Written by Thierry Meyssan; Originally appeared on voltairenet.org
The new unilateral sanctions by the United States against Iran, Russia and Syria add to the previous actions concerning the same three targets. They now form the most unforgiving embargo in History. The way in which they have been organised is illegal according to the definition of the Charter of the United Nations – these are weapons of war, designed for killing.
For his visit to Moscow on 8 November, ambassador James Jeffrey was tasked with explaining the current US obsession with the expansion of Persian influence in the Arab world (Saudi Arabia, Bahrein, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen). Washington now wishes to formulate this question in geo-strategic rather than religious terms (Chiites/Sunni), while Teheran is organising its national defence around forward posts composed of Chiite Arabs.
Moscow then considered the possibility of negotiating on Teheran’s behalf for the easing of unilateral US sanctions, in exchange for its military withdrawal from Syria. President Vladimir Putin confirmed his proposition, not only for his US opposite number, but also for the Israëli Prime Minister, during their meeting in Paris on 11 November for the celebrations marking the centenary of the end of the First World War .
He attempted to convince the Westerners that Russia alone in Syria was preferable to the Irano-Russian tandem. However, he could not guarantee that Iran would have sufficient authority over Hezbollah – as both Washington and Tel-Aviv pretend – to be able to order it to withdraw also.
Washington’s only answer, nine days later, was to announce the eleventh series of unilateral sanctions against Russia since the beginning of August. This was accompanied by a ridiculous speech according to which Russia and Iran had together organised a vast plot aimed at maintaining President Assad in power and expanding Persian control in the Arab world.
This rhetoric, which we believed had been abandoned, assimilates three states (the Russian Federation, the Syrian Arab Republic and the Islamic Republic of Iran) as machines in the service of three men (Bachar el-Assad, Ali Khamenei and Vladimir Putin) who are united by the same hatred of their respective peoples. It ignores the massive popular support they enjoy, while the United States are profoundly torn apart.
We can leave aside the stupid assertion that Russia is aiding and abetting the conquest of the Arab world by Persia.
According to the US Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, who presented the unilateral US sanctions on 20 November, they do not form the economic section of the present war, but are intended to punish the « atrocities » committed by these three « régimes ». However, on the verge of winter, they mostly concern the supply of refined petroleum to the Syrian people so that they may light their homes and keep warm.
It is not necessary to specify that the three states targeted deny the « atrocities » of which they are accused, while the United States pursue the wars that they started in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
The US sanctions were not decided by the United Nations Security Council, but by the United States alone. They are illegal in international law because in order to make them lethal, Washington is attempting to force third-party states to associate themselves with the motion, which constitutes a threat to the states targeted and therefore a violation of the United Nations Charter. The United States have the sovereign right to refuse to enter into commerce with other states, but not to exercise pressure on third-party states in order to harm their targets. At one time, the Pentagon claimed that inflicting damaging treatment on a particular nation would lead its people to overthrow its government. That was also the theoretical justification for the bombing of Dresden during the Second World War and the endless embargo against Cuba during the Cold War. However, in the space of 75 years, this theory has never, absolutely never, been verified by the facts. Now the Pentagon is considering using detrimental treatment against a nation as a weapon of war like any other. Embargoes are designed to kill civilians.
The ensemble of systems currently used against Iran, Russia and Syria constitute the most gigantic siege system in History [1]. These are not economic measures, but – without any possible doubt – military actions implemented in the economic sector. In time, they will probably lead to a division of the world into two parts, just as in the period of USA-USSR rivalry.
Secretary Mnuchin insisted at length on the fact that these sanctions were aimed above all at the interruption of the sale of hydro-carbons, meaning depriving these countries – mostly exporters— of their main financial resources.
The mechanism described by Steven Mnuchin is as follows:
Syria is presently unable to refine petrol since its installations were destroyed either by Daesh or by the international Coalition’s bombing raids against Daesh.
For the last four years, Iran has been supplying refined petrol to Syria in violation of previous unilateral US sanctions. This petrol is transported by Western companies working for the Russian public company Promsyrioimport. This company is paid by the private Syrian company Global Vision Group, which is itself financed by the Iranian company Tabir Kish Medical and Pharmaceutical.
Finally the Global Vision Group transfers a part of the money it receives to Hezbollah and Hamas.
This a cock and bull story :
The international Coalition has the official objective of fighting Daesh. However, numerous testimonies over the last four years attest that it had alternatively bombed the Islamic state whenever it exceeded the zone which had been allocated to it by the Pentagon (the Wright plan), and that, on the contrary, it had parachuted weapons to Daesh in order to maintain its position in the specified area. The two entities worked together to destroy Syrian refineries.
What is the purpose of implicating the Russian government in the transfer of petroleum from Iranian refineries towards Syrian ports?
Why would Iran suddenly need Syria to transfer money to Hezbollah and Hamas?
Why would Syria transfer Iranian money to Hamas while the Palestinian organisation – whose leaders are members of the Muslim Brotherhood – is at war with them?
Steven Mnuchin doesn’t bother with long explanations. As far as he is concerned, Syria is criminal state and Russia is its accomplice, while Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are all « terrorists ». This is the most important point, the word that cancels out thought.
A French proverb assures that « When you want to drown your dog, you claim it has rabies ». So there’s no point expecting logic in Secretary Mnuchin’s answer to President Putin’s proposition of mediation.
Progressively, the United States are withdrawing their troops from the conflicts in which they were engaged, and replacing them with mercenaries on the ground (the jihadists) and economic sanctions, the modern version of the medieval siege.
Translation
Pete Kimberley
They’re desperate. It’s also why the Americans are trying to stop reconstruction in Syria. They are trying to rescue something from the failed attempt at regime change in this Syria War and these measures are a last throw of the dice. Work arounds will be found and progress made to mitigate these sanctions. The American strategic position around the world is eroding, fueling this desperation. In an article in the Webzine “The American Conservative” a U.S. military officer this weekend laid out the case for how and why the Taliban are winning on the battlefield in Afghanistan. And the American darling coup plotters in Ukraine are failing miserably, what with massive discontent and rising prices for gas, fuel, martial law, failed skirmishes with Russian Coast Guard boats and elections coming. North Korea is idle and waiting Trump out. Iraq wants the U.S. gone and refuses to enforce the Iran sanctions, and similiar angry sentiments abound in NATO “ally” Turkey, busy facilitating Russian gas pipelines to Europe and buying Russian weapons and nuclear reactors. The U.S. is failing, flailing and in massive and growing debt. These sanctions should be seen as the American witch’s clawnails leaving scratches on the window ledge as her ugly ass loses her grip and falls to her justified demise.
I agree – failing and flailing on an epic scale.
Disagree. You and most people perceives it in a traditional way of winning and forget the psychopath´s and the ideologist´s perception of winning is not the same, but contrary. Washongton´s aim and goal is chaos and destruction in countries they perceive as competitors or are in the way. In this context America is winning all the battles they are into, which you can see in the strong dollar and the low unemployment rate pt.
The AngloZioNazis & Washington will Create a Crisis and Chaos in America (after De-Dollarisation)….The U.S.A. Is Done…to Stay in Control, their Last Straw will be a Civil War II….
O MINTE BOLNAVA FARA CREER DE MICIUNOS
Whenever the US or UK says anything about Iran, it is a mixture of negative propaganda and outright lies. I have yet to see a documentary on any Western TV channel about “Operation Ajax”, the military coup which was Churchill’s brainchild, and led to the removal of the democratically elected PM and government in Iran. The Middle East is a vast area, consumed by death and destruction, due to the irresponsible interventions of Western powers and their constant support for Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The Russians and the English were fighting over Iran before world war 2, before Israel was ever created. They tried to partition Iran the same way the the Russians and US divided Germany, but that only lasted for a few months. Back in the 70’s the US did the same thing, they helped overthrow the democratically elected government and reinstalled the Sha [King] against the peoples wishes, the Muslims then took over the rebellion and took back the country, the hardline Muslims have been in power ever since. But European powers did the same thing to the Turks and the Iranians amongst others, they’re all the same.
The UK/US overthrew the Iranian governemnt in 1953, and the US/UK helped remove the Shah from power in 1979, thinking that they could gradually instal a “moderate” clergy led regime, and then put the Shah’s son back on the Peacock throne. Instead as yet another “law of unintended consequences” Ayatollah Khomeini got into power instead leading to the regime in power in Iran at the present. In 1941, there was a joint Anglo Soviet Invasion of Persia, where the allies secured the oilfields and deposed the old Shah, replacing him with his son. We have to remember that Iran was a neutral country at the time, and hundreds of Iranian civilians were killed in bombing raids.
Iran has been a democracy since the start of the last century, it’s only the western powers that have ever tried to drive them back into a feudal system.
FUKUS also neglects to mention that the Saudis went full-retard after the Iranian Revolution. They poured billions into spreading Wahhabism as far and wide as possible to raise a great head-chopper army to destroy Iran. In fact, that’s what distinguishes ultra-orthodox Salafism from Saudi Wahhabism: the Saudi’s nutjob, politicized version of Islam necessarily demonizes Shia and Iran and calls for their destruction. Not officially, of course [wink, wink].
The Saudi inbred, extra-chromosome Royalty (and the UAE/Qatar royalty as well) was spreading their Wahhabi extremism all over the Middle East via well-funded mosques and madrasas since 1979. In fact, the Houthi rebellion in Yemen was largely a reaction to the Saudis building a giant Wahhabi theological seminary / terrorist training camp in Northern Yemen in the middle of Houthi territory. You never hear the MSM talk about the spread of Saudi Wahhabism that always precedes a Shia uprising. It’s always ‘Iranian expansion’, like that just happened all on it’s own.
Yep, and the giant theological seminaries always end up doubling up conveniently as military HQs, inhabited by many “salafists” who have no idea about the Qu’ran or islam generally, but who are happy to fight for islam as long as they have Captagon running through their veins.
Putin mediates nothing.
The US is the single largest state sponsor of terrorism in the World and has been for over seventy years.
Thats how US became the richest country and the biggest economy in the world, and thats why you have no car………………………….LOL.
LOL…80% debt of US GDP, compared to Russia, 5 – 8% debt of GDP.
Western hypocrisy. Crimea is also sanctioned by the west….. but not mentioned….. and part of Ukraine on the map and not Russia.