Europe Must Defend the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that the United Arab Emirates "is aiming to pull most of its forces out of the Saudi-led campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen." Also on Tuesday, a Houthi drone attacked the airport in Abha, Saudi Arabia, wounding nine.

One wonders if UAE is withdrawing from Yemen to ready itself for the coming war on Iran. As AP reports, "Iran this week breached a low-enriched uranium stockpile limitation set by the deal and said by Sunday it would increase its enrichment of uranium closer to weapons-grade levels if Europe does not offer it a new deal."

The ontology of Europe is such that it is incapable of action in opposition to the United States. The problem for Europe, and the planet as a whole, is that the United States is now inseparable from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the apartheid settler state of Israel. All three are fundamentally warfare states.

Our only hope to counter a catastrophic war on Iran is if Europe acts independently and confronts the United States. A fulsome defense of the JCPOA is the only way. But it doesn't appear that France, let alone the UK, intends to provide that defense.

Aircraft Carrier Kabuki

The excuse provided by the Trump administration for the movement of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to the Persian Gulf apparently is based on intelligence that some of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces were preparing to attack U.S. troops (see David Sanger's "Iran Will Stop Complying With Some Parts of Nuclear Deal" and Alissa Rubin's "Iraq’s Militias, Accused of Threatening U.S., Pose a Quandary for Iraq").

Putting aside reports from the Navy that this is a regularly scheduled deployment, what is clear is that if the U.S. did attack Iran it would also have to go to war with Iraq again.

The Popular Mobilization Forces saved Iraq from ISIS. Some are aligned with Iran, some not. But the idea that the U.S. can dictate the terms of their composition is absurd. As Rubin says,

[S]oon after the United States Treasury Department announced in March it was listing one of the Popular Mobilization groups, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, as a foreign terrorist organization, the Iraqi government made clear it disagreed.

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi did not defend the group by name — al-Nujaba has proved difficult for the Iraqi military to work with at times — but he did support the Popular Mobilization groups.

“The Americans can make the decisions they want, but the Americans see things differently from the way we do, and our attitude toward the Popular Mobilization is well known and clear,” he said in March. “We respect all of the groups of the Popular Mobilization that made sacrifices.” 

The sacrifices he was alluding to were largely made from 2014 through 2016, when the Islamic State swept across northern Iraq with little resistance and was moving fast toward the capital. Urged by a call in June 2014 from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s influential Shiite spiritual leader, for volunteers to defend their nation, young men and old formed a pickup army.

That pickup army truly liberated Iraq, even if U.S. troops are still stationed there. The days when the U.S. can exact compliance via aerial bombardment are over. This bit of aircraft carrier kabuki is going nowhere.

Centcom Chief Caught Lying to Congress

An excellent story appeared yesterday on the front page of The New York Times. In "Arms Sales to Saudis Leave American Fingerprints on Yemen’s Carnage" Declan Walsh and Eric Schmitt establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. military, despite statements to the contrary, knows exactly what decisions the Saudi coalition makes in Yemen:

The Pentagon and State Department have denied knowing whether American bombs were used in the war’s most notorious airstrikes, which have struck weddings, mosques and funerals. However, a former senior State Department official said that the United States had access to records of every airstrike over Yemen since the early days of the war, including the warplane and munitions used.

[snip] 

While American officials often protested civilian deaths in public, two presidents ultimately stood by the Saudis. President Obama gave the war his qualified approval to assuage Saudi anger over his Iran nuclear deal. President Trump embraced Prince Mohammed and bragged of multibillion-dollar arms deals with the Saudis.

As bombs fell on Yemen, the United States continued to train the Royal Saudi Air Force. In 2017, the United States military announced a $750 million program focused on how to carry out airstrikes, including avoiding civilian casualties. The same year, Congress authorized the sale of more than $510 million in precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia, which had been suspended by the Obama administration in protest of civilian casualties.

Walsh and Schmitt expose the head of Central Command, Gen. Joseph L. Votel, lying to Congress:

But in Congress, the mood was souring. In the March [2018] hearing, senators accused the Pentagon of being complicit in the coalition’s errant bombing, and pressed its leaders on how directly the United States was linked to atrocities.

General Votel said the military knew little about that. The United States did not track whether the coalition jets that it refueled carried out the airstrikes that killed civilians, he said, and did not know when they used American-made bombs. At a briefing in Cairo in August, a senior United States official echoed that assessment.

“I would assume the Saudis have an inventory system that traces that information,” said the official, who spoke anonymously to discuss diplomatically sensitive relations. “But that’s not information that is available to the U.S.”

But Larry Lewis, a State Department adviser on civilian harm who worked with the Saudi-led coalition from 2015 to 2017, said that information was readily available from an early stage.

At the coalition headquarters in Riyadh, he said, American liaison officers had access to a database that detailed every airstrike: warplane, target, munitions used and a brief description of the attack. American officials frequently emailed him copies of a spreadsheet for his own work, he said.

The data could easily be used to pinpoint the role of American warplanes and bombs in any single strike, he said. “If the question was “Hey, was that a U.S. munition they used?” You would know that it was,” he said.

Just Foreign Policy is circulating a petition asking senators and representatives to call Votel back to Congress to testify under oath:

Incoming House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff has promised a "deep dive" on the U.S. role in the Saudi regime's war in Yemen in his committee. Other Congressional committees should do the same. In particular, they should compel General Votel to testify, under oath, in both open and closed session, about what Votel knew about the U.S. role in Saudi atrocities in Yemen, and when he knew it; about what he should he have known, and when should he have known it; and about why this knowledge wasn't reflected in Votel's testimony to Congress in March, when the Senate was about to vote on the U.S. role in the war.

So much of what Obama did in the Middle East -- the war on Yemen, the war on Syria -- was predicated on getting the Iran nuclear deal finalized. When Trump came in and pulled out of the nuclear agreement it turned all U.S. policy in the region upside down. Trump was thinking, Why fight proxy wars when you can fight one war with the main enemy and win everything in one fell swoop?

The troop pullout in northern Syria is merely a prelude for a greater conflict.

Europe Awaits U.S. Midterm Election Results

Besides igniting a conflagration in the Middle East that has the potential to dwarf all others of the last 40 years, Trump's war on Iran, which began phase two yesterday with punishing sanctions on the Iranian energy and banking sector, is a challenge to Europe. Can Europe act on its own or is it merely an appendage of the United States?

We'll find out shortly.

The European Union has vowed to stick with Iranian nuclear deal, the JCPoA, the deal that Trump is trying to scuttle. In order to keep Iran's economy from collapsing, Europe must find a way around U.S. control of the global banking system.

Steven Erlanger reports in "As U.S. Sanctions on Iran Kick In, Europe Looks for a Workaround" that

But the Europeans have found it difficult to set up an alternative payment mechanism to sidestep the American-dominated banking system and allow Iran to continue selling its oil and goods. The so-called special purpose vehicle would act as a clearing house: Iran’s proceeds from sales of oil and gas would be offset against Iranian purchases, a form of barter without explicit financial transactions.

So far, however, no European country has agreed to host the vehicle, for fear of American retaliation.

In a joint statement issued on Friday, the European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and the foreign and finance ministers of Britain, France and Germany said they “deeply regret” the reimposition of American sanctions and that work would continue to set up the special payment vehicle.

“We remain committed to implementing” the nuclear deal “as a matter of respecting international agreements and of our shared international security, and expect Iran to play a constructive role in this regard,” the statement said.

Realistically, European officials say, they may be able to preserve only 20 percent to 30 percent of existing trade with Iran, given that large European companies with ties to the United States have already pulled out of Iran or are in the process of doing so to avoid the sanctions. Stefano Stefanini, a consultant and former Italian diplomat based in Brussels, said that the European officials think 40 percent would be optimistic.

Of all the issues between Europe and the Trump administration, Iran has become the most divisive. The Europeans are actively working against United States policy, which effectively puts them in league with Russia, China and Iran.

“It is a huge strain in the trans-Atlantic relationship,” Mr. Stefanini said.

If the Europeans manage to create “a small breach in the hold that the U.S. has on international financial transactions, that could be replicated,” he said. And if they fail, he said, “it will be another big grievance with Washington, creating another minefield.”

So far, European unity is holding, but there are worries among some European officials that Britain may not remain so firm in the face of a Washington that wants to give little quarter to Iran.

There is plenty to be skeptical about in terms of Europe's chances of pulling this off: Germany is headed for elections sooner rather than later; the UK, for Brexit; Italy, for confrontation with Brussels. It's not a propitious time to strike a blow to dollar hegemony and erect the foundation of a future multi-polar world.

On the other hand, the existential nature of the breech between Europe and the United States is reason for hope. It is now -- after the about-face on the JCPoA, after Yemen, after Khashoggi -- undeniable in elite circles that the U.S. is an unhinged, predatory, destructive power. There is no pot of gold at the end of the U.S. rainbow. It's all death and destruction.

Capitals around the globe are watching to see what happens today. Does the population of the "indispensable nation" support this rainbow of death and destruction?

If Trump somehow manages to hold the House for the GOP, and thereby earns distinction as a super-historical figure of realignment in a class with FDR, then Europe will have to quickly get busy building bridges to Russia and China.

Then again if the Democratic vote is solid and Trump is rejected by a wide margin Europe will probably want to dawdle for another couple of years waiting for the next Obamaesque neoliberal savior to materialize in 2020 and knit the uni-polar world back together.

New War Scares Before the End of Summer

It's all coming unraveled for Trump. When it comes apart, it will disintegrate quickly. Eventually all the braggadocio and brinkmanship he learned as a developer and a star of the New York City tabloids are going to have to be backed up with an actual war, whether a trade war or an armed conflict.

Team Trump is on the ropes with China. According to Mark Landler and Ana Swanson in "Chances of China Trade Win Undercut by Trump Team Infighting":

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday that the United States would hold off on imposing tariffs on China, putting the trade war “on hold,” but hours later, the United States trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, warned the Chinese that the Trump administration might yet impose tariffs.

On Friday, Mr. Trump’s chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, told reporters that China had offered to reduce its trade surplus with the United States by $200 billion. Two days later, he said that the number was merely a “rough ballpark estimate,” and that the two countries never expected to reach an agreement and merely planned to issue a statement laying out next steps.

It was a muddled end to a chaotic process — one that revealed an American team riven by conflicts over tactics and policy, working for a president eager for a victory but torn by his desire to have a smooth summit meeting next month with North Korea, over which China wields enormous influence. 

Now the future of the negotiations falls to Wilbur Ross, the 80-year-old commerce secretary, who will travel to China in the coming days to try to nail down the commitments that proved so elusive in last week’s negotiations.

Trump is on the ropes with North Korea. There is a good chance that the ballyhooed Trump-Kim summit in Singapore won't happen.

It is obvious that complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is a Trump fantasy. Trump has made a huge blunder though, similar to Obama's chemical weapons red line blunder, by proclaiming that no Northern Korean deal equals decimation of the country.

Yesterday Pompeo promised the same thing for Iran. Bill Van Auken has a masterful write-up in "US Secretary of State Pompeo presents war ultimatum to Iran." What caught my eye was his detailed summary of the steps being considered to counter the resumption of U.S. sanctions:

The French energy giant Total has already announced that it will withdraw from a $5 billion deal to develop the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf unless it is granted a sanctions waiver by US authorities. The Danish shipping giant Maersk Tankers said Thursday it would cease its activities in Iran, while German insurer Allianz and the Siemens corporation, which has sold gas turbines to Iran, have also announced that they are closing down their operations there. Airbus, which has already provided jets to Iran under a multibillion-dollar contract, has indicated it is considering compliance with US sanctions.

Meanwhile, China’s state-owned oil company CNPC announced that it is prepared to take over the contract for the Iranian gas field if Total withdraws. China is Iran’s top trade partner. The Russian government has signaled that it is prepared to incorporate Iran into a free trade zone.

While the unilateral US action has brought relations between Europe and America to their lowest point in the post-World War II era, with calls from European officials for an independent policy and a defense of “economic sovereignty,” the EU and its member states have yet to agree on any concrete policy for defying Washington.

Proposals coming out of Brussels reportedly include the continuation of Iranian oil imports by making direct euro-denominated payments to Iran’s central bank, bypassing the US financial system; paying damages to companies affected by US sanctions; and the retooling of a 1996 “blocking statute” drafted in response to US sanctions against Iran, Libya and Cuba, which makes it illegal for European firms to comply with extra-territorial sanctions. At the time, the Clinton administration provided relief for European corporations doing business in those countries, rendering the statute moot.

There is no indication that the Trump administration intends to provide any such exemptions. This means that, whatever the divisions among the European powers, trade war and political tensions will continue to intensify as the threat of a major new war in the Middle East looms.

Then there is the regime change operation underway in Venezuela.

Before the summer is over the U.S. will be at the center of several new war scares.

The Gaddafi Option on Iran

For a compellingly plain explanation of why the U.S., its allies in Israel and among the sheikhdoms will continue to come up short against Iran and its allies read Eldar Mamedov's "Obsession With Iran Destabilizes The Middle East":

As the political track to roll back Iranian influence fails to produce desired results, Washington and its regional allies are debating whether to mirror what the Iranians did: build up proxies capable of challenging them militarily. This, however, is a daunting task. Organizations like Hezbollah, for example, are not just military groups acting on Iran’s behalf. It is a genuine Lebanese grassroots organization. Armed struggle is only one dimension of its activities. The rest is focused on social and political work, all of which integrates the holistic concept of “resistance”. By contrast, as the Syrian war has shown, the most militarily capable Sunni militant groups are in the orbit of al-Qaeda, pursuing a global jihad through means of nihilistic terrorism. And those Sunni militants that are outside this orbit, like Hamas, are in many ways allies of Iran and Hezbollah.

So, the notion of openly supporting al-Qaeda/Islamic State-type proxies against Iran/Hezbollah would be politically costly for the US and its allies and inevitably backfire, like it did on September 11. Kurds are not considered plausible proxies, given their own dynamic and complex relationships with Iran. There is, of course, an option of hiring an army of mercenaries paid by mainly Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. But in the long term, mercenaries are always at disadvantage when confronted with highly motivated and capable local foes.

Taken together, these aggressive efforts to counter Iranian influence would only stiffen the resolve of Tehran and its allies/proxies to protect their positions and contribute to the destabilization of countries like Lebanon and Iraq. In such a climate, any talk of Hezbollah giving up its arms and becoming a “normal” social and political Lebanese actor would be an obvious no-go. In Iraq, consensus-minded politicians like Abadi would find it difficult to retain power, while figures like Hadi al-Amiri would be on the ascendant. Any prospect of security sector reform, involving the demobilization of the Hashd Shabi militias or their integration into the official security forces of the state, would be rendered impossible. To the contrary, there will be ample incentive for Iran and its allies in Iraq to transform Hashd into an Iraqi version of Hezbollah.

Thus, Trump administration’s anti-Iranian offensive is likely to make the Middle East even more violent and unstable than it already is. There was no need for that. The JCPOA opened the way for engaging Iran, also on regional issues. None other than Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei recognized as much when he said that the JCPOA was a test that, if successful, could lead to opening up conversation between the US and Iran on other issues. That could have provided an opportunity to address and perhaps even remove the more objectionable Iranian policies in the region. The utterly unnecessary crisis manufactured by Trump precludes that possibility. The result is likely to be not so much Iranian rollback as more chaos and destabilization in the Middle East.

There appears be two options to the neocon U.S. pullout of the JCPOA, one oriented primarily around recreating the pre-JCPOA status quo -- economic strangulation through extensive sanctions and periodic terror attacks on critical infrastructure and personnel -- and the other an outright military strike a la Libya.

The first can't succeed because China, Russia and most likely Europe -- we'll have to wait and see what effect Italy's new government has on the neoliberal corporate hive mind in Brussels -- are absolutely not going back to the pre-JCPOA status quo.

The days when China and Russia go along with U.S. global leadership are long gone. Was it Obama's "pivot to Asia"? Was it the Umbrella Revolution? We know for Russia it was definitely Kiev February 2014.

So sanctions aren't going to work over the long haul. China and Russia will continue to trade with Iran, if not Germany and Italy. That leaves option #2, the Gaddafi option. But Iran is not Libya. Persia has been around for a long time, longer than Europe. It is going to take more than F-16s and Tomahawks to bring Iran down. That was the whole point of the JCPOA. There were enough people within the U.S. national security state who understood that the Gaddafi option wouldn't work for Iran. To think otherwise is insanity.

By now we should know that this is Trump's game. He bluffs, runs right up against the insane and the absurd, and then he sashays backwards, rubbing out his tracks as he retreats. But before we can cry foul, he's on to the next absurdity, cartwheeling and tweeting.

Trump has made himself vulnerable to China though. If he accepts China's reported offer of $200 billion in additional imports from the U.S., he'll have to capitulate on his demands that China end "Made in China 2025"; he'll have to give in on national security restrictions to Chinese purchases of U.S. tech.

Without China there is no peace deal on the Korean Peninsula. Trump badly wants a peace deal between North and South Korea. He's hungry for it because he believes it will guarantee him a second term and it will put him in the history books as one of the greatest statesmen of all time.

But Trump's foreign policy team, minus Mattis, is composed of full-spectrum dominance neocons, which is why he'll try to keep everyone on board by promising a Gaddafi option on Iran.

Murray and Erlanger on the Future of Europe Following U.S. Pullout from JCPOA

A couple of good assessments -- both focus on the chances of Europe falling into line with the U.S. resumption of sanctions on Iran -- are Craig Murray's "Trump’s Act of American Hubris" and Steven Erlanger's "Europe, Again Humiliated by Trump, Struggles to Defend Its Interests."

Murray sees yesterday's announcement by Trump scuttling U.S. participation in the Iranian nuclear deal as "a key marker in US decline as a world power." Erlanger sees another humiliating episode for gutless European vassals to grin and bear; in other words, Europeans leaders will grouse but ultimately fall into line behind the U.S. position because Europe has no ability to map its own course.

First Murray:

We are yet to see the detail, but by all precedent Trump’s Iran sanctions will also sanction third country companies which trade with Iran, at the least through attacking their transactions through US financial institutions and by sanctioning their US affiliates. But at a time when US share of the world economy and world trade is steadily shrinking, this encouragement to European and Asian companies to firewall and minimise contact with the US is most unlikely to be long term beneficial to the US. In particular, in a period where it is already obvious that the years of the US dollar’s undisputed dominance as the world currency of reference are drawing to a close, the incentive to employ non-US linked means of financial transaction will add to an already highly significant global trend.

In short, if the US fails to prevent Europe and Asia’s burgeoning trade with Iran – and I think they will fail – this moment will be seen by historians as a key marker in US decline as a world power.

Then Erlanger:

BRUSSELS — It is now a familiar, humiliating pattern. European leaders cajole, argue and beg, trying to persuade President Trump to change his mind on a vital issue for the trans-Atlantic alliance. Mr. Trump appears to enjoy the show, dangling them, before ultimately choosing not to listen.

Instead, he demands compliance, seemingly bent on providing just the split with powerful and important allies that China, Iran and Russia would like to exploit.

Such is the case with the efforts to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear pact. The failure is very similar to what happened with the Paris climate accord, and to what is happening now with unilateral American sanctions imposed on steel and aluminum imports, and to Mr. Trump’s decision to move the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

And with each breach, it becomes clearer that trans-Atlantic relations are in trouble, and that the options are not good for the United States’ closest European allies.

However angry and humiliated, those allies do not yet seem ready to confront Mr. Trump, wishing to believe that he and his aides can be influenced over time. It is reminiscent of what Samuel Johnson said of second marriages: a triumph of hope over experience.

But there are signs that patience is wearing thin, and that many are searching for solutions as Mr. Trump, in the name of “America First,” creates a vacuum of trans-Atlantic leadership that the Europeans have so far seemed incapable or unwilling to fill.

“The allies are certainly sick of this but don’t seem to have an alternative,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former career State Department official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“The Europeans are invested down a path of trying to please the president, not out of belief but more hope against hope that they will convince him,” he added. “And they only pursue this at such a level of embarrassment because they don’t have an alternative.”

I favor Murray's analysis because he sees the U.S. pullout from the JCPOA as a precursor to wider war in the Middle East:

I have chosen not to focus on the more startling short term dangers of war in the Middle East, and the folly of encouraging Saudi Arabia and Israel in their promotion of sustained violence against Iranian interests throughout the region, as I have very written extensively on that subject. But the feeling of empowerment Trump will have given to his fellow sociopaths Netanyahu and Mohammed Bin Salman bodes very ill indeed for the world at present.

I shall be most surprised if we do not see increased US/Israeli/Saudi sponsored jihadist attacks in Syria, and in Lebanon following Hezbollah’s new national electoral victory. Hezbollah’s democratic advance has stunned and infuriated the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia but been reported very sparsely in the MSM, as it very much goes against the neo-con narrative. It does not alter the positions of President or Prime Minister, constitutionally allocated by religion, but it does increase Hezbollah’s power in the Lebanese state, and thus Iranian influence.

Iran is a difficult country to predict. I hope they will stick to the agreement and wait to see how Europe is able to adapt, before taking any rash decisions. They face, however, not only the provocation of Trump but the probability of a renewed wave of anti-Shia violence from Pakistan to Lebanon, designed to provoke Iran into reaction. These will be a tense few weeks. I do not think even Netanyahu is crazy enough to launch an early air strike on Iran itself, but I would not willingly bet my life on it.

The problem is, with Russia committed to holding a military balance in the Middle East, all of us are betting our lives on it.

Erlanger hints at this -- the real goal is regime change -- but, writing from Brussels, favors institutional inertia maintaining the trans-Atlantic alliance:

A senior adviser to the European Union, Nathalie Tocci, said that the Iran deal was a lost cause, because “Trump and Europe have fundamentally different objectives.”

She said that Mr. Trump “is not interested in keeping a nuclear nonproliferation agreement but in regime change in Iran — it’s as simple as that.” 

“We have to stop being wimps,” she added.

Europe can't go along with another large war in the Middle East. Governments who join the U.S., Israel and the Gulf monarchies in attacking Iran will fall. The voters will rebel. 

The U.S. Unipolar World Ends Today

Trump is set to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), today. The silver lining here is that it will drive a wedge between the United States and Europe.

This morning Bill Van Auken, "Tensions rise with Trump set to announce decision on Iran nuclear deal," plays up the commercial divisions between Europe and the U.S. over Iran. But even more important than commerce is the political reality for the governing parties of Britain, France and Germany that the voters would rebel against a conflict with Iran.

Voters in the United States have been sapped of any strength to resist the widening gyre of war. Israel will lead the way, and the U.S. will join in.

Pain has to come home before the voters in the U.S. demand a halt to the madness.

But for the time being the initial stages have to play out. Let's pay close attention. The U.S. unipolar world ends today.

The End of the U.S. Unipolar World

A larger war is coming to the Middle East. This seems inevitable. Netanyahu's roll out yesterday of  purloined Iranian files that purportedly show an old secret effort to build a nuclear bomb paves the way for Trump's pullout of the Iranian nuclear deal.

Bill Van Auken lays it all out neatly in "Israel denounces Iran nuclear deal after new missile strikes on Syria":

Speaking at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden shortly after Netanyahu’s speech, Trump said it confirmed that he had been “100 percent right” about the Iran nuclear deal.

“We’ll see what happens, I’m not telling you what I’m doing,” he added, affirming that “we’ll make a decision” either on or before May 12, the deadline for the White House to renew the waiver of unilateral US sanctions against Iran that were lifted as part of the nuclear agreement.

Trump repeated his claim that under the agreement the US had given Iran “$150 billion and $1.8 billion in cash…and we got nothing.” The $150 billion is an invention concocted by the American political right as the figure for Iranian overseas assets that were unfrozen under the nuclear deal. The real figure is estimated at between $25 billion and $50 billion. The $1.8 billion is slightly more than the amount the US was required to return to Iran for an arms deal that was never fulfilled.

The fixation of the American president on money that went to Iran reflects broader concerns within the American ruling oligarchy that the agreement’s prospective opening of the Iranian market will benefit capitalist interests in Europe, China and Russia, rather than those of US-based banks and corporations.

The flurry of contacts between Washington and Tel Aviv since the weekend appear to signal the failure of the recent back-to-back visits to the American capital by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to convince Trump to renew the US sanctions waiver and forestall the collapse of the Iranian nuclear deal—an outcome that will almost certainly accelerate the drive to a major war in the region. 

The office of Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May issued a statement indicating that she and her French and German counterparts had reaffirmed their support for the deal in separate phone calls on Sunday. Moscow, meanwhile, issued a statement recording a similar conversation between Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The European powers view the apparent determination of the Trump administration to blow up the JCPOA and head down a path of military confrontation with Iran with increasing trepidation. It is not merely the prospect of losing out on potentially lucrative trade and investment deals—few of which have actually been consummated since the deal was signed in 2015—but also the prospect of Europe bearing the brunt of the blowback from such a war, both in terms of regional destabilization and a new exodus of refugees.

There needs to be an anti-war movement in the United States to call a halt to this insanity. But there isn't one. Part of the problem is the hawkishness of the Democratic Party. The unspoken wisdom is that there is no meaningful register of protest because the entire power structure is completely enthralled with war, more war and total war. Revolution is the only option. And how does one go about taking the first step toward a revolution?

The encouraging sign in all of this is that Europe is about to go its own way. It must go its own way. The U.S. has chosen its Saudi and Israeli clients over a some sort of sustainable management of its unipolar world.

If Trump Scuttles the Iranian Nuclear Deal He Destroys the U.S. Unipolar World

UPDATE: Fifteen years ago I used to read Antiwar all the time. I don't know why I fell out of the habit. Occasionally I look in and see what there is to see. I must say today I was tickled to find three spot-on opinion pieces by Pat Buchanan, "Shall We Fight Them All?"; Medea Benjamin, "Time to Hit the Reset Button on US-Korean Policy"; and Ron Paul, "North Korea or Iran… Where Will President Trump Attack First?" All three examine various aspects of Trump's war fever. According to Paul,

Twice in the past week the US military has fired at Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf. On Tuesday an Iranian military ship in the Persian Gulf was warned off by machine gun blasts from a US Naval vessel. Then on Friday the US Navy fired warning flares toward another Iranian ship operating in the Persian Gulf.

Imagine if the US Navy had encountered Iranian warships in the Gulf of Mexico firing machine guns at them when they approached the Iranians.

Facing new sanctions, the Iranian government announced that it will not end ballistic missile testing even under US pressure. The missile program is not a violation of the P5+1 Iran deal unless it is specifically designed to carry nuclear weapons.

So whom will Trump attack first? Let’s hope nobody, but with continuing pressure from both Democrats and Republicans over the unproven “Russiagate” allegations, it increasingly looks like he will seek relief by starting a “nice little war.” If he does so, however, his presidency will likely be over and he may end up blundering into a much bigger war in the process.

Although Trump’s bombastic rhetoric on Iran and North Korea has been pretty consistent, the American people voted Trump because he was seen as the less likely of the two candidates to get the US into a major war.

A recent study by the Boston University and the University of Minnesota concluded that Trump won the most votes in parts of the country with the highest military casualties. Those most directly suffering the costs of war were attracted to the candidate they saw as less likely to take the US into another major war. These are the Americans living in the swing states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan that surprised the pundits by voting for Trump over Hillary.

Will Trump’s legacy be blustering us into one or two wars that will make Iraq and Afghanistan look like cakewalks by comparison? Millions dead? It’s time to make our voices known before it’s too late!

I think Paul is right. Buchanan says basically the same thing. Among Trump's base the realization is going to sink in that he, like Obama, is not playing three-dimensional chess. Trump is planning for war. Already his woeful approval ratings are starting to dip even further.

But even with Trump gone from the White House there is no sign that Congress would be any less bellicose.

One positive in all this is that Europe now must wake up. As Oliver Stone said in recent interview with Dennis Bernstein,

We’re seeing Europe begin to wake up and realize that NATO is not what it was proposed to be and that the United States is not such a great partner to have. Maybe the US is just interested in Europe as a buffer state between us and them [Russia]. Maybe Europe is beginning to feel more like a hostage than an ally. If the United States cannot yield its superiority, it is going to be a very rocky road ahead for everyone.

****

With The Mooch immolated on a pyre of his own making, the toxic fallout from the collapse of Trumpcare still clouding nation's capital, administration officials acknowledging that North Korea can hit most of the U.S. with ballistic missiles, and the White House throwing down the gauntlet to Nicolas Maduro, it is easy to see how a story from last week about the Trump/neocon plan to torpedo the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a.k.a., the Iranian Nuclear Deal, got lost.

A good one-stop site for all the ins and outs is LobeLog. There are several informative stories, but start with Trita Parsi's "The Mask Is Off: Trump Is Seeking War with Iran."

The idea is to phony-up an excuse to pull out of the JCPOA by demanding intrusive inspections of Iranian military sites. When Iran refuses, the U.S. can act the aggrieved party and scrap the nuclear deal. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker calls this strategy "radical enforcement."

The problem is that in order for it to work Trump needs five of the eight members of the JCPOA joint commission to go along with him. The eight members are the United States, the European Union, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Iran. Trump can't muster a single vote beyond his own. Theresa May's wobbly government would topple if the British public perceived another pretext for a Middle East war. France has signed a number of large business deals with Iran. Germany refused to bomb Syria, and so on.

In other words, it is beyond the ability of the U.S. to even create the pretext which would justify a withdrawal. I suppose Trump could withdraw the U.S. from the JCPOA unilaterally -- a replay of  the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- but the coalition of the willing (COW) would be a much shrunken beast from its "shock and awe" version of 15 years ago.

Let's remember that Obama and Kerry worked as diligently as they did to arrive at a nuclear deal with Iran because the sanctions regime was falling apart. The rest of the world was ready to do business with Persia.

Since the dawn of the caliphate in 2014, and its broadly acknowledged though undeclared support by the Gulf sheihkdoms, Iran looks better to the West than it ever has.

Looking on the bright side of things, a move by Trump to scuttle the JCPOA would usher in the end of the era of the U.S. unipolar world.

Sanctions Bill Puts World on Notice That It's Not Only Trump Who is the Problem. It is the Entire U.S. Government.

UPDATE: Corker is now said to be fine with the House sanctions bill. From Matt Flegenheimer, "Key Senator Drops Objection, Clearing Way for Russia Sanctions":

“We expressed concerns about it,” Mr. Corker said of the addition of North Korea to the House plan, citing a desire for greater Senate input before placing new sanctions on the reclusive country. “They decided to add it. I don’t take affront.” 

Hours later, Mr. Corker said the Senate would move to approve the House version after all, but demanded that House leaders “expeditiously consider and pass enhancements to the North Korea language, which multiple members of the Senate hope to make in the very near future.” 

Some hurdles remain. Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said it was not yet clear if the Senate would approve and send the bill to President Trump’s desk before lawmakers leave for the August recess.

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There is a spat between Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy over the inclusion of North Korea in the House sanctions bill that appears to be holding the legislation up.

Assuming the sanctions bill eventually finds its way to Trump's desk, it is noteworthy that not one Democrat in the House voted "No." All three nays were from Republicans, which means all my donations and phone-banking for the "peace" candidate, who ended being elected to represent my congressional district, were for naught. Ambition trumps principle once again.

The sanctions bill codifies the New Cold War begun by the Obama administration in 2014. The silver lining is that the Democrats, so completely bellicose and Russophobic, will continue their accelerated collapse. Even The New York Times greeted their "Better Deal" reboot with derision. How can you front with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and expect otherwise?

The other silver lining is that Europe can no longer run away from the Trump bogeyman with the expectation that Obama's Second Coming is right around the bend. No, this is deeply-rooted institutional madness that is not going anywhere until something crashes or blows up.

The sanctions bill also moves the U.S. in a direction to undo the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) by targeting Iran's ballistic missile program. Iran's ballistic missile program was a sticking point during JCPOA negotiations, and it was purposely fudged by John Kerry so as not to kill the deal. (To get a look at the Israeli wish-list for U.S. policy toward Iran, read "Strategy to Restore U.S. Leverage Against Iran," by Eric Edelman and Charles Wald. It's basically war.)

The silver lining here is that the U.S. will be alone, except for the usual accomplices, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, maybe Poland. The sanctions bill has put the world on notice that it's not only Trump who is the problem.It is the entire U.S. government.