With a focus on possible war on Iran, TFF Associates argue that the US must – and can – be stopped. It doesn’t have a God-given exceptionalist status. It has become “too arrogant.”
By Pascal Lottaz, Annette Schiffman and Jan Oberg, TFF
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Last week it was Venezuela – this week the United States under Trump are threatening Iran with intervening and repeating that he must have Greenland.
We cannot let that happen again and again. The West has already destroyed enough states—Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine (well, this one is controversial), Gaza, the West bank, to name a few.
In the spirit of Article 1 of the UN Charter, we call for peace-making by peaceful means. No violent intervention under any circumstances!
The West has no moral or legal right to intervene militarily anywhere on the basis of Trumped-up, imperial arguments.
Protests gain way more support when peaceful – but driving a people into despair will sometimes lead to different ways of action. Violence is the first, sometimes only, tool of the intellectually and morally weak.
We strongly condemn any state shooting at its own civilians.
We say with Martin Luther King, Jr., “America, you have become too arrogant.”
We do not accept to wake up every morning to a new jaw-dropping atrocity and violations of fundamental international law and norms.
We refuse to keep quiet about daily violations of international law and basic norms that threatens humanity – all of us.
The Trump Regime and other Americans continuously threaten Iran. One must ask: With what right and why does the rest of the world not forcefully and clearly communicate that it does not accept any US/Israeli or other interference – be it military or not – in Iran?
Has the world gone numb to the tempo of Trump’s repeatedly surprising, unprovoked and law-defying interventions and threats?
Has it completely lost its ethical and legal compass?
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Background to US/Iran relations
The US and the UK committed the crime of regime change in 1953 against the first democratic leadership under Dr Mossadegh. It supported the massive human rights violations and rampant militarist build-up under the Shah of Iran. It installed horrendous economic sanctions on the people when he fell and Ayatollah Khomeini took over in 1979. These sanctions have devastated an otherwise resource-rich country and impoverished the 90 million people of Iran. Poverty is a key reason they protest.
These sanctions have destroyed the middle class that could have driven through political and economic reforms in Iran; they put the people in an international sanctions cage in addition to the domestic repression cage. Still, as any visitor to Iran knows, the people of Iran are extremely hospitable and open to the West’s citizens and culture, but not to US government intervention or other foreign manipulation.
The sanctions, thereby, have only made things worse. They are also huge violations of the UN Charter (as are the secondary US sanctions on those who have economic interaction with Iran).
TFF stands in solidarity with the Iranian people, who for decades have been paying an unbearable price, now also in blood.
While the Iranian leadership is fundamentally authoritarian and does repress the people, women in particular, the US, Israel and other Western countries bear a very heavy responsibility for the present situation.
Furthermore, the West has – absurdly – focused on Iran’s status as a non-nuclear power while having made Israel a nuclear weapons power. PM Netanyahu seems to suffer from deep paranoia since, during the last 35 years, he has predicted that Iran was this and that close to becoming a nuclear weapons state.
Why does the world believe such a miserable prediction-maker? It has been nothing but a deliberate, demonising lie all the time. The solution to that problem is that the world takes steps to end Israel’s status as a nuclear weapons state and make the Middle East a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone, as decided long ago by the UN GA.
And do not forget that it was also the Trump Regime that withdrew from one of the greatest and most important diplomatic agreements ever, the JCPOA signed by Iran and its partners in 2015. Why? To be able to continue harassing Iran.
Then you have the repeated US and Israeli coordinated bombings of Iran in indisputable, conspicuous violation of international law. And the Trump 1.0 Regime’s ruthless liquidation of Iran’s Number Three leader, General Qassem Soleimani, when in 2020, he was on a peace-making mission to Baghdad, the arch enemy.
Shouldn’t enough be enough in the asymmetric conflict?
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Western allies’ pathetically submissive reactions = complicity
The Western allies of the US have never had the courage and decency to state their disagreement with all this no matter how they might otherwise interpret the Iranian government. This is shameful.
EUropean subdued and submissive responses to US crimes are deeply troubling – self-destructive too.
And it is shameful that they are also turning their blind eye to the present Trumped-up pretext for a new war on Iran – masterminded also by meddling significantly with various opposition factors, foreign terrorists in Iran and building up huge military strike potentials in the region these very hours.
There is nothing to misunderstand about that: Trump’s former Secretary of State, Pompeo’s statement says it all: “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also, to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”
If Trump takes Greenland and bombs Iran they may mention international law, but do absolutely nothing concrete.
TFF condemns all these actions against a unique civilisation. Another foreign destructive action on Iran and its people must be prevented.
TFF categorically rejects any incitement to civil war and any form of internal and external intervention, which would only deepen the suffering of the Iranian people.
We affirm the Iranian people’s right to determine their own political, economic, and social future—and call now for international pressure not on Tehran, but on Washington and Brussels.
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North America must not continue to get away with its crimes
Yes, America, you have indeed become too arrogant. Martin Luther King Jr. who was born on this very day in 1929, said it in 1967:
You should not be the main enabler of the Gaza genocide – and get away with it.
You should not send troops into your own cities, attack and shoot to death your own civilians – and get away with it.
You should not abduct Venezuela’s president couple and take over the country, steal its resources and make yourself Viceroy of it – and get away with it.
You should not be able to take over Greenland for what you call your national security reasons, threaten also Denmark, your extremely loyal NATO friend and ally – and get away with it.
You should not be able to argue that only your own “morals” and not international law is what guides you – and get away with it.
Your – too arrogant, imperial – ways are unacceptable, and the rest of the world must tell you so in ways you can understand – by hundreds of diplomatic and other non-violent initiatives: No, America, you can’t continue this way and we will stop you. (Shortly, TFF will publish a 5-part series of ideas on how to do that).
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Positive visions for true peace
What we need now more than ever is to stand up for a world where the law and common rules apply to everyone. That means adherence to the UN and other decent bodies and all the provisions of international laws and the Geneva Conventions. It means the Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, Defensive Defence, and Common Security. It means simple decency.
That is the true rules-based order. It may sound like utopia today but we shall stick to it anyway. Humanity needs to dialogue about the ideas, visions and principles of a better, just and peaceful world and work for it.
The United Nations was founded after the horrors of World War II. Because members violate it and starve it – now to 1% of their military expenditures – the UN is far from perfect, but its Charter and other norms and laws are by far the best we have. We want its collectively accepted norms to rule the world, not yours, America.
Today, you – America – is the most dangerous player in the world; change yourself if you want friendship, security and prosperity.
Therefore:
No more interventions, regime changes, CIA infiltrations, bases and wars. It is time for you, America, to join the civilised world.
And no more Western/US destruction of Iran.
TFF insists that living together without militarism, imperialism and war, if not in true peace, is eminently possible. And we continue to work for it into our fifth decade.
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