changes resulting from a deal to materialise, 61 percent of respondents said they would see Iranians gaining greater access to foreign-made medicines and medical equipment in a year or less while a similar number—62 percent—thought they would see “a lot more foreign companies making investments in Iran” in a year or less.

A slightly lesser 55 percent thought they would see “a tangible improvement in people’s standard of living” within a year.

The poll—based on telephone interviews with over 1,000 respondents between May 12 and May 28—found strong support for a nuclear deal, but that support appears to be contingent on the belief that the U.S. would lift all sanctions as part of the deal, not just those related to Iran’s nuclear activities, and that economic relief would come relatively quickly.

The timeframe for and extent of sanctions removal remains, however, a major obstacle in the negotiations, the exact details of which are being kept private while talks are in progress.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—who holds the final say on all matters related to the state—reportedly demanded in a major speech Tuesday that all U.S. sanctions be lifted as of the signing of a deal, a demand that could further complicate the negotiations.

“While there is majority support for continuing to pursue a deal,” said Ebrahim Mohseni, a senior analyst at the University of Tehran’s Center and a CISSM research associate, “it is sustained in part by expectations that besides the U.N. and the E.U., the U.S. would also relinquish all its sanctions, that the positive effects of the deal would be felt in tangible ways fairly quickly, and that Iran would continue to develop its civilian nuclear programme.”

He added that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani might have “difficulty selling a deal that would significantly deviate from these expectations.”

Tempered expectations

A 34-page study conducted by the New-York based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI) also found that civil society, which continues to support the negotiations even while criticising the government’s domestic policies, is hopeful for an agreement that will end years of sanctions and isolation.

Of the 28 prominent civil society members interviewed by ICHRI between May 13-June 2, 71 percent of respondents expect economic benefits from an accord, citing increased investment and oil revenues, and gains to employment, manufacturing, and growth.

However, one-fifth of those expecting economic gains believe these benefits could be lost to ordinary Iranians due to governmental mismanagement.

In fact, a significant number of the civil society leaders were skeptical of the Rouhani government’s ability to deliver tangible results from a final deal to the general public.

Thirty-six percent of the interviewees expected no improvement in political or cultural freedoms, citing either Rouhani’s lack of authority or lack of willingness, while 25 percent of all respondents said they expected economic benefits to reach only the wealthy and politically influential.

“Mr. Rouhani is not in control,” Mohammad Nourizad, a filmmaker and political activist told ICHRI. “Whatever he wants to implement, he would first have to seek permission from the Supreme Leader’s office.”

“The expectations we have of Mr.Rouhani do not match his capabilities,” he added.

However, 61 percent of the respondents still believe a deal would grant the Rouhani administration the political leverage required to implement political and cultural reforms.

“It may take a while, but the aligning of Rouhani’s promises with the people’s expectations regarding the resolution of the nuclear issue will give him more tools to pursue his other agenda items regarding cultural and political opening and economic liberalisation,” Farideh Farhi, an independent scholar at the University of Hawaii, told IPS.

“He will still face still resistance and competition but there is no doubt he’ll be strengthened,” she said.

While the ICHRI’s civil society respondents expressed a greater degree of scepticism and nuance than the general population surveyed by the CISSM, a substantial majority in both polls argued that sanctions were significantly hurting ordinary Iranians, an effect that would only increase if no deal is reached.

“[Failed negotiations] would cause terrible damage to the people and to social, cultural, political, and economic activities,” Fakhrossadat Mohtashamipour, a civil activist and wife of a political prisoner, told ICHRI.

“The highest cost imposed by the sanctions is paid by the people, particularly the low-income and vulnerable groups.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Gazans celebrate "victory" over Israel following last year’s war. Now, desperate to maintain the calm in Gaza, Israel has been conducting intermittent, off-the-record indirect talks with Hamas, which it describes as a “terror organisation”. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Jun 16 2015 (IPS)

Israel’s deadly game of divide and conquer against its enemies could be coming home to roost with a vengeance, especially as the Islamic State (ISIS) grows in strength in neighbouring countries and moves closer to Israel’s borders.

Desperate to maintain the calm in Gaza, Israel has been conducting intermittent, off-the-record indirect talks with Hamas through U.N., European and Qatar intermediaries despite vowing to never negotiate with Hamas which it describes as a “terror organisation”.

Israel helped promote the establishment of Hamas in the late 1980s in a bid to thwart the popularity of the Palestinian Authority-affiliated Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) which was then also regarded as a “terrorist organisation” and the most powerful and popular Palestinian political movement.

But Israel’s indirect support of ISIS-affiliated Syrian opposition groups could be an even bigger gamble.“Despite ISIS ultimately being a threat to Israel, it currently fits in with Israel’s strategy of weakening the military capabilities of Iran and Syria, both enemies of ISIS, the same way a previously powerful Iraqi military had threatened Israel”

As the Omar Brigades calculated, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) responded by attacking Hamas military targets in the coastal territory because they hold the Gaza leadership responsible for any attacks on Israel.

“Israelis, we learn, are essentially being used as pawns in a deadly game of chicken between Hamas and these Salafist rivals,” said Alison Kaplan Sommer, a columnist with the Israeli daily Haaretz.

“The Salafists refuse to abide by the informal truce that has kept the tense quiet between Hamas and Israel since the Gaza war – and Hamas is not religious and fundamentalist enough for their taste.

“Firing rockets into Israel serves a dual purpose for them. It makes a statement that they are true jihadists, unlike the Hamas sell-outs who abide by truces – and it also happens to be an excellent way for them to indirectly strike back at their Hamas oppressors. Why, after all, go to the trouble of attacking Hamas when you can so easily get Israel to do it for you?”

Israel’s dual policy of covertly supporting ISIS-affiliated Jihadists in Syria in a bid to weaken Israel’s arch-enemy Syria has taken several forms.

U.N. observers in the Golan Heights have released reports detailing cooperation between Israel and Syrian opposition figures including regular contacts between IDF soldiers and Syrian rebels.

Israel is also regularly admitting wounded Syrian opposition fighters to Israeli hospitals and it is not based on humanitarian considerations.

Israel finally responded by saying the wounded were civilians reaching the border by their own accords but later conceded it was coordinating with armed opposition groups.

“Israel initially had maintained that it was treating only civilians. However, reports claimed that members of Israel’s Druze minority protested the hospitalisation of wounded Syrian fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front in Israel,” reported the Global Research Centre for Research on Globalisation.

The last report distributed to U.N. Security Council members in December described two U.N. representatives witnessing Israeli soldiers opening a border gate and letting two unwounded people exit Israel into the Golan Heights.

The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations also complained of widespread cooperation between Israel and Syrian rebels, not only for treatment of the wounded but also other aid.

U.N. observers remarked in a report distributed last year that they identified IDF soldiers on the Israeli side handing over two boxes to armed Syrian opposition members on the Syrian side.

Despite ISIS ultimately being a threat to Israel, it currently fits in with Israel’s strategy of weakening the military capabilities of Iran and Syria, both enemies of ISIS, the same way a previously powerful Iraqi military had threatened Israel.

When the United States began operations against ISIS, a senior Israeli high command seemed reluctant to give any support and called the move a mistake.

It was easier to deal with terrorism in its early stages [ISIS] than to face an Iranian threat and the Hezbollah, he said. “I believe the West intervened too early and not necessarily in the right direction,” he told Haaretz anonymously.

“Israel is pursuing a policy that in the long term will ultimately be self-defeating. In a bid to divide Syria, Israel is supporting ISIS but this will backfire in that ISIS is growing in strength and destroying societies in its path and it will eventually turn its sights on Israel,” Professor Samir Awad from Birzeit University, near Ramallah, told IPS.

It is possible that ISIS could topple future regimes that Israel is hoping for support from, including Syrian rebels who hinted at a peace with Israel once Syrian President Bashar Assad is toppled.

Jacky Hugi, the Arab affairs analyst for Israeli army radio Galie-Zahal who confirmed on the Al Monitor website that Israel was taking the Syrian rebels side in the fighting, had a warning.

“We should stop with the illusions – the day ‘after Assad’ won’t bring about a secular liberal ruling alternative. The extremist organisations are the most dominant factions in Syria nowadays,” said Hugi. “Any void left in Syria will be seized by them, not the moderate rebels.”

According to political analyst Benedetta Berti of Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies, Israel is closely monitoring its northern front, specifically the Golan Heights.

“Israel believes that there is no current threat from the rebels as they are too busy with the Syrian war,” Berti told IPS. “However, if we extend the time frame, then the situation could change when Syrian rebels may want to attack Israel from the northern borders.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

By Prem Shankar Jha
NEW DELHI, Jun 2 2015 (IPS)

The euphoria that spread though the world after the Iran nuclear agreement reached in Lausanne in April this year with the United States, Russia, China, France, United Kingdom and Germany, plus the European Union, is  proving short-lived.

Republicans in the U.S. Congress have made it clear that they will spare no effort to block it.  Hilary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s presidential hopeful, is keeping her options open. Whispers are escaping from European chancelleries that the sanctions on Iran will only be lifted in stages. Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani have responded by insisting that they must be lifted “at once”.

Prem Shankar Jha

But the agreement’s most inveterate enemy is Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel. In the week that followed the Lausanne agreement, he warned the American public in three successive speeches that the agreement would “threaten the survival of Israel” and increase the risk of a “horrific war”. This is a brazen attempt to whip up fear and war hysteria on the basis of a spider’s web of misinformation.

Netanyahu is not new to this game. At the U.N. General Assembly in 2012, he unveiled a large cartoon of a bomb and drew a red line across it, just below the neck. This was how close Iran was to making a nuclear bomb, he said. It could get there in a year. Only much later did the world learn that Mossad, Netanyahu’s own intelligence service, had told him that Iran was very far from being able to build a bomb.

Mossad probably knew what a U.S. Congress Research Service (CRS) report revealed two months later:  that although Iran already had enough five percent, or low-enriched,  uranium in August 2012 to build  five to seven bombs, it had not enriched enough of it to the intermediate level of  20 percent to meet the requirement for even one  bomb. The CRS had concluded from this and other evidence that this was because  Iran had made no effort to revive its nuclear weapons programme after stopping it ‘abruptly’ in 2003.“[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is following a two-pronged strategy: first to get the U.S. Congress to insert clauses in the nuclear treaty draft that Iran will be forced to reject, and second to take advantage of the spike in paranoia that will follow to push the West into an attack on Iran”

Another of Netanyahu’s deceptions is that he only wants to punish Iran with sanctions until it gives up trying to acquire not only nuclear weapons but any nuclear technology that could even remotely facilitate this in the future. However, he knows that no government in Iran can agree to this, so what he is really trying to steer the world towards is the alternative – a military attack on Iran.

What is more, because he also knows that destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities will not destroy its capacity to rebuild these in the future, he does not want the attack to end until it has destroyed Iran’s infrastructure (as Israel destroyed southern Lebanon’s in 2006), its industry, its research facilities and its science universities.

He knows that Israel cannot undertake such a vast operation without the United States. But there is one stumbling block – President Barack Obama – who has learned from his recent experience that, to put it mildly, U.S. interests do not always tally with those of its allies in the Middle East.

So Netanyahu is following a two-pronged strategy: first to get the U.S. Congress to insert clauses in the nuclear treaty draft that Iran will be forced to reject, and second to take advantage of  the spike in paranoia that will follow to push the West into an attack on Iran.

He has been joined in this endeavour by another steadfast friend of the United States – Saudi Arabia. At the end of February, Saudi Arabia quietly signed an agreement with Israel that will allow its warplanes to overfly Saudi Arabia on their way to bombing Iran. This has halved the distance they will need to fly. Then, four weeks later, on Mar. 26,  it declared war on the Houthis in Yemen, whom it has been relentlessly portraying as a tiny minority bent upon taking Yemen over through sheer terror, with the backing of  Iran.

This is a substantial oversimplification, and therefore distortion, of a complicated relationship.

Iran may well be helping the Houthis, but not because they are Shias.  The Houthis, who make up 30 percent of Yemen’s population, are Zaidis, a very different branch of Shi’a-ism than the one practised in Iran, Pakistan and India. They inhabit a region that stretches across Saada, the northernmost district of Yemen, and three adjoining principalities, Jizan, Najran and Asir, that Saudi Arabia annexed in 1934.

The internecine wars that Yemeni Houthis have fought since the 1960s have not been sectarian, or even against the Saudis specifically, but in quest of independence and, more recently, a federal state. This is a goal that several other tribes share.  

The timing of Saudi Arabia’s attack, four weeks after its overflight agreement with Israel, and its incessant portrayal of the Houthis as proxies of Iran, hints at a deeper understanding between it and Israel. The Houthis’ attacked Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, in September last year. So why did Saudi Arabia wait until March this year before sending its bombers in?

Iran has kept out of the conflict in Yemen so far, but the manifestly one-sided resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council and the immediate resignation of the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, Jamal Benomar, who had been struggling to bring about a non-sectarian resolution of the conflict in Yemen and been boycotted by the country’s president Abed Rabo Mansour Hadi for his pains, cannot have failed to raise misgivings in Tehran.

Iraqi President Haydar Abadi’s sharp criticism of the Saudi attack in Washington on the same day reflects his awareness of how these developments are darkening the prospect for Iran’s rehabilitation, and therefore Iraq’s future.

To stop this drift Obama needs to tell his people precisely how far, under Netanyahu’s leadership, Israel’s interests have diverged from those of the United States, and how single-mindedly Israel has used its special relationship with the United States to push it into actions that have imperilled its own security in the Middle East.

Instead of dwelling on how the nuclear treaty will make it practically impossible for Iran to clandestinely enrich uranium or produce plutonium, he needs to remind Americans of what Netanyahu has been carefully neglecting to mention: that a nuclear device is not a bomb, and that to convert it into one Iran will need not only to master the physics of bomb-making and reduce its weight to what a missile can carry, but conduct at least one test explosion to make sure the bomb works. That will make escaping detection pretty well impossible.

Finally, the White House needs to remind Americans that Iranians also know the price they will pay if they are caught trying to build a bomb after signing the agreement. Not only will this bring back all and more of the sanctions they are under,  but it will vindicate Netanyahu’s apocalyptic predictions and make a pre-emptive military strike virtually unavoidable.

Should a  military strike, whether deserved or undeserved,  destroy Iran’s economy, it will add tens of thousands of Shi’a Jihadis to the Sunni Jihadis already spawned in Libya, Somalia, Chechnya and  the other failed states and regions of the world. The security that Netanyahu claims it will bring will turn out to be a chimera.

Edited by Phil Harris

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Prem Shankar Jha
NEW DELHI, May 10 2015 (IPS)

President Barack Obama’s Nowroz greeting to the Iranian people earlier this year was the first clear indication to the world that the United States and Iran were very close to agreement on the contents of the nuclear agreement they had been working towards for the previous 16 months.

In contrast to two earlier messages which were barely veiled exhortations to Iranians to stand up to their obscurantist leaders, Obama urged “the peoples and the leaders of Iran” to avail themselves of “the best opportunity in decades to pursue a different relationship between our countries.”

Prem Shankar Jha

This moment, he warned, “may not come again soon (for) there are people in both our countries and beyond, who oppose a diplomatic solution.”

Barely a fortnight later that deal was done. Iran had agreed to a more than two-thirds reduction in the number of centrifuges it would keep, although a question mark still hung over the timing of the lifting of sanctions against it. The agreement came in the teeth of opposition from hardliners in both Iran and the United States.

Looking back at Obama’s unprecedented overtures to Iran, his direct phone call to President Hassan Rouhani – the first of its kind in 30 years – and his letter to Ayatollah Khamenei in November last year, it is clear in retrospect that they were products of  a rare meeting of minds between him and  Rouhani and their foreign ministers John Kerry and Muhammad Jawad Zarif that may have occurred as early as  their first meetings in September 2013.

The opposition to the deal within the United States proved a far harder obstacle for Obama to surmount. The reason is the dogged and increasingly naked opposition of Israel and the immense influence of the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) on U.S. policymakers and public opinion.

Both of these were laid bare came when the Republican party created constitutional history by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address  a joint session of Congress  without informing the White House, listened raptly to his diatribe against Obama, and sent a deliberately insulting letter to Ayatollah Khamenei in a bid to scuttle the talks.

Obama has ploughed on in the teeth of this formidable, highly personalised, attack on him  because he has learnt from the bitter experience of the past four years what Harvard professors John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt had exposed in their path-breaking  book, ‘The Israel lobby and American Foreign Policy’ in 2006.“Quietly, and utterly alone, Obama decided to reverse the drift, return to diplomacy as the first weapon for increasing national security and returning force to where it had belonged in the previous three centuries, as a weapon of last resort”

This was the utter disregard for America’s national interest and security with which Israel had been manipulating American public opinion, the U.S. Congress and successive U.S. administrations, in pursuit of its own security, since the end of the Cold War.

By the end of 2012, two years into the so-called “Arab Spring”, Obama had also discovered how cynically Turkey and the Wahhabi-Sunni sheikhdoms had manipulated the United States into joining a sectarian vendetta against Syria, and created and armed a Jihadi army whose ultimate target was the West itself.

Nine months later, he found out how Israel had abused the trust the United States reposed in it, and come within a hairsbreadth of pushing it into an attack on Syria that was even less justifiable than then U.S. President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.  And then the murderous eruption of the Islamic State (ISIS) showed him that the Jihadis were out of control.

Somewhere along this trail of betrayal and disillusionment, Obama experienced the political equivalent of an epiphany.

Twelve years of a U.S. national security strategy that relied on the pre-emptive use of force had  yielded war without end, a string of strategic defeats, a  mauled and traumatised army, mounting international debt and a collapsing hegemony reflected in the impunity with which the so-called friends of the United States were using it to serve their ends.

Quietly, and utterly alone, Obama decided to reverse the drift, return to diplomacy as the first weapon for increasing national security and returning force to where it had belonged in the previous three centuries, as a weapon of last resort. His meeting and discussions with Rouhani and Iranian foreign minister Zarif gave him the opportunity to begin this epic change of direction.

Obama faced his first moment of truth on Nov. 28, 2012 when a Jabhat al Nusra unit north of Aleppo brought down a Syrian army helicopter with a Russian man-portable surface-to-air missile (SAM).

The White House tried to  pretend that that the missile was from a captured Syrian air base, but by then U.S. intelligence agencies were fed up with its suppression and distortion of their intelligence and  leaked it to the Washington Post that 40 SAM missile batteries with launchers, along with hundreds of tonnes of other heavy weapons had been bought from Libya, paid for by Qatar, and transported to the rebels in Syria  by Turkey through a ‘rat line’ that the CIA had helped it to establish, to funnel arms and mercenaries into Syria.

A day that Obama had been dreading had finally arrived: heavy weapons that the United States and the European Union had expressly proscribed, because they could bring down civilian aircraft anywhere in the world, had finally reached Al Qaeda’s hands

But when Obama promptly banned the Jabhat Al Nusra, he got his second shock. At the next ‘Friends of Syria’ meeting in Marrakesh three weeks later, not only the   ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels that the United States had grouped under a newly-formed Syrian Military Council three months earlier, but all of its Sunni Muslim allies condemned the ban, while Britain and France remained silent.

Obama’s third, and worst, moment of truth came nine months later when a relentless campaign by  his closest ‘allies‘, Turkey and Israel, brought him to the verge of launching an all-out aerial attack  on Syria in September 2013 to punish it for “using gas on rebels and civilians in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus.”

Obama learned that Syria had done no such thing only two days before the attack was to commence, when the British informed him that soil samples collected from the site of the Ghouta attack and analysed at their CBW research laboratories at Porton Down, had shown that the sarin gas used in the attack could not possibly have been prepared by the Syrian army.

This was because the British had the complete list of suppliers from which Syria had received its precursor chemicals and these did not match the chemicals used in the sarin gas found in the Ghouta.

Had he gone through with the attack, it would have made Obama ten times worse than George Bush in history’s eyes.

Hindsight allows us to reconstruct how the conviction that Syria was using chemical weapons was implanted into policy-makers in the United States and the European Union.

On Sep. 17, 2012, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the highly-reputed German magazine Der Speigel, had learned, “quoting several eyewitnesses”, that Syria had tested delivery systems for chemical warheads   at a chemical weapons research centre near Aleppo in August, and that the tests had been overseen by Iranian experts.

Tanks and aircraft, Der Speigel reported, had fired “five or six empty shells capable of delivering poison gas.”

Since neither Der Speigel nor any other Western newspaper had, or still has, resident correspondents in Syria, it could only have obtained this report second or third-hand through a local stringer. This, and the wealth of detail in the report, suggests that the story of a test firing, while not necessarily untrue, was a plant by an intelligence agency. It therefore had to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

One person who not only chose to believe it instantly, but also to act on it was Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Dec. 3, 2012, Haaretz reported that he had sent emissaries to Amman twice, in October and November, to request Jordan’s permission to overfly its territory to bomb Syria’s chemical weapons facilities.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service.

* The second part of this two-part analysis can be accessed here.

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Apr 27 2015 (IPS)

The results of a survey of what 3,500 young people between the ages of 18 and 24 – in all Arab countries except Syria – feel about the current situation in the Middle East and North Africa have just been released.

The report of the survey, which was carried out by international polling firm Penn Schoen Berland (PBS), is not a minority report given that 60 percent of the population of the Arab population is under the age of 25, which means 200 million people. Well, the outcome of the survey is that the large majority of them have no trust in democracy.

Roberto Savio

The word democracy does not exist in Arabic, being a concept totally alien to the era in which Muhammad created Islam. However, it is worth noting that the concept of democracy as it is known today is also relatively recent in the West, and we have to wait from its origins in the Greek era for it to make a comeback at the time of the French Revolution.

It became an accepted value just after the end of the Second World War, and the end of the Soviet, Nazi and Japanese regimes.

As a matter of fact, it is still not a reality in large parts of Asia (just think of China and North Korea) and Africa.

Then we have governments, as in Hungary where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is openly preaching a style of governance à la Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by several of his esteemers, including the National Front party in France, and the Northern League in Italy. But few have such a negative view of democracy as young Arabs.After the Arab Spring revolutions in 2012, a massive 72 percent of young Arabs believed that the Arab world had improved. The figure dropped to 70 percent in 2013, then 54 percent in 2014, and now it stands at just 38 percent

After the Arab Spring revolutions in 2012, a massive 72 percent of young Arabs believed that the Arab world had improved. The figure dropped to 70 percent in 2013, then 54 percent in 2014, and now it stands at just 38 percent.

According to the survey, 39 percent of young Arabs agreed with the statement “democracy will never work in the region”, 36 percent thought it would work, while the remaining 25 percent expressed many doubts.

It is clear that the Arab Spring has been betrayed by the return of the army to power as in Egypt, or by the clinging of the old guard to power regardless of the costs, like Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

If you add to this the fact that 41 percent of young Arabs are unemployed (out of a total unemployment figure of 25 percent), and of those 31 percent have completed higher education and 17 percent have graduated from university, it is not difficult to understand that frustration and pessimism are running high among Arab youth.

It also contributes to explaining why so many young people feel attracted to the Islamic State (ISIS) which wants to topple all Arab governments, defined as corrupt and allied to the decadent West, and create a Caliphate as in Muhammad’s times, where wealth will be distributed among all, the dignity of Islam will be enhanced, and a world of purity and vision will substitute the materialistic one of today.

This is why ISIS is attracting youth from all over. Besides, according to experts, for the terrorist to have a geographical space and run it  as a state, where hospitals and schools function and there is a daily life to prove that the dream is possible, represents a great difference with previous terrorist movements like Al-Qaeda, which could only destroy, not really build.

But the survey also reveals something extremely important. To the question “which is the biggest obstacle for the Arab world?”, 37 percent indicated the expansion of ISIS and 32 percent the threat of terrorism. The problem of unemployment was mentioned by 29 percent and that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 23 percent.

It is worth noting that the threat of a nuclear Iran was mentioned by only 8 percent (contrary to the declarations of Arab governments), while 17 percent consider that the real problem is the lack of political leaders, while only 15 percent denounce the lack of democracy.

It is important to note that no interviews were carried out in Iran, which is not an Arab country but is a Muslim country. However Iranian Muslims are Shiites and not Sunnis, as in all Arab countries, except for Iraq and Bahrein, and perhaps Yemen, where Shiites are a majority. Of the world’s total Islamic population of 1.6 billion people, Shiites make up only 10 percent.

It is within Sunnite Islam that a dramatic conflict is going on, where Wahabism, a Sunni school born in Saudi Arabia and the official religion of the Saudi reigning house, has now split into those who want to return to the purity of the early times and those are considered “petrowahabists” because they have been corrupted by the wealth created by petrol (they are also called sheikh wahabists because they accept government by sheikhs).

Saudi Arabia has been spending an average of 3 billion dollars a year to promote Wahabism. It has built over 1,500 mosques throughout the world, where radical preachers have been asking the faithful to go back to the real and uncorrupted Islam.

It was with Osama Bin Laden that the Wahabist movement escaped from the control of Saudi Arabia, very much like the radical Hamas movement, originally supported by Israel to weaken the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Yasser Arafat, turned against the Israeli state. It is not possible to ride radicalism.

The survey also reveals that young Sunnis see ISIS and terrorism as their main threat, but we are talking here of a poll which should represent 200 million people between the ages of 18 and 25. Even if just one percent of them were to succumb to the call of the jihad, we are talking of a potential two million people … and this is now being felt acutely.

The polarisation inside Sunni society (Shiites are not part of that – there are no Shiite terrorists) is felt as the most important problem for the future.

In Europe and the United States, this should be the clearest of examples that ISIS and terrorism are first and foremost an internal problem of Islam and that to intervene in that problem will only unify the Arab world against the invader. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Sep. 9, 2009. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Apr 3 2015 (IPS)

Two days after the deadline for reaching a deal over Iran’s nuclear programme had passed, negotiators looked like they would be going home empty handed. But a surprisingly detailed framework was announced Apr. 2 in Lausanne, Switzerland, as well as in Washington, and in the same breath, U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged the battle he faces on Capitol Hill.

“The issues at stake here are bigger than politics,” said Obama on the White House lawn after announcing the “historic understanding with Iran,” which, “if fully implemented will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

“If Congress kills this deal [...] then it’s the United States that will be blamed for the failure of diplomacy." -- U.S. President Barack Obama
“If Congress kills this deal – not based on expert analysis, and without offering any reasonable alternative – then it’s the United States that will be blamed for the failure of diplomacy,” he said. “International unity will collapse, and the path to conflict will widen.”

Negotiators from Iran and the P5+1 countries (U.S., U.K., France, China, Russia plus Germany) have until Jun. 30 to produce a comprehensive final accord on Iran’s controversial nuclear programme. That gives Congress just under three months to embrace a “constructive oversight role”, as the president said he hoped it would.

“Congress has played a couple of roles in these negotiations,” Laicie Heeley, policy director at the Washington-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told IPS. “I think some folks would like to think they are playing a bad cop role, but I’m not sure how effective they’ve been…it’s a dangerous game to play.”

If negotiators had gone home empty handed, hawkish measures, like the Kirk-Menendez sponsored Iran Nuclear Weapon Free Act of 2013, which proposes additional sanctions and the dismantling of all of Iran’s enrichment capabilities – a non-starter for the Iranians – would have had a better chance of acquiring enough votes for a veto-proof majority.

Officials at the Iran talks in Lausanne, Switzerland. Credit: European External Action Service/CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0

But now that a final deal is on the horizon, Republicans will have a much harder time convincing enough Democrats to sign on to potentially deal-damaging bills.

The Corker bill gives the final say to a Republican-majority Congress – which has consistently criticised the president’s handling of the negotiations – granting it 60 days to vote on any comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran immediately after it’s reached. During that period, the president would not be able to lift or suspend any Iran sanctions.

Corker said Thursday that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would take up the bill on Apr. 14, when lawmakers return from a spring recess.

“If a final agreement is reached, the American people, through their elected representatives, must have the opportunity to weigh in to ensure the deal truly can eliminate the threat of Iran’s nuclear program and hold the regime accountable,” he said in a statement.

But administration officials reminded reporters yesterday that the president would oppose any bill that it considered harmful to the prospects of a final deal.

“The president has made clear he would veto new sanctions legislation during the negotiation, and he made clear he would veto the existing Corker legislation during negotiations,” said a senior administration official yesterday during a press call.

“What would not be constructive is legislative action that essentially undercuts our ability to get the deal done,” said the official.

The idea that Congress should have a say on any deal became especially popular after a preliminary accord was reached in Geneva two years ago, clearing the path for a host of congressional measures particularly from the right. But now that a final deal is in the works, hawks will have a harder time acquiring essential support from Democrats.

“Before yesterday Senator Corker was fairly certain he could get a veto-proof majority, but now that there’s a good deal on the table he’s going to have a lot of trouble getting votes from enough Democrats,” said Heeley, who closely monitors Capitol Hill.

Statements from key democrats yesterday retained what has become customary skepticism, but some are already hinting that they are gearing up to support the administration’s position.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called on his colleagues to “take a deep breath, examine the details and give this critically important process time to play out.”

“We must always remain vigilant about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon but there is no question that a diplomatic solution is vastly preferable to the alternatives,” he said in a statement Thursday.

Obama has his work cut out for him, however, in the next two weeks as pro- and anti-deal groups press Congress to take up their positions.

“[W]e have concerns that the new framework announced today by the P5+1 could result in a final agreement that will leave Iran as a threshold nuclear state,” said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a leading Israel lobby group, in a statement.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a well-known hawkish think tank in D.C, also reiterated its stance against any deal that allows Iran to maintain its nuclear infrastructure.

“The parameters of the nuclear deal that have emerged look like we are headed toward a seriously flawed one,” wrote FDD’s Mark Dubowitz and Annie Fixler in an article on the Quartz website entitled ‘Obama’s Nuclear Deal With Iran Puts the World’s Safety at Risk’.

The Israeli prime minister, who received numerous standing ovations when he addressed Congress on Iran in March – even after the White House made its opposition to his visit crystal clear – meanwhile called the framework deal “a grave danger” that would “threaten the very survival” of Israel.

Both Israel, and to a lesser degree Saudi Arabia, have made their opposition to the negotiations with Iran clear, and are expected to voice their concerns loudly over the next few months.

But the Obama administration’s efforts can’t be solely devoted to convincing allies or fighting a home front battle—it must also nail down the details of the final deal, which is far from guaranteed at this point.

“A lot of thorny issues will have to be resolved in the next three months, chief among them the exact roadmap for lifting the sanctions, language that goes into the U.N. Security Council resolution, measures for resolving the PMD [possible military dimensions] issues, and the mechanism for determining violations,” Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s senior Iran analyst, told IPS.

“Negotiations will not get easier in the next three months; in fact, they will get harder as the parties struggle to resolve the remaining thorny issues and defend the agreement,” said Vaez, who was in Lausanne when the agreement was announced.

“Success is not guaranteed, but this breakthrough has further increased the cost of breakdown,” he added.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Mar 25 2015 (IPS)

The United Kingdom has been accused of “sleepwalking” into the Ukraine crisis – and the accusation comes from no less than the House of Lords, not usually considered a place of critical analysis.

In a scathing report, the upper house of the U.K. parliament has said that the United Kingdom, like the rest of the European Union, has sleepwalked into a very complex problem without looking into the possible consequences, letting bureaucrats taking critical political decisions.

Roberto Savio

It said that it was only when the conflict was well entrenched that political leaders decided to negotiate the Minsk ceasefire agreement, reached by Angela Merkel of Germany, Francois Hollande of France, Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation and Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, with the notable absence of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron.

In fact, it was left up to bureaucrats of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to take decisions regarding Ukraine, the same kind of bureaucrats as those appointed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission who, with their usual arrogance, decided the European bailout conceded to Greece where it is widely known that the priority was to refund European (especially German) banks.

The media have a great responsibility in this situation. In all latter day conflicts, from Kosovo to Libya, the formula has been very simple. Let us divide conflicts into good and bad, let us repeat the declarations of the ‘good guys’ and demonise the ‘bad guys’. Let us not go into analytical disquisitions, complexities and side issues because readers do not like that. Let us be to the point and crisp.“The media have a great responsibility … the formula has been very simple. Let us divide conflicts into good and bad, let us repeat the declarations of the ‘good guys’ and demonise the ‘bad guys’. Let us not go into analytical disquisitions, complexities and side issues because readers do not like that”

The latest example. All media have been talking of the Iraqi army engaged in taking back the town of Kirkuk from the Caliphate, the Islamic State. But how many are also informing that two-thirds of the Iraqi army is actually made up of soldiers from Iran? And that the Americans engaged in overseeing this offensive are in fact accepting cooperation from Iran, formally an archenemy?

How many have been reporting that the ongoing negotiations over the nuclear capabilities of Iran are really based on the need to restore legitimacy to Iran, because it has become clear that without Iran there is no way to solve Arab conflicts? And how many have informed that all radical Muslims have received financial support from  Saudi  Arabia, which is intent on supporting Salafism, the Muslim school which is at the basis of al-Qaeda and now of the Islamic State?

Recent history shows the West has gone into a number of conflicts (Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2012), without looking beyond the immediate consequences, and without any consideration for long-term analysis. The costs of those conflicts have always exceeded the benefits foreseen. An auditor company could not certify any of those conflicts in terms of costs and benefit.

Let us start from the collapse of Yugoslavia, and let us remind ourselves that the West has three principles of international law under which to shield itself as a result of its actions.

One is the principle of inviolability of state borders, which was not applied to Serbia, but is now the case for Ukraine. The second is the principle of self-determination of people, which was used in Kosovo for the Albanian minority living in that part of Serbia but it is not considered valid now for the Russian populations of East Ukraine. The third is the right to intervene for humanitarian interventions, which was used first in Libya, and is now under consideration for Syria.

The drama of the Balkan conflicts was due to a very unilateral action by Germany, which decided to extrapolate Croatia and Slovenia from the Yugoslav federation as its zone of economic interest. The then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, pushed this in an unprecedented way throughout the West.

It was the first time that Germany had play an assertive role, with U.S. support, and it was a Cold War reflex – let us eliminate the only country left after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which still inspires itself to a socialist state and not to a market economy.

Serbia, which considered itself heir to the Kingdom of Serbia (out of which Josep Broz Tito had created the socialist Yugoslavia), intervened and a terrible conflict ensued, with civilians paying a dramatic cost.

That conflict renewed dormant ethnic and religious divisions, about which everybody knew, but Genscher, who was then no longer in the German government, explained at a meeting in which the author participated: “I never thought the Serbians would resist Europe.”

It is interesting to note in this context that just a few weeks ago, the International Court of Justice ruled that neither Serbia nor Croatia had engaged in a genocidal war. The news was reported by many media, but without a word of contextualisation.

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had been destroyed to implement the winning theory of “free market against socialism”. Did the creation of five mini-states improve the lives of the people? Not according to statistics, especially of youth unemployment, which was unknown in the days of Tito.

Then there was Iraq where, in the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack in September 2001, the rationale for attacking the country was based on assertions that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was both harbouring and supporting al-Qaeda, the group held responsible for the attack, and possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to the United States and its allies. These, which turned out to be lies, were blindly propagated by the media

But if, as is widely believed, petroleum was the cause, let us look at figures as an accounting company would do. That war is estimated to have cost at least two trillion dollars, without considering human life and physical destruction.

Iraq’s annual petroleum output at full pre-war capacity was 3.7 million barrels per day. Now a part of that is under the control of the Islamic State and Kurds have taken more than one-third under their control. But even at the full production, it would have taken more than 20 years to recoup the costs of the war.

It is, to say the least, unlikely that the United States would have had all that time – and since the war, has spent more than a further trillion dollars just in occupation and military costs.

And what about Afghanistan where there is no petroleum? Two trillion dollars have also been spent there … and the aim of that war was just to capture al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden!

Among others, it was said that democracy would be brought to Afghanistan. Now, after more than 50.000 deaths, nobody speaks any longer of institutional building, and the United States and its allies are simply trying to extricate themselves from a country whose future is bleak.

Now, the question I want to raise here is the following: what has happened to looking beyond the immediate consequences and long-term analysis in foreign policy?

Is it possible that nobody in power questioned the wisdom of an intervention in Libya for example, even assuming that Muammar Gaddafi was a villain to remove?  Did any of them ask what would happen afterwards? Did any of those in power ask what it would mean to support a war to remove Bashar al-Assad in Syria and what would happen after?

It appears that the House of Lords is right, we are taken into conflict by sleepwalkers. The West is responsible either for creating countries which are not viable (Kosovo), or for disintegrating countries (Yugoslavia and now probably Iraq), or for opening up areas of instability (Libya, Syria).

Without mentioning Ukraine where intervention is aimed at pushing the country towards Europe and NATO, thus provoking the potential retaliation of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Those errors have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced millions of people and, altogether, cost at least seven trillion dollars. Who is going to wake the sleepwalkers up? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Mar 19 2015 (IPS)

For a long time, citizens of the United States have firmly believed that their country has an exceptional destiny, and continue to do so today even though their political system has become totally dysfunctional.

The three pillars of U.S. democracy – legislative, executive and judicial – are no longer on speaking terms,  so dialogue or the possibility of bipartisan policy has virtually disappeared.

In this context, to please his opponents, and with a view to the U.S. presidential elections in 2016, President Barack Obama is increasingly being pushed to act as strong guy.

Roberto Savio

This is the only reasonable explanation on why he has suddenly declared Venezuela a security threat to the United States, just months after starting the process of normalisation of relations with Cuba, a long-time U.S. enemy in Latin America and ally of Venezuela.

The country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, is extremely happy because his denunciations of a U.S. plot with Venezuela’s opposition to have him removed have now been officially justified – by no less than the United States itself. Even the New York Times, in an editorial on Mar. 12, wondered about the wisdom of such move.

The problem is that, behind Obama’s back, U.S. Republican senators are doing unprecedented things, like writing an admonitory letter to the Supreme Guardian of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, indicating that any nuclear agreement made with Obama would last only as long as he remained in office.

That letter must have made Khamenei and Iran’s hardliners very happy, because they have always said that the United States cannot be trusted, and that the ongoing nuclear negotiations make no sense."This escalation [over Ukraine] has already taken a direction that clear heads should exam with a long-term perspective. Are the members of NATO – an institution that needs conflict to justify its new life now that the Soviet Union no longer exists – ready to enter a war, just to keep making the point? "

We are now facing an extension of the concept of the exceptional destiny of the United States, in which its foreign policy can also be exceptional, not subject to logic and rules.

Across the Atlantic, what is certainly exceptional is that while Europe has practically always followed U.S. foreign policy, even when it is against its interests as is the case of the confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, the United Kingdom – which has a special relationship with the United States – is now indulging in some divergent action.

Through its Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, the United Kingdom has announced that it intends to join the Chinese initiative for the creation of an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), in which Beijing is investing 50 billion dollars. This has raised the ire of the United States because the AIIB is seen as an alternative to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, in which the United States (and Japan) have powerful interests.

Shortly after Cameron’s move, France, Germany and Italy followed, while Australia will also join and South Korea will have to do so. This will leave the United States isolated, opening up a new “exceptional” dimension – economic might (China) is more attractive than military might (United States).

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has responded to U.S. irritation by declaring that the United Kingdom is joining the AIIB because “we think that it’s in the UK’s national interest”.

Of course, Cameron is playing up to his financial constituency, which is very aware of its interest, even when it does not coincide with U.S. interest. After all, China’s share of global manufacturing output, which was three percent in 1990, had risen to nearly 25 percent by 2014.

Even worse is that Cameron has also decided to cut spending on defence and while the U.K. government currently meets the two percent of GDP target that the United States expects all members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to pay into the alliance, it has only committed itself to continuing that until the end of the current Parliament in May.

For the U.S. administration, this could be taken as a sign of weakness by Russian President Vladimir Putin who, it argues, should be put under growing pressure and shown that the confrontation over Ukraine will escalate until he backs down.

This escalation has already taken a direction that clear heads should exam with a long-term perspective. Are the members of NATO – an institution that needs conflict to justify its new life now that the Soviet Union no longer exists – ready to enter a war, just to keep making the point?

The signals are those that precede a war.

U.K. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has declared that Russia is “as great a threat to Europe as ‘Islamic States’.” Troops are amassing in the Baltic States to serve as a deterrent for a possible Russian invasion. The U.S. Republican Congress is overtly asking for the supply of massive and heavy weapons to the Ukrainian army.  Hundreds of U.S. troops have been assigned to Ukraine to bolster the Kiev regime against Russian-backed rebels in the east. The United Kingdom is sending 75 military advisers.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, the Polish government is supporting the creation and training of militias, and plans to provide military training to any of the many Poles who are increasingly concerned that “the great Russian behemoth will not be sated with Ukraine and will reach out once again into the West.” The same is happening in the Baltic States, which all have a sizable Russian presence and think Putin could invade them at any moment.

Media everywhere have engaged in a frenzy of personal vilification of Putin and in the popular pastime of using Putin and Ukraine to justify military expansionism – to advocate tit for tat what Putin is doing.

It is difficult to look to Putin with sympathy, but this confrontation has again pushed the Russian people behind its leader, and at an unprecedented level that now stands at around 80 percent.

The Guardian has reported veteran Russian leftist Boris Kagarlitsky as commenting that most Russians want Putin to take a tougher stand against the West “not because of patriotic propaganda, but their experience of the past 25 years”, and it would be a mistake to underestimate the role that humiliation can play in history.

It is commonly accepted that Hitler emerged from the frustrations of the German people after the heavy penalties that they had to pay the victors after the First World War. The same sense of humiliation made the war of Slobodan Milosevic against NATO popular with the Serbian population.

It is the humiliation of the Arabs divided among the winners of the First World War which is at the roots of the Caliphate, or the Islamic State, which claims that Arabs are finally going to be given back their dignity and identity.

And it is also humiliation over the imposition of austerity which is now creating a strong anti-German sentiment in Greece, to which Germans respond with a sense of righteous indignation (52 percent of Germans now want Greece to leave the Euro).

Has anyone considered who is going to take over Russia if Putin goes away? Certainly not those who are now in the opposition. Has anyone considered what it would mean to take on responsibility for a very weak state like Ukraine?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has now approved a 17.5 billion dollar relief fund for Ukraine but warned that the country’s rescue “is subject to exceptional risks, especially those arising from the conflict in the East.”

In fact Ukraine needs to plug a hole of at least 40 billion dollars in the immediate term, and economists all agree that the country does not have a viable economy. It will require many years of consistent help to reach some economic equilibrium – if there is no war.

Europe is close to recession and apparently unable even to solve the problems of Greece, but goes headlong into supporting Kiev against Russian-backed rebels. NATO can support Ukrainian soldiers up to their last man, but it is impossible that they will beat Russia. Will the West then intervene or back off and lose face, after many deaths and much waste and destruction?

A widespread view now is that sanctions should starve Russia, which will have lost its revenues from oil. What if Putin does not back down, sustained by the Russian people? Are Europeans ready to go to war to please the Republican Congress in the United States? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Baloch youngsters ride their motorbikes along the dry bed of the Helmand River. The total lack of economic and social opportunities pushes them to illegally migrate to neighbouring Iran, seeking a better life. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
ZARANJ, Afghanistan, Mar 18 2015 (IPS)

Balochistan, divided by the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, is a vast swathe of land the size of France. It boasts enormous deposits of gas, gold and copper, untapped sources of oil and uranium, as well as a thousand kilometres of coastline near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.

Despite the wealth under their sandals, the Baloch people inhabit the most underdeveloped regions of their respective countries; Afghanistan is no exception.

“Against all odds, our national identity is [growing]. We just need the rest of the world to know about us.” -- Baloch intellectual and historian Abdul Sattar Purdely
Often overlooked, the Afghan Baloch count as just one among the many groups that make up the colourful ethnic mosaic of Afghanistan. And like the Pashtuns, the Tajiks and the Uzbeks, they have also seen their land divided by the arbitrary boundaries in Central Asia.

Baloch historian and intellectual Abdul Sattar Purdely tells IPS there are “about two million of us in Afghanistan, but only those living in the southern provinces of Nimroz and Helmand speak Balochi.”

In his late sixties, this former MP during the rule of Mohammad Najibullah (1987-1992) is today a professor, writer, and a leading advocate for the preservation of the Baloch language and culture in Afghanistan.

In coordination with the Afghan Ministry of Education, Purdely has written textbooks in Balochi that go as far as the 8th grade, which are already being used in three schools.

The Baloch in Afghanistan make up just a tiny portion of a people scattered throughout the Iranian Plateau, but they are united by the experience of religious, linguistic and ethnic persecution in a region increasingly marked by Islamic extremism.

A shepherd and his family walk their sheep in Zaranj, capital of Afghanistan’s Nimroz Province. In the absence of comprehensive census data, the Baloch intellectual Abdul Sattar Purdely tells IPS that Afghan Balochs number about two million, though not all speak the Balochi language. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

The Baloch people, who hail from the Iranian plateau, have settled for centuries alongside the banks of the Helmand River in Afghanistan. But severe droughts and the excessive use of the river’s water for opium cultivation in Nimroz have lead to the collapse of agriculture in the province, affecting scores of Baloch families. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

The majority of the Baloch people are Sunni Muslims but their moderate vision of Islam has turned them into victims of growing Islamic extremism in the region. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

The neglected village of Haji Abdurrahman, in Afghanistan’s Nimroz province, is a hub for Afghan and Pakistani Baloch people, the latter seeking shelter in Afghanistan. Dozens of families struggle to survive in this cluster of mud houses without electricity or running water.

Baloch youngsters ride their motorbikes along the dry bed of the Helmand River. The total lack of economic and social opportunities pushes them to illegally migrate to neighbouring Iran, seeking a better life. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

A Baloch teenager poses next to his portrait inside his house in Nasirabad, another mud-hut village in Afghanistan’s Nimroz province. Like the majority of the local population, he is also illiterate. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

In Pakistan, for instance, the Baloch people have long weathered a crackdown against what the government calls an insurgency, while “Tehran is constantly trying to quell any Baloch initiative in Nimroz [a province in southwest Afghanistan] as they consider it a potential threat to their security,” according to Mir Mohamad Baloch, a political and cultural activist.

This Afghan-born Baloch tells IPS that an independent Balochistan is a “life dream” for him – but under current political conditions in the region, this dream is a long way from reality.

Currently, Zaranj hosts the only TV programme in Balochi in Afghanistan for one hour a day between five and six pm. Although the first TV channel in Balochi was set up in 1978 preceding the printing of the community’s first books and newspapers, the fall of the Communist government led to a sharp cultural decline in Afghanistan.

Historically a nomadic group, the Baloch people have endured years of brutal repression for their moderate vision of Islam. Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, even issued a fatwa, an Islamic edict, against the people of Nimroz, calling for the ethnic cleansing of the Baloch and Shia population.

“Against all odds, our national identity is [growing] bigger despite the ongoing chaos in the country,” proclaims Abdul Sattar Purdely from his office in downtown Kabul. “We just need the rest of the world to know about us.”

A Baloch family from the Taliban-stronghold of Kandahar stand for a photograph. While millions of Afghans have fled to Pakistan over the past four decades, Pakistani Balochs are taking the opposite route, fleeing to Afghanistan to avoid repression by the Pakistani government. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

This Pakistani Baloch elder and his two sons are today hiding in Afghanistan. Rights groups have criticised the Pakistan government’s crackdown on the Baloch people. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Baloch fighters from the Balochistan Liberation Army crouch at an undisclosed location along the Afghan-Pakistan border. There are several Baloch insurgent groups fighting for independence in Pakistan. Some of their fighters often cross the border to evacuate the wounded and treat them in Afghan hospitals. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Karim and Sharif Baloch, both of them from Pakistan, show the portraits of their lost brother and father at their current residence in Zaranj. They tell IPS their relatives were killed in 2011 during a Pakistani military operation. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

A truck travels down a lost road in Nimroz, the only Afghan province where the Baloch minority form a majority. In the country’s remote southwest, Nimroz shares a 500-kilometre border with both Iran and Pakistan. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

A truck pauses at the Afghan-Iranian border in Zaranj, the administrative capital of Afghanistan’s Nimroz Province. Pakistani writer Amhed Rashid tells IPS this province is a smuggling hub through which heroin goes out and weapons come in. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Iranian-American Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post's Tehran Bureau Chief, has been detained in Iran since July 22, 2014. Credit: http://freejasonandyegi.com/

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Mar 12 2015 (IPS)

The lawyer for Jason Rezaian, the Iranian-American Washington Post reporter detained in Tehran since Jul. 22, 2014, has officially requested temporary bail for her client during Nowruz, the beginning of the Persian calendar year when some prisoners have customarily been granted furlough requests.

“This time of year, with his birthday and Nowruz [Mar. 21] coming up, we are certainly hopeful that the folks in government will see that there is really no justifiable reason for Jason to be in prison,” said Jason’s brother, Ali, in an interview here Wednesday with IPS.“[The Rouhani government] would like to see him free, but they have shown to be completely unwilling to spend any of their political capital on this case or any of the other horrendous violations going on in the country." -- Hadi Ghaemi

Rezaian, who spoke at the National Press Club’s event today naming Jason as a recipient of its John Abuchon press freedom award, said his family has not been officially informed of the charge his brother is facing.

The Iranian judiciary, which does not recognise dual citizenship, hasn’t publicly announced charges. But Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Sept. 17 that Rezaian, whom he described as a “fair reporter,” is aware of the charge during an interview with National Public Radio (NPR).

Mohammad Larijani, a top advisor to Iran’s supreme leader and the head of the judiciary’s human rights council, was also unspecific but told Euronews Nov. 11 that Rezaian was “involved in activities beyond journalism.”

The influential politician added that he expected Rezaian to be released soon: “My hope is that before going to the court process, the prosecutor could be content to drop the case to see that maybe the accusations are not quite substantial.”

Four months later, Rezaian is facing trial in the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary court, which operates separately from criminal and civil courts and handles cases categorized by the judiciary as pertaining to national security issues.

Human rights groups say the court tries people for ideological and political reasons and that case outcomes are often predetermined with harsh sentences.

“Jason is not only a credentialed journalist engaging in journalist activities, he’s also a reporter for the Washington Post and it should be understood that his job requires him to speak to people and understand what is going on in Iran and portray the life and the activities of the people there,” Ali Rezaian told IPS. “He has done this fairly for more than a decade.”

Longest-held Western journalist

Born to an Iranian father and American mother, Jason Rezaian, who covered Iran for IPS until 2012, will likely spend his 39th birthday in Iran’s notorious Evin prison on Mar. 15.

Rezaian moved to Iran, where press freedom is severely limited, in 2008, and became the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief in 2012.

No other journalist working with a Western news outlet has been held as long as Rezaian, who has been detained for more than 230 days.

Ali Rezaian told IPS that his brother loved his life in Iran and would often encourage foreigners to see the country for themselves.

“He always said: ‘You should come and see it; it’s a wonderful place.’ And if people would say things that were not right about Iran he would say: ‘You don’t understand; come and see it.'”

Extending beyond the common Western news themes of the nuclear programme and political infighting, Rezaian’s journalistic portfolio is heavily focused on the social and cultural aspects of life in Iran.

“You know, you look at the work that he did with the Post and he spent a lot of time showing people a different side of Iran than we are regularly exposed to here in America,” said Rezaian.

“It’s just his nature to communicate with all sorts of people and its part of being a journalist, to ask questions, to try and reach out to people on both sides of the discussion to promote understanding,” he said.

Since being detained, Rezaian reportedly struggled to get several health conditions treated in a timely manner and has lost 50 pounds. But he may be suffering most from the isolation and lack of human contact, according to his brother, who said Jason spent five months in solitary confinement before being moved to a cell with another prisoner.

Initially seeking to personally request her son’s release from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Rezaian’s Istanbul-based mother Mary was only allowed to see her son in Evin prison twice in December.

“I need a head doctor, because this is going on way too long,” Jason Rezaian told his mother after showing her he had not been tortured during a videotaped meeting, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Since then, his family abroad has been unable to speak to Jason and the frequency and amount of contact with his wife, reporter Yeganeh Salehi who was detained with Rezaian and released on bail in October, has dramatically decreased.

Campaign

The National Press Club released a letter today signed by prominent American journalists addressed to Iranian judicial chief Sadegh Larijani expressing “grave concern” over Rezaian’s detention and what it called “the ongoing disregard for the legal protections assured its citizens by the Iranian constitution.”

Boxing star Muhammad Ali also issued a statement through the club. “To my knowledge Jason is a man of peace and great faith, a man whose dedication and respect for the Iranian people is evident in his work. I support his family, friends and colleagues in their efforts to obtain his release,” he said

In addition to his family’s stepped up efforts and calls by the U.S. government, his editors, and journalistic institutions for Rezaian’s release, an online support petition has received more than 235,000 signatures from around the world.

The hashtag “#FreeJason” continues to be circulated on social media including Twitter and Facebook.

But while some of the conditions of Rezaian’s custody have improved, he remains incarcerated while he and his family agonise over his fate.

His story is meanwhile competing for media coverage with the intensive talks over Iran’s nuclear programme aimed at reaching a final agreement by the end of June.

“This case has been a headache in the Iranian government’s foreign policy dealings with the outside world,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. “But due to the sensitive time of the negotiations its probably not getting the attention it should.

“[The Rouhani government] would like to see him free but they have shown to be completely unwilling to spend any of their political capital on this case or any of the other horrendous violations going on in the country,” he said.

“Iran needs to feel more heat to release him,” added Ghaemi.

A State Department official told IPS, “We are doing everything we can to secure the release of Jason Rezaian and the other U.S. citizens detained and missing in Iran.”

The cases of American citizens were being kept separate from the ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme, added the official.

“Nowruz is a wonderful time for the higher-ups in government to take a hard look at the evidence that some people say they have to decide if that’s really deserving of time in prison, let alone nearly eight months, and if not make it clear to those in power that Jason should be acquitted,” said Ali Rezaian.

Edited by Kitty Stapp