A screen grab of Ambassador Nicolas de Rivière of France participating in a videoconference of the UN Security Council on Syria, April 29, 2020. As president of the Council in June, he intends to speak only in French in public sessions, as multilingualism in the Council, he said, has suffered collateral damage during the pandemic.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Israel, May 13, 2020. He says the US plans to extend the arms embargo in the Iran nuclear deal, but it must go through the UN Security Council to do so. Members appear ready to push back. RON PRZYSUCHA/STATE DEPARTMENT
The Trump administration may be bound and determined to extend a tight global arms embargo on Iran, but it still can’t send a straight message about how it will do so through the United Nations Security Council. The embargo, embedded in a Council resolution endorsing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, expires in October.
They – the Euro 3 – are taking Iran to the JCPOA Disputes Resolution Mechanism at the UN, insisting Iran to be in non-compliance with its obligations under the JCPOA.
While the current Liberal government claims to be progressive and in favour of a rules-based international order, promotion of democracy and world peace, its actions regarding Iran demonstrate that the primary drivers of Canadian foreign policy remain US geo-political interests and the interests of the rich and powerful.
(This previous article argues this has long been the case.)
Not since the 1930s has European appeasement been seen to be so cowardly, so cynical and ultimately so recklessly leading to greater escalation and war.
In the 1930s, British and French appeasement of Nazi fascism led to World War II. Nearly a century later, the same unscrupulous fawning over American imperialism towards Iran is similarly creating the conditions that fuel lawlessness and aggression.
Daniel LARISON
Tom Friedman’s latest column obviously wasn’t fact-checked before it was published:
And then, a few weeks later, Trump ordered the killing of Suleimani, an action that required him to shift more troops into the region and tell Iraqis that we’re not leaving their territory, even though their Parliament voted to evict us. It also prompted Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program [bold mine-DL], which could well necessitate U.S. military action.
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the decision by the EU to trigger the DRM (dispute resolution mechanism) and essentially pull out of the JCPOA. UN sanction will inevitably snapback on Iran in a matter of weeks.
Iran is not done. General Hajizadeh, Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, said in a briefing yesterday that the strike “was the starting point of a great operation”. He also underlined that “the strikes were not meant to cause fatalities: We intended [rather] to deliver a blow to the enemy’s military machine”. And the Pentagon is saying, too, that Iran intentionally missed US troops at the bases.
The U.S. assassination of General Qassem Soleimani has not yet plunged us into a full-scale war with Iran thanks to the Iranian government’s measured response, which demonstrated its capabilities without actually harming U.S. troops or escalating the conflict. But the danger of a full-blown war still exists, and Donald Trump’s actions are already wreaking havoc.
