Rashed Rahman
Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)
Director: Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)
Email: rashed.rahman1@gmail.com
Cells: +92 302 8482737 & +92 333 4216335.
As written by me:
No war, no peace?
Rashed Rahman
Not entirely unexpectedly, the first ever face-to-face interaction in Islamabad between the protagonists of the Gulf war, the US and Iran, since the 1979 revolution in the latter, ended without agreement. Does this mean an end of the ceasefire and a return to military conflict? Perhaps not immediately. Both sides hinted at their respective positions after the conclusion of the talks and left open the possibility of their continuance in a second round. If nothing else, the talks laid out the respective positions of both sides on matters of utmost importance and concern to one side or the other, or even to both, although not everything has likely been shared with the public.
Going by what has been shared though, the issues that proved prickly can be reduced to six: 1) control of the Hormuz Straits; 2) the nuclear question; 3) full sanctions lifting (Iran), not partial, phased (US); 4) conflicting claims over Iran’s $ six billion frozen assets; 5) war reparations, and 6) complete end to war, including Israel’s continuing attacks on Lebanon.
Before departing Islamabad, US Vice President J D Vance, the leader of his delegation, said they had conveyed to the Iranians their “final and best offer”, without bothering to go into the details of what that might contain or entail. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who led the Iranian delegation, said his country would not give in to threats after Trump’s social media bluster regarding the Hormuz Straits. “If they fight, we will fight, and if they come forward with logic, we will deal with logic,” was how he responded. Given the way the war has unfolded, this is no empty threat as Iran has exceeded most people’s pre-war assessment of its fighting strength. The really pointed part of his remarks was the tone struck by Mr Ghalibaf when he said the opposing side had “failed to earn their trust”. Certainly Tehran has good reasons for this posture since the US-Israel combine has by now attacked it twice while ostensibly in the middle of negotiations.
The Hormuz Straits conundrum turned out to be the key flashpoint. Iran has declared its control over the strategic waterway through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes by applying a toll on ships passing through with its permission. Trump, after the talks ended, burst forth on social media insisting the Hormuz Straits would be blocked by the US and its Navy would interdict any ships linked to Iranian permission. This Trumpian move threatens the delicate peace since major powers such as China have declared their intent to use the Hormuz Straits for passage of oil-bearing ships for their domestic use. If Trump carries through on his stated intent (not always the case with him), it could produce the horrific scenario of US-China and US-other countries’ clashes in the waterway. No one with even a modicum of sense would want to see things come to such a dangerous pass.
On the nuclear question, the US betrays a stubborn refusal to accept the Iranian position that its late leader Ayatollah Khamenei (assassinated by the US-Israeli aggressor combine) had expressly forbidden his country to acquire nuclear weapons, an argument richly loaded with religious injunction against forging a weapon that threatens so many innocent people. Uranium enrichment for civilian use is the right of Iran as a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, watched over by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has in the past betrayed its objective mandate in favour of US designs. Iran has gone further in offering the concession that it would reduce its current 60 percent enrichment to lower levels. The US stubbornness smacks of a deliberate attempt to pillory Iran for a nuclear weapon venture it does not uphold.
The US offered phased, partial lifting of sanctions, no doubt dependent on Iran submitting to other demands. These sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy since 1979 and fed into the unrest that exploded throughout the country last year. The US-Israeli attack, ostensibly to bring about regime change, has done the opposite. Even the most hardened opponent of the clerical regime has joined hands to repel the foreign aggression.
Iran’s frozen assets are its property. Their freezing offers one more example of the risks of secreting any developing country’s assets in the West. War reparations would likely amount to billions, given the sustained destructive power Washington and Tel Aviv have unleashed on Iran. Objective calculation of these sums could possibly be carried out by the UN. A complete end to the war, including Israel’s continuing aggression against Lebanon, is a no-brainer. Iran has been pummelled for totally dubious reasons that have more to do with the US’s global hegemony drive than anything else.
For that reason alone, the current no war, no peace interlude may quickly turn to war again.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
As printed by the paper:
No war, no peace?
Rashed Rahman
Not entirely unexpectedly, the first ever face-to-face interaction in Islamabad between the protagonists of the Gulf war, the US and Iran, since the 1979 revolution in the latter, ended without agreement. Does this mean an end of the ceasefire and a return to military conflict? Perhaps not immediately. Both sides hinted at their respective positions after the conclusion of the talks and left open the possibility of their continuance in a second round. If nothing else, the talks laid out the respective positions of both sides on matters of utmost importance and concern to one side or the other, or even to both, although not everything has likely been shared with the public.
Going by what has been shared though, the issues that proved prickly can be reduced to six: 1) control of the Hormuz Straits; 2) the nuclear question; 3) full sanctions lifting (Iran), not partial, phased (US); 4) conflicting claims over Iran’s $ six billion frozen assets; 5) war reparations, and 6) complete end to war, including Israel’s continuing attacks on Lebanon.
Before departing Islamabad, US Vice President J D Vance, the leader of his delegation, said they had conveyed to the Iranians their “final and best offer”, without bothering to go into the details of what that might contain or entail. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who led the Iranian delegation, said his country would not give in to threats after Trump’s social media bluster regarding the Hormuz Straits. “If they fight, we will fight, and if they come forward with logic, we will deal with logic,” was how he responded. Given the way the war has unfolded, this is no empty threat as Iran has exceeded most people’s pre-war assessment of its fighting strength. The really pointed part of his remarks was the tone struck by Mr Ghalibaf when he said the opposing side had “failed to earn their trust”. Certainly Tehran has good reasons for this posture since the US-Israel combine has by now attacked it twice while ostensibly in the middle of negotiations.
The Hormuz Straits conundrum turned out to be the key flashpoint. Iran has declared its control over the strategic waterway through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes by applying a toll on ships passing through with its permission. Trump, after the talks ended, burst forth on social media insisting the Strait of Hormuz would be blocked by the US and its Navy would interdict any ships linked to Iranian permission. This Trumpian move threatens the delicate peace since major powers such as China have declared their intent to use the strait for passage of oil-bearing ships for their domestic use. If Trump carries through on his stated intent (not always the case with him), it could produce the horrific scenario of US-China and US-other countries’ clashes in the waterway. No one with even a modicum of sense would want to see things come to such a dangerous pass.
On the nuclear question, the US betrays a stubborn refusal to accept the Iranian position that its late leader Ayatollah Khamenei (assassinated by a US-Israeli combine) had expressly forbidden his country to acquire nuclear weapons, an argument richly loaded with religious injunction against forging a weapon that threatens so many innocent people. Uranium enrichment for civilian use is the right of Iran as a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, watched over by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has in the past betrayed its objective mandate in favour of US designs. Iran has gone further in offering the concession that it would reduce its current 60 percent enrichment to lower levels. The US stubbornness smacks of a deliberate attempt to pillory Iran for a nuclear weapon venture it does not uphold.
The US offered phased, partial lifting of sanctions, no doubt dependent on Iran submitting to other demands. These sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy since 1979 and fed into the unrest that exploded throughout the country last year. The US-Israeli attack, ostensibly to bring about regime change, has done the opposite. Even the most hardened opponent of the clerical regime has joined hands to repel the foreign aggression.
Iran’s frozen assets are its property. Their freezing offers one more example of the risks of secreting any developing country’s assets in the West. War reparations would likely amount to billions, given the sustained destructive power Washington and Tel Aviv have unleashed on Iran. Objective calculation of these sums could possibly be carried out by the UN. A complete end to the war, including Israel’s continuing aggression against Lebanon, is a no-brainer. Iran has been pummeled for totally dubious reasons that have more to do with the US’s global hegemony drive than anything else.
For that reason alone, the current no war, no peace interlude may quickly turn to war again.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
Rashed Rahman
Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)
Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)
Email: rashed.rahman1@gmail.com
Cells: +92 302 8482737 & +92 333 4216335
A new form of imperialism
Rashed Rahman
Most commentators have puzzled over what is the end objective of the US-Israel war on Iran. That war has thrown the global order, such as it is, and the world economy into a tailspin from which it may not soon recover. If the aim was decapitation and regime change in Iran, that has clearly not worked. If Israel sought expansion into Palestinian territory and neighbouring Arab countries, e.g. Lebanon, that too seems a goal too far. In both these and any other territories the Zionist entity may target, resistance will be fierce and perhaps insurmountable. So what is this war really about?
The US desires full spectrum global dominance, both economic and military. This is not a new objective. Clearly and unequivocally stated or not, this has been the overriding aim of successive US administrations since the end of WWII. The urge for economic dominance formally began with the Bretton Woods system whereby without colonial physical conquest of territories the US was able, through the mechanisms of the World Bank and IMF, to subject the Third World to economic extraction in a manner that makes it difficult to trace and identify. The military hegemony drive, on the other hand, began with the atomic bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Successive US Presidents since have pursued this goal. The Trump administration is more unilateralist (note the treatment of long standing western allies) and certainly more open about its intention to maintain ‘full spectrum dominance’ with massive military superiority that no one, enemy or friend, would even think of challenging. However, the difference between the historically defunct colonial empires and the current US pursuit of hegemony needs explication.
The US is the first, and so far only, purely capitalist empire. This by no means implies that capitalist powers have not been empires in the past. However, the US seeks to dominate the world largely through manipulating the economic mechanisms of capitalism. The British Empire, to take a more familiar example, hoped to exploit the commercial wealth of the Subcontinent without incurring the inevitable costs of colonial rule. Instead, it found itself creating a tribute-extracting military despotism resembling more traditional imperialisms than a new mode of capitalist hegemony. Perhaps learning from that experience, the US’s preference has been to avoid direct colonial rule wherever possible and rely on economic hegemony, which is less costly, less risky, and more profitable. But this enterprise is stricken with a fundamental contradiction.
While the objective of US imperialism is economic hegemony without colonial rule, global capital still, in fact more than ever, needs a closely regulated and predictable social, political and legal order. Imperial hegemony relies now more than ever on an ‘orderly’ system of many states, and global economic hegemony depends on keeping control of the many states that maintain the global economy. This capitalist mode of economic imperialism is the first in history that does not depend simply on capturing territory, or dominating subject peoples. It needs to oversee the whole global states system and ensure that imperial capital can safely and profitably navigate throughout the global system (a more complex task than the current concerns about navigating, physically, the Straits of Hormuz). It has to deal not only with ‘rogue’ and ‘failed’ states. It also has to keep subordinate states open and vulnerable to exploitation. To be really effective, it has to establish its military and political supremacy over all others to avoid a system in which military power is more or less evenly distributed among various states. Hence the build-up of military power and bases all over the world by the US, to pre-empt any rivalry.
Once this kind of military preponderance is established, it takes on a dynamic of its own. This is because it has no specific and self-limiting constraints. With the kind of huge unchallenged military preponderance it enjoys, the US will use it to pursue what any administration takes to be in its interests, and particularly when its economic supremacy is no longer without challenge (e.g. China). It only takes a Donald Trump to use this power beyond any reasonable limits. But this tendency to military excess is not just the aberration of a Trump. It is in fact inscribed in the mission of global capitalism itself. That implies a continuation and repetition of Trump-like military excesses in the future.
The world has been warned. The ‘demonstration effect’, by now a major pillar of US military policy, makes it hard to predict where the next adventure might play out. But play out it will, so long as US dominance (challenged but still supreme) persists. We have yet to see any signs of an alternative to the imperial policy of endless wars, not continuous perhaps but without end, in purpose or time.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
