US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal is tantamount to a declaration of war, writes veteran Arab journalist Abdel Bari Atwan.
The decision is the first step of a plan to change the regime in Tehran, in the same way that regimes in Iraq, Libya and Granada were changed, under the pretext of getting rid of weapons of mass destruction.
It has been clear since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentation of documents that he said were Iranian and were proof of a breach of the nuclear agreement, that President Trump’s administration and the hawks have been preparing to cancel the agreement and move to the scenario of imposing sanctions to starve the Iranian people, like they did with the Iraqi people.
But Trump’s decision is an invaluable gift to the Supreme Leader of Iran and the hawks of the Iranian Revolution because he has now destroyed the reformers and the Iranian opposition. He just gave the hawks and the hardliners a golden opportunity to have the upper hand in Iran.
They will tell the Iranian public that we handed over rule to President Rouhani and his reformist wing. We put our enemies and our lack of confidence in America and the West aside, and we froze our nuclear program. And this is the result!
For its part, the European Union rejected this American blackmail and its main countries – Germany, France and Britain – stuck to the agreement and stressed Iran’s commitment to all its provisions. This strengthens the Iranian government’s position, while condemning the American declaration of war.
Trump is doing what Benjamin Netanyahu and his government want, literally turning into a tool to fulfil his demands to launch an aggression against Iran, to mobilise some of the governments of the Gulf States behind him, to plunge the region into a new sea of blood and to use all that remains in its treasury to cover the expenses of this aggression.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani described Trump’s speech as a “psychological war” and threatened to resume uranium enrichment. In addition, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his top advisor Ali Velayati have said Iran will not accept new negotiations to dismantle the agreement and destroy its missile programs, and will return to enrich uranium, at high rates.
President Trump refused to listen to all his European partners who advised him not to take this step because he only listened to Netanyahu and his son-in-law Jared Kouchner, his ambassador to Tel Aviv David Friedman, and the symbols of extremism, racism and Islamophobia – John Bolton, the National Security Adviser, and Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State.
So it is war then, and we, the sons of the region, Arabs and Muslims, are meant to be its victims and financiers, but they will not achieve their goals in this regard. But we have said in the past, and repeat it now, that Israel will not emerge from this war intact. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was honest when he advised the Jewish settlers in the occupied territories to leave because if war broke out they would not benefit from the shelters or the government’s arsenal.
Iran is not a threat to the security and safety of the international community. Rather, it is Israel, which occupies land and practices killing daily, and America with its destructive plans. When our choice is between America and Israel on the one hand, and Resistance Axis on the other hand, our choice will not be the American-Israeli ditch.
