Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani warned the US not to threaten the nation’s oil exports, called for improved relations with its neighbors including arch-nemesis Saudi Arabia, and cautioned the US that a conflict with Iran would be "the mother of all wars."
"Don’t play with the lion’s tail, this would only lead to regret," Iran's leader said during a speech with Iranian diplomats on Sunday, the semi-official Iranian Students’ News agency reported. "The Americans must understand well that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars" he said, adding that Iranians will only be united by further threats from the US, and that the Islamic Republic "will certainly defeat America."
The latest attack against president Trump by Rouhani came one day after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei backed the idea of blocking all oil exports from the region by closing the Strait of Hormuz in the event of Iran’s exports being banned. He also said that "U.S. govt.'s words or even signatures cannot be relied on; thus negotiations with the U.S. are useless. The assumption that negotiations or establishing ties with the U.S. would solve country's problems is an obvious error."
In response to US escalations, Iran threatened to halt oil shipments through the strait if the U.S. stopped it from exporting, Esmail Kowsari, deputy commander of the Sarollah Revolutionary Guards base in Tehran. Such a move would likely provoke a conflict between Iran and the US, as the strait is the most important export waterway for most Arab oil.
Reza Marashi served in the Office of Iranian Affairs at the U.S. State Department and is currently research director at the National Iranian American Council. He is frequently consulted by Western governments on Iran-related matters. He took to Twitter on Friday to sound the alarm ahead of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's upcoming address called "Supporting Iranian Voices," set to be held Sunday at the Reagan Library, warning as a former longtime State Department insider that this is not about "rights" or "democracy promotion" but that the wheels of the Washington regime change machine are turning.
To date, out of respect for my friends still fighting the good fight at the State Department, I have kept silent about this heavy, wet, overflowing diaper of everything that should not be. But I keep getting asked about it, so I will oblige once and then let the clown show carry on.
An eerily familiar drumbeat of war is intensifying across DC, as the continues its wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen. The ghosts of America’s neoconservative past are dusting off their Iraq playbook to make the case for war with Iran.
Their formula is simple but effective: Portray the Iranian government as an existential threat, insist that a chain of catastrophic events will result from inaction, and minimize costs and risks of the war that is necessary to facilitate their regime change efforts.
The Iranian people are expressing their frustration with their government’s corruption and mismanagement. Tomorrow, July 22, 6p PT/9p ET, @SecPompeo will make remarks on “Supporting Iranian Voices.” Watch live at https://t.co/58Uc9lIgDz and https://t.co/4PAwVBoTVX pic.twitter.com/sEnKsQ8b63
— Department of State (@StateDept) July 21, 2018
The Iranian regime is used to saber-rattling. This comes naturally to a regime that has sat at the negotiation table for more than three decades signing deals with other countries while failing to keep its promises – broken promises that have gone unpunished.
Unfortunately, the West, especially Europe, has ignored Iran's games. Whether this was intentional or biased or because Europe just did not understand the game is unknown.
Now, with the current status quo, Iran's saber-rattling is a front for its bewilderment in terms of which policy to follow to prolong its life.
Khamenei, Iran's so-called supreme leader, tweeted this yesterday: "The president's remarks in his recent trip to Europe stating, 'If Iran's oil export is blocked, no other country in region will export oil either,' is a crucial remark expressing Islamic Republic's approach. Foreign Ministry must sternly follow up on such stances by President."
Iran has less than four months before the U.S.'s "historical" sanctions come into play.
It seems that Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, is at a loss with regard to the path forward for the regime.
On July 20, in an interview with Euronews' Global Conversation, carried by Tasnim state-run News Agency, Zarif pleaded with Europe to do everything in its power to save the JCPOA and prevent the continuous exit of European companies from Iran.
"Donald Trump's plan is to weaken Iran to the extent of economic pressure leading to waves of protests. Unfortunately, no one in the world can counter the economic strength of the dollar," Arman, a state-run daily, wrote on July 19.
There have also been various reports of a shuffle in Iranian president Hassan Rouhani's Cabinet.
Rouhani's chief of staff, Mahmoud Vaezi, has also spoken of "new conditions" the regime is facing following the U.S.'s pullout of the Iran nuclear deal.
"We need cabinet members to handle our affairs while taking the current circumstances into consideration," he added in recent remarks.
Iran has two options going forward, since it does not have the power to play with various options: negotiating and accepting conditions that will have heavy repercussions or trying in vain to counter sanctions.
Iran cannot ignore the growing waves of protests inside the country. This is what it rightly fears most of all, and it will be the power of the people that will eventually bring the whole establishment to its demise.
It is significant that Presidents Putin and Trump have both spoken out against “haters” among America’s political establishment who would rather see conflict between Russia and the United States instead of a normalization of bilateral relations.
Following their landmark, successful summit this week in Helsinki, Putin and Trump separately made public comments deploring the hostile hysterical reaction emanating from broad sections of the US political establishment and its dutiful, controlled news media.
Speaking in Moscow to his diplomatic corps, President Putin warned that there were “powerful forces” within the US which are ready to sacrifice the interests of their country and indeed the interests of world peace in order to pursue selfish ambitions.
For his part, Trump also slammed opponents in the US who “hated” to see him having a good meeting with Putin. “They would rather see a major confrontation with Russia, even if that could lead to war,” said the American president.
That’s it in a nutshell. Rather than welcoming the opening of a cordial dialogue between the US and Russia, the American political establishment seems to desire the deepening of already dangerous tensions between the world’s two nuclear superpowers. If that’s not deranged, then what is?
Significantly, the hostile reaction was overwhelmingly on the American side. Russians, by and large, welcomed the long-overdue summit between Trump and Putin, and the potential beginning of a new spirit of dialogue and partnership on a range of urgent global problems. Problems including arms control, nuclear proliferation, and working out political settlement to conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine and the Korea Peninsula.
Significantly too, according to recent polls, most ordinary Americans seem to be agreeable or neutral about Trump’s diplomatic engagement with Russia. According to a Gallup poll out this week, the vast majority of US citizens are far more concerned by economic woes than they are by anything untoward in American-Russian relations.
Thus, what we are seeing in the explosion of hostility towards the Trump-Putin summit is twofold. It is an American phenomenon, and secondly, it is an angst that animates only the political class in Washington and the news media corporations. This constituency, it is fair to say, is an elite faction within the US, albeit extremely powerful, made up of Washington politicos, the state intelligence apparatus, the corporate media and think tanks, and the deep state establishment of imperial planners and strategists. In short, this constituency is what some observers call the “War Party” that transcends the US ruling class.
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