(Photo Credit: U.S. Embassy Photo)
Former Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA Graham Fuller has a provocative op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor on the uranium fuel-swap agreement reached among Iran, Brazil, and Turkey in the context of the United States’ posture toward rising powers.
Fuller is critical of the Obama administration’s dismissal of the agreement and suggests that Washington will actually benefit from the emergence of rival power centers with diverse interests and perspectives on global political issues.
From Fuller’s piece:
After the Lula-Erdogan success, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton immediately proclaimed her own success at garnering Russian and Chinese support for enhanced sanctions against Iran – a stunningly insulting response to the remarkable accomplishment of Brazilian and Turkish negotiation. These states are, after all, immensely important to US regional and global interests. To blow them off like that was a major blunder, not just in terms of Iran, but in broader global strategy. The rest of the world has surely taken further negative note that Washington’s game remains depressingly familiar.
But do we really believe Clinton has in fact garnered Russian and Chinese support? Just as Tehran had every incentive to accept a proposal from “equals,” offered with respect instead of bluster and threats, so too Russia and China have every reason to welcome this initiative from Brazil and Turkey. Yes, the terms of the agreement do matter somewhat, but what is far more important for them is the slow but inexorable decay of US ability to deliver international diktats and to have its way. This is what Chinese and Russian foreign-policy strategy is all about. Neither of these countries will, in the end, permit the US hard-line approach to win out over the Brazilian-Turkish one in the Security Council, even if the Brazilian-Turkish deal requires a little tweaking. Russia and China champion the emergence of multiple sources of global power and influence that chip away at dying American unipolar power.
China and Russia, of course, represent the alternative polarity in the emerging struggle to end American hegemony in international affairs. But of greater moment, they now witness the political center in international politics shifting away from Washington as well. These two countries that defied American wishes are not just some Third World rabble-rousers scoring cheap points off the US. They are two major countries that are supposedly close friends of the US This makes the affront even crueler.
You can read the entire article here.
– Ben Katcher
Fiorangela,
There were competing interests in the aaftermath of the First World War. The British would have preferred to set up Faisal as king of a Greater Syria (including Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan). The French wanted Lebanon and Syria, so the British made Faisal king of Iraq. And Abdullah king of Jordan.
Most of the Rothschild family opposed the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, prior to the First World War.
Eric,
Thanks. I have a good biography of Sykes, but can’t find it just now! The fuidity of the situation in the Ottoman provinces toward the end of the war was remarkable. Some Armenians were trying to set up an independent Armenia in the province of Mosul, which of course became part of Iraq.
Liz,
Also worth reading is Peter Beinart’s long NY Review of Books article cited in the Foreign Policy article you cited:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/?pagination=false
James,
“Have you read much about Sir Mark Sykes, Bt.? He was very active during the First World War in planning what would be the shape of the post-war scene in the Middle East, expecially regarding provinces detached from the Ottoman Empire.”
I’m not entirely sure I’m remembering correctly, but I think I am. An excellent description of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the two men who negotiated and signed it, and the meetings and discussions that led to it, appears in “A Peace to End All Peace,” whose author I can’t recall now but I’m sure you’ve either heard of it or can quickly find it.
James, All that I know about Sykes is that he was part of a double-deal: in the Sykes-Picot agreement, Great Britain gave gave Palestine to the French (iirc); with Balfour, Palestine was given to Lord Rothschild (Caesarea, in Israel, is still the personal preserve of the Rothschild family).
We Americans are ‘children’ of Mother England, but it’s not that easy to be proud of Mumsy; she’s done some pretty rotten stuff. I’ve just learned that London simultaneously financed the rise of Adolf Hitler AND manipulated credit and moneyflows to create hyperinflation in the Wiemar era. These are important facts of history to know and understand. Ahmadinejad was correct: ALL history should be fully open to research.
The UN secretary general spoke favorably about the Yurkey-Brazil-Iran deal yesterday. Clinton should pay attention to what he says.
Fiorangela,
Have you read much about Sir Mark Sykes, Bt.? He was very active during the First World War in planning what would be the shape of the post-war scene in the Middle East, expecially regarding provinces detached from the Ottoman Empire. Britain was afraid the Germans would make a play for support of international Jewry, by promising a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine. To an extent, A. J. Balfour’s letter to Lord Rothschild was an effort to pre-empt a German move in the same direction.
Hass,
More good points. One wonders whether Condoleezza Rice was chosen as G W Bush’s national security adviser because she had little knowledge or understanding of the Middle East. She was the perfect dupe or stooge of the warmongers setting up the illegal invasion of Iraq.
That said, clearly the fearmongering regarding Iran is based almost entirely on the claim that Iran is secretly building nukes, or soon will be doing so.
Looking back, Saddam Hussein definitely should have had Dan Rather, or pehaps a British journalist, into Baghdad for an open discussion of Iraq’s compliance with the UN demands in the wake of the Gulf War. Most Americans even today are not aware that Iraq destroyed its WMD in the 1990s.
Thanks, Fiorangela. The Wawro interview is interesting and I’ll be looking out for his book, “Quicksand”. It’s heartening to see a tradition of academic research and freedom of speech struggling to exist.
Yesterday, radio host Jeffrey Blankfort had an amazingly frank conversation with historian Geoff Wawro, discussing Wawro’s latest book, “Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East.”
Wawro gave voice and validity to the facts that more and more Americans are learning about the US-Israel relationship as he explains the history of how Israel came to be, claiming that the Balfour Declaration was a “play to detach Jews in central Europe from their countries, as well as to the bankers financing World War I.” He suggests that Great Britain may have schemed that Jews in Israel would act as a British vassal state, guarding access to transit routes and oil supplies required to sustain the British Empire (sound familiar?). Wawro discusses the King-Crane report, a topic usually dismissed as antisemitic, when it’s mentioned at all. Wawro also traces Iran’s shifting status and intertwined relationship to US influence in the Middle East.
Wawro’s latest book is massive — 700 pages; I hope to dig into it. I learned a great deal that helped shape my understanding of the role zionists played in the decades leading up to World War I from an earlier, and slimmer, Wawro history, “The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871.” In my opinion, most discussions of causal factors of World War II and the holocaust do not dig deeply enough; Wawro’s history of the Franco-Prussian war and the consequent seminal moment of German unification, provides a more accurate starting point.
A good article:
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/05/26/secretary_clintons_cold_shoulder_on_the_iranian_fuel_swap_deal
When I look at Binyamin Netanyahu’s eyes, I see nothing but death, destructions, Rule of force and intimidations.
Both Turkey and Brazil have hailed Iranian letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as positive step that can help resolve the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program and urged the United States, Russia and France, which form the Vienna Group to make the best of this opportunity and resolve the bickering once for all in the interest of peace in the region. Brazilian President Lula said on Monday that Iran’s letter to UN nuclear watchdog (IAEA) is a proof that Tehran is committed to the agreed nuclear fuel swap declaration. So much so that even the Washington man in the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon called it a “major confidence building measure”. However, as expected, he moved the ‘pole” a little farther by saying that “Tehran must raise its level of cooperation with the IAEA”.
Israel’s position is still “a pro-Israel regime change in Tehran”. Israel’s deputy prime minister Dan Meridor said that no matter what, “I still believe that further ‘crippling sanction’ would force Tehran stop its nuclear program”. Washington especially Hillary Clinton was repeating Israeli lines that Tehran is trying to buy more time and cannot be taken seriously. Russian President Medvedev (Jewish), although more guarded in his reaction, lauded the Brazil-Turkey efforts and extensively discuused the details of the deal with Lula over the phone. Sarkozy, Cameron and Markel echoing Hillary Clinton – insisted that the Brazil-Turkey brokered deal will not prevent Iran from reaching an overall agreement with IAEA. The ZOGs in the US, France, Britain and Germany are obsessed with preventing the Islamic Republic from developing any uranium enrichment in its own territory as desired by the Zionist entity – something that goes against the NPT itself.
Patrick J. Buchanan calling Obama to take the deal, said: “If Barack Obama is sincere in his policy of “no nukes in Iran — no war with Iran,” he will halt this rude dismissal of the offer Tehran just made to ship half its stockpile of uranium to Turkey. Why is President Obama slapping it away? Does he not want a deal? Has he already decided on the sanctions road that leads to war? Has the War Party captured the Obama presidency?….”
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/nuclear-deal-iran-1-israel-0/
It should be interesting for tax payers to read how easy an obsessed super power could be dragged and prostituted for her obsession with what is called loss of fame
Playing the Role of Lapdog in Iran Sanctions Ploy
China’s Cool Hand Game
By PETER LEE
http://www.counterpunch.org/lee05262010.html
When I look into Clinton’s eyes, I see death.
When I look in Clinton’s eyes I see the eyes of an Iranian gentleman in Isfehan.
In a bid to clinch the deal for the Pennsylvanian primary vote, Clinton had just announced that the US would “obliterate Iran.” The Iranian man and I had a long conversation at the hotel elevator. He said, “The US must take care; we are all in the car together, but the US is driving. If the US is reckless, we all get hurt.”
He asked me if Obama would be elected, and if he would be better for the US. My imagination, I suppose, but I thought his eyes were pleading for affirmative responses to those two questions. In any event, the look in his eyes haunts me.
When I look at president Obama`s eyes , I see five things : an A ,an I , a P , an A and a C ! In short I see ” AIPAC ” written in his face ! :)
When I look at Hillary Clinton`s eyes , I see seven things : a Z , an I ,an O , a N , an I , a S and a T ! In short I see ” Zionist ” written in her face !
By now it is pretty clear that the US has no intention of allowing the standoff with iran to be resolved, and will keep moving goalposts and raising the bar to prevent that from happening. This was the same policy that the US followed in Iraq. Even after Iraq filed a 20,000 page declaration detailing how it got rid of its WMDs, Sec of State Rice simply turned around and condemned Iraq for filing such a voluminous document (after taking pains to remove the pages that showed Western complicity in Iraq’s WMD programs), accused them of lying, and went right on talking about the “WMDs in Iraq” that no one could find as if nothing had happened. In both cases, the mantra of “nuclear weapons programs in Iran” and “WMDs in Iraq” was simply pretextual. The US didn’t wnat to see either issue resolved because it would rob them of their pretext. This conflict with Iran is not about getting Iran to abide by the NPT or anything like that. Its not even clear that if Iran simply gives up enrichment, some new issue won’t be cooked-up.
Fuller might have mentioned that Russia and China both want to avoid having an Iran armed with nukes, and both countries say that dipolomacy is the best way forward.
Regarding “hegemonic” American actions in the Middle East, we should bear in mind that Iraq allowed the UN weapons inspectors back into the country, in an effort to avoid a US invasion. The warmongers in the Bush administration pushed the invasion forward because they feared it would become generally known that Iraq posed no threat to the US or the UK and that the war, as result of this situation, would be illegal.
Hilary Clinton’s completely stupid response the the Turkey-Brazil-Iran agreement was no surprise to most of those reading this blog.
I agree with Graham Fuller that the US benefits from the energetic approach taken by Brazil and Turkey. After all, the US itself is largely unable to act in its own best interests, in matters pertaining to the Middle East. For reasons known only too well to readers of this blog.
From Fuller’s lips to anybody’s ears?
Ben
Thanks for posting this article