How they see us: America’s lonely campaign against Iran

Iran will not be bullied by the U.S., said Mohammad Kazem Anbarloui in Resalat (Iran). It was a mistake for our government to trust the Americans in the first place. We signed the 2015 nuclear agreement with not just the U.S. but also Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia, agreeing to curtail our nuclear research in exchange for new opportunities for trade and investment. We held up our end of the bargain and “lost valuable opportunities for development,” but the U.S. unilaterally and illegally backed out of the deal last year and reimposed vicious sanctions. Now it is threatening military conflict with the Iranian people, by sending the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group to the Persian Gulf. It’s an empty threat, of course, and U.S. President Donald Trump is actually desperate to negotiate. But why should we ever again make a pact with a nation that doesn’t keep its promises?

The European Union will have no part of America’s rush to war, said Diario Córdoba (Spain) in an editorial. Spain had a frigate traveling with the Lincoln, but we withdrew it when the combat group headed for Iran’s neighborhood. Europe will redouble its efforts to support the nuclear deal, “betting on the diplomatic sphere until the threat of war is deactivated.” But what can the EU actually achieve? asked Marwan Bishara in Qatar’s AlJazeera.com. The financial mechanism that the bloc has created to allow countries to trade with Iran without triggering U.S. sanctions isn’t yet operational. Without the support of China and Russia, the EU’s sputters and protests have failed to stop the Trump administration from “launching a diplomatic offensive, a deception campaign, a public relations assault, an economic and psychological war on Iran.” The U.S. seems intent on forcing Iran to “make an impossible choice between total surrender and total defeat.”

U.S. military might is but one side of the pincers, said Jonathan Tobin in Israel Hayom (Israel), while U.S. sanctions are the other. The Obama-era nuclear pact was fatally flawed, because it let Iran continue its financing of terrorists in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza in exchange for a mere pause in its drive to build a nuclear bomb. By withdrawing from the deal and crippling Iran with sanctions, Trump will force Tehran back to the table. “As long as Trump doesn’t back down, the inevitable result isn’t war, but rather the much-needed fix of the nuclear pact.”

The world can only pray there will be no shots fired, said Irvin Studin in the Toronto Star (Canada). America’s misadventures in Iraq created ISIS, while its intervention in Libya left behind a failed state and a mass refugee crisis. A war on Iran “would further radicalize America, collapse the EU outright through unprecedented refugee flows, and risk a kinetic clash between the U.S. and Russia.” The very idea is “patently criminal.” ■