SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
tehran
Facing the Climate Crisis, Can We Make Politics Move Faster Than Physics?
As Tehran runs low on water, New York City considers divesting from planet-wrecker Blackrock. We need more of the latter to prevent more of the former.
Nov 29, 2025
We are not getting out of the climate crisis without immense amounts of damage—the only question at this point is whether we can extricate ourselves with something like our civilizations intact. And the news from one cradle of civilization isn’t heartening: In Iran, where urban settlements date back to 4400 BC, the deepest drought in the country’s recorded history has now reached the havoc stage.
Tehran, shrouded in truly toxic smoke because the country’s power plants have run short of natural gas and begun burning “mazut, a dark residue of petroleum high in sulphur and other impurities,” is now facing a possible evacuation because it has run out of water. As Yeaganeh Torbati points out in an excellent essay, Iran’s water woes are deeply rooted in agricultural policy that prioritized irrigation above all (see also California); its international isolation has not helped it cope (including with the tragic fires that broke out last week in the Hyrcanian Forest, one of the oldest woodlands on Earth and a biodiversity hotspot). But the savage drought has been the final domino here, in a country where, as the head of one water utility points out, “Higher than normal heat has intensified the evaporation of water resources.” As the Australia Broadcasting Corporation summarized it:
Faced with a perfect storm of weather woes and decades of mismanagement, President Masoud Pezeshkian issued a warning to his country earlier this month that the situation could deteriorate even further.
“We’ve run short of water. If it doesn’t rain, we in Tehran… must start rationing,” he said.
“Even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all."
“They [citizens] must evacuate Tehran.”
While it may seem like an exaggeration, it is the shocking reality facing the Iranian population—particularly in its capital, which has in excess of 15 million people across the broader metropolitan area.
This particular kind of disaster is becoming more common on a rapidly warming world. We’ve already had severe Day Zero scares in big cities in Brazil and South Africa; a new study earlier this month warns that:
Moments when water levels in reservoirs fall so low that water may no longer reach homes—could become common as early as this decade and the 2030s.
To find out where and when DZDs are most likely to occur, scientists at the Center for Climate Physics in Busan, South Korea ran a series of large-scale climate simulations. They considered the imbalance between decreasing natural supply (such as years of below-average rainfall and depleted river flows).
By some estimates, 2 billion humans are at risk.
The residents of New York are not at present among them. The city’s water supply system is one of the miracles of the modern world, and after six decades the “third tunnel” that will make that water system more secure is almost complete. (As a cub reporter in the early 1980s I spent several happy days underground, watching "sandhogs" from Local 147 blowing up rock walls to extend the shaft).
But that doesn’t mean New York is immune from climate danger, as anyone who lived there during Hurricane Sandy will recall. (As the financial journal Business Week printed in block letters on its cover the week after that catastrophe, “IT’S GLOBAL WARMING STUPID”).
And it certainly doesn’t mean that New York isn’t part of the cause of the global climate collapse. Not from its emissions—subway-riding New Yorkers are fairly green—but from the churn of capital through its financial markets that underwrites the ongoing expansion of the fossil fuel enterprise, in ways that scientists have said for years now simply has to stop.
A huge step in the right direction came Wednesday morning, when the city’s comptroller, Brad Lander, announced that he was recommending the city stop investing its money with Blackrock, the largest single representative of irresponsible capitalism on planet Earth.
Lander is urging three of the city’s pension funds to drop BlackRock Inc. because of “inadequate” climate plans, the latest move to penalize investment firms for failing to tackle global warming.
The guidance to reject BlackRock, the city’s largest money manager overseeing $42.3 billion of index funds for the pensions, follows a review of the firm’s efforts to press companies to decarbonize. Lander said Wednesday he’s also asking plan trustees to terminate much smaller mandates with Fidelity Investments and PanAgora Asset Management.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this decision. To call Blackrock a “giant” is to pitifully underestimate its size—it has $13.46 trillion under management as of this fall. It owns 10% of the world’s stock market. If it wanted to stop the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, it could, more easily than any other single entity on planet Earth.
Instead it has dithered endlessly, making occasional noises of climate concern and then backtracking when red state treasurers (with far smaller portfolios than Lander’s to wave around) squawked at them. In August, Democratic officials from a dozen states sent warning letters to asset managers, calling on them to “reject pressure from the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers, and instead commit to thorough evaluations of risks tied to global warming, supply chains, and corporate governance.” Lander’s recommendation is the first concrete outcome.
Or, fairly concrete. Lander’s term ends on December 31. The advocates who have pressed for this policy—especially New York Communities for Change—are pushing him to get one of the city’s three pension plans—the New York City Employees Retirement System or NYCERS—to actually commit to the plan at its December 17 meeting. They think that with some prodding by Lander the votes are there to make the change.
If anyone has the political credibility to get it done before Christmas, that would be Brad Lander. Though he finished third in the primary, he emerged from this year’s mayoral contest with more love than any player in the city, maybe even including Zohran Mamdani. Partly that was because stood up for immigrants early, getting arrested by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement thug. Mostly it was because he figured out he was going to lose to Mamdani, took it with exceptionally good grace, and ended up playing the important role of his being his verifier—assuring people with both his insider and his Jewish credentials that the young socialist was up to the job. He comes out of 2025 both a macher and a mensch, and now he’s rumored to be planning a run for Congress; assuming he ties up some of the loose ends here, he will take on any future race with the fervent support of the environmental community, for whom he has delivered big-time. (And with the fervent opposition of Wall Street, which is proving to be a useful credential in itself).
In a larger sense, I’ve been reading accounts for months now of how climate is dead as a political issue. I think this move makes clear that isn’t true; in fact, I’d wager that as energy affordability takes center stage in next year’s midterms, the transition off fossil fuels will be a key issue for progressives to seize.
They will need to do so quickly. As events in Tehran make clear, time is now moving fast. The physics of global warming are implacable: Run out of water and you have to move your city. We’ll have to make politicians move fast to have any hope of getting ahead of the curve.
Keep ReadingShow Less
UN Nuclear Chief Warns Israel's Bombing of Iranian Facility Risks Radiation Release
IAEA head Rafael Grossi implored "all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further escalation."
Jun 16, 2025
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog cautioned Monday that Israel's bombing of Iran's primary uranium enrichment facility raises the risk of radiological and chemical contamination, a warning that came amid condemnation of such strikes and mounting civilian casualties on both sides of the widening war.
Addressing an emergency session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors in Vienna, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said that "military escalation threatens lives, increases the chance of a radiological release with serious consequences for people and the environment, and delays indispensable work towards a diplomatic solution for the long-term assurance that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon."
"Last week the board adopted an important resolution on Iran's safeguards obligations," Grossi continued. "The resolution, while containing important proliferation-related provisions, also stressed support for a diplomatic solution to the problems posed by the Iranian nuclear program. Member states of the IAEA have a crucial, active role to play in supporting the urgent move away from military escalation towards diplomacy."
"Consistent with the objectives of the IAEA and its statute, I call on all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further escalation," he added.
Based on info available to the IAEA, this is the current situation at the Iranian nuclear sites in Natanz, Fordow, Khondab, Bushehr, and Esfahan. pic.twitter.com/gTvJrYzPFW
— IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency ⚛️ (@iaeaorg) June 16, 2025
The IAEA affirmed that Israeli strikes have damaged above-ground areas of the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and another nuclear site in Isfahan. Grossi said earlier that four buildings in Isfahan had been damaged by Israeli strikes on Friday, but noted Monday that there were no apparent signs of damage to another enrichment plant at Fordow, which is deep underground.
Experts say it would likely take intervention by the United States—which has more powerful bunker-busting bombs than Israel—to destroy the Fordow site. U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that "it's possible" that American forces could enter the fight, while the apparent deployment of what The Times of Israel on Monday called an "unprecedented" number of U.S. Air Force aerial refueling planes fueled speculation of deeper American involvement in the war.
Grossi's warning came amid widening Israeli bombing of Iran and retaliatory Iranian strikes against Israel. Iran's Ministry of Health said Monday that 224 people—90% of them civilians—have been killed and over 1,400 others wounded by Israeli attacks. Iranian media reported serious damage to a hospital in the western city of Kermanshah following Israeli bombing.
Last week, Israel began bombing Iranian government, military, and nuclear sites and assassinating numerous Iranian nuclear scientists. Some of these attacks have also killed targeted scientists' relatives, neighbors, and other civilians. The far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is attacking Iran in order to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons. However, critics note that U.S. intelligence agencies concur that Iran is not trying to develop nukes.
As is the case with Gaza—where Israel is waging a war for which Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes—numerous observers accuse the Israeli leader of creating a distraction from his ongoing criminal corruption trial in his own country.
On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said that Iran's legislative body, the Majlis, was drafting a bill that would withdraw the country from the landmark 1968 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Meanwhile, at least 23 Israeli civilians including women and children and Palestinian citizens of Israel have been killed by Iranian missile and drone strikes that have been condemned as indiscriminate. Hundreds more Israelis have been wounded. Responding to these attacks, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz—who is accused of supporting genocidal policies in Gaza—said over the weekend that Iran's capital "will burn" if Iranian forces did not stop responding to Israel's bombing.
"The residents of Tehran will pay the price, and soon," he vowed.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Threatens Iran With 'Bombing the Likes of Which They Have Never Seen'
Despite U.S. intelligence once again finding Iran is not currently developing nukes, the president is trying to force Tehran into a nuclear deal after unilaterally abrogating an existing one in 2018.
Mar 31, 2025
Iran's military has reportedly readied ballistic missiles for possible launch against U.S. bases in the Middle East after President Donald Trump renewed his threat to wage war on the country if it does not reach an agreement with his administration regarding nuclear weapons—which American intelligence agencies have repeatedly found Tehran is not building.
Trump discussed Iran during a Sunday phone call with NBC News' Kristen Welker, telling her that "if they don't make a deal, there will be bombing, and it will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before," adding that there is also "a chance that if they don't make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago."
Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran's theocratic government, warned Monday that "if any hostile act is committed from outside, though the likelihood is not high, it will undoubtedly be met with a strong counterstrike."
Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, said on social media Monday that "an open threat of bombing by a head of state against Iran is a shocking affront to the very essence of international peace and security."
"It violates the United Nations Charter and betrays the safeguards under the [International Atomic Energy Agency]," Baghaei added. "Violence breeds violence, peace begets peace. The U.S. can choose the course."
Iranian Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Aerospace Division, noted Monday that "the Americans have 10 bases in the region, particularly around Iran, and 50,000 troops based in there."
"This means they are sitting in a glass house; and when one sits in a glass house, one does not throw stones at others," he added.
The Tehran Times reported Monday that Iran's military has "readied missiles with the capability to strike U.S.-related positions" and that "a significant number of these launch-ready missiles are located in underground facilities scattered across the country, designed to withstand airstrikes."
The U.S., meanwhile, is amassing firepower including B-2 Stealth Bombers at its base on the forcibly depopulated island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean for possible use in strikes against Iran.
Trump today: If Iran does not agree to a deal “There will be bombing and it will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before” Can he go 1 day without threatening a new war? How many would he like? - Greenland - Panama - Gaza - Mexico - Yemen - Somalia - Gaza - Venezuela Is 8 enough?
— Secular Talk (@kylekulinskishow.bsky.social) March 30, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Trump's threat to attack Iran—which hasn't started a war since the mid-19th century—comes despite U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbardtestifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week that "Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003."
U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly come to the same conclusion since the George W. Bush administration.
However, Gabbard added that "Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons."
That's at least partly due to the unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—also known as the Iran nuclear deal—in 2018 during Trump's first administration.
Since Trump abandoned the JCPOA—which was signed in 2015 during the Obama administration by China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—Tehran has been operating advanced centrifuges and rapidly stockpiling enriched uranium.
While there were hopes of a renewed deal during the tenure of former U.S. President Joe Biden, no agreement was reached, and Iranians continue to suffer under economic sanctions that critics have said are killing people and crippling the country's economy.
Earlier this month, Trump sent a letter to Khamenei in which he claims to have said, "I hope you're going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it's going to be a terrible thing."
On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian left open the possibility of indirect talks but said that the U.S. could not be trusted to keep its word.
"We don't avoid talks; it's the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far," Pezeshkian said during a televised Cabinet meeting. "They must prove that they can build trust."
This isn't the first time that Trump has threatened Iran. In 2020, during his first term, the president vowed to strike 52 sites across Iran "very fast and very hard" if it retaliated for the U.S. assassination of IRGC commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Iraq. Later that year, Trump had another message for Iran: "If you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before."
On the campaign trail last September, Trump told Iranians he would "blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens" if he was reelected and Iran didn't cease what he perceives as threats against the United States.
While the U.S. has never directly attacked Iran, it did help overthrow the country's reformist government in 1953 and supported a repressive monarchy for decades leading up to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The U.S. backed Iraq during that country's eight-year war against Iran, during which then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces used chemical weapons against Iranian troops and his own restive Kurdish population. In 1988, a U.S. warship in Iranian waters accidentally shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard. Then-President Ronald Reagan blamed the incident on the "barbaric Iranians."
The U.S. has also
supported the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a State Department-designated terrorist group that had previously assassinated six American officials, and successive U.S. administrations have used international financial institutions to punish Iran, like in 2007 when Bush pressured the World Bank into suspending emergency relief aid after the 2003 Bam earthquake, which killed more than 26,000 Iranians.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israel Attacks Iran; Explosions Also Reported in Syria and Iraq
"The targets there are likely both Iranian assets as well as militias supported by Tehran," said one Middle East expert.
Oct 25, 2024
Israel—which is already waging war on Gaza and Lebanon—said its military struck targets in and near Iran's capital Tehran early Saturday, while explosions believed to be Israeli attacks were also reported in Syria and Iraq.
Numerous explosions were reported in and near the Iranian capital, including at the Imam Khomeini International Airport, as well as in eastern parts of the city and the Sadeghiyeh neighborhood of western Tehran. Israeli targets reportedly included the headquarters of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
"In response to months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the state of Israel—right now the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran," IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a video posted on social media.
"The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since October 7th—on seven fronts—including direct attacks from Iranian soil," Hagari added. "Like every other sovereign country in the world, the state of Israel has the right and the duty to respond. Our defensive and offensive capabilities are fully mobilized. We will do whatever [is] necessary to defend the state of Israel and the people of Israel."
Iran said it launched the October 1 missile attack in retaliation for Israel's targeted killing of longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah and an IRGC commander who was with him; as well as for the July assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
If the Syrian and Iraqi explosions are confirmed as Israeli strikes, it would mean that Israel is simultaneously attacking at least five nations—Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, and Iraq. In Palestine, the IDF is waging a yearlong war which has killed or wounded more than 153,000 people. Israel's bombardment and ground invasion of Lebanon have killed or wounded thousands of people and displaced more than 1.2 million others.
U.S. officials told media outlets that the Biden administration was informed of Saturday's attacks.
Meanwhile, peace groups in the U.S. warned of the risk of escalation.
"The U.S. should stay out of the conflict between Israel and Iran," Massachusetts Peace Action executive director Brian Garvey said in a statement. "Israel is bombing Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen—picking a fight with almost every one of its neighbors—while escalating its genocide in Gaza."
"The U.S. should not provide assistance for Israel's escalations, which would contravene President [Joe] Biden's stated goal of preventing a wider regional conflict," he continued. "Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu has long sought to embroil the U.S. in war with Iran, and his efforts to do so now are likely timed to influence the U.S. election."
"The United States should avoid that trap, stop sending weapons into the region, and support urgent talks for ceasefires in Gaza, Lebanon, and between Israel and Iran," Garvey added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Iran Forces Fire on Protesters Marking 40 Days Since Mahsa Amini's Death
Meanwhile, Iranian state media said a gunman killed at least a dozen people at a Shi'a shrine in Shiraz, an attack for which the Sunni militant group Islamic State has claimed responsibility.
Oct 26, 2022
Iranian security forces on Wednesday attacked demonstrators marking 40 days of mourning for a young woman whose death in police custody sparked protests across the Middle Eastern country and around the world, while separately, Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack on a popular Shi'a shrine in the southern city of Shiraz that reportedly killed more than a dozen people.
Wednesday's demonstrations, which reportedly took place in around 30 Iranian cities, were a continuation of nationwide and international protests sparked by the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman arrested by so-called morality police three days earlier and reportedly beaten for violating the fundamentalist theocracy's strict Islamic dress code.
An estimated 10,000 people gathered in Amini's hometown of Saqqez in Kurdistan province, where the first of the weekslong protests--many of them led by women and girls--erupted after the aspiring lawyer's death. News reports and videos posted on social media showed a large crowd of people marching and driving toward the cemetery where Amini is interred.
Al Jazeera reports the crowd chanted slogans including "woman, life, freedom," which became the rallying cry for one of the largest people's uprisings against Iran's dictatorship, which has ruled the country since shortly after the overthrow of its repressive, U.S.-backed monarchy in 1979.
The New York Times reports that by evening, protests had spread to cities and university campuses across Iran. In the capital Tehran, demonstrators chanted anti-regime slogans in addition to the ubiquitous "woman, life, freedom" refrain.
Women burned their hijabs, the headscarves that are mandatory under the law which Amini was arrested for allegedly violating. Protesters chanted slogans calling for the ouster and death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
According to the Times:
Security forces attacked protesters with tear gas, beat them with batons and in some places, like Tehran, Shiraz, Qazvin, and Saghez, opened fire on them, with pellets, paint, and live bullets, videos showed. Some crowds in the capital fought back, chasing security forces and setting fire to their motorcycles.
Human rights groups say that at least 216 people have been killed during the course of the protests--including 32 children--with thousands more people wounded or arrested.
Meanwhile, the Sunni militant group Islamic State said it was responsible for an attack on the Shah Cheragh shrine and mosque in Shiraz, where a gunman killed at least a dozen religious pilgrims shortly before evening prayers, according to Iranian state media.
"This crime will definitely not go unanswered," Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in response to the massacre, "and the security and law enforcement forces will teach a lesson to those who designed and carried out the attack."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Revolt at Notorious Facility That Holds Political Prisoners as Iran Protests Enter 5th Week
Demonstrations were also held by youth in Tehran, Ardabil, Kermanshah, Hamadan, Rasht, Karaj, Isfahan, and several cities in Iranian Kurdistan.
Oct 16, 2022
Dubai-based Al-Arabiya assembles tweets from Iran about the prisoner uprising at Iran's maximum-security prison, Evin, which led to the outbreak of a major fire on Saturday. The facility holds political prisoners, including foreigners. Interrogations there have routinely involved torture.
Despite government claims that the fire had been extinguished on Saturday evening, it went on burning into early Sunday morning according to the videos. Family members of the prisoners were frantic with worry over their safety.
The pro-government Iranian Students News Service reports that the prisoner uprising began at an entrepreneurship workshop being offered to inmates guilty of embezzlement and other forms of theft. They appear to have attacked their guards. There was also a workshop on tailoring going on in the financial crimes block, and somehow in the midst of the melee a fire broke out there in the piles of cloth.
We cannot, of course, accept the accounts of such pro-government sites at face value. It may be that they wanted to stress that embezzlers and thieves, rather than political prisoners, were behind the fire in order to make the rioters less sympathetic to Iranians.
On the Iranian Twitter feeds, many posters brought up the possibility that the government had itself set the fire at the prison. They compared it to an infamous movie theater fire in 1978 that people became convinced was the work of Mohammad Reza Shah's secret police, in an attempt to blame it on the protesters then criticizing the shah's government.
Other reports say that the inmates deliberately set the fire in a place where spare uniforms were stored.
A major battle between inmates and security forces appears to have raged into the night. In the videos posted online of the fire, gunfire and explosions can clearly be heard.
Meanwhile, crowds gathered in Tehran streets, chanting "Death to the dictator!"-- a reference to the country's clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Authorities claimed to have put out the fire by Sunday morning.
The prominent inmates of Evin include acclaimed film directer Jafar Panahi:
The Saudi-backed Iran International reports that videos posted to the internet show that on Saturday demonstrations were staged, as well, by youth in Tehran, Ardabil, Kermanshah, Hamadan, Rasht, Karaj, Isfahan, and several cities in Iranian Kurdistan.
VOA reports that "In the city of Sanandaj, a hotspot for demonstrations in the northern Kurdish region, schoolgirls chanted, 'Woman, life, freedom,' down a central street."
Keep ReadingShow Less
After British Commandos Seize Oil Tanker, Iran Accuses UK of Committing 'Maritime Piracy' on Behalf of US
"If Britain does not release the Iranian oil tanker, it is the authorities' duty to seize a British oil tanker," said Mohsen Rezai, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander
Jul 05, 2019
Iran on Friday accused the United Kingdom of committing an act of "maritime piracy" on behalf of the U.S. after British commandos seized an Iranian supertanker they said was carrying oil to Syria in violation of European Union sanctions.
In a statement, Iran's foreign ministry called the U.K.'s move an "illegal" and "destructive" act of aggression and demanded "the immediate release of the oil tanker, given that it has been seized at the request of the U.S., based on the information currently available."
Mohsen Rezai, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander, said Friday that Iran should retaliate by seizing a British tanker if the U.K. does not release the Iranian vessel.
"If Britain does not release the Iranian oil tanker, it is the authorities' duty to seize a British oil tanker," Rezai tweeted. "Islamic Iran in its 40-year history has never initiated hostilities in any battles but has also never hesitated in responding to bullies."
The U.K.'s seizure of the Iranian tanker in waters east of Gibraltar on Thursday came amid heightened military tensions between Iran and the United States, sparked by President Donald Trump's violation of the nuclear accord last year and continued belligerent threats.
While many European nations expressed skepticism given the flimsy evidence, the U.K. joined the U.S. in accusing Iran of carrying out attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman last month.
U.S. national security adviser John Bolton, who reportedly backed airstrikes on Iran that Trump abruptly called off last month, applauded British forces for seizing the Iranian tanker in a tweet on Thursday.
"Excellent news: U.K. has detained the supertanker Grace I laden with Iranian oil bound for Syria in violation of E.U. sanctions," Bolton said. "America and our allies will continue to prevent regimes in Tehran and Damascus from profiting off this illicit trade."
According to the London-based Financial Times, British "Royal Marines boarded the Grace 1 from a naval helicopter and patrol boats in a joint operation with Gibraltar police" in the early hours of Thursday morning.
"[T]he UK seized the Grace 1 because it suspected that the vessel was violating European sanctions on Syria," according to FT.
Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera's Dorsa Jabbari said the Iranian government does not believe it is violating any international sanctions.
"They don't recognize the E.U. sanctions on the Syrian government as legitimate because they have not been endorsed by the United Nations," Jabbari said. "They say that this act by the British government on behalf of Americans is tantamount to piracy."
Matthew Oresman, a U.S.-based lawyer who advises firms on sanctions, told Al Jazeera that the seizure of the Iranian tanker was likely carried out in partnership with the Trump administration.
"This is the first time that the E.U. has done something so public and so aggressive," Oresman said. "I imagine it was also coordinated in some manner with the U.S. given that NATO member forces have been involved."
Keep ReadingShow Less
What Sanctions Mean for My Iranian-American Family
As innocent people suffer, break-ins are on the rise—including at my grandparents’ house
Jul 03, 2019
"What's wrong?" I asked my mother, as I saw her broken expression. She was on the phone, speaking with my grandparents in Iran. "A terrible thing has happened," she replied.
My grandparent's home in Tehran had been broken into. The thieves took everything they could carry -- my grandmother's jewelry, my uncle's prized watch collection, his wedding band, and some cash. Perhaps the only thing left untouched was the grand, ornate Persian rug in their living room.
My grandfather had left the house for 10 minutes for afternoon prayers at the mosque. Now, he swears to never leave his home unattended again. He takes turns leaving the house with my grandmother, both in constant dread of another break-in.
Across Iran, such burglaries seem to be increasing as ordinary Iranian people face increased hardship from U.S.-imposed sanctions.
As a dual citizen, I was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, but I've been traveling to Iran regularly ever since I was four months old.
I grew up in a household that taught me to love who I am, to see the wisdom in maintaining cultural intricacies, and to relish in the socio-religious traditions that keep life going. Words cannot do justice to the feeling of affinity that envelops me every time I step into my second home in Tehran.
My mother, in efforts to ease her old parents' anxious hearts, could only repeat tavakol be khoda, or as we like to translate it: "Your faith must be stronger than your fear."
President Trump has sought confrontation with Iran at every opportunity. Since America's unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal in 2018, the U.S. has re-imposed sanctions targeting critical sectors of Iran's economy.
Whether it's Cuba or Venezuela or Iran, history shows that sanctions alone have never forced a change in policy by an adversary. Since then, oil exports have more than halved, choking the main source of funding for the country. Iranian currency has lost almost 60 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar, reaching a record low.
Meanwhile, sanctions and problems in banking transfers have made it extremely hard to buy everything from food to medicine. In the past 12 months, the cost of red meat and poultry has increased by 57 percent. Physicians are forced to prescribe less effective drugs, while patients must wait longer for operations.
During my visit last December, I witnessed the desperation with my own eyes.
Children stood, begging on the streets, tapping on my car window, trying to sell flowers and CDs. Highly educated youth sat in their homes, unable to find employment. Families withstood long lines at government-subsidized grocery stores to receive rationed meat. Patients had to self-treat their illnesses because they couldn't purchase proper medicine.
Day after day, I sit and watch my president come up with new ways to escalate tensions, like tweeting that we're "cocked and loaded to retaliate," and only barely calling off a strike that would have killed 150 people -- potentially starting a war without congressional approval. Or imposing new sanctions on top Iranian officials, which could close off the road to diplomacy.
Yet the absence of armed conflict doesn't mean that over 80 million innocent people aren't tremendously hurting already -- and for no good reason. Economic sanctions are a form of warfare on people who are just trying to make ends meet.
Trump has even configured a way to suppress the normal aspirational response to escape destitute living conditions -- banning Iranians entry to the most promising nation on Earth with his Muslim travel ban.
Whether it's Cuba or Venezuela or Iran, history shows that sanctions alone have never forced a change in policy by an adversary. Iranians and Americans alike deserve diplomacy, not war -- and that includes war by economic means.
Can our faith be stronger than our fear?
Keep ReadingShow Less
Iranians Are Not Our Enemies
When foreign policy as we know it isn’t working, creative citizen diplomacy can step in to humanize the real people who would be most impacted by war
Jul 02, 2019
"We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night," Donald Trump tweeted about Iran on June 21, showing us just how close we are to yet another war.
In light of the shooting down of a U.S spy drone, the tanker incidents just a few days prior, and a trajectory of other escalatory moves, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton aren't waging a maximum pressure campaign to change the behavior of their enemy, but are paving a path toward war.
Regardless of the clear facts about the incidents, one thing is clear -- military escalation must not be the response.
The consequences would be disastrous in terms of casualties on all sides, further destabilization of the Middle East, the increased risk of nuclear proliferation and war, and the waste of trillions of dollars. Now more than ever, diplomatic efforts need to be pursued at all costs.
In addition to the tangible checklist for preventing war, I suggest that it is overdue to change the narrative around Iran and its people.
First, however, the context in which these events are occurring needs to be understood.
When we are talking about the possibility of war with Iran, we must refuse to think about the faceless enemy that is so often being dehumanized in our political system and in the media.
The recently escalated tensions all take place within the context of the U.S. unilaterally withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. This needs to sink in: the U.S. pulled out of a working agreement between Iran, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the European Union, added sanctions, issued threats, and thereby created the current crisis.
The broader historical context is Iran's insistence not caving to U.S. interests in the region. I heard this point of view directly from Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, whom I met in Tehran as part of a citizen peace delegation earlier this year. "Iran's biggest crime against the U.S.", he told us "was the desire to be independent."
In Iran, I learned that the Iranian people expected to see improvements in their lives from the nuclear deal. They are aware of their own government's problematic behavior, but the last thing they want is the "help" of the United States. Outside pressure strengthens hardliners in Iran and leads to Iranians to rally around the flag. Without external pressure, Iranians can work toward social change on their own time and on their own terms.
To de-escalate the current tension and prevent war, a few components are clear. Congress needs to make stopping war with Iran a priority and exercise its authority to oppose a war of choice with Iran. Citizens can flood the congressional phone lines to encourage that. The U.S. should also re-enter the Iran nuclear deal as quickly as possible. Until that happens, the other signatories need to take on a leadership role, defy U.S. pressure, and work tirelessly and creatively to uphold the commitments of the agreement.
The destructive sanctions also need to end, and genuine diplomacy needs to be supported. Given that there is little chance and incentive for high level dialog, backchannel negotiations like the ones that paved the path for the Iran nuclear deal need to be pursued.
I want to suggest another component, one that goes beyond immediate legislate and diplomatic issues. It is time to change the narrative around Iran.
There are many staunch advocates for diplomacy, in Congress and beyond, who are still caught in the good "us" vs. bad "them" narrative. We need to look beyond that and think about how a country of 80 million people is constantly vilified as the root of all evil in the Middle East. That is simply wrong. The problematic behavior of the Iranian government must not be an obstacle to rethinking how we can create better understanding between the people of the U.S. and Iran. In fact, all Iranians I talked to liked Americans, but for obvious reasons were not so keen about our president and the policies.
When we are talking about the possibility of war with Iran, we must refuse to think about the faceless enemy that is so often being dehumanized in our political system and in the media.
I think about the people I met. Sama and her husband Ali, who came to pick her up after a long day of working as our tour guide; Shahram, who sends me WhatsApp messages about classic rock bands that we both like; Ebrahim, who would love to take Americans on trekking tours in Iran; Farimah, who asked me to speak English with about 10 of her young students; Roozbeh, the young waiter who insisted that I not leave without desert.
They deserve to live a life without sanctions and without the threat of war. When foreign policy as we know it is not working, creative citizen diplomacy can step in. We have our responsibilities to make that happen by recognizing that Iranians are not our enemies.
Keep ReadingShow Less
We're Not the Good Guys
Why is American aggression missing in action?
Jul 02, 2019
Headlined "U.S. Seeks Other Ways to Stop Iran Shy of War," the article was tucked away on page A9 of a recent New York Times. Still, it caught my attention. Here's the first paragraph:
"American intelligence and military officers are working on additional clandestine plans to counter Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, pushed by the White House to develop new options that could help deter Tehran without escalating tensions into a full-out conventional war, according to current and former officials."
Note that "Iranian aggression." The rest of the piece, fairly typical of the tone of American media coverage of the ongoing Iran crisis, included sentences like this: "The C.I.A. has longstanding secret plans for responding to Iranian provocations." I'm sure I've read such things hundreds of times without ever really stopping to think much about them, but this time I did. And what struck me was this: rare is the moment in such mainstream news reports when Americans are the "provocative" ones (though the Iranians immediately accused the U.S. military of just that, a provocation, when it came to the U.S. drone its Revolutionary Guard recently shot down either over Iranian air space or the Strait of Hormuz). When it comes to Washington's never-ending war on terror, I think I can say with reasonable confidence that, in the past, the present, and the future, the one phrase you're not likely to find in such media coverage will be "American aggression."
I mean, forget the history of the second half of the last century and all of this one so far. Forget that back in the Neolithic age of the 1980s, before Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein turned out to be the new Adolf Hitler and needed to be taken down by us (no aggression there), the administration of President Ronald Reagan actively backed his unprovoked invasion of, and war against, Iran. (That included his use of chemical weapons against Iranian troop concentrations that American military intelligence helped him target.) Forget that, in 2003, the administration of George W. Bush launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq, based on false intelligence about Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction and his supposed links to al-Qaeda. Forget that the Trump administration tore up a nuclear agreement with Iran to which that country was adhering and which would indeed have effectively prevented it from producing nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future. Forget that its supreme leader (in fatwas he issued) prohibited the creation or stockpiling of such weaponry in any case.
Forget that the Trump administration, in a completely unprovoked manner, imposed crippling sanctions on that country and its oil trade, causing genuine suffering, in hopes of toppling that regime economically as Saddam Hussein's had been toppled militarily in neighboring Iraq in 2003, all in the name of preventing the atomic weapons that the Obama-negotiated pact had taken care of. Forget the fact that an American president, who, at the last moment, halted air strikes against Iranian missile bases (after one of their missiles shot down that American drone) is now promising that an attack on "anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force... In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration."
Provocations? Aggression? Perish the thought!
And yet, just ask yourself what Washington and the Pentagon might do if an Iranian drone were spotted off the East Coast of the United States (no less in actual U.S. air space). No more need be said, right?
So here's the strange thing, on a planet on which, in 2017, U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to 149 countries, or approximately 75% of all nations; on which the U.S. has perhaps 800 military garrisons outside its own territory; on which the U.S. Navy patrols most of its oceans and seas; on which U.S. unmanned aerial drones conduct assassination strikes across a surprising range of countries; and on which the U.S. has been fighting wars, as well as more minor conflicts, for years on end from Afghanistan to Libya, Syria to Yemen, Iraq to Niger in a century in which it chose to launch full-scale invasions of two countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), is it truly reasonable never to identify the U.S. as an "aggressor" anywhere?
What you might say about the United States is that, as the self-proclaimed leading proponent of democracy and human rights (even if its president is now having a set of love affairs with autocrats and dictators), Americans consider ourselves at home just about anywhere we care to be on planet Earth. It matters little how we may be armed and what we might do. Consequently, wherever Americans are bothered, harassed, threatened, attacked, we are always the ones being provoked and aggressed upon, never provoking and aggressing. I mean, how can you be the aggressor in your own house, even if that house happens to be temporarily located in Afghanistan, Iraq, or perhaps soon enough in Iran?
A Planet of Aggressors and Provocateurs
To mine the same New York Times piece a little more, here's another paragraph:
"Some officials believe the United States needs [to] be willing to master the kind of deniable, shadowy techniques Tehran has perfected in order to halt Iran's aggressions. Others think that, while helpful, such clandestine attacks will not be enough to reassure American allies or deter Iran."
Of course, such clandestine American attacks would, by definition, not be "aggression," not given that they were directed against Iran. Forget the grim historical humor lurking in the above passage, since the present Iranian religious hard-liners probably wouldn't be there if, back in 1953, the CIA hadn't used just such techniques to overthrow a democratically elected Iranian government and install its own autocrat, the young Shah, in power.
As that Times piece also emphasizes, Iran now uses "proxy forces" throughout the region (indeed it does!) against U.S. (and Israeli) power, a tactic Americans evidently just hadn't thought about employing themselves in this century -- until now. Americans naturally have no proxy forces in the Greater Middle East. That's a well-known fact. Just out of curiosity, however, what would you call the local forces our special ops guys are training and advising in so many of those 149 countries around the planet, since obviously they could never be proxy forces? And how about the Afghan and Iraqi militaries that the U.S. trained, supplied with weaponry, and advised in these years? (You know, the Iraqi army that collapsed in the face of ISIS in 2014 or the Afghan security forces that have been unable to staunch either the growth of the Taliban or of the Afghan branch of ISIS.)
Now, don't get me wrong. Yes, the Iranians can (and sometimes do) provoke and aggress. It's an ugly planet filled with aggression and provocation. (Take Vladimir Putin's Russia in Crimea and Ukraine, for instance.) The Chinese are now aggressing in the South China Sea where the U.S. Navy regularly conducts "freedom of navigation" operations -- though no provocation there, as the Pacific's an American lake, isn't it?
In short, when it comes to provocation and aggression, the world is our oyster. There are so many bad guys out there and then, of course, there's us. We can make mistakes and missteps, we can kill staggering numbers of civilians, destroy cities, uproot populations, create hordes of refugees with our never-ending wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa, but aggression? What are you thinking?
One thing is obvious if you follow the mainstream media: in our world, no matter what we do, we're still the good guys on a planet filled with provocateurs and aggressors of every sort.
War to the Horizon
Now let's think for a moment about that remarkable American comfort level, that unprecedented sense of being at home practically anywhere on Earth we choose to send armed Americans -- and while we're at it, let's consider a related subject: America's wars.
If, in the early 1970s, you had told me or any other American that, in the nearly half-century to come, the U.S. would fight wars and other lesser conflicts of almost every imaginable sort in startling numbers of places thousands of miles from home, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, countries most Americans couldn't then (or now) find on a map, I guarantee you one thing: we would have thought you were nuts. (Of course, if you had described Donald Trump's White House to me then as our future reality, I would have considered you beyond delusional.)
And yet here we are. Think about Afghanistan for a moment. In those distant days of the last century, that country would undoubtedly have been known here only to small numbers of young adventurers eager to hike what was then called "the hippy trail." There, in a still remarkably peaceful place, a young American might have been greeted with remarkable friendliness and then spaced out on drugs.
That, of course, was before Washington's first (covert) Afghan War, the one the CIA oversaw, with the help of Saudi money (yes, even then!) and a major hand from the Pakistani intelligence services. Do you remember that conflict, which began in 1979 and ended a decade later with the Red Army limping out of Kabul in defeat, heading for a land, the Soviet Union, which would implode within two years? What a "victory" that proved to be for America, not to speak of the groups of extremist Islamic militants we helped to fund and support, including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden.
And keep in mind as well that that was our "short" war in Afghanistan, a mere decade long. In October 2001, soon after the 9/11 attacks, instead of launching a police action against Osama bin Laden and crew, the administration of George W. Bush decided to invade that country. Almost 18 years later, the U.S. military is still fighting there (remarkably unsuccessfully) against a thoroughly rejuvenated Taliban and a new branch of ISIS. It now qualifies as the longest war in our history (without even adding in that first Afghan War of ours).
As we head into election season 2020, don't imagine that we're the good guys on Planet Earth.
And then, of course, there's Iraq. By my count, the U.S. has been involved in four conflicts involving that country, starting with Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1980 and the ensuing war, which the administration of President Ronald Reagan supported militarily (as the present one does the Saudi war in Yemen). Then there was President George H.W. Bush's war against Saddam Hussein after his military invaded Kuwait in 1990, which resulted in a resounding (but by no means conclusive) victory and the kind of victory parade in Washington that Donald Trump can only dream of. Next, of course, was President George W. Bush's 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq (mission accomplished!), a grim and unsatisfying eight-year conflict from which President Barack Obama withdrew U.S. troops in 2011. The fourth war followed in 2014 when the U.S.-trained Iraqi military collapsed in the face of relatively small numbers of ISIS militants, a group that was an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which didn't exist until the U.S. invaded that country. That September, President Obama loosed the U.S. air force on Iraq and Syria (so you can add a fifth war in a neighboring country to the mix) and sent U.S. troops back into Iraq and into Syria where they still remain.
Oh, yes, and don't forget Somalia. U.S. troubles there began with the famed Black Hawk Down incident amid the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 and never, in a sense, really ended. Today, U.S. Special Operations forces are still on the ground there and U.S. air strikes against a Somali militant Islamic group, al-Shabaab, have actually been on the rise in the Trump era.
As for Yemen, from the first U.S. drone strike there in 2002, the U.S. had been in an on-again, off-again low-level conflict there that included commando raids, cruise missile attacks, air strikes, and drone strikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, another offshoot of the original al-Qaeda. Since, in 2015, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates launched their war against Houthi rebels (backed by Iran) who had come to control significant parts of the country, the U.S. has been supporting them with weaponry, intelligence, and targeting, as well as (until late last year) mid-air refueling and other aid. Meanwhile, that brutal war of destruction has led to staggering numbers of Yemeni civilian casualties (and widespread starvation), but as with so many of the other campaigns the U.S. has involved itself in across the Greater Middle East and Africa it shows no sign of ending.
And don't forget Libya, where the U.S. and NATO intervened in 2011 to help rebels take down Muammar Gaddafi, the local autocrat, and in the process managed to foster a failed state in a land now experiencing its own civil war. In the years since 2011, the U.S. has sometimes had commandos on the ground there, has launched hundreds of drone strikes (and air strikes), often against a branch of ISIS that grew up in that land. Once again, little is settled there, so we can all continue to sing the Marine Hymn ("...to the shores of Tripoli") with a sense of appropriateness.
And I haven't even mentioned Pakistan, Niger, and god knows where else. You should also note that the American forever war on terror has proven a remarkably effective war for terror, clearly helping to foster and spread such groups, aggressors and provocateurs all, around significant parts of the planet, from the Philippines to the Congo.
Addicted to war? Not us. Still, all in all, it's quite a record and let's not forget that looming on the horizon is another possible war, this time with Iran, a country that the men overseeing the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (including present National Security Advisor John Bolton) were eager to go after even then. "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad," so the saying reputedly went in Washington at the time. "Real men want to go to Tehran." And it's just possible that, in 2019, Bolton and crew will be able to act on that much delayed urge. Considering the history of American wars in these years, what could possibly go wrong?
To sum up, no one should ever claim that we Americans aren't "at home" in the world. We're everywhere, remarkably well funded and well armed and ready to face off against the aggressors and provocateurs of this planet. Just one small suggestion: thank the troops for their service if you want, and then, as most Americans do, go about your business as if nothing were happening in those distant lands. As we head into election season 2020, however, just don't imagine that we're the good guys on Planet Earth. As far as I can tell, there aren't many good guys left.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy