July 14th, 2020, marks the fifth anniversary of
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Agreement, often referred to as
the Iran Nuclear Deal (or simply the Deal) – the Deal that wasn’t. It was yet another attempt at regime change.
Of all the plans to control Iran beginning from Operation
Ajax to Operation JCPOA and everything in between, the Iran Nuclear Deal was by
far the most devious attempt at undermining the sovereignty of Iran – one way
or another. The Greek’s Trojan Horse pales compared to
this dastardly scheme. Years in the
making, the crafty plan even prompted Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute (SIPRI) to nominate
John Kerry and Javad Zarif to recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.
As such, it is high time that the Deal’s
planners, their motivations and their associations were discussed in order to grasp
the depth of the deception.
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Iran, due to its geopolitical position, has always
been considered a jewel in the crown of the colonial powers. Attempts to conquer Iran through a proxy
which started with Operation Ajax in August 1953, at the behest of the British
and carried out by the CIA were not abandoned even with the ousting of
America’s man, the Shah. Although the
Islamic Revolution reclaimed Iran’s sovereignty, America was not ready to abandon its plans of
domination over Iran, and by extension, the Persian Gulf.
The Persian Gulf has been the lynchpin of US foreign policy.
"To all intents and
purposes," a former senior Defense Department official observed,
"'Gulf waters' now extend from the Straits of Malacca to the South
Atlantic." Nevertheless, bases nearer the [Persian] Gulf had a special
importance, and Pentagon planners urged "as substantial a land presence in
the as can be managed." (Anthony H. Cordesman, “The Gulf and the Search
for Strategic Stability”, Boulder: Westview, 1984).
Having failed in numerous attempts including the Nojeh coup
at the nascent stages of the IR Iran’s newly formed government, war, sanctions,
terrorism, and a failed color
revolution, the United States needed
other alternatives to reach its goal.
Unlike the illegal war against Iraq, war with Iran was not a feasible
option. The United States was aware of
its inability to wage a successful war against Iran without serious damage to
itself and its allies.
When George W. Bush took office, he commissioned a war
exercise to gage the feasibility of an attack against Iran. The 2002 Millennium
Challenge, was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States Armed
Forces in mid-2002. The exercise, which ran from July 24 to August
15 and cost $250 million, proved
that the US would not defeat Iran. The
US even restarted
the war games changing rules to ensure an American victory, in reality,
cheating itself. This led to accusations that the war game had
turned from an honest, open, playtest of U.S. war-fighting capabilities into a
controlled and scripted exercise intended to end in a U.S. victory to promote a
false narrative of US invincibility.
For this reason, the United States continued its attempts at
undermining Iran’s sovereignty by means of sanctions, terror, and creating
divisions among the Iranians. The JCPOA
would be its master plan.
A simple observation of
Iran clearly suggests simple ideological divisions among the Iranian people
(pro-West, anti-West, minorities, religious, secular) which have all been amply
exploited by the United States and allies.
None of the exploits delivered the prize the US was seeking. And so it was that it was decided to exploit
the one factor which united Iranians of ALL persuasion. Iran’s civilian nuclear program.
In an interview with
National Public Radio (25 November 2004), Ray Takyeh (Council on Foreign
Relations CFR and husband to Iran expert Suzanne Maloney of Brookings) stated that according to polls
75-80% of the Iranians rallied behind the Islamic Republic of Iran in support
of its nuclear program, including the full fuel cycle. In other words, the overwhelming uniting
factor among the Iranians for the Islamic Republic was the nuclear program. (USIA poll conducted in 2007 found that 64%
of those questioned said that US legislation repealing regime change in Iran
would not be incentive enough to give up the nuclear program and full
fuel-cycle). The next phase was to cause disunity on an
issue that united Iranians of all stripes:
negotiate away the nuclear program.
The first
round of nuclear negotiations 2003-2005 dubbed the Paris Agreement between Iran
and the EU3 proved to be futile, and as
one European diplomat put it: “We gave them a beautiful box of chocolate that was,
however, empty.” As West’s fortune would have it, the same Iranian
officials who had participated in the 2003-2005 negotiations would negotiate the
JCPOA.
Around the time of the end of the first round of
negotiations, another Brookings Fellow, Flynt Leverett , senior advisor for
National Security Center, published a book “Inheriting Syria, Bashar’s Trial by
Fire” (Brookings book publication, April 2005).
In his book, Leverett argued that instead of conflict, George W. Bush
should seek to cooperate with Syria as Assad was popular, but instead seek to
weaken Assad’s position among his people by targeting the Golan (induce him to
give it up) so that he would lose popularity among the Syrians. The JCPOA was designed in part along the
same line of thinking. And more. His wife Hillary Leverett had a prominent
role in ‘selling’ the Deal.
Secret
negotiations between the Americans and ‘reform-minded’ Iranians never ceased,
bypassing both Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and the President at
the time – Mahmood Ahmadinejad. In a 2012 meeting at
the University of Southern California, present members of the Iran Project team
had no reservations about suggesting that it was more beneficial to engage Iran
rather than attack. They went as far as
stating in the Q&A session to this writer that “they had been engaged with
the “Green” (the opposition movement in the failed 2009 color revolution) for
years, but Ahmadinejad won” (referring to the 2009 elections). But Ahmadinejad would soon leave office and
be replaced by Rohani – a more amenable player.
Why
Negotiate?
Fully
appreciating the challenge of attacking Iran, in 2004, the pro-Israel Washington Institute for
Near East Policy
(WINEP), presented its policy paper “The Challenges
of U.S. Preventive Military Action” authored by Michael Eisenstadt. It was opined that the ideal situation was
(and continues to be) to have a compliant ‘regime’ in Tehran. Eisenstadt was of the opinion that unlike
the Osiraq nuclear power plant which was bombed and destroyed, Isarel/US would
not be able to bomb Iran’s Bushehr reactor with the same ease. In particular, Eisenstadt claimed that Israel may have benefited from
French aid in destroying Osiraq. French intelligence reportedly emplaced a
homing beacon at Osiraq to help Israeli pilots locate the facility or target a
critical underground structure there.
In this light, it was
recommended that the principal goal of U.S. action should be to delay Iran's
nuclear program long enough to allow for the possible emergence of new
leadership in Tehran. Failing that, war
would have been facilitated.
It was thought the Paris
Agreement talks would fail (as the JCPOA was designed to fail) and as such, the
following were some of the suggestions made:
• harassment or murder of key
Iranian scientists or technicians;
• introduction of fatal design
flaws into critical reactor, centrifuge, or weapons components during their
production, to ensure catastrophic failure during use;
• disruption or interdiction of
key technology or material transfers through sabotage or covert military
actions on land, in the air, or at sea;
• sabotage of critical facilities
by U.S. intelligence assets, including third country nationals or Iranian
agents with access to key facilities;
• introduction of destructive
viruses into Iranian computer systems controlling the production of components
or the operation of facilities;
• damage or destruction of
critical facilities through sabotage or direct action by U.S. special forces.
As with the murder and terror of the nuclear scientists, and
the Stuxnet virus into the reactor, the JCPOA enabled personnel on the ground
in Iran to carry out extensive sabotage as has been recently observed in recent
days and weeks. Rohani’s visa free
travel opened the flood gates to spies and saboteurs – dual citizens, who easily traveled with passports other than
American, British, and Australian. Iran
even managed to prevent an IAEA inspector who triggered an
alarm at Iran’s nuclear facility.
But it would seem, Iran has not been able to stop other intruders and
terrorists – not yet.
Other Motivational Factors for Negotiating
According to studies, as of 2008 Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor had 82 tons of enriched
uranium (U235) loaded into it, according to Israeli and Chinese reports.
This amount was significantly higher pre and during negotiations. History has not witnessed the bombing of a nuclear
power plant with an operational nuclear enrichment facility. Deliberate
bombing of such facilities would result breach containment and radioactive
elements released. The death toll horrifying. The Union of
Concerned Scientists has
estimated 3 million deaths would result in 3 weeks from bombing the nuclear
enrichment facilities near Esfahan, and the contamination would cover
Afghanistan, Pakistan, all the way to India.
The
JCPOA significantly reduced the amount of enriched uranium reducing the
potential casualty deaths in the event that a strike is carried out.
The Deal buys time - Iran’s strength has been its ability to retaliate to
any attack by closing down the Strait of Hormuz. Given that 17 million barrels of oil a day, or 35% of the world’s seaborne
oil exports go through the Strait of Hormuz, incidents in the Strait would be
fatal for the world economy. Enter Nigeria (West Africa) and Yemen.
In 1998, Clinton’s
national security agenda made it clear that unhampered access to Nigerian oil
and other vital resources was a key US policy. In early 2000s, Chatham House
was one of the publications that determined African oil would be a good
alternate to Persian Gulf oil in case of
oil disruption. This followed a strategy paper for US to move
toward African oil. Push for African oil was on Dick Cheney’s desk on May 31,
2000. In 2002, the Israeli based IASPS suggested America push
toward African oil. In the same year Boko Haram was ‘founded’.
In 2007, AFRICOM
helped consolidate this push into the region. The 2011, a publication titled: “Globalizing West African Oil:
US ‘energy security’ and the global economy” outlined ‘US positioning itself to use military
force to ensure African oil continued to flow to the United States’. This was
but one strategy to supply oil in addition to or as an alternate to the passage
of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
(See HERE for full article).
JCPOA as
a starting point
It has
now been made abundantly clear that the Deal was simply JCPOA1. Other Deals were to follow to disarm Iran
even further, to stop Iran’s defensive missile program, and to stop Iran
helping its allies in the region. This
would have been relatively easy to achieve had Hillary Clinton been elected –
as had been the hope. The plan was to
allow trade and neoliberal polices which the Rohani administration readily embraced,
a sharp increase in imports (harming domestic production and self-reliance)
while building hope – or as Maloney called it ‘crisis of expectation’. It was thought that with a semblance of
‘normalcy’ in international relations and free of sanctions, Iranians would
want to continue abandoning their sovereignty, their defenses, and rally around
the pro-West/America politicians at the expense of the core ideology of the
Islamic Revolution, the conservatives and the IRGC. In other words, regime change. (several meetings speak to this; see for example, and here).
The
players
The most
prominent, one could argue, was President Obama. Obama was not about peace. The biggest threat to an empire is
peace. Obama had chosen feigned
diplomacy as his weapon. But before
picking up the mantle of diplomacy, he had proposed terrorism – sanctioned
terrorism. Obama, while a junior senator introduced S. 1430 in 2007 and had "crippling sanctions" in
mind for the Iranian people. As
president, his executive orders assured this.
Not to be left unmentioned
was the darling of the theatrics of this Deal – Federica Mogherini. So enamored were some of the Iranian
parliamentarians with her that to the embarrassment of Iran, the internet was
abuzz with these MPs taking pictures with her.
Perhaps they looked at her and not her years as a German
Marshall Fund Fellow.
The German Marshall Fund (GMF)
sounds harmless enough, but perhaps Russia many not view it that way. And Iran shouldn’t. The GMF pushed for bringing Ukraine into NATO’s fold. Furthermore, the GMF gives
funding to American Abroad Media. AMA boasts
of some of the most dangerous anti-Iran neoconservatives who have shaped
America’s policies such as Dennis Ross, James Woolsey, Martin Indyk
(responsible for the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act later to become ISA and still in place after the
JCPOA), Tom Pickering (one of the main proponents of the Iran Deal and member
of the Iran Project). Supporters are not
limited to the GMF. Others include Rockerfeller, Ford Foundation, and NED.
And a most active proponent of the JCPOA was none other than
NED recipient, Trita Parsi/NIAC. Trita
Parsi was personally thanked for his role in pushing the JCPOA through. Job well done for a 3 time recipient of NED
funds . No wonder the George Soros –
Koch foundation Quincy Institute selected
him as their Executive Vice President.
And last but not least, Hillary Mann Leverett (wife of
aforementioned Flynn Leverett) who persuaded her audiences that the JCPOA was
akin to “Nixon going to China”. While
some in Iran naively believed this to be the case, and even defended her, they
failed to realize that when Nixon went to China it was to bring China on board
against Russia. And Israel was not a
player. It was not an opening to
befriend Iran any more than Nixon’s trip had altruist motivations.
Russia and China’s role
The Russians and the Chinese were so eager to embrace a
long-awaited peace after all the calamity caused by the United States that they
fully embraced this Deal, even though it was detrimental to their interests in
so doing.
America’s animosity and never-ending schemes encouraged
cooperation between Russia, China, and Iran.
Although the lifting of sanctions post JCPOA would have facilitated trade
and enhanced diplomacy between Iran and the West, at a cost to China and Russia,
they stood steadfast by the Deal. Peace was more valuable. But far more importantly, the two powerful
nations allowed the United States to be the arbitrator of an international
treaty – the NPT.
During the Shah’s reign, President Ford had signed onto a
National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM
292, 1975) allowing and encouraging Iran to not only enrich uranium, but
sell it to neighboring countries to profit America. The United States then decided that since the
Islamic Republic of Iran did not serve the interests of the United States, the
United States would determine how the NPT should apply to Iran.
But their efforts at peace and the West’s efforts at regime
change all came to naught. What is
important to bear in mind is that America’s efforts at war, sabotage, and
terrorism have not ended. Imposing
unilateral sanctions – terrorism against the Iranian people, has not
ceased. Although the Iranian people and
their selected representative in the new Iranian parliament are far more aware
of, and have an aversion to America’s ploys and the Deal, China and Russia must
do their part not only as guarantors of peace, but also to maintain their
integrity in a world where both aspire to live in multilateralism. The world already has a super power without
morals and integrity; it does not need other great powers that act similarly.
Iran has fended off another assault on its sovereignty. However,
saboteurs and terrorists are soliciting war with their recent string of
terrorism in Iran. As the fifth
anniversary of this trap approaches, the world needs to understand and step up
in order to defend peace, international law and social justice. The future of all depends on it.
And to American compatriots:
Make sure Trump understands war will not get him re-elected.
