Amir-Abdollahian Calls Sanctions What They Are: Terrorism

Sanctioned Terrorism

In 2013, I was invited to speak at a conference in Tehran on the topic of terrorism. Regrettably, none of the speakers covered the topic of terrorism sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The reality is that the UNSC is the only un-democratic entity that gives license to terror – without ever facing consequences. And we still fail to recognize this act of terrorism – America’s weapon of choice. We call it sanctions.

It is way past time for us to wake up to the reality that terrorism must not necessarily involve blood and carnage. Yes, images of the atomic bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki immediately killing 120,000 civilians continue to shock us. The images haunt us and shame us. But there are no shocking images of the 500,000 Iraqi children that were killed with sanctioned terrorism. We were horrified and reacted to the drone strike that killed 7 innocent Afghan children, but we are silent and therefore complicit in the terrorizing of innocent children and adults who suffer as a result of America’s sanctioned terror all over the world.

The world must unite in fighting the ruthless but cowardly terrorists who continue their reign of terror; their weapon of mass murder that they dub ‘diplomacy’. The foremost state sponsor of terror, the United States, pledges COVID vaccines to the very same people whose well-being and security it is undermining or killing with terrorism – sanctions. By every definition, sanctions are an act of terrorism. You don’t see the blood, you don’t see the wreckage. Maybe you don’t want to hear the number of casualties pile up. But terrorism has no borders, no boundaries. It may spare you today. Tomorrow you may well be the victim.

Understand terrorism – call it out by its name. Shame it and stop it.

Who is a terrorist? Undoubtedly, what comes to mind is Daesh (ISIL), al-Qaeda, MKO, Boko Haram, etc. What is terrorism? The events of 9/11 and the gruesome beheadings carried out by Daesh shape our visual perception of terrorism. What is left unmentioned and unrecognized in our collective psyche is the kind of terrorism that has been deliberately obfuscated: sanctioned terrorism or terrorism with a license—sanctions.

The fact that scholars have identified over 100 definitions of the term terrorism demonstrates that there is no universally accepted definition. There is general consensus that terrorism is “viewed as a method of violence in which civilians are targeted with the objective of forcing a perceived enemy into submission by creating fear, demoralization, and political friction in the population under attack.” ⁱ

In 1937, the League of Nations Convention defined terrorism as “All criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public.”

Article 1.2 of The Arab Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism signed in Cairo in 1998 describes terrorism as: “Any act or threat of violence, whatever its motives or purposes, that occurs for the advancement of an individual or collective criminal agenda, causing terror among people, causing fear by harming them, or placing their lives, liberty or security in danger, or aiming to cause damage to the environment or to public or private installations or property or to occupy or to seize them, or aiming to jeopardize a national resource”.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1373, licensing the United States to wage war against terrorism without first defining terrorism. Security Council Resolution 1373, the Counter-Terrorism Committee, and the Fight Against Terrorism | American Journal of International Law | Cambridge Core, however, Section 1.B of 18 U.S. Code § 2331 on international terrorism includes the following: (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. In spite of these clear definitions, sanctions—sanctioned terrorism is dubbed as “diplomacy”, “an alternate to war”, etc.

The reality of sanctioned terrorism is denied even by the UN from whence the most important definition of terrorism was delivered in a seminal speech by Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations. Annan conveyed the findings of a high-level UN panel “A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility”(2004)ⁱⁱ as having defined terrorism to be: “[A]ny action intended to kill or seriously harm civilians or non-combatants, with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling action by a government or international organization”.

Shamelessly, even after sanctioned terrorism took the life of one million Iraqis, the UNSC licensed terrorism against Iran—sanctions, without any remorse for the lost lives of one million Iraqi victims of sanctioned terrorism and untold numbers of other victims across the globe.

The terror inflicted by way of sanctions could not have been made more clear than what Kofi Annan reported of the 2004 UN panel’s findings stating that prevention was a vital part of any strategy to protect people against terrorism adding that “in today’s world, any threat to one is truly a threat to all” and that “any event or process that leads to deaths on a large scale or the lessening of life chances, and which undermines states as the basic unit of the international system, should be viewed as a threat to international peace and security. Such threats included “economic and social threats”.ⁱⁱⁱ

“Security” in terms of international relations is understood to be human security. There are six sectors to security: physical, military, economic, ecological, societal, and political. Any change from “secure” to “insecure” or a general deterioration in any one or more of these sectors, increases the potential for violence (Buzan 2009). In spite of it all, the UNSC licensed terrorism.

The overall failure to identify and deliberately obfuscate this act of terrorism has enabled this premeditated act of terrorism to continue with impunity. The success of this deception is owed to controlling the narrative with complicity from the media. This has been so effective that even the victims of sanctioned terrorism fail to grasp that they are being subjected to terrorism. As Walter Laquer famously wrote in his 1977 piece “Terrorism”: “The success of a terrorist operation depends almost entirely on the amount of publicity it receives.” Sanctioned terrorism has received no publicity.

Our present day understanding of terrorism was initially introduced by Hollywood that often borrows its story ideas from the U.S. foreign policy agenda and has at times reinforced these policies. Hollywood rarely touched the topic of terrorism in the late 1960s and 1970s when the phenomenon was not high on the U.S. foreign policy agenda, in news headlines or in the American public consciousness. In the 1980s, in the footsteps of the Reagan administration, the commercial film industry brought terrorist villains to the big screen, making terrorism a blockbuster film product in the 1990s, painting Arabs (and now Moslems) as terrorists.^iv Thus the movie industry-defined and projected terrorism to the world at large in a manner consistent with US foreign policy. The news media continues to play an even bigger role.

News media has consistently framed terrorism by presenting sudden, shocking scenes of carnage and blood in order to shock the viewer and drive home the narrative of what terrorism should entail—by implication, ruling out all other terrorist acts. So while the imagery creates fear and loathing, and a total rejection of terrorism as identified by the media, a parallel loathing of unidentified terrorism—of sanctioned terrorism has been deliberately precluded. This is propaganda at its finest.

It goes without saying that the aim of propaganda is to change people’s opinions and attempt to influence their future actions and decisions. What is common about propaganda is that it seldom shows the situation from different points of view and seldom gives the full picture. Images of sanctioned terrorism are sorely missing from the picture as the culprits make every effort to present sanctions as diplomacy, a tool of statecraft, and have even convinced the general public that it is a better alternative to war. In fact, sanctioned terrorism is the cowardly alternative to war for the victim is deprived of an unidentifiable enemy to fight. Sanctions, like other terrorists, don’t wear military uniforms.

It is incumbent upon every individual opposed to terrorism to take ownership of the falsely presented narrative about sanctions and refer to sanctions as sanctioned terrorism at all times. Terrorism, like pollution, does not recognize boundaries. Russia has learned this the hard way. By Hillary Clinton’s own admission, the terrorists America is fighting today were created by the US. We cannot send our uniformed men and women to fight unidentified terrorism, sanctions. We must be the champions of this war on terror. Whether we want to speak for yesterday’s victims or defend today’s victims of sanctioned terrorism, or whether we want to prevent future victims, we must fight sanctioned terrorism today.

Sanctioned Terrorism (syrianews.cc)

[i] Alex P. Schmid, Albert J. Jongman, et al., Political Terrorism: A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories, and Literature, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988, pp. 5-6.

 [ii] www.un.org/secureworld

[iii] Kofi Annan, “Special Report: Courage to fulfill our responsibilities”, The Economist Intelligence Unit, December 4, 2004.

[iv] Helena Vanhala – “Hollywood portrayal of modern international terrorism in blockbuster action-adventure films: From the Iran hostage crisis to September 11, 2001”. Dissertations and theses. University of Oregon; 2005.

Iran's New Foreign Minister - Amir-Abdollahian

Article published by Foreign Policy about Iran's new FM.    

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/17/amir-abdollahian-iran-foreign-minister-suleimani/

Meet Iran’s New Foreign Minister: Qassem Suleimani’s ‘Soldier’

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian is a staunch backer of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance.”

By Saheb Sadeghi, a columnist and foreign-policy analyst on Iran and the Middle East. 

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian gives a press conference at Bayan Palace in Kuwait City, Kuwait, on March 31, 2015.  STR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021, 3:16 PM

“[Hossein] Amir-Abdollahian is another Qassem Suleimani in the field of diplomacy.”

That’s how one Iranian lawmaker recently described Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s nominee for foreign minister. Like Suleimani, the powerful commander of Iran’s Quds Force who was assassinated in a U.S. drone strike in January 2020, Amir-Abdollahian is well known for his support of the Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance” in the Middle East—the array of political and military groups, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq, Yemen’s Houthis, and others that Iran supports across the region.

The country’s conservative-led parliament approved Amir-Abdollahian’s appointment 270 votes to 10 votes. Members had demanded the Ministry of Foreign Affairs support the late Suleimani’s goals and missions during their review of Amir-Abdollahian’s credentials, and the high vote in parliament shows they trust him in this regard.

Indeed, the 57-year-old diplomat, who previously served as speaker of parliament for international affairs and deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, among other posts, once referred to himself as Suleimani’s “soldier.” He said every time he went to a country as a diplomatic and negotiation envoy, he would first consult with Suleimani to get necessary guidance.

The closeness in Amir-Abdollahian’s and Suleimani’s views means the former is likely to attach great importance to Iran’s military policy in the Middle East during his tenure. On his first official bilateral visit as Iran’s foreign minister, he traveled to Syria and met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to reaffirm Iran’s support for his regime. Since 2011, with the start of the Syrian civil war, Iran has provided military and civilian support to Assad.

 

Amir-Abdollahian was born in Damghan, Iran, 200 miles north of Tehran, but his family moved to the capital when he was six after his father passed away. They settled in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, on 17 Shahrivar Street to the south of Mehrabad International Airport. He describes himself as “from the south”—a term usually reserved for families who live in the poor southern outskirts of Tehran and have a relatively low level of welfare and livelihood.

Describing the level of poverty and deprivation in the area where he lived, he has said there was no hospital or even a small clinic where he grew up, and later, with the help of a group of locals and his friends, they established a charity-run clinic there.

Amir-Abdollahian volunteered to serve in the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988 and says that experience is what led him to work at the foreign ministry’s Iraq desk in 1990 and 1991. He received his bachelor’s degree in international relations from the School of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1991, and went on to receive his master’s and doctoral degrees in international relations from the University of Tehran. He was appointed undersecretary of Iran’s embassy to Iraq in 1997.

Amir-Abdollahian has said from the very beginning of his career, he worked closely with Suleimani. He was present for the direct 2007 negotiations with the Americans in Iraq. The Iranian team was under Suleimani’s supervision during those talks and negotiated with CIA and U.S. Defense Department officials.

That his work frequently brought him into close contact with Suleimani is no surprise. Suleimani’s Quds Force, the foreign branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has traditionally been in charge of Iran’s policies and diplomacy in the Middle East, from Palestine to Iraq to Yemen, and has played an instrumental role in providing military and political support to militant movements throughout the region.

 

In 2011, due to Amir-Abdollahian’s good relationship with the Quds Force and Suleimani, then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appointed Amir-Abdollahian as deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, where most activities of the Quds Force took place. When Mohammad Javad Zarif became foreign minister in 2013, Amir-Abdollahian was the only deputy foreign minister from the Ahmadinejad era to keep his post, which he held for three more years.

But in 2016, he was abruptly dismissed. Some reports suggest he did not match Zarif’s approach and the two were not on the same page regarding regional issues. Asked about his ouster, Amir-Abdollahian said Zarif was pursuing new policies in the region after the nuclear talks concluded. Yet hard-line lawmaker Javad Karimi Qudusi quoted Zarif’s undersecretary, Morteza Sarmadi, telling Amir-Abdollahian: “We want to send a message to the West that our policies in the Middle East have changed, and the way to send this message is to remove you from your post.”

Amir-Abdollahian’s ouster was met with sharp criticism from conservatives and conservative-friendly media outlets. Some suggested he’d been fired to appease Arab countries and then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who saw Amir-Abdollahian as one of the main obstacles to then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s peace and diplomacy efforts toward the United States and major Arab countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia.

When conservatives in parliament summoned Zarif for an explanation, he denied that accusation, stating: “It is an insult to the government to claim that we are changing our officials due to the concerns of foreigners. These claims have no basis. The transfer of people from one department to another in the foreign ministry is an obvious fact.”

Yet Zarif’s decision to fire Amir-Abdollahian may have also had to do with his own frustrations with Suleimani—and thus with Amir-Abdollahian by proxy.

In recently leaked audio of an interview that was only meant to be published long after he had left office, Zarif accused Suleimani of having constantly undermined his diplomatic efforts and complained that despite being foreign minister, he had a limited role in setting Iran’s regional policies. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, he said, the battlefield or “field”—meaning the Quds Force’s military and influence operations in the Middle East—always came first ahead of the “diplomatic field.”

In this context, then, Zarif’s firing of Amir-Abdollahian could be seen as an attempt to weaken the Quds Force’s influence in the foreign ministry and claw back some authority over foreign policy in the Middle East.

And judging by Amir-Abdollahian’s reaction to Zarif’s remarks, he may have had a point.

Amir-Abdollahian argued that Suleimani’s and the Quds Force’s actions in the Middle East have brought security to Iran and the region. He saiddiplomacy has always relied on the “field,” and if the Americans agreed to negotiate with Iran on various occasions over the past decade regarding the nuclear program and other issues, it had been because of Iran’s capabilities on the ground and its influence in the Middle East.

Now that he’s foreign minister, Amir-Abdollahian will be able to more seamlessly integrate the Quds Force’s strategy into the nation’s foreign-policy approach. He even told lawmakers he would continue Suleimani’s path in foreign policy.

Amir-Abdollahian has been clear about what he wants to achieve as foreign minister. “We in the Middle East are looking to consolidate the achievements of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ field,” he said during his parliamentary review for the job. “We are proud to support our allies and the ‘Axis of Resistance.’”

That approach seems to be in line with Raisi’s own foreign-policy goals. At Raisi’s inauguration ceremony, representatives of Iranian-backed proxies—such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Hashd al-Shaabi—were seated at the front; the EU foreign-policy representative was seated behind them. Amir-Abdollahian, who was the international director of parliament at the time, was responsible for the formalities of the international guests and their seating arrangements at the ceremony.

Amir-Abdollahian also supports the “Look to the East” policy emphasized by Raisi, which aims to expand Iran’s relations with China and Russia, and called it the most important axis of the new government’s foreign policy. He described the signing of the 25-year cooperation agreement between Iran and China as “historic” and said he had played a role in drafting the document.

On the nuclear deal, Amir-Abdollahian does not have much experience as he was not present in the talks. But he believes “diplomacy only understands the language of force,” and to get the United States to lift sanctions on Iran, the country must increase its leverage in negotiations by advancing its nuclear program.

He supported legislation under which Iran drastically reduced its nuclear commitments and seriously limited International Atomic Energy Agency access to its nuclear program—legislation that Rouhani called harmful to Iran and one of the most important barriers to reaching an agreement with the West to lift economic sanctions.

During his tenure, Zarif turned the foreign ministry into the most important government ministry in the past eight years, bringing in a generation of Iranian diplomats who negotiated the nuclear deal, the most important diplomatic agreement in Iran’s modern history in the last 40 years. That’s the foreign ministry Amir-Abdollahian has inherited, and he has a difficult job to do as he will inevitably be compared to Zarif.

However, Amir-Abdollahian enjoys privileges that pave the way for him in diplomacy. The IRGC’s and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s trust in him give him more credibility than Zarif had. All of this means his tenure could see a significant expansion of the foreign ministry’s role in shaping Iran’s Middle East policy.

Afghanistan and Taliban

 

 Thoughts share with an Afghan friend on 9/13/2001.

Press TV interview today prompted me to share on my blog.

https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZNaDlnMKB

 

 

	Sep 13, 2021, 9:41 AM (1 day ago)

I believe that the Taliban DID make a deal.  And the US, both Trump and Biden knew they would take over very quickly - a planned before.  But they pulled a fast one over the Americans!

between 1994 and 1997 was the expectation that they would swiftly conquer the whole country, enabling Unocal to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. Pakistan, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia "  The Washington Post on May 25, 2001, reported that the U.S. government "pledged another $43 million in assistance to Afghanistan, [the Taliban government] raising total aid this year to $124 million and making the United States the largest humanitarian donor to the country.'' This was less than four months before the September 11 attacks.  

According to reports, the Taliban demanded a bigger cut from the pipeline for infrastructure.  The US declined and said we will carpet bomb you.  And they did.  

Course, a lot more to the background and other stuff on the matter, but my point being that the US concluded it should make a deal with the Taliban, stop being involved, get benefits from Afghanistan's riches, and  set them on the 'targets' - including Iran, China and Russia.  Private mercenaries were being hired as late as May.

But I believe, and will continue to believe until demonstrated otherwise, that the Taliban pulled a fast one on the Americans.  They promised cooperation but they were making deals with China.  They sent a delegation to China a few months before the pull out.  

I also believe that they are capable of change - so long as they want to.  Let us remember that with American interference and encouragement, weaponry, the Mojahedeen and their offshoot Taliban were fighting invaders.    Women are the first victim of wars - and there was rampant rape and other practices.  Many welcome Taliban to give order to society.  This included practice of a more strict practices.  I have been told the imposititon of the strict dress code was to protect women from being raped or abused.   Something very common.   Then they got worse, more fanatical, and the corruption and dealings with the Americans just exasperated it all.  The Afghan people outside Kabul were still being assaulted - in a major way, and many welcomed the Taliban for the same reason they did in earlier times.

Right now, Afghanistan is in a very bad place.  .  Covid. Drought.  Famine.  According to UN agencies, Food insecurity has spiked over the past year.  2.3 billion people lacking year around food.  They are striving to form a government to rule over a disaster with all the problems facing them, a quest for legitimacy, and winning over the people.  I believe the Taliban will implement better policies - in time.  For now, they need people to fear them so as to stop further fractioning, and they are not interested in the West's standards of 'modern society', women's rights, gays, transgenders, etc. which became common place in Afghanistan with the Americans!  And I think China can afford to help them.  Though China always does things for a price and to benefit itself.  America wants to destroy and conquer with war, China with exploitation/construction.

The world will react to the Taliban and its actions.  But we MUST remember, whether we hate the Taliban or not, that there are thousands of foreign terrorists in Afghanistan, as well as thousands of 'mercenaries' - US paid.  Anything that happens in Afghanistan will be blamed on the Taliban.  

 

No doubt, Pakistan and Wahhabis have skin in the game.  Where their standing is at the moment, I am not certain.  I think that every nation is re-evaluating its relationship with Washington.  

Time will tell.  But tragically, millions don't have time.