'Yes, he is right as you have analysed here that Iran is trying to build a Shiite empire in the Middle East and the American establishment ( despite Trumps claim that he is anti establishment) abhors ideological or religious empires ( if it is not Judeo- Christian,that is. )'
Is it the fact not simply that the US does not want any powerful figures or states that can work agst their own imperial interests?
On Mon, 6 Jan 2020 at 20:44, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--I agree that Thomas Friedman many a time puts in a supremacist ebullient American rhetoric in his columns. But he has put in a caveat in this case that he cannot say whether killing Soleimani is the right thing to do.
Yes, he is right as you have analysed here that Iran is trying to build a Shiite empire in the Middle East and the American establishment ( despite Trumps claim that he is anti establishment) abhors ideological or religious empires ( if it is not Judeo- Christian,that is. )
That was why the Iron Curtain came down at America's insistence. This was the real motive for Soleiman's killing: Iran wanted a Shiite dominated empire that would be used to neutralize the influence of the West ( and potential eviction from) in the Middle East. Trump and the American Right would not allow that to happen.
Eventually the West and Iran would have to go back to that Obama brokered deal with the clear caveat the financial windfall is not to be used for any form of supra national empire building, but only for the welfare of Iranians.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com>Date: 06/01/2020 19:06 (GMT+00:00)Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Is Suleimani a hero?
… Trump just ordered the assassination of possibly the dumbest man in Iran and the most overrated strategist in the Middle East: Major General Quassim Suleimani (Soleimani) - Thomas L. Friedman
If one may ask, why is it logical and sensible for Donald Trump to murder the dumbest man in faraway Iran, a country, that does not even share border with the US? Donald Trump is certainly acting the script he suspected Barack Obama would play when he, Trump, twitted on 29 November 2011, that Obama would start a war with Iran in order to be re-elected as President for the second term. Barack Obama disappointed Trump by not starting war with Iran but yet won the election. Thereafter, Obama's presidency collaborated with the Russian, German, French and British leaders of government, under the United Nations auspices to enter into agreement with Iran on non-procurement of nuclear weapon. Against the wish of the United Nations and the European powers that co-signed the agreement with Iran, Trump's government unilaterally reneged on the agreement signed by his predecessor in office and ordered Iran to discuss and sign with him a new agreement acceptable to him.
It was Suleimani(?) and his Quds Force pals who pushed Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to push Sunnis out of the Iraqi government and army, stop paying salaries to Sunni soldiers, kill and arrest large numbers of peaceful Sunni protesters and generally turn Iraq into a Shiite-dominated Sectarian State. The Islamic State was the counterreaction - Thomas L. Friedman.
After the Gulf war, the Security Council Resolution Nr. 687 of April 1991 authorised the setting up of United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and mandated it to ensure that all weapons of mass destruction capability in Iraq were destroyed. The Swedish head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Mr. Hans Blix, and his men were still in Iraq when the Anglo-American military alliance ordered the UNSCOM personnel to vacate Iraq. One of the UN Weapons Inspectors in Iraq was Scott Ritter, who had served in the US Marines. He worked in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, for seven good years. Despite the fact that he was a card carrying member of the Republican Party and had voted for George Bush (jr.) he was against the fraudulent pretence that was being touted for going to war with Iraq in 2003. In their 2002 book, WAR ON IRAQ, Scott Ritter and William Rivers Pitt wrote that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. After the Gulf War, the authors explained, "The economic sanctions have rendered his conventional weaponry impotent by denying him access to the spare parts that are essential to any functioning mechanized military. The UNSCOM inspectors destroyed, right to the ground, any and all capabilities he possessed to create weapons of mass destruction (p.4)." Now that Mr. Friedman is talking about Shiite pushing Sunni out of the government, it is worthwhile to recall that Ritter and Pitt warned already in 2002 against the war of 2003 that aimed at removing Saddam Hussein from power. They wrote, " We must see the cultural dynamic of Iraq for what it is. All of the Bush administrations talk of *regime change and democracy in Iraq* ignores the reality on the ground there. Western-style democracy - majority rules - is antithetical to our (the US) national interests. The majority in Iraq (60%), the Shiites, are ideologically and theologically tied to Iran. Allowing this group to rule in Iraq would forge a bond of fundamentalist ideology with Iran, located right on top of all that strategically necessary oil. We cannot allow the Kurds, who make up 23% of the population to rule. The neighbouring Turks, simply will not allow it. The remaining *17% are the Sunnis*, as is Hussein (p.5)" The regime change enforced in Iraq by the United States of America in 2003 produced a majority rule of the Shiites in Iraq, but it seems as if Mr. Friedman would prefer a minority rule of the 17% Sunnis in Iraq over the 60% Shiites. However, Mr. Friedman was not being truthful when he concluded that, "The Islamic State was the counterreaction," to the Shiite-dominated Sectarian State. It should not be forgotten that a no flying zone was proclaimed by the Security Council in Libya which was exploited by NATO countries led by Obama to effect a regime change with subsequent chaos that is still abound in that country today. After the success of NATO leaders in Libya, they turned to the Security Council to seek no flying zone in Syria, which Russia and China vetoed. Failure of the NATO countries to obtain no flying zone over Syria caused them to arm and train IS members to fight and cause regime change in Syria. When it back-fired, the NATO countries disowned their own creation, the IS. In fact, the Shiites fought to attain victory over the IS in Iraq and Syria.
During his campaigns for presidential election in 2015, Donald Trump promised to withdraw American soldiers from what he termed the unnecessary and endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. But now, Trump says by murdering a member of the Government of Iran, he is not starting a new war but preventing one to occur. At the same time he is sending not only more soldiers to Iraq after murdering an Iranian General, but he is ordering all American citizens to leave Iraq immediately. If the murder of an Iranian General is a panacea to peace, why is the murderer sending more soldiers and ordering his country's citizens to leave Iraq? For all we know, Donald Trump is to face impeachment very soon of which he desperately needs to divert attention from in this election year. Therefore, he needs a war with Iran as he presumably twitted, 29 November 2011, Obama would do. Politics is not dirty, but dirty people can play politics. Ritter and Pitt recalled Karl Kraus postulation thus, "How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print."S. Kadiri
--
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Skickat: den 5 januari 2020 23:33
Till: dialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Is Suleimani a hero?TRUMP KILLS IRAN'S MOST OVERRATED WARRIOR
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Suleimani pushed his country to build an empire, but drove it into the ground instead.
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By Thomas L. Friedman, Columnist, New York Times (January 03, 2020)
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One day they may name a street after President Trump in Tehran. Why? Because Trump just ordered the assassination of possibly the dumbest man in Iran and the most overrated strategist in the Middle East: Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
Think of the miscalculations this guy made. In 2015, the United States and the major European powers agreed to lift virtually all their sanctions on Iran, many dating back to 1979, in return for Iran halting its nuclear weapons program for a mere 15 years, but still maintaining the right to have a peaceful nuclear program. It was a great deal for Iran. Its economy grew by over 12 percent the next year. And what did Suleimani do with that windfall?
He and Iran's supreme leader launched an aggressive regional imperial project that made Iran and its proxies the de facto controlling power in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sana. This freaked out U.S. allies in the Sunni Arab world and Israel — and they pressed the Trump administration to respond. Trump himself was eager to tear up any treaty forged by President Obama, so he exited the nuclear deal and imposed oil sanctions on Iran that have now shrunk the Iranian economy by almost 10 percent and sent unemployment over 16 percent.
All that for the pleasure of saying that Tehran can call the shots in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sana. What exactly was second prize?
With the Tehran regime severely deprived of funds, the ayatollahs had to raise gasoline prices at home, triggering massive domestic protests. That required a harsh crackdown by Iran's clerics against their own people that left thousands jailed and killed, further weakening the legitimacy of the regime.
Then Mr. "Military Genius" Suleimani decided that, having propped up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and helping to kill 500,000 Syrians in the process, he would overreach again and try to put direct pressure on Israel. He would do this by trying to transfer precision-guided rockets from Iran to Iranian proxy forces in Lebanon and Syria.
Alas, Suleimani discovered that fighting Israel — specifically, its combined air force, special forces, intelligence and cyber — is not like fighting the Nusra front or the Islamic State. The Israelis hit back hard, sending a whole bunch of Iranians home from Syria in caskets and hammering their proxies as far away as Western Iraq.
Indeed, Israeli intelligence had so penetrated Suleimani's Quds Force and its proxies that Suleimani would land a plane with precision munitions in Syria at 5 p.m., and the Israeli air force would blow it up by 5:30 p.m. Suleimani's men were like fish in a barrel. If Iran had a free press and a real parliament, he would have been fired for colossal mismanagement.
But it gets better, or actually worse, for Suleimani. Many of his obituaries say that he led the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq, in tacit alliance with America. Well, that's true. But what they omit is that Suleimani's, and Iran's, overreaching in Iraq helped to produce the Islamic State in the first place.
It was Suleimani and his Quds Force pals who pushed Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to push Sunnis out of the Iraqi government and army, stop paying salaries to Sunni soldiers, kill and arrest large numbers of peaceful Sunni protesters and generally turn Iraq into a Shiite-dominated sectarian state. The Islamic State was the counterreaction.
Finally, it was Suleimani's project of making Iran the imperial power in the Middle East that turned Iran into the most hated power in the Middle East for many of the young, rising pro-democracy forces — both Sunnis and Shiites — in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
As the Iranian-American scholar Ray Takeyh pointed out in a wise essay in Politico, in recent years "Soleimani began expanding Iran's imperial frontiers. For the first time in its history, Iran became a true regional power, stretching its influence from the banks of the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Soleimani understood that Persians would not be willing to die in distant battlefields for the sake of Arabs, so he focused on recruiting Arabs and Afghans as an auxiliary force. He often boasted that he could create a militia in little time and deploy it against Iran's various enemies."
It was precisely those Suleimani proxies — Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen — that created pro-Iranian Shiite states-within-states in all of these countries. And it was precisely these states-within-states that helped to prevent any of these countries from cohering, fostered massive corruption and kept these countries from developing infrastructure — schools, roads, electricity.
And therefore it was Suleimani and his proxies — his "kingmakers" in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq — who increasingly came to be seen, and hated, as imperial powers in the region, even more so than Trump's America. This triggered popular, authentic, bottom-up democracy movements in Lebanon and Iraq that involved Sunnis and Shiites locking arms together to demand noncorrupt, nonsectarian democratic governance.
On Nov. 27, Iraqi Shiites — yes, Iraqi Shiites — burned down the Iranian consulate in Najaf, Iraq, removing the Iranian flag from the building and putting an Iraqi flag in its place. That was after Iraqi Shiites, in September 2018, set the Iranian consulate in Basra ablaze, shouting condemnations of Iran's interference in Iraqi politics.
The whole "protest" against the United States Embassy compound in Baghdad last week was almost certainly a Suleimani-staged operation to make it look as if Iraqis wanted America out when in fact it was the other way around. The protesters were paid pro-Iranian militiamen. No one in Baghdad was fooled by this.
In a way, it's what got Suleimani killed. He so wanted to cover his failures in Iraq he decided to start provoking the Americans there by shelling their forces, hoping they would overreact, kill Iraqis and turn them against the United States. Trump, rather than taking the bait, killed Suleimani instead.
I have no idea whether this was wise or what will be the long-term implications. But here are two things I do know about the Middle East.
First, often in the Middle East the opposite of "bad" is not "good." The opposite of bad often turns out to be "disorder." Just because you take out a really bad actor like Suleimani doesn't mean a good actor, or a good change in policy, comes in his wake. Suleimani is part of a system called the Islamic Revolution in Iran. That revolution has managed to use oil money and violence to stay in power since 1979 — and that is Iran's tragedy, a tragedy that the death of one Iranian general will not change.
Today's Iran is the heir to a great civilization and the home of an enormously talented people and significant culture. Wherever Iranians go in the world today, they thrive as scientists, doctors, artists, writers and filmmakers — except in the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose most famous exports are suicide bombing, cyberterrorism and proxy militia leaders. The very fact that Suleimani was probably the most famous Iranian in the region speaks to the utter emptiness of this regime, and how it has wasted the lives of two generations of Iranians by looking for dignity in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways.
The other thing I know is that in the Middle East all important politics happens the morning after the morning after.
Yes, in the coming days there will be noisy protests in Iran, the burning of American flags and much crying for the "martyr." The morning after the morning after? There will be a thousand quiet conversations inside Iran that won't get reported. They will be about the travesty that is their own government and how it has squandered so much of Iran's wealth and talent on an imperial project that has made Iran hated in the Middle East.
And yes, the morning after, America's Sunni Arab allies will quietly celebrate Suleimani's death, but we must never forget that it is the dysfunction of many of the Sunni Arab regimes — their lack of freedom, modern education and women's empowerment — that made them so weak that Iran was able to take them over from the inside with its proxies.
I write these lines while flying over New Zealand, where the smoke from forest fires 2,500 miles away over eastern Australia can be seen and felt. Mother Nature doesn't know Suleimani's name, but everyone in the Arab world is going to know her name. Because the Middle East, particularly Iran, is becoming an environmental disaster area — running out of water, with rising desertification and overpopulation. If governments there don't stop fighting and come together to build resilience against climate change — rather than celebrating self-promoting military frauds who conquer failed states and make them fail even more — they're all doomed.
Sent from my iPhone
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