However, as the Americans chanted “no taxation without representation” when they were fighting for their independence and tried to shake off the yoke of a foreign power over their lives, it is now appropriate for the people of the world to say “no extermination without representation.” If the rest of the world cannot have representation in US elections, at least we are entitled to express a view about it, especially when it affects the well-being or even the continued existence of the rest of the world.

I am writing this not as an enemy of the United States, but as a long-time friend and admirer. From my childhood, I heard glowing praise of America and its history from my father who had spent many years of his life as a young man in New York and who was a great lover of that country. I wrote a PhD thesis on Oriental Influences on the Work of Ralph Waldo Emerson when I came to study in England, and spent a wonderful summer in the United States visiting Emerson’s house in Concorde and doing research on his work at the Weidner Library at Harvard. Later on, I spent a year at Harvard as a Senior Fulbright visiting scholar teaching courses on Persian and American literature.

I also established the first Department of American Studies in Iran when I served as professor and Dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan. I also helped arrange the conference on the 200th anniversary of American Independence at the University of Shiraz, which served as the main anniversary conference in the Middle East and Asia. So, I have many reasons to be interested in the outcome of the US election.

The United States continues to be the most consequential country in the world. By nominal GDP, the United States is still the biggest economy in the world, and even by PPP, it is the second richest country. However, from a military point of view, it is by far the most powerful country compared to all its rivals. Never in world history has a country possessed such overwhelming power in all the corners of the world. While Russia and China can be regarded as regional superpowers, the United States is the only hyperpower with global reach and can even be regarded as the sole world hegemon.

As American generals are fond of repeating, the United States enjoys “full spectrum dominance” on land, on sea and in the air, and they are not reluctant to use America’s awesome military power. There are more than 750 U.S. military bases in at least 80 countries. They are spread from Europe to the Middle East to the Far East, right up to Japan, Australia, South Korea, and many offshore bases all over the world. NATO, which the United States leads, has 32 members and constitutes by far the biggest military alliance, surrounding Russia.

In addition to NATO in the West (which has also taken part in US wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East), there are a number of US-led alliances aimed at containing China. Following the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) and Japan-U.S.-South Korea trilaterals, and the U.S.-Japan-India-Australia Quad, the latest US-Japan-Philippines military alliance is yet another initiative to isolate China and enhance the US’s position in the Asia-Pacific.

Since the Second World War when, on the ruins of European and Asian empires, the United States became the richest and strongest country in the world, it tried to extend its power and became a virtual empire. Although many justifications have been put forward for the use of nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the available evidence shows that one of the main reasons for their use was a demonstration of US power to Russia, which was emerging as the main US rival in the form of the former Soviet Union.

Shortly after the Second World War, the United States tried to stop the communist advance in the Far East with the invasions of Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, killing many millions of people in those countries. Those wars were really proxy wars between the United States and the Soviet Union and China. While during the Cold War, there existed some military balance between the Western and Soviet blocs, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States felt that all restrictions on her had been lifted and she could act as the sole superpower in a unipolar world. That gave rise to the US’s Operation Desert Shield to expel the Iraqi forces from Kuwait, which killed tens of thousands of Iraqi forces.

The war was followed by the invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist outrage, and later Iraq, and different military campaigns in Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, etc. Those wars killed a few million people and cost a few trillion dollars to US taxpayers. Following the expansion of NATO to nearly all former Warsaw Pact member states, and plans to bring Ukraine into NATO, President Putin felt he had no alternative but to invade Ukraine to prevent the establishment of NATO bases in the country that he regarded as Russia’s backyard.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Congress has provided Ukraine with at least $175b of military and humanitarian assistance. This is in addition to billions of dollars of military and economic aid given to Ukraine by Europe and other NATO members.

Since the horrendous HAMAS attack on Israel on 7 October, the Israeli government has conducted a merciless war and massacre on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and lately on Lebanon, which has killed at least 44,000, most of them women and children, 134-146 journalists, 120 academics, over 224 humanitarian aid workers, including 179 employees of UNRWA, and has injured hundreds of thousands of civilians. Most people in the Global South and even in Europe and the United States cannot understand how a Democratic administration can so blindly support a regime which according to ICJ, the world’s highest judicial authority, is engaged in “plausible genocide” and whose leaders are accused by the ICC of war crimes.

Although the Biden administration carries the major responsibility for arming Israel and becoming complicit in its war crimes, the decision of the Trump administration to grant Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to Israel, contrary to international law, and bribe some subservient Arab regimes to normalise relations with Israel in some phoney deals, known as the Abraham Accords, created a feeling of impunity among Israeli leaders who feel they can commit any crime and violate any international law without any sanctions or punishments. As a result, Israel has been acting as though it is above the law and can openly challenge and ignore numerous UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. This blatant lawlessness and impunity endangers the entire international order and bodes ill for the future of the so-called “rules-based international order”.

In a landmark ruling on 19 July 2024, the ICJ “declared that Israel’s occupation of the Gaza strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful, along with the associated settlement regime, annexation and use of natural resources.” It called on Israel to immediately withdraw its forces and settlements from the occupied territories and pay reparation to the Palestinians. Not only has the US not implemented that resolution, but it has continued to deliver the most-deadly weapons to Israel enabling its genocide in Gaza and war crimes in the West Bank and Lebanon.

“No Extermination without Representation,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024

The scope of the war on Gaza has now expanded to neighbouring countries with dangerous confrontations between Israel and Iran, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Far from punishing Israel for those war crimes, the United States has imposed further sanctions on Iran and several other Middle Eastern countries. Iran and Russia are two of the most sanctioned countries in the world. Not only have those unilateral sanctions not forced those countries to surrender to US demands, but they have also pushed Iran closer to Russia and Russia closer to China.

The recent BRICS summit in Kazan, held from 22-24 October, was convened with the participation of five new members, namely Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The new Nine-member BRICS partnership accounts for 45% of the world’s population and 30% of the world’s land surface. Its combined GDP of around US$65 trillion (35% of global GDP PPP) and an estimated US$5.2 trillion in combined foreign reserves are larger than that of the G7 bloc.

The wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East and growing conflict with China have brought the world to the brink of a devastating world war with unimaginable consequences. The planet is now in a more dangerous position than at any time since the Second World War. At the same time, the United States is now more isolated than ever. A good example of US isolation can be seen in the vote at the United Nations General Assembly on 30th October 2024, demanding an end to the US embargo on Cuba. Only the United States and Israel voted against the resolution, Moldova abstained, and 187 countries, including all European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Canada, voted for it. This level of isolation, the whole world against the United States and Israel, is unprecedented.

Most American voters do not usually pay much attention to foreign affairs, but as can be seen from the above examples, in the current interconnected world no country can keep itself immune to international developments. What the United States does in its foreign policy matters and will boomerang back to itself. Without presuming to tell the Americans how to vote in the forthcoming election, I only wish to urge them to pay more attention to the US’s foreign policies and to American values that must govern those relations.

From an intelligence and technical point of view, the booby-trapping of the pagers was a sophisticated espionage operation carried out by the Israeli Mossad. There is an international trail in this complex operation and, so far, even the company that produced those pagers and those who manipulated them have not been identified. In view of the impact of this extensive form of cyber terrorism on the current Israeli war and its repercussions in the region and beyond and what it means for cyber security in the future, this incident must be properly investigated to see which firms and which countries were involved in this heinous act.

Many international legal experts and academics have stressed the illegal nature of such indiscriminate action and have described it as another Israeli war crime. Luigi Daniele, a senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University and an expert in international humanitarian law, says that these acts constitute at least two war crimes. “The first is intentionally directing attacks against individual civilians not taking a direct part in the hostilities, for all the unlawful targets, so basically, diplomats or merely political affiliates of Hezbollah with no combat function.” The second is “intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.”[1]

Yet, some pro-Israeli commentators have bizarrely praised it as an example of Israel’s technical expertise and its intelligence dominance of the region. Writing in Haaretz, Yossi Melman called it a “genius move” and praised it as “a brilliant and innovative operation, showing that for imaginative spy craft planners the sky is really the limit.” However, he criticises its “early implementation”, rather than waiting for the start of a war on Hezbollah. Axios cited a former Israeli official who said Israeli intelligence services had originally planned to use the modified pagers as a “surprise opening blow in an all-out war to try to cripple Hezbollah”, but three U.S. officials told Axios that they used them prematurely because they believed that their secret might have been discovered by the group.[2]

Clearly, the massive pager attack on Lebanon was meant to coincide with the start of a major Israeli invasion of Lebanon and it might still lead to a regional war. Israeli aircraft have already started bombing parts of Lebanon. Even from before the 7^th October attack, Netanyahu spoke about a new Middle East. In a speech at the UN General Assembly in New York, Netanyahu showed a map of Israel which had incorporated both Gaza and the West Bank.[3]

Speaking two days after the Hamas attack on Israel, Netanyahu vowed to change the Middle East: “What Hamas will experience will be difficult and terrible … we are going to change the Middle East.” The day after the Hamas attack, Israeli forces shelled Lebanon, killing three Hezbollah members, to which Hezbollah responded by firing a salvo of rockets into northern Israel, marking a significant expansion of the conflict.[4] These border attacks have continued ever since, displacing some 60,000 Israelis from their homes in Northern Israel and a larger number of Lebanese from southern Lebanon.

Israel’s technical prowess and the expansion of the war to Lebanon may be a sign of Israel’s military superiority, but in the long-run they may prove to be counter-productive and even foolish. Praising them is similar to praising Hitler’s aggressive wars as signs of German military strength. The German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the beginning of World War II with dire consequences for Europe, for the world, and especially for Germany. Yet, from a military point of view, it was a great achievement. It started with the Gleiwitz incident, which was a false flag attack on a radio station in Gleiwitz (then Germany and now Gliwice, Poland) staged by Nazi Germany as a casus belli for the invasion of Poland. 

“Beirut Hospital Explosion,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

One of the aims of the invasion was to divide Polish territory at the end of the operation and seize large parts of it, something that the Israelis have done before in the case of Lebanon. The 1978 South Lebanon conflict (codenamed Operation Litani) began when Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon up to the Litani River in March 1978. The conflict resulted in the deaths of as many as 2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, and 20 Israelis, and the internal displacement of nearly 250,000 people in Lebanon. In response to the Israeli invasion, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolutions 425 and 426, calling on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, which eventually she was forced to do.

Again, on 6 June 1982, Israeli forces under the command of Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon on the false excuse of the attempted assassination of an Israeli diplomat in London by the PLO, despite the fact that the perpetrators belonged to Abu Nidal Organisation, which was an enemy of the PLO. Israel’s objectives were to expel the PLO members who had fled to Lebanon following the Nakba, and install a pro-Israeli Christian government led by President Bachir Gemayel.

Israeli forces carried out massive bombardment of Beirut and Sidon, killing between 20,000 and 30,000 people and displacing hundreds of thousands of the Lebanese. Those savage attacks ended with the Sabra and Shatila Massacre when between 16–18 September 1982 several thousand unarmed Palestinians were massacred by Israeli-backed right-wing Lebanese militias, while Israeli forces provided lighting for the massacre. In February 1983, an independent commission chaired by Irish diplomat Sean MacBride, assistant to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, concluded that the IDF, as the then occupying power over Sabra and Shatila, bore the main responsibility for the militia’s massacre.

The Shi’is who formed the majority in the south bore the brunt of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. This is how Hezbollah was born to force the Israeli forces to leave Lebanon, which they eventually achieved in the year 2000. The Israelis have a habit of describing all those who rise against their occupation as terrorists, whether the PLO and later the Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas which came to power in Gaza as the result of a democratic election, encouraged by President Bush mainly in order to weaken the PLO.

If Israeli forces are foolish enough to invade Lebanon again and try to occupy a part of it near their border they will face the same outcome. Despite massive and unquestioning US support, the Israelis constitute a tiny minority in the Middle East. The genocide in Gaza has alienated and infuriated many people, even many of Israel’s former friends. Far from achieving an Israeli-Arab front against Iran, many Arab countries that Netanyahu counted on, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have established relations with Iran. Egyptian and Iranian leaders have spoken of the possibility of renewing diplomatic relations. Turkey which has friendly relations with Iran has turned against Israel and has called Netanyahu’s government a terrorist regime.

Although so far, the United States has supported Israel at great cost to its reputation and its relations with Middle Eastern and Muslim countries as a whole, there are indications that most Americans, including young Jewish Americans have turned against Israel’s far-right government.

Netanyahu has not concealed his ultimate desire to expand the scope of the war and get the United States involved in a war against Iran. Such a  war will not be in the interest of the region and the United States. Even if Israel manages to crush Hezbollah and weaken Iran, he will not be able to get rid of some seven million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and in Israel. In this day and age, the world will not allow another massive genocide and ethnic cleansing similar to the one Israel carried out in 1948. The only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is the end of the occupation and apartheid and the establishment of a truly democratic state for both the Palestinians and Jews.

The world’s highest judicial authority, the International Court of Justice, has described Israel’s massacres in Gaza as “plausible genocide”, and had ordered Israel to stop the war. It has also clearly declared the occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights as illegal and had ordered Israel to end the occupation as soon as possible. On 18^th September, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Israel “brings to an end without delay its unlawful presence” in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The voting result was as follows: In favour: 124, Against: 14, Abstain: 43. This shows that the international community as a whole regards Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories as illegal and views its system as an apartheid regime. Israel should stop digging and should abide by international law.

As was done in the case of the apartheid South Africa, the international community must form a truth and reconciliation commission, to punish those who have been directly involved in the genocide and to form a unity government under United Nations supervision, until the two communities learn to live in peace together. Any other alternative will be a mirage and will lead to greater tragedies in the future.

[1] Rabia Ali, “2 probable crimes committed in Lebanon pager attack: Legal expert”, Anadolu, 18.09.2024, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/2-probable-war-crimes-committed-in-lebanon-pager-attack-legal-expert/3333837#

[2] Barak Ravid, “Israel conducted Lebanoln pager attack fearing Hezbollah was onto the operation”, Axios, Sep 18, 2024. https://www.axios.com/2024/09/18/hezbollah-pager-explosions-israel-suspicions

[3] “Netanyahu predicts a new Middle East, is silent on the havoc he’s unleashed in Israel” The Times of Israel, 22 September 2023. https://www.timesofisrael.com/pm-predicts-an-israel-transformed-in-mideast-has-no-words-for-internal-israeli-peace/

[4] Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu vows to ‘change Middle East’ as Hamas threatens killing captive Israelis”, ABC News, Mon 9 Oct 2024. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-10/netanyahu-promises-massive-force-against-hamas-and-gaza/102954562

The Labor Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, overturned a big Conservative majority of 80 seats in the Parliament achieved by Boris Johnson’s victory in December 2019, with an unprecedented majority of 412 Labor seats to the Conservative Party’s 121 seats, a gain of 211 seats by Labor and a loss of 250 seats by the Conservatives.

Only five years ago, the Labor party led by Jeremy Corbyn suffered its biggest loss since 1935, while in this election the Conservative Party suffered the biggest defeat in its entire history. The election has completely changed Britain’s political landscape. The Conservative Party is a big vote-winning machine and regards itself as the natural party of government. It has ruled Britain for most of its recent history. As the result of winning this election, Keir Starmer has become the 58^th UK prime minister, but only the 7^th Labor prime minister. This shows the scale of the dominance of  British politics by the Conservative, and in the past by a few Liberal prime ministers.

This also shows the significance of the latest Labor victory. The scale of this victory was even bigger than Margaret Thatcher’s landslide victory in 1983 when she won 397 seats to Labor’s 209 seats, or the former Labor landslide victory in 1997 under Tony Blair when Labor won 418 seats compared to the Conservative’s 165 seats, with a gain of 145 seats by Labor and the loss of 178 seats by the Conservatives.

A large number of prominent Conservative ministers have lost their seats and have been kicked out of the parliament. They include former Prime Minister Liz Truss, the House of Commons Leader Penny Mordant who was tipped as a future Tory leader, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg who was a former cabinet minister and the leader of the Commons, and 12 other cabinet ministers, including Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, Chief Whip Simon Hart, and many other prominent Tories who have fallen by the wayside.

Contrary to US elections where campaigning goes on virtually for the second half of a presidential term, the latest British campaign only lasted six weeks. Elections were held from 7.00 in the morning to 10.00 at night on Thursday. The ballots were counted overnight and the results were announced by 09.00 in the morning. Rishi Sunak, the outgoing Conservative prime minister, conceded defeat at around 03.00 in the morning and in a gracious speech accepted responsibility and apologized for the election defeat, and congratulated Keir Starmer for his impressive victory.

Early in the morning, he and his family left their apartment in 10 Downing Street, went to see King Charles to submit his resignation, followed shortly by Keir Starmer who was invited by the king to form the new government. Starmer drove with his wife back to 10 Downing Street by mid-day and gave his first speech as prime minister in front of the famous black doors of his new residence.

The transfer of power in UK elections is among the fastest, smoothest and most orderly changes of governments in the world. The outgoing prime minister did not question the accuracy of the votes, did not try to overturn the election results and did not ask his deputy prime minister to subvert the will of the electorate. Within a 24-hour period, the election was held, results were announced, the former prime minister left office and the new one took over.

The new prime minister spent the afternoon finalizing the members of his government who will take part in the first cabinet meeting tomorrow morning. The first King’s Speech, which includes the policies of the new government will be delivered to the members of both Houses of Parliament on July 18^th.

Another important aspect of these elections was that, contrary to a number of European countries where we have seen a move to the extreme right, this election resulted in the triumph of a left-of-center party against a rightwing Conservative Party. In many recent elections in Hungary, Holland, Germany, Italy and recently in France we have seen big wins by far-right parties.

Sunak could have remained in power till next January but, encouraged by a fall in the inflation rate and a few favorable economic indicators, he called an early election hoping that Labor and the far-right Reform Party would be unprepared for it. His gamble resulted in the biggest loss for his party.

However, although on paper, Keir Starmer has achieved a remarkable victory, the future may not be as rosy as it seems at the moment. The country is facing a number of major economic problems, including low productivity, high interest rates resulting in high mortgages and high prices, a widening gap between the rich and the poor, long waiting lists for seeing a doctor or a dentist and unacceptable delays in hospital admissions, etc.

In his first speech outside Number 10 Downing Street, Starmer who had won with his slogan of “Change” referred to the public’s mistrust of politicians and said: “Change begins now … We said we would end the chaos, and we will, we said we would turn the page, and we have. Today, we start the next chapter, begin the work of change, the mission of national renewal and start to rebuild our country.” However, he admitted: “Changing a country is not like flicking a switch. And the world is now a more volatile place. This will take a while.”

The problem is that millions of people who have been suffering as the result of a long recession and who have pinned their hopes on rapid change under the new government may not be willing to wait too long for all the promises to be fulfilled.

LBC Video: “Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘warning’ for Keir Starmer” | LBC

The other problem is that although the number of seats that have been won may look very impressive on paper, the Labor victory has not been based on solid foundations. Labor may have come to dominate the parliament but it has won only 36% of the vote. The Conservatives won 23%, and Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party won some 17% of the vote. In other words, the combined number of votes cast for rightwing parties exceeds the numbere of votes cast for Labor. The vote has been a rejection of the Conservative Party and not necessarily an endorsement of the Labor Party.

Nigel Farage, a close friend and supporter of President Trump, was the leader of the far-right UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009, and 2010 to 2016. He was also the main force behind Brexit who pushed for the referendum under former Prime Minister Cameron and who supported Boris Johnson to get it done. He stood unsuccessfully seven times to win a seat in the Parliament and succeeded yesterday in his eighth attempt.

Being disillusioned by the failure of Brexit to stop large numbers of migrants to Britain and to achieve what he called full political and economic independence from Europe, he formed the Reform UK party, and only during the election campaign he stood again for parliament.

His party which is way to the right of the Conservative Party won 17% of the vote, but due to the nature of the first past the post system of voting in Britain, it won only four seats in the parliament. Most former Conservative voters who were fed up with the party voted for Reform, resulting in big losses for the Conservative Party. Reform came in second place in 103 constituencies, set against only three during the last election in 2019, when a pact with Boris Johnson led it to hold off contesting Conservative-held seats.

Consequently, the big Labor win is more due to the hemorrhage from the Conservatives to Reform, rather than due to support for Labor. The Reform Party which devastated the Conservatives in this election has vowed to target Labor in the future and become the main opposition to Labor. This should ring alarm bells for the Labor Party, especially if the government cannot stem the tide of illegal immigration or if it tries to reach some agreements to cooperate with the EU.

While Reform poses a threat from the right, many people on the left of the Labor Party are also very worried about the center-right policies of the new Labor Party. Many leftwing labor supporters even regard Starmer a traitor who went along with a rightwing campaign against former Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Cornyn who advocated socialist policies and even opposed the possession of nuclear weapons and NATO membership had many supporters in the Labor Party, especially among younger members. He built Labor into the biggest political party in Europe.

However, he became the victim of an extensive campaign of vilification and was accused of anti-Semitism. The fact remains that, as in most Western countries, there are more antisemites in the extreme right groups than in socialist groups. However, the well-orchestrated campaign resulted in Corbyn’s defeat in the 2019 election, which was won by Boris Johnson. Although the Labor Party attracted many more members under Corbyn than before, the anti-Semitism campaign was very effective and led to his undoing.

It is interesting to note that Starmer got three million votes less in 2024 than Corbyn got in 2017 and half a million votes less than Corbyn got in 2019. However, due to the vagaries of the British voting system, Corbyn went to a crashing defeat, while Starmer won a landslide victory in 2024. After his defeat in 2019, Corbyn resigned as party leader and Starmer who had been appointed as EU negotiator by Corbyn was elected leader. He waged a relentless campaign of purging the Labor Party of alleged antisemites, and when Corbyn protested that the extent of antisemitism in the party had been exaggerated, Starmer expelled him from the party. In this election, Corbyn stood as an independent candidate in his constituency and won with a big manority.

All of this has alienated a considerable number of leftwing members of the Labor Party who have never forgiven Starmer for his alleged betrayal of his former boss. In a rare recent interview, Corbyn said that the pressure of the Israeli government on the Labor Party had been huge and this had led to his ouster. He said: “During one extremely hostile meeting of the Parliamentary Labor Party Committee, they confronted me and said will you give a blanket undertaking that you, as party leader and potentially prime minister will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes? And I said No, I give no such undertaking. I will give no such agreement because the issue of Palestine has to be resolved and Palestinian people do not deserve to live under occupation, and the siege of Gaza has created the most incredible stress, and by the way I have been there on nine occasions in Israel, Palestine and the West Bank… So, was I surprised at this support for Israel? No, because the pressure of the Israeli government on the Labor Party is huge…”

So, although at the moment the Labor victory is sweet and the government will be able to do a great deal of good for the country, there are some clouds in the horizon which might become threatening in the future, especially if the new government is not able to resolve all the problems quickly and adequately.

However, Blinken was also asked about his recent meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the possibility of normalisation of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Blinken said (as quoted by the US Department of State): “But with regard specifically to normalization, the crown prince reiterated Saudi Arabia’s strong interest in pursuing that. But he also made clear what he had said to me before, which is that in order to do that two things are required: an end to the conflict in Gaza and a clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

In other words, the Saudis are strongly in favour of normalisation but, in addition to ending the conflict in Gaza, they believe that there should be a “clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state.” This paints a fairly rosy and optimistic picture of Israel-Saudi negotiations and the prospects for normalisation of relations.

Shortly after that press conference, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement which puts the record straight and which seems to contradict the main thrust of what Blinken said. The difference between what Blinken said and what the statement of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs stresses is stark and revealing.

There has been a “clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state” for the past 30 years, called the Oslo Accords. However, despite that process, which has been as long as a piece of string, the Israelis and especially Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu have opposed it and prevented its implementation.

What the Saudis are clearly saying is that they are not happy with a similar process, but want to go back to the Saudi Plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, as well as a reference to the Palestinian refugee problem and the right of the Palestinians to return to their occupied land.

That plan was adopted unanimously by all the members of the Arab League in 2002 at their summit in Beirut. Subsequently, it was also approved by all 57 states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (formerly known as the Organisation of Islamic Conference) at a summit meeting that was held in Riyadh, including Iran which was represented by President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad. The Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat immediately embraced the plan.

In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also expressed tentative support for the Initiative, but in 2018 he rejected it as a basis for future negotiations with the Palestinians. In his infamous speech at the United Nations’ General Assembly on 22 September 2023 in New York, he held a map of “The New Middle East”, with Palestine completely wiped out. The elimination of Palestinian territories from the map of the Middle East angered the Palestinians and was one of the reasons that led to the 7^th October attack by Hamas militants on Israel. Since the start of the Gaza war, Netanyahu has emphatically opposed the establishment of a Palestinian state and has even said that it will reoccupy Gaza for the foreseeable future.

The statement by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs clearly shows that the Saudis are not happy with Israeli policies and that there will be no prospect of normalizing relations with Israel under the current circumstances.

It states: “The Kingdom has communicated its firm position to the U.S. administration that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognised on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops and all the Israeli occupation forces withdraw from the Gaza Strip. The Kingdom reiterates its call to the permanent members of the UN Security Council that have not yet recognized the Palestinian state, to expedite the recognition of the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, so that the Palestinian people can obtain their legitimate rights and so that a comprehensive and just peace is achieved for all.”    

Video: “Saudi Arabia: No Israel ties without recognition of Palestinian state” | Latest English News | WION

Abraham Accords

Towards the end of the Trump Administration (between August 2020 and January 2021), a series of agreements were reached between the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and Israel to normalise their relations, which came to be known as the Abraham Accords. The ceremonies were held with great fanfare on the Truman Balcony of the White House, hosted by President Trump, flanked by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, in order to give the impression that they represented major and historic peace agreements. It should be stressed that at least the first three countries on the list were not at war with Israel and in fact had covert cordial relations with her.

A close examination of the Abraham Accords shows that they were a series of cynical moves to bribe some Arab regimes to normalise relations with Israel by bypassing the Palestinians. Israel’s long-term plan to isolate and bypass the Palestinians by reaching agreements with Arab regimes outside the immediate neighbourhood was enthusiastically championed by Pompeo and Kushner, and behind them by Netanyahu.

The UAE wanted to buy some advanced US weapons, including F-35 fighter jets. They were promised that they would be able to buy them if they normalised relations with Israel. After doing so, the United States reneged because Congress opposed the sale of those sophisticated weapons to the UAE. Once the UAE decided to normalise relations with Israel, little Bahrain also decided to follow suit.

In 1993, Sudan was first added to the list of states that sponsored terrorism, but the overthrow of President Al-Bashir in April 2019 improved relations between Sudan and the United States and in December 2019 the two countries announced their intention to exchange ambassadors. Sudan’s Ambassador to the United States presented his credentials in September 2020.

US government promised to remove Sudan from the State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) list if the Sudanese government agreed to normalise relations with Israel. Sudan agreed, and on 14 December 2000 the US Government removed Sudan from the SST list, just in time for Sudan to normalise her relations with Israel and to join the Abraham Accords. Of course, after the breakout of the latest civil war in Sudan between various army factions, the situation has gone from bad to worse.

There has been a long-lasting conflict between Morocco and the Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, about the ownership of the Western Sahara. Large parts of Western Sahara were controlled by the Moroccan Government and known as the Southern Provinces, whereas some 20% of the Western Sahara was controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the Polisario state with limited international recognition.

The United Nations officially considers Morocco and the Polisario Front as the main parties to the conflict and has called on them to reach a negotiated settlement. The Obama administration disassociated itself from the Moroccan autonomy plan in 2009 and put the option of an independent Western Sahara on the table. Clearly, the issue had to be settled by the UN negotiation through consultation with both sides. However, Trump unilaterally and illegally gifted the Sahara to Morocco if she normalised relations with Israel.

Then it was the turn of Saudi Arabia, which came under enormous pressure to normalise relations with Israel but, even before the events of 7^th October, Saudi Arabia refused to join the Abraham Accords without the acceptance of the two-state solution by Israel. The latest statement by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows that Saudi normalisation of relations with Israel is dead in the water, at least for the time being.

Of course, genuine peace between Israel and the Arab states would be very Welcome, provided that it brought with it positive gains for both sides and was not at the expense of the Palestinians.

Instead of rejecting those phony agreements and pushing for some real and lasting solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Biden Administration supported those agreements and even pressured Saudi Arabia to join them. The realization of total US support, created a feeling of impunity among the Israeli right-wing government and was responsible for excessive demands by Netanyahu’s latest extreme right government, which contributed to the disastrous terrorist attack on 7^th October and Israel’s indiscriminate war and genocide in Gaza.

Given the events of the past four months and the collective punishment that Israeli government has inflicted on Gaza and the West Bank, it would be highly unlikely that any Arab government would dare to normalise relations with Israel due to their fear of their own populations.

A Statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the discussions between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States of America on the Arab-Israeli peace process:

Prior to his execution, the Iranian official news agency IRNA  released a 9-minute-long series of disjointed interviews with Mr Akbari in which he allegedly confessed to having been a British spy. The news agency referred to him as a “super-spy”, and as “one of the most important agents of the British intelligence service in Iran”.

No fair-minded person who listens to this patchwork of disjointed sentences, clearly recorded at different times and places, can find anything that is incriminating or an admission of guilt. All that he says is that he had met with some British officials and had briefly discussed with them Iran’s nuclear programme.

Certainly, no respectable court of law could find anything in his alleged confessions that would deserve a death sentence. The BBC Persian Service broadcast an audio message on Wednesday from Mr. Akbari, in which he said that he had been jailed for ten months in an unknown place before being transferred to Evin prison. He said that he had been interrogated for more than 3,000 hours, and had been forced under torture to confess on camera to crimes he had not committed.

Maryam Samadi, Akbari’s wife, who had been allowed to see him on Wednesday told the BBC that her husband had been moved to solitary confinement in preparation for execution. On Saturday, The Iranian judiciary’s official news outlet Mizan reported that Alireza Akbari had been hanged, without specifying the date when the execution took place, but presumably early on Saturday.

The British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in a tweet said that he had been appalled by Mr Akbari’s execution, adding: “This was a callous and cowardly act, carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people.” The British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, said that the execution would “not stand unchallenged”. Meanwhile, the UK has imposed sanctions on Iran’s Prosecutor General, saying it would hold the regime to account “for its appalling human rights violations”, and has temporarily withdrawn Britain’s ambassador to Iran, Simon Shercliff, “for further consultations”.

Iran-UK relations have been very tumultuous ever since the victory of the Islamic Revolution. The first time that Britain cut off relations with the revolutionary regime was when the so-called “Students Following the Line of the Imam” attacked the US embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and took American diplomats hostage.

The second time was after Ayatollah Khomeini’s notorious “fatwa”, sentencing Salman Rushdie and the publishers of the Satanic Verses to death for having allegedly insulted Prophet Muhammad.

The third time was in November 2011 when a crowd of Iranian protestors attacked the British diplomatic compound in Tehran and ransacked offices and stole some documents.

In some ways, the current episode could be regarded as the most serious because this time domestic and international issues have combined to form a true storm.

Ever since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s so-called Guidance Patrol on 16 September 2022, the country has been rocked by nationwide demonstrations and protests that have been the most extensive and the most widespread in the Islamic revolution’s 44-year history. Although four months have passed since the start of the protests they show no sign of abating. On the contrary, the protestors’ demands have gone well beyond the issue of ending compulsory hijab and represent a total rejection of the Islamic Republic and the clerical rule. Massive repression, nearly 500 deaths, 18,000 arrests and the execution of at least four demonstrators with many more having been sentenced to death have not cowed the protestors.

On the international level, the nuclear deal (officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action of JCPOA) is virtually dead and US officials have openly stated that they do not see it as their priority anymore. The continued deadlock has meant that US and EU sanctions on Iran have continued, resulting in further collapse of the Iranian economy. The hostility of regional states, mainly Saudi Arabia, towards Iran shows no sign of resolution. Meanwhile, new right-wing members of the Israeli nationalist government have openly spoken of preparing for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

MSNBC: “Britain’s PM condemns Iran’s execution of British-Iranian national”

Adding to these problems has been Iran’s turning to the East, new military collaboration with Russia, and the sale of Iranian drones to Russia for use in Ukraine, which have been responsible for many deaths and massive damage to Ukrainian infrastructure. Many Western leaders see this as perhaps the most serious issue in Iran’s foreign policy posture. The British parliament unanimously voted to declare the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps a terrorist organisation, following in former President Trump’s footsteps. Many EU countries are also contemplating doing the same.

Under these circumstances, Iranian leaders seem to have thrown caution to the wind and are openly challenging both their opposition at home and their adversaries abroad. The execution of Alireza Akbari should be seen in this context. The execution of such a high-profile figure is meant to convey the following messages.

The first aim is to send a message to the West, especially to Britain, that their hostility to Iran will not go unanswered, and Iran is prepared to take even more drastic measures to show her displeasure at Western behaviour towards Iran. Of course, such steps will intensify Western hostility towards Iran and will make Iran even more isolated than before. In Akbari’s voice recording that BBC Persian has obtained, he says that Iran’s Intelligence Ministry has been in conflict with the British government and as he had British nationality, by arresting him the Intelligence Ministry “wishes to take revenge” on Britain.

The second aim is to try to link domestic protests that are completely homegrown to foreign intrigue against Iran, and blame the West for inciting the demonstrators. This has been a tactic often used by Iran in the past but, judging by the reaction of Iranian protestors, it seems that this tactic has lost its effectiveness. Many demonstrators openly chant “They’re lying when they say America is our enemy, our enemy is right here”.

The third aim is to settle domestic scores. Iran’s clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, chose Mahmud Raisi as a right-wing candidate in order to marginalize the Reformists and to unify all branches of the government behind someone he could trust. Ever since his election, Raisi has pursued right-wing policies at home and abroad. Domestically, his stricter enforcement of hijab was one example of more hard-line policies, and in foreign policy his turning to the East and adopting a belligerent stance in nuclear negotiations have been in keeping with Khamenei’s wishes.

Ali Shamkhani, the powerful secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, is regarded as being close to the Reformists and not being revolutionary enough. Shamkhani who had engaged in armed struggle against the Pahlavi dynasty prior to the revolution joined the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organisation after the victory of the revolution, and later on served in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) rising to the position of the commander of IRGC Navy with the rank of rear admiral. In 1988 he was appointed the Minister of the Revolutionary Guards.

However, in the Reformist government of President Mohammad Khatami, he held the post of minister of defence from August 1997 until the end of his government in 2005. During that time, Ali Reza Akbari served as deputy defence minister under Shamkhani.

On 10 September 2013, Shamkhani was appointed secretary of the powerful Supreme National Security Council, a post which he still holds. Although he has been seemingly loyal to Ayatollah Khamenei, it seems that Raisi’s new rightwing government wishes to remove Shamkhani from his powerful post. Akbari’s arrest could be linked to an attempt to weaken and perhaps to replace Shamkhani with a more radical figure.

Apart from serving as deputy defence minister under Shamkhani, Akbari also served a number of years as Shamkhani’s advisor in his current post. On the eve of former President Hassan Rouhani’s second term as president, in a long article for Diplomacy Website, Akbari criticised certain attempts to dismiss Shamkhani as secretary of Supreme National Security Council. He praised his qualities and described him as “the best person” for the job.

Incidentally, Akbari is the second deputy to Ali Shamkhani who has got into trouble. Another former deputy, Ali Reza Askari (who was a brigadier general in the Revolutionary Guards), was also arrested on spying allegations and was imprisoned for 18 months before he disappeared on February 7, 2007 in Istanbul. Therefore, another reason for Akbari’s execution could be domestic settling of scores.

Finally, another reason for his execution could be to intimidate the people at home and tell opposition forces and the protestors that the same fate awaits them if they do not support the regime. In a recent speech, Ayatollah Khamenei complained about some officials and organizations who had not been sufficiently firm in suppressing the protests, especially mentioning the Supreme National Security Council.

Whatever the real reasons behind Akbari’s execution, it is clear that Iran is passing through a very dark period in both domestic and foreign policies, and is facing an uncertain and maybe a violent future.

Oxford (Special to Informed Comment) – Various Iranian and foreign news agencies have reported that Iran’s Prosecutor General has announced the shutting down of the. Guidance Patrol (often referred to in the West as the morality police). In response to a question about the dismantling of the Guidance Patrol, Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said: “The Guidance Patrol has nothing to do with the Judiciary. It was dismantled by the same organisation [presumably the Revolution Guards and the law-enforcement forces] that had established it.”

In another meeting held in Qom on the recent protests, he said: “The Majlis [the Parliament] and Supreme Islamic Revolution Council are studying and working on the issue of hijab, and the outcome of those decisions will be announced in 15 days. Such decisions should be based on wisdom.” He added: “After recent events, security and cultural organisations are trying to find a wise solution to this issue. The judiciary is busy working on a bill on the issue of morality and hijab.”

However, there is plenty of evidence to show that the Iranian regime has been rattled by the protests and is trying to find a way out of the biggest domestic crisis it has faced since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Earlier this month, Ali Reza Hosseini-Beheshti, the son of the late Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, the first head of the Islamic Judiciary, a member of the shadowy Islamic Revolution Council and one of the main architects of the Islamic Republic’s first constitution, called for the election of a Constituent Assembly to write a new constitution. He said that the regime has no other alternative: “The system has only two options. If it wants Iran to survive, it has no choice but to give in to this solution, or else it should openly admit that it attaches no importance to Iran.”

The Iranian Students News Agency, ISNA, has reported that Azar Mansouri, the secretary general of a leading reformist party, accompanied by “a number of political activists” met with the powerful Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, on December 4 and offered some proposals to him about how the government should react to the protests. She said: “The ruling establishment must talk to the people, accept its mistakes, and control the microphones that spread hatred and anger the people.” She also called on the government to lift the restrictions on social media, allow peaceful gatherings, free political prisoners and rescind the death sentences. She went on to say that “in order to improve the economic situation, the government must resolve its differences and challenges with America and the West, and must reform its policies in order to make the best use of the capabilities of Iranian expatriates.”

The current nationwide protests started following the tragic death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the Guidance Patrol on 16 September 2022, and they show no sign of abating. Meanwhile, strikes by many labor unions, such as truck drivers, teachers, university lecturers, oil industry workers and even some conservative merchants in the Tehran bazaar in support of the protestors have continued and are even intensifying.

The regime’s brutal crackdown of the protests has had the opposite effect and has intensified the scope and severity of the protests, despite many casualties. Iran’s Security Council (headed by the Interior Minister Hassan Habibi) has admitted that at least 200 people have died, while IRGC Aerospace head Amir Ali Hajizadeh says that “at least 300 people have been killed or martyred in recent weeks.”

Iran’s deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri-Kani has claimed that more than 50 law-enforcement personel have also been killed by protestors. Opposition sources put the number of the dead as over 440, with more than 18,000 protestors being arrested and some of them sentenced to death.

It is clear that the women’s uprising in Iran, supported by many men and by remarkable international solidarity, has reached a critical point and, for the first time, it is possible to realistically imagine the end of the clerical regime. Deep cracks have appeared among the leading members of the regime and even of the security forces, and doing nothing and hoping that everything will go back to square one is not an option. The movement is irreversible, and if the reports about the dismantlement of the Guidance Patrol are confirmed, it shows that the women’s revolution has achieved its first tangible gains. However, what is on offer is too little too late. The main question is which direction the events will take from now on.

Although many opposition groups abroad have jumped on the bandwagon and are calling on the people sacrificing everything inside the country to intensify their activities and prepare the way for one such group to return to the country among universal acclaim, the fact remains that the real change will take place inside Iran and not from outside.

A major problem of the revolutionaries under the Shah was that they only wanted to get rid of him, without any plans for an alternative. During the last days of the former regime, I asked a university friend of mine who was very active in the protests what his ideal future regime was. I asked him if he had even read Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s books and whether he agreed with his views. He answered that even asking such a question was treason to the revolution. The only aim was to get rid of the Shah because, according to him, what replaced him could not be any worse. Of course, given the brutal record of the clerical regime, one can hold that view with more justification about this regime, but this is a very risky course to follow.

Already, many opposition activists have adopted a very intolerant attitude towards any divergent views, but it is at such critical times that cool heads, real debate and dialogue and exchanges of views are needed in order to avoid possible pitfalls. Any serious uprising to topple this unpopular regime is not a game because it affects the future of over 86 million Iranians. The aim should be to establish a democratic system on the ruins of the clerical regime not merely engage in an orgy of destruction.

With its long history, a constitutional revolution nearly 120 years ago, a well-educated and pro-Western population, Iran is perhaps the only country in the Middle East which is totally ready for democracy. The imposed fanatical Islamist regime and people’s long struggle against it has given Iranians a unique experience and a thirst for freedom, as demonstrated in their slogan of “Women, Life, Freedom”.

It is important to avoid the fate of some failed states in the Middle East, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia or Yemen where some US Neoconservatives were trying to establish democracy.
This is why it is important to at least think about the possible alternatives to the current regime. Possible scenarios may include:

1- The slow-motion collapse of the Islamic regime and the triumph of the protestors without much resistance by the regime’s military and security forces. This option is very unlikely, given the fanatical attachment or subservience of some military forces, especially the IRGC and the Basij militia, to the regime. It is possible that if the regime faces serious threats to its existence those forces will unleash a reign of terror worse that we have ever seen.

2- A foreign military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the hope of weakening the regime and strengthening the protestors. This option too is very unwise and may in fact strengthen the regime, as was the case with the Iran-Iraq war. Most Iranians may detest the regime but they love their country. Nothing will unite them more than a foreign threat or a foreign attack on their country.

3- The possibility of a military coup either by the regular Army or more likely some elements within the IRGC. Far from establishing freedom and democracy in Iran, this option will entrench the violent sections of the regime and will produce a military dictatorship as we have seen in Egypt or Syria. Given the state of chaos in the Middle East and the world, especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, any new military action in the Middle East would be catastrophic and would be the last straw to break the back of the global economy.

4- There is some wishful thinking in the West that a different government in Iran would be less nationalistic or assertive than the current regime and would be friendlier towards the West and Israel. Given the extreme hostility of the Neocons towards Iran and the experience of crippling sanctions and maximum pressure imposed by President Trump, and the Israeli record of assassinating many Iranian scientists, it is highly unlikely that any new regime imposed from outside would want or be able to establish closer relations with the West or Israel.

However, this does not mean that there cannot be a constructive path to regime change in Iran. With an ailing leader, widespread protests and even a profound feeling of disappointment and disillusionment among many members of the regime, there is the possibility of evolutionary, rather than revolutionary or violent change. The major fear of many government officials and security forces is either the disintegration of the country or the possibility of severe reprisals by a new government. This anxiety is not helped by the constant threats issued by some opposition groups, especially those in exile.

We have had the experience of a remarkable peaceful transfer of power in South Africa from an apartheid regime to majority rule. Perhaps the most important factor in the success of that revolution was its promise of peaceful change. Iran needs to follow the path of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, promising a general amnesty, combined with the rule of law and the punishment of those who have committed major crimes. A majority of Iranians participated in the Islamic Revolution and it was not imposed from outside. Most people share in the guilt, although the crimes of those who used the revolution for their own personal gain and who introduced a reign of terror cannot be forgotten or forgiven.

While a violent change in Iran can destabilize the country and even lead to its disintegration, helped by some malign foreign elements, a peaceful and orderly transition can save the country and even serve as a model for others in the Middle East to follow. On the other hand, the collapse or disintegration of Iran will have profound repercussions for the region and will destabilize the entire Middle East and the rest of the world.
Of course, it is not for any of us from outside to tell Iranians which path to follow, but at least we can make suggestions and warn of possible pitfalls. The current nationwide protests give one hope that Iranians will choose the option which is more in keeping with their experiences and traditions and to the greater interest of the country. Long-suffering Iranians deserve this.

The next British Prime Minister will be the third prime minister in three months, his or her Home Secretary and Chancellor of Exchequer will also be the fourth ministers in as many months, something that is totally unprecedented in British history. James Graham, a British playwright and screenwriter, tweeted this morning: “A Prime Minister may fall today. Soak up the history, guys. Days like today only come around every couple of months.”

In yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Question Time in Parliament, the leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer opened his question with a retort about an upcoming book about Liz Truss’s time in office. “Apparently it’s going to be out by Christmas. Is that the release date or the title?” he joked. Truss came out fighting, insisting that she would continue to remain prime minister because “I am a fighter, not a quitter”.

Her “Prime Minister’s Question Hour” in Parliament went fairly well, and many of her supporters thought that she would be safe for the time being, but early in the afternoon, her right-wing Home Secretary Suella Braverman resigned and, in a blistering attack on her, accused her of having ditched her election promises. This bombshell was followed by chaotic scenes in Parliament over a vote on fracking. The government imposed a “three-line whip” making it mandatory for Tory MPs to vote for it or lose the whip (being expelled from the Party).

Fracking is very unpopular with the majority of the British people, including many members of the Conservative Party. There were unprecedented scenes of some MPs being press-ganged and forced to vote for the bill, which showed the disarray in the party. However, according to the internal rules of the Conservative Party, the MPs could not force a vote of no-confidence on the prime minister for at least a year after her election.

Yet, early on Thursday morning, Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the powerful “1922 Committee” that represents the views of backbench MPs, went to see Truss at 10 Downing Street and informed her that she had lost the trust of the majority of Tory MPs and that it would be more dignified for her to resign, rather than to be forced out. Therefore, she found that she had no option but to resign.

In her short resignation statement, she said: “I came into office at a time of great economic and international instability… And we set out a vision for a low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit. I recognise, though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative party. I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative party.”

Thus ended Truss’s tumultuous premiership. Her departure after only six weeks in office was a rapid and humiliating fall from power that throws her Conservative Party into further disarray. She said she would remain party leader and prime minister until a successor is chosen within a week. This would make the choice of her replacement even less democratic than the way she was elected (selected) following the messy departure of Boris Johnson over the summer. This time, instead of going to the party members in the country, only Tory MPs will choose her successor.

If all goes well (and judging by the events of the past few weeks that is going to be a tall order), one of the prominent Conservative MPs, presumably one of those who took part in the last election campaign, will be chosen to succeed her. The problem is that there are few MPs who are prepared to welcome this poisoned chalice, knowing that their tenure will also be a short one. Among the leading candidates, the former Chancellor of Exchequer who received the highest number of votes by Tory MPs has remained silent and some of his friends have said that he is no longer interested in the job. The current Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is popular with most MPs, but he too has ruled himself out.

British Parliament Building via Pixabay.

The situation has become so bizarre that some MPs have suggested that they should ask the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson who was forced out of office following a number of scandals to return to his former job. In his resignation speech, Johnson who is a lover of the classics intriguingly made a reference to the Roman statesman Cincinnatus, who left power only to be called back to office when his people were in trouble. He had also compared himself to Winston Churchill who was invited to serve as prime minister when the country was facing a major crisis. However, many opposition figures have said that he should be barred from returning to office given his past record.

Whatever happens, it is clear that British politics is passing through a period of the worst crisis since the Second World War. The current problems started with a foolish referendum called for by the former Prime Minister David Cameron on whether to stay or leave the European Union. As a parliamentary democracy, British policies are not decided by referenda, especially on such a complex issue as the EU membership. The vote in favour of Brexit was won by a small majority of voters. It was pushed by a small number of fanatical MPs and political activists who allegedly wanted to make Britain independent and to usher in a brilliant era of economic progress. Brexit was opposed by the majority of Labour and Liberal Democrat voters. It was also opposed by a decisive majority of voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and even by a number of senior Tory MPs.

Brexit has strengthened independence campaigns in Scotland and Northern Ireland and its disastrous consequences have also turned many of its initial supporters against it. Not only has Brexit not led to economic progress, it has acted as a deadly poison in the British body politics, cutting Britain off from the largest single market in the world. Polls show that if a referendum was held today, a big majority of people would vote against it.

The situation has been aggravated by the aftermath of Covid that has brought the National Health Service to its knees, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the highest rate of inflation for 40 years, unprecedented high energy costs, a looming recession, increased interest rates, making life very difficult for old-age pensioners, those with mortgages, and those on low income.

In the midst of all this, Truss and her short-lived Chancellor of Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng introduced a new budget dropping the top rate of tax which would only benefit the super-rich, lifted the limit on bankers’ bonuses and raised the tax for most of the people. These Neo-Conservative policies that were based on extreme economic ideologies and free market fundamentalism that were hostile to workers’ rights and the environment, crashed the pound, raised mortgage repayments and dramatically hyped the cost of borrowing. Kwarteng was forced to resign only three weeks after being appointed to his job.

This shambolic change of government has not only undermined Britain’s standing in the world, it has also weakened the Western alliance at a critical time in the history of the world. The rise of right-wing politicians in Italy, Hungary, Turkey and now Britain has delivered a major blow to Western democracy. If the Republicans manage to gain control of the House and Senate in next month’s mid-term election, the West will be in a much weaker ideological position in its confrontation with China, Russia and other autocracies. These events must be a wakeup call for the West to rethink its policies and put its house in order.

After of a series of scandals, Johnson’s opponents called for a vote of confidence in Parliament on 6^th June. Although he won the support of 211 Conservative MPs, 148 MPs or 41% of Conservative MPs voted against him. The size of the rebellion against him encouraged his opponents to pile the pressure on him.

A number of new scandals provided an excuse to push Johnson out of office. Last February, Johnson appointed Chris Pincher as the Government Deputy Chief Whip. After allegedly groping two men while he was drunk, Pincher resigned on 30 June 2022. Johnson who had allegedly described him as “Pincher by name, pincher by nature”, denied that he had known of the extent of his sexual misconduct, but the intervention of a former top civil servant Lord Simon McDonald who in an interview with the BBC confirmed that Johnson had been informed of the incident sealed his fate.

During Prime Minister’s Question Time on 6^th July, a Conservative MP, Tim Loughton, asked “Does the prime minister think there are any circumstances in which he should resign?” Johnson replied that only a couple of years ago he had won a landslide election with the biggest Tory majority since 1987, and that it was his duty to continue and implement his mandate. However, during the day, 51 ministers including some of the most prominent members of his cabinet resigned and by the evening he discovered that he had no government to run. On 7^th July, an unrepentant Johnson appeared in front of the black door of 10 Downing Street and announced his resignation. He said that he had wanted to deliver his mandate, “But as we’ve seen, at Westminster the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves it moves, and, my friends, in politics no one is remotely indispensable.”

According to the British Constitution, the members of the ruling party in parliament, in this case the Conservative Party, select two candidates out of all those who have put themselves forward for election in a series of secret ballots, and then the members of the party in the country select one of them to be the party leader and therefore the Prime Minister.

A remarkable aspect of the race among the candidates vying to be the next British prime minister has been that out of eleven original candidates, five of them were either foreign born or were the children of immigrant families.

Sajid Javid (born 1969), the former Chancellor of Exchequer, Home Secretary and Health Secretary, is the son of Muslim Pakistani Punjabi parents who migrated to the UK in the 1960’s.

Nadhim Zahawi (1967) is an Iraqi-born Kurdish Muslim politician whose parents fled to England when he was 11 years old. He also served as the last Chancellor of Exchequer and a health minister.

Suella Braverman (1980), a lawyer who has served as the Attorney General for England and Wales, is the daughter of Indian parents who migrated to Britain from Kenya and Mauritius. Her mother was born to a Hindu Tamil Mauritius family. Braverman herself is a Buddhist.

Kemi Badenoch (1980) is the daughter of Nigerian parents, who spent part of her childhood in Lagos and the United States before returning to the United Kingdom at 16. She was elected to the House of Commons in 2017 and when Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in July 2019, he appointed Badenoch as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families, and the following year as Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury and in 2021 she was appointed as Minister of State for Local Government, Faith and Communities and served as Minister of State for Equalities from 2021 to 2022.

Rishi Sunak (1980) who served as Chancellor of Exchequer from 2020 until he resigned in protest at Johnson’s policies, was born in Southampton to Punjabi parents, and is a practicing Hindu. Sunak is believed to be the richest man in the House of Commons, thanks to his past career as a banker and his marriage to Ms Murty, the daughter of one of India’s most successful entrepreneurs. The Sunday Times Rich List values Mr Sunak and Ms. Murty’s fortune at £730m (nearly $860m). Before going into politics Sunak worked for the US investment bank Goldman Sachs and had a U.S. Green Card.

This says a great deal about how much the Conservative Party has changed during the past few decades. In the past, Conservative cabinets were mainly staffed by rich and privileged white people educated at Eton or one of the other exclusive private schools, moving almost automatically to Oxbridge. Mrs Thatcher was the first Conservative prime minister to have a relatively large number of Jewish ministers from East European origins. The late patrician prime minister, Harold Macmillan, sarcastically quipped that Mrs Thatcher had filled her cabinet with Estonians, instead of Etonians.

Boris Johnson’s cabinet by contrast was the most diverse cabinet in British history, with some of the most prominent posts in the cabinet, including the Chancellor or Exchequer, Home Secretary, Education Secretary, Business Secretary, Secretary of State for Europe and North America, etc being held by the children of immigrants. It is no wonder that some of the leading candidates for succeeding him also come from diverse backgrounds.

The election (or rather selection) of the next British Prime Minister is rather bizarre. Johnson’s replacement will not be elected by the 47 million adults registered to vote, but by around 160,000 grassroots Conservative Party members who are not at all representative of the British population as a whole. The members of this rather exclusive club can start voting from the beginning of next week, and the winner will be announced on September 5.

According to the most recent research, 63% of Conservative Party members are male, and 37% female. 6% are under 24-years-old, 36% are aged 25 to 49-years-old, 19% are aged between 50 and 64-years-old, and 39% are over 65. 24% backed Remain in the EU referendum, and 76% backed Leave. 56% live in London and the south-east of England, 18% in the Midlands and Wales, 20% in the north of England and 6% in Scotland. 80% belong to the highest social economic groups known as ABC1, with an income of more than £100,000 a year. Therefore, a very small number of mainly white, middle-aged, wealthy, male Brexiters, most of whom live in the affluent London or south-east of England, will select the next British prime minister who will be in office until the next election which is due to be held on 17 December 2024.

So far, there has been little discussion of issues such as inflation, climate change, the cost of living, levelling up, to name a few. Instead, both candidates are competing with each other to see which of them can appeal most to right-wing Conservative voters. Both of them are in favour of Brexit. Although initially Liz Truss was a Remainer, but since joining Johnson’s cabinet, she has been among the most ardent Brexiters. Both of them are in favour of overriding the Northern Ireland Protocol, and deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. Truss has announced plans for a “bonfire” of EU laws retained after Brexit. She has promised to scrap or replace all such laws which she argues hinder growth, by the end of 2023.

She also promises immediate tax cuts, while Sunak who wishes to portray himself as a fiscally responsible candidate believes that tax cuts must start next year, after he has tamed the rate of inflation at 9.1%, the highest for 40 years.

Both Sunak and Truss are staunchly pro-NATO and believe in maintaining close ties with the United States. Both of them will continue British support for Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and believe that Russian forces must be forced out of all the territory they have occupied in Ukraine, including Crimea.

Rishi Sunak has said that he would put the UK on a “crisis footing” on day one as PM. He believes the country is facing a national emergency, including on the economy, the NHS and migration, and therefore radicalism, change and moral courage is needed in order to overcome the problems that Britain is facing.

In an interview with the Times, he said a “business-as-usual mentality isn’t going to cut it” when it comes to dealing with challenges that are “staring us in the face”. “Having been inside government I think the system just isn’t working as well as it should. And the challenges that I’m talking about, they’re not abstract, they’re not things that are coming long down the track,” he said.

It is strange that both candidates are very critical of the government in which they served as Chancellor of Exchequer and Foreign Secretary.

Most polls show that Liz Truss is the favourite among the Conservative voters and the bookies. According to YouGov’s latest poll, Truss is leading Sunak by 62% to 38% among Tory members, a lead that will be difficult to overturn. A sizeable number of Conservatives believe that Sunak stabbed the prime minister in the back, and there seems to have been a concerted effort by Johnson’s supporters to prevent Sunak from winning the vote. A recent YouGov poll showed that even now 25% of Tories wish that Boris Johnson was still Prime Minister, 60% would prefer someone else and 15% don’t know.

With a difficult winter ahead as the result of Covid, a looming recession, high inflation, exorbitant gas and energy prices, an accelerating climate crisis, the now emerging problems of Brexit seen during the past few days in long lines of cars and trucks stuck at border crossing points to Europe, ongoing war in Ukraine threatening to get out of hand, and the unresolved Northern Ireland Protocol, the next prime minister will have a mountain to climb. No matter which of the two candidates wins, it is clear that the next government will be more populist and more right-wing. Whether with such policies they can defeat the Labor Party in the next general election remains to be seen.

Iran-US relations have gone through many ups and downs, and have moved from extreme friendship to extreme hostility. Maybe this year’s Now Ruz is a good opportunity for both nations to start anew. What are the main causes of the current conflict between the two countries, and is there any way to bridge that gap and establish at least cordial if not friendly relations between the two? The following bullet points refer to some of the headlines of this long and complex relationship.

1- One of the problems with these relations has been the fact that they have often been based on emotions and sentimentality, rather than on pragmatism and rationality. Henry John Temple who served twice as the British prime minister in the mid-19^th century has a famous saying: “Nations do not have permanent friends or enemies, only interests”. The first requirement for better relations between Iranians and Americans is that they should separate their personal feelings from political relations between the two states and nations.

2- The ancient Iranian prophet Mani (216-274) believed in a dualistic cosmology according to which the world is ruled by two opposing forces of good and evil, light and darkness, day and night. He believed that these two forces are in constant struggle until one of them triumphs over the other. In English, the term “Manichaeism” has come to mean duality and the struggle between good and evil.

Unfortunately, this philosophy seems to have had a lasting effect on the Iranian psyche, right up to the present time. Iranians are often accused of “efrat va tafrit”, namely going to an extreme in one direction or the other. What is so strange is that many Americans also share this trait and often see things in black and white, with little awareness of all the shades of grey in between. When Americans befriend a government, as they did with the late Shah’s government or the current Israeli government, they see no evil and hear no evil, but when they turn against a government they take their hostility to extremes as they have been doing with Iran since the Iranian Revolution. In other words, their relations with many countries are based on a zero-sum game.

3- Relations between individuals are very different from relations between nations. We may form a friendship with someone who shares our views and characteristics. On the other hand, nations are large and complex organisms that contain many different and sometimes contradictory interests and policies.

In some ways, there are many similarities between Iran and the United States. The United States is a nation composed of people from all over the world. According to figures produced in 2020, American society was divided into the following groups:

Population 330 million

White 57.8%

Hispanics 18.7%

Black 12.1%

Asian 5.9%

Muslims 1.1%

Jews 2.4%

According to the figures provided by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2021, there are also more than 1.5 million people of Iranian descent living and working in the United States.

Iranian society is equally diverse. According to figures published in 2019, Iran has the following ethnic divisions:

Population 85 million

Persian 61%

Azeri 16%

Kurdish 10%

Lurs 6%

Baluchis 2%

Arabs 2%

Turkmen 2%

Others 1%

4- Relations between nations are not static, but vary depending on who is in power at different times. Clearly, Iranian relations with the United States under Mohammad Reza Shah were quite different from those under Ayatollah Khomeini, and in recent times the policies of President Obama towards Iran were very different from those of President Trump.

5- Relations based on friendship are different from economic and political relations between governments. Most countries manage to separate their political relations with other countries from their economic interests. India is a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation led by China. At the same time, she is also a member of the so-called Quad, comprising the United States, India, Japan and Australia, with the aim of confronting China. India has extensive commercial relations with both sides.

China has signed a 25-year economic agreement with Iran to invest some $400 billion into the Iranian economy, but she also has equally large agreements for economic cooperation with the GCC states and Israel that are regarded as Iran’s rivals if not opponents.

Iran’s neighbour Turkey is a member of NATO, yet has friendly relations with Russia and China. Turkey bought the Russian S-400 missile defence system in 2019, much to USA’s annoyance, and she has also signed an agreement under which Russia will build a nuclear reactor in Turkey. At the same time, she has major differences with Russia over Syria, Libya and even Ukraine to which she has sold high-precision weapons that have been used against Russia. Nevertheless, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Turkey has remained fairly neutral and has even tried to mediate between them. Having an agreement with one side does not prevent agreements with other players.

Friends turned into enemies:

As far as political relations between Iran and the United States are concerned, they have gone through many changes over the past two centuries. The early phases of those relations were very cordial and even friendly. In 1907, Howard Baskerville, a recent graduate from Princeton University, went to Iran and started teaching English and American history to mixed classes of boys and girls at the American Presbyterian-run Memorial School in Tabriz, the capital of Iranian Azerbaijan.[1]

In 1909, when the Constitutional Revolution was facing opposition from the Qajar ruler Mohammad Ali Shah who wanted to reverse the revolution, Baskerville was so impressed by the people fighting for their freedom that he joined the revolutionaries. On April 19, 1909, Baskerville was killed by a sniper’s bullet and was buried in the Christian Armenian cemetery in Tabriz, while over 1,000 mourners took part in his funeral. He was 24 years and 9 days old.

He was eulogised as a patriot and martyr of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. Right up to the present time, a bronze bust of Howard Baskerville is on display in the Tabriz Constitutional House. Aref Ghazvini, one of Iran’s leading poets, travelled to Tabriz to pay tribute to Baskerville in 1923 and wrote an ode in his honour.

In 1909, after the Constitutional Revolution triumphed, Iran’s Constitutionalists turned to the United States for assistance to reform its finances. When President William Taft took the oath of office in 1909, his inaugural address expressed optimism about the possibility of improved trade relations with Iran. In 1910, the newly-minted Iranian Parliament recruited a 35-year-old American lawyer, Morgan Shuster, to be ‘Treasurer-General’, and gave him broad powers to restructure the country’s finances. Morgan Shuster devised a new taxation system and planned to set up a tax-collecting gendarmerie.

His active support for the Constitutional Movement and his attempts to improve Iran’s financial affairs displeased the two colonial powers of the time, Russia and Britain, forcing the Iranian vice-regent to expel him in 1911. Back in America, he authored a remarkable book, The Strangling of Persia, which still remains one of the best accounts of the designs of foreign imperial powers to suppress the Iranian constitution. In his book, he wrote: “It was obvious that the people of Persia deserve much better than they are getting, that they wanted us to succeed but it was the British and the Russians who were determined not to let us succeed.”[2]

After the First World War, again Iran turned to another American, Dr Arthur Millspaugh, to continue the work that had been started by Shuster. He was a former advisor to the U.S. State Department’s Office of Foreign Trade. He was hired by Iran’s Finance Ministry and served in Iran from 1922-27 and again from 1942-45. He helped Iran become independent of foreign loans, and he was seen by the Iranian public and government as a liberator from foreign dominance.

Back in the United States, he tried to influence the State Department’s policies towards Iran. Following Morgan Shuster’s example, in 1925 Millspaugh published a book about his first assignment in Iran, The American Task in Persia.[3] After his second assignment, he wrote another book, Americans in Persia.[4]

Six main events in Iran-US relations:

In the recent history of Iran-U.S. relations, five events have shaped those relations:

1- The first event was the 1953 US-UK-orchestrated coup that overthrew the popular government of Mohammad Mosaddeq. That event marked a turning point in the popular perceptions of the United States in Iran, and has poisoned bilateral relations ever since.

2- The Islamic Revolution turned Iran from one of the closest US allies in the Middle East to one of its fiercest enemies. The occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979, followed by the aborted US attempt to attack the embassy and release the hostages by force, exacerbated the hostilities that have continued right to the present time.

3- While most Americans still hold a strong grudge against Iran due to the hostage crisis, many Iranians hold similar feelings of betrayal and hurt as the result of US support for Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran on 22 September 1979, which killed and wounded more than a million Iranians. Saddam Hussein’s aggressive war against Iran was supported by the whole world—from the United States to the former Soviet Union, Europe and many regional countries. On the other hand, Iran was isolated and had to fight the war almost single-handedly.

4- The fourth source of Iranian complaint has been the example of double standards regarding nuclear programmes. The West knowingly ignores Israel’s nuclear arsenal amassed initially by even deceiving its closest ally, the United States. Far from imposing sanctions on Israel and demanding that she gets rid of her weapons of mass destruction, the United States has prevented the IAEA from inspecting Israel’s nuclear facilities and has even blocked calls for setting up a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. In contrast to its treatment of Israel’s illegal weapons, the United States has imposed a wave of extraterritorial sanctions on Iran on the basis of Iran’s nuclear programme which Iran insists is for peaceful purposes.

5- The fifth event was the signing of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, which was backed unanimously by the Security Council Resolution 2231 that lifted all sanctions on Iran. The nuclear deal was also endorsed unanimously by the EU Council.[5]

After years of hostility, President Obama finally decided to recognize Iran’s right to have a peaceful nuclear programme under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency to which she was entitled as an NPT member. According to the deal, Iran destroyed most of her nuclear material in return for the lifting of US and UN sanctions.

After the signing of the deal, there were nationwide celebrations in Iran and a widespread feeling of a new dawn in relations between Iran and the West. Iran signed some massive oil and gas deals with European and American companies and Iran put in big orders for US aircraft. Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said that once the deal was implemented, it could prove to be the floor and not the ceiling of many more ambitious agreements in different fields. Unfortunately, President Trump’s violation of the deal further undermined Iranians’ view of the United States and persuaded them never to trust US governments again.

6- The sixth factor has been the slow pace of return to the JCPOA under President Biden. Despite Mr Biden’s promises during his presidential campaign that he would reverse President Trump’s executive order to withdraw from the JCPOA, and despite the fact that he cancelled a large number of his predecessor’s executive orders, he has dragged his feet regarding the JCPOA. More than a year after taking office, he has not re-joined the deal and has demanded that Iran should return to full compliance with the JCPOA before the United States lifts Trump’s sanctions, despite the fact that it was the U.S. president who violated the deal not Iran.

Six U.S accusations against Iran:

1- Iran is building a nuclear weapon. This claim is manifestly false. Even 14 U.S. intelligence organisations in a joint statement stated that prior to 2003 Iran had made some studies regarding the manufacturing of a nuclear weapon, but she had given up those attempts under President Mohammad Khatami and had not repeated those efforts again.[6] In any case, in its various inspections of different sites, the IAEA had reported that there had been no diversion of nuclear activities towards the manufacturing of weapons.

Furthermore, the nuclear deal blocked all paths to Iran’s access to nuclear weapons. The agreement reduced Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile by 98 percent and restricted the level of enrichment to 3.67 percent. Given that an enrichment level of more than 90 percent is needed to build a single nuclear bomb, the deal makes it impossible for Iran’s uranium to be weaponized. Under the deal, Iran also reduced the number of its centrifuges from 20,000 to a little over 5,000, far below the number that would be needed for manufacturing a single bomb, even if she wanted to do so. Iran closed the Arak reactor, which was capable of producing plutonium, and agreed to severe restrictions on research and development activities in other facilities. In short, the agreement made it virtually impossible for Iran to build a single bomb.

2- Iran has violated the nuclear deal. The IAEA which is in charge of inspecting Iran’s nuclear programme in 15 separate reports has stressed that Iran abided by the terms of the deal until more than a year after President Trump had violated that deal. In response to the illegal sanctions imposed by the United States, Iran went beyond some of the limits for enrichment set out in the JCPOA, but all those activities have also been under IAEA supervision, and there has been no attempt at enriching uranium beyond 60 degrees of purity which is too low for making a bomb.

3- Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism. The charge of terrorism has been levelled at many countries, but it all depends on what one means by terrorism. Iran has assassinated a few active opposition leaders abroad, but sadly this is a nefarious practice carried out by many countries, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, to name only two.

Iran helped to establish the Lebanese Hezbollah after the Israeli invasion of that country, but that movement has become a part of the Lebanese government and sees itself as a champion of the Shi’is in Lebanon, rather than as a terrorist organisation. In most of its actions, it seems to act independently rather than taking orders from Tehran.

4- Iran is working with Al Qaeda. The charge of Iran’s collaboration with Al Qaeda is as false as the same charge made against Saddam Hussein. During the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration levelled two false accusations at Saddam Hussein’s regime. First, that it possessed weapons of mass destruction, and second that it had close relations with Al Qaeda. Those lies paved the way for the devastating war against Iraq. Fast forward nearly two decades and the former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who was intensely hostile towards Iran made exactly the same allegations regarding Al Qaeda’s ties with Iran as a parting shot before he left office. Naturally, Pompeo did not provide any evidence in support of his claim, but he knew that this was a highly effective and dangerous charge because the 2001 Authorization for Use of Force passed by Congress in the wake of 9/11 allows the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations.”[7]

5- Iran is intent on destroying Israel. Certainly, the relations between Iran and Israel have gone from correct, if not friendly, relations under the late Shah’s government to extreme hostility. Both sides use very ugly and hateful speech against each other, which only serves to intensify their mutual hostility. Both sides exaggerate the other side’s actions taken against them and refuse to respond to signals of friendship from the other side. While even some Arab regimes that have been implacably hostile to Israel have established relations (under US pressure), there is no reason why Iran which has had a unique relationship with the Jews throughout history cannot move towards friendly relations with Israel. After all, Iranians cannot be more Palestinian than the Palestinians. The best policy for Iran and all Middle Eastern countries is to join the global consensus to help the Palestinians either to acquire their own state alongside Israel or to live in a single state minus the apartheid laws.

6- Hostility with Iran serves US interests in the region. American policy in the Middle East, with non-stop wars with Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc. has been a very sorry chapter in American foreign policy. The United States has sold a huge quantity of weapons to some dictatorial Arab regimes, but as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown most of them have been unreliable allies. Most of them refused to condemn the Russian aggression and have turned to both Russia and China for purchasing weapons and even nuclear reactors. Persian Gulf regimes have also started mending fences not only with Iran but even with the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is visiting the UAE this week-end.

What needs to be done?

1- As the talks in Vienna are reaching their final phase, both countries should draw a line under the Trump era and should move towards closer political and economic relations. Unfortunately, as there is some sign of progress in Iran-US relations, the Israelis have moved beyond acts of sabotage and killing of Iranian scientists to direct attacks on Iranian military installations. There was an attack on an Iranian military base in Kermanshah on 14 February and the Israeli media boasted that six Israeli drones had attacked the base destroying hundreds of Iranian drones.[8] Iran retaliated by hitting an alleged Mossad training base in the Kurdistan region of Iraq near a new US consulate in Erbil.[9]

Meanwhile, in an astonishing move, all Republican Senators, with the notable exception of Senator Rand Paul, in a letter to President Biden, warned him against reviving the nuclear deal with Iran.[10]

2- As the result of a new agreement, Iran should be encouraged to resume her oil exports that were halted following Trump’s sanctions and maximum pressure policy. At a time when oil and gas prices are rising and creating many problems for the European and global economy, Iran’s plentiful oil and gas reserves can make up for the loss of Russian fossil fuel. Iran has tens of millions of barrels of oil in storage which she can release almost immediately, and within a few months can return to exporting more than 2.5 million barrels of oil.

Unhappy about the prospect of Iran competing with Russian exports, during the final phases of the nuclear talks Russia dropped a spanner in the works by demanding that her trade with Iran should not be subject to US sanctions.[11] This threatened to derail the agreement, but after the visit of Iranian foreign minister to Moscow and talks with his Russian counterpart, Lavrov agreed to drop his objections to the deal.[12]

3- After the original nuclear agreement reached in 2015 under President Obama, both sides acted timidly and did not make full use of the agreement. The US Treasury failed to lift all the sanctions that had been agreed and hardliners in Iran also criticised Rouhani’s government alleging that Iran had given up too much in return for too little. This time, both sides should make use of the opportunity and must move fast to expand political and economic relations. The sad history of the past four decades has shown that both sides have lost a great deal as the result of mutual demonization, while their enemies have benefited from Iran’s full participation in regional and international developments.

4- One way to draw a line under the past is for both sides to apologise for past behaviour. In 2,000 when Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami was calling for closer relations with the United States, the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright acknowledged the United States’ role in overthrowing Mosaddeq’s government and called US policy towards Iran as “regrettably short-sighted.”[13] President Biden may not be able to tie the hands of a future US president not to renege on a new nuclear deal as Iran has demanded, but it would be gracious if he could apologise for Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and the imposition of illegal sanctions on Iran. Equally, many Iranian officials have publicly acknowledged that taking US diplomats hostage was against international law and even against Islamic teachings. Their public apology for that illegal act would go a long way to heal the wounds of the hostage crisis.

After more than four decades of hostility, there is a conjunction of different factors that can bring the two nations together and usher in a new springtime of hope and renewal in their relations. Both sides should seize this opportunity.

[1] For a brief biography of Baskerville see Fereshteh Sabetian: “The American Hero in Iran: The True Story of Thomas Baskerville”, SurfIran, July 17, 2018. https://medium.com/@surfiran/an-american-hero-in-iran-the-true-story-of-howard-baskerville-3953ae752f27

[2] Morgan W. Shuster, The Strangling of Persia: A Personal Narrative, (Mage Publishing, Washington D. C., 1912).

[3] Arthur Millspaugh, The American Task in Persia (New York, Arno Press, 1925)

[4] Arthur Millspaugh, Americans in Persia (Washington D.C., The Brookings Institution, 1946)

[5] “Iran nuclear deal: EU statement on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”, European Council https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2017/10/16/iran-nuclear-deal-eu-jcpoa/

[6] “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities”, November 2007. https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/20071203_release.pdf

[7] Public Law 107-40, 107^th Congress. https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ40/PLAW-107publ40.pdf

[8] “Hundreds of Iranian Drones Destroyed in Israel-attributed Attack Last Month.” Haaretz, March 15, 2022. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-israel-destroyed-hundreds-of-iranian-drones-in-massive-strike-1.10674930

[9] “Deep Dive: Did Iranian missile strike follow ‘unheeded’ warnings?” Amwaj, March 18, 2022. https://amwaj.media/article/erbil-iraq-kurdistan-masrour-barzani-attack-irgc-iran-israel

[10] “GOP senators ramp up pressure on Biden to scrap Iran talks”, The Hill, March 14, 2022. https://thehill.com/policy/international/598117-gop-senators-ramp-up-pressure-on-biden-to-scrap-iran-talks

[11] Trita Parsi, “Already fragile JCPOA talks ‘paused’ over Russian demands”, March 11, 2022 https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/03/11/already-fragile-jcpoa-talks-paused-over-russian-demands/

[12] “Amir Abdollahian: Russia to cooperate with Vienna talks until agreement reached”, March 16, 2022. https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/471134/Amir-Abdollahian-Russia-to-cooperate-with-Vienna-talks-until

[13] “Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Remarks before the American-Iranian Council,” March 17, 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20150707013627/http:/fas.org/news/iran/2000/000317.htm