by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Haider Abbas
The entire world is gripped with the possibility of a coming war, and the theatre which was assumed to be India-China , is now suddenly getting shifted to the much awaited Iran and Middle-East, which very arguably, has all the potential to turn into a third world-war, as the on-going duel between US president Donald Trump and incumbent president Joseph Biden, may fast turn out to be ‘out-of-hand’ . Trump supporters have started to march to Washington to protest the allegations of ‘fraud-in-elections’ by Trump and Biden has expressed his grave concerns, for the first time, that ‘more people may die’. If Trump refuses to cooperate on transition’ of power, informed The Guardian on November 17, 2020 1, but amid all the spree, it has come to light that Trump is mulling an attack on Iran, cited BBC on November 17, 2020 2 and has called all his advisors to assuage the options of a strike on nuclear sites of Iran, towards which Iran has vowed a ‘crushing’ response, tells Al Jazeera on November 17, 2020 3.
Trump who is credited not to have started any fresh war, in contrast to a war-mongering image of Biden, in fact had long been pressurised by the Jewish state of Israel to start a war on Iran, in apprehension to the Iranian nuclear programme, in all these last four-years, and now Trump in desperation to please the Israel state, is standing on a very critical moment as a war at this juncture has every possibility to engulf the whole world. Iran has to be decimated on the charges of its nuclear enrichment programme, as after all in the wake of the hoax of weapons of mass destruction claim, Iraq too had to be reduced to ashes, once by George W Bush and the world just saw to be a witness to millions of deaths in Iraq, followed by Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen etc!
It is worth to recall that Trump in May 2018 had scrapped the US-Iran nuclear deal, which Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu boasts to have got it done himself, reveals TimesofIsrael on July 17, 2018 4 might not have succumbed to Israel, but in his desperation right now, might out-trigger a war with Iran, in his next 65 days i.e. until he remains confirmed with the same powers, or else it is also an understandable reality that soon Biden would pick from where Trump would leave. Thus, a war on Iran, to the tunes of Israel, whether be it from Trump or Biden, is therefore likely to come. As Biden had always been a self-professed Zionist, disclosed Scoop.Co.NZ on March 17, 2020 5.
Trump has been overtly pro-Israel as he played an instrumental role into getting UAE, Bahrain, Sudan formalise their ‘relations’ with Israel apart from giving status to ‘Jerusalem’ to be the capital of Israel. He complied with the annexation-plan of West Bank by Israel, and it was also quite conclusive that Trump, if re-elected, will supervise it to happen. But, Trump to the liking of Israel fell dramatically short of a war! Trump is therefore now searching for moves to placate Israel and has already deployed his US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who recently declared that a second-term of Trump is coming, his highest ranking official to visit the ‘Israeli illegal settlements’ in West Bank , which is to provide a legitimate-cover and also to take one more step forward towards the ‘annexation-plan’ of Israel, although US state department has not confirmed Pompeo itinerary as yet, notified Al Jazeera on November 13, 2020 6 .
Iran as its part of defense mechanism, is also moving to safeguard its boundaries, and therefore, its foreign minister Javed Zarif made a visit to Pakistan on November 10, 2020 to coordinate a response from Pakistan, for US would surely try to seek to use Pakistan Shamsi airbase to bombard Iran, or obviously from its biggest military base in Al Udeid in Qatar. And, no wonder the chief of Qatar air force, therefore, made a visit to Pakistan on November 17, 2020, to help clear the air that Qatar too would not oblige US in its attack on Iran, as then Iran would also target US base in Qatar, and moreover, Qatar is now firmly with Turkey which is now in a new bloc with Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia-supported by Russia and China. Plus, in one of the biggest deals in history China and Iran have entered into a 25 years 400 billion USD ‘military and trade’ agreement which has sent everything spinning in Middle-East as well as in Israel, US and India. India, ironically, has been made to move out from Iran Chabahar project which even the visits of defense minister Rajnath Singh (September 5, 2020) and external affairs minister S Jaishaker (September 9, 2020) , could not re-stitch again.
If Trump is to give a go-ahead against Iran, it will most certainly have a fallout on Pakistan and China, who are at daggers-drawn with India over India’s PM Narendra Modi annulment of Article 370, on August 5, 2019, which gave special status JK&L, and it hadn’t been that long enough when Pakistan distanced itself from Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one year later, after allegations that KSA did not stand with Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir, and therefore, KSA King Salman, response after the visit of Javed Zarif, at the behest of US, was quite predictive as he sought for a ‘decisive-stance’ against Iran, corroborated Al Jazeera on November 12, 2020 7 .
There might be a stealth-fighter attack, or a missile attack from Iraq or even a cyber-attack, as Iran had experienced mystery-fires in July last , when seven of its ships had caught fire , but whatever is to happen is to make it to the advantage of Israel, and India is very firmly with Israel, which ironically has been accorded as a ‘black-sheep’ by Russian president Vladimir Putin in ‘BRICS family’ on November 17, 2020, according to HindustanTimes 8 , as India has bid adieu to Russia by signing BECA with US, despite when around 70 percent of India’s military wherewithal has a stamp of Russia.
But, despite all if US goes on to attack Iran, China alongside Pakistan, due to CPEC, would also be there to the defense of Iran. Perhaps, if all this happens, then surely it would be advantage India. Even if, when Biden takes over on January 21, 2021.
The writer is a former State Information Commissioner, India. He is a media analyst and writes of international politics.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran
Tehran : Iran is ready to boost the capacity of its uranium enrichment, Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) said.
“Based on a decree by Iran’s Supreme Leader and the emphasis put on this issue by AEOI head, the country is ready to increase its uranium enrichment capacity to 190,000 separative work units (SWUs),” Xinhua quoted Kamalvandi as saying to Press TV.
In July 2018, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the AEOI, said that Iran had set up a factory to manufacture rotors used in advanced centrifuge machines, which was part of plans to elevate the country’s uranium enrichment capacity to 190,000 SWUs.
The factory had the capacity to manufacture around 60 IR-6 centrifuge machines each day, Salehi said.
SWU is the standard measure of the effort required to separate isotopes of uranium during an enrichment process. 1 SWU is equivalent to one kg of separative work.
Earlier, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had ordered the AEOI to prepare for the enrichment of uranium up to a level of 190,000 SWUs.
On Sunday, Kamalvandi said that Iran is also ready to increase the level of its uranium enrichment to 20 per cent of purity.
Under an international nuclear deal in 2015, which put an end to the Iranian controversial nuclear issue, Iran agreed to reduce the purity of its enriched uranium to three per cent.
Iran has drawn up plans to start re-designing the Arak heavy water reactor given the fact that the signatories to the nuclear deal have failed to fulfill their commitments, Kamalvandi also said.
Following the withdrawal of Washington from the Iranian nuclear deal in May last year and subsequent re-imposition of sanctions against Tehran, Iran has urged the remaining parties to step up measures to secure the country’s economic interests enshrined by the deal.
Meanwhile, Tehran has also threatened that it may reconsider its approach to the deal, if the signatories fail to guarantee Iran’s benefits from the accord.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Mohammad Javad Zarif
Tehran : Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the Islamic republic will maintain supports for Palestine’s “resistance” groups, official IRNA news agency reported.
“Iran will support the Palestinian resistance groups against Zionist (Israeli) regime’s occupation and aggression,” Zarif was quoted as saying by IRNA on Sunday.
Zarif made the remarks in a meeting with the Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement Ziad al-Nakhala, in the Lebanese capital Beirut, Xinhua news agency reported.
Ziad thanked Iran for its support for the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian nation.
The two sides, discussed the latest developments in the “occupied” lands of Palestine.
Zarif arrived in Beirut on Sunday to hold talks with senior Lebanese officials on the boost of ties.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World, Opinions
By Saeed Naqvi,
“Problems” like Afghanistan, even Iran, created in the thick of the Cold War, are now in the lap of a declining sole superpower in a withdrawal mode. Since I was witness to both, the Saur and Islamic revolutions, I thought the New Year might be a good occasion to ferret out material from my notebook focusing on the Genesis. To synchronise with the arrival of 2019, let us revert to New Year’s Day, 40 years ago, 1978, when President Jimmy Carter accompanied by his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski arrived in New Delhi. Morarji Desai was Prime Minister and Atal Bihari Vajpayee the Minister for External Affairs.
The two events need not be bound together by conspiracy theories but within four months of the Carter visit, the Saur revolution on April 28 brought Communists to power in Kabul. The next morning my story was banner headlines with the Indian Express. That Communists had taken over in Afghanistan. It was a world scoop. And I owed it to one impeccable source.
A year after Carter’s New Delhi visit, the Shah was dethroned by the Ayatullahs in Tehran. The youth in the vanguard of the revolution laid siege to US embassy from November 4, 1979, for 444 days until January 20, 1981. I still remember the tears of relief in Carter’s eyes as he embraced Vice President Walter Mondale when the hostages were released. The Carter presidency was consumed by Iran. Soon murals of Uncle Sam went up with cryptic captions: “Shaitaan e Buzurg” or Senior Satan. These incidents continued to cast a long shadow on the West’s fluctuating relations with Iran even during the bizarre Iran-contra deal when Iran, Israel and the US were in one amazing scrum.
The Shah’s notorious Savak agency, never secretive with the CIA, planned to eliminate the Left which was gaining in influence around then Afghan President Mohammad Daud who had deposed King Zahir Shah in a coup in 1973. Thereafter, the King lived in exile, in Rome, until the post 9/11 US occupation when he returned as Father of the Nation.
Two communist parties of Afghanistan, Khalq and Parchan, corresponded more or less to India’s CPI and CPI-M. I was able to attend the historic press conference addressed by Afghanistan’s head of the government after the coup, Noor Mohammad Taraki. He was leader of the Khalq faction. It was on the margins of this occasion, where well-informed middle level communist leaders were present, I picked up bits and pieces of how the coup came about.
On April 17, Mir Akbar Khyber, a trade union leader attached to the Parcham faction, was murdered, exposing prematurely the plot to eliminate the Left. Thus alerted, Communist cells in the army and the air force led by Aslam Watanjar and Abdul Qadir were activated. Reinforcement entered the palace and killed Daud. Coming of the Communists to power paved the way for the Soviet invasion in December 1979.
Brzezinski was back in the region, this time in Pakistan, peering over the parapets into Afghanistan, plotting the world’s largest programme of breeding Salafists, arming them to the hilt, to wage war against Soviet occupation. After this war had been won, spare ultra-Islamic jehadis, their morale boosted by having helped defeat a super power, flexed their muscles in Kashmir, Cairo, Algeria where the West blundered by helping the army upturn the result of the 1991 election which brought the Islamists Salvation Front in the lead.
The cancellation of election results bred more Islamism. Another complicating factor has not been mentioned yet. Since 1990, the US egged on by UNICAL, the gas giant, has developed a major interest in TAPI, the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India Pipeline. Brzezinski shrugged his shoulders: We wanted to bring down the Soviet Union; “we were not worried about some stirred up Muslims”.
I must put it down to lack of hard work on my part but the beginnings of the Islamic revolution have remained something of a haze. Was Ayatullah’s first instinct to give the new regime a civilian face in Iran? A few days after the revolution, journalists like me were directed to meet the suave Prime Minister, Mehdi Bazargan. In form, feature, sartorial detail, he was the very antithesis of the Ayatullah. He looked very European in a bow-tie and spoke English like a French grandee.
That he lasted barely nine months in that post was because of his strong opposition to the occupation of the American embassy and the taking of US hostages. Abolhassan Banisadr, who escorted Ayatullah Khomeini from exile in Neauphle-le-Chateau, 30 km from Paris, was made President. He was exiled because of internal conspiracies.
From the holy city of Qom came stories of the civilians plotting to oust the Ayatullahs who required a civilian front because a true blue Islamic revolution cannot be deemed to have taken place in the absence of the 12th Imam whose appearance will impart legitimacy to the revolution. The concept of the awaited messiah is common to all Abrahamic religions.
Various interests jump into a revolutionary situation to extract advantage. Just the other day, Marine Le Pen, with her fascist agenda, tried to move in sideways into the yellow vest agitation in Paris. The confusing chaos caused a strong wing of the Ayatullahs dust up the theory of Vali Faqih, or the intermediate Imam who can guide the revolution pending the appearance of the Mehdi or Messiah.
Like the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, one use of the Islamic revolution was to be the bulwark against the Soviets. But for them to play this role, the pro-Soviet Tudeh party, which had played a role in the success of the revolution, had to pay a price. They were no longer underground, as they had been during the Shah, and easy targets to be eliminated. A more radical Mujahideen-e-Khalq, crossed over to Iraq where Saddam Hussain nursed them as an anti-Ayatullah force.
If the CIA had a hand in eliminating the Communists, well, by the same token they have helped consolidate the Ayatullahs. What joy in this outcome?
(Saeed Naqvi is a commentator on political and diplomatic affairs. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Hassan Rouhani
Tehran : Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday said Washington cannot dictate its policies on regional countries for their relations with Iran.
Rouhani made the remarks at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport before leaving for Turkey, Xinhua news agency reported.
He said the US has no longer any influence on relations between countries in the region, and it will no longer be able to dictate its policies to regional states, Press TV reported.
Rouhani left Tehran for Ankara for an official two-day visit at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Rouhani will co-chair the fifth Turkey-Iran High Level Cooperation Council meeting in Ankara.
He also hailed what he called Turkey’s “firm” stance on unilateral US sanctions against the Islamic republic.
Ties of Turkey, as friendly key regional player, are of high significance to Iran, he stressed.
—IANS
