As I locked my bike up in Dublin City centre today, about to take a longish bus journey, two worlds connected around me.
Seeing a young woman collecting rubbish from the pavement to put in a litter bin, I became aware that she was the user of a nearby tent. I have to admit I was impressed with the focus on clearing of rubbish and noted an older van driver looking too.
Taking out my wallet I gave her some money with a brief word of encouragement and thought I heard the van driver giving out to me for doing so. Ignoring him, I got ready to cross the street to the bus stop. “Hey!” he shouted at me.
I turned back to him, ready for an argument.
“Did you just give that girl some money?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, (restraining myself from adding “and what of it?”). I was ready to meet aggression if it was coming but didn’t feel the need to start it.
He stretched out his hand to me, holding out a ten-euro note: “You dropped this.”
“Oh, thanks,” sez I, accepting the note, “I thought you were going to tell me off.”
He looked taken aback. “Not at all, sure I sometimes give her some money too.”
We shook hands and I crossed the road, reflecting that mine and the van driver’s world had briefly and in a small way intersected with the young woman’s world.
Outside, in yet another world, a state is carrying out genocide against a people in full view of the World, not just with western states’ compliance, as occurred with the genocide against the Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s, but this time with the actual encouragement and active collusion of the western states.
Iran has informed the International Atomic Agency that it is stepping up its uranium enrichment to 20% purity, which significantly exceeds that set by the restrictive 2015 Agreement and which according to media reports places it one step away from achieving weapons grade. This has set off concerns and what might even be interpreted as threats from other states but whether we agree with the existence of nuclear weapons or not, what gives some states the right to have them and to tell others that they can’t?
Iran entered into that Agreement in exchange for ending of the economic blockade on it by the USA. However, recently Trump withdrew the USA from the Agreement, leaving little incentive for Iran to continue restricting its development of nuclear fuel.
Three big European powers signed a public call on Iran to return to the Agreement levels in the hope that Biden will bring the USA back into the Agreement (which he has indicated he will). Meanwhile, some media are reporting that a similar step by Iran prior to the Agreement led Israel to prepare to launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And Israel is in fact believed to have assassinated Iran’s foremost nuclear scientist, Mohseh Fakhrizadeh last year.
Map showing states with estimated numbers of nuclear warheads.
(Source image: Arms Control Association)
NUCLEAR WEAPONS GATEKEEPERS
Whether we agree with any state having a nuclear arsenal (and I don’t), what gives some states the right to dictate to others that they can’t have them? And what is the record of these “nuclear weapon gatekeepers”? The partners in the 2015 Agreement were: USA, UK, Germany, France, Russia and China. These are, if we believe the slant of much of the mass media, the states that are justified in telling others that they cannot be permitted to have nuclear weapons.
The USA is one of the states with most nuclear weapons in the world (according to some estimates, Russia has the most, followed by the USA), a state which has been involved in wars of aggression against other peoples and states almost since its creation (10 directly – not through proxies — in the last 20 years alone). Furthermore, it is the only state to have attacked another with not only one but two weapons of mass destruction, causing at least a million casualties of mostly civilians.
Map showing estimated US troops officially based in the Middle East in January 2020 (Source image: Newsweek)
The European states that made that public call on Iran are Germany, France and Britain, of which only Germany does not have nuclear weapons of its own (though it permits them to be sited there). The reason that Germany does not have them is probably because its European neighbours and in particular world powers France and the UK would not allow them to have them, with memories of two world wars in four decades during the last century.
France and the UK are imperialist states with massive armed forces which, when they have not been at war with the other, have attacked nations and peoples across the globe.
The other owners of nuclear weapons are Russia, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. And Israel, a Zionist occupation-settler state established through ethnic cleansing and which, since its inception, has been at war with its neighbours. And massively supported by the USA, financially, militarily and politically.
IRAN
The Islamic Republic of Iran, on the other hand, has been at war with no-one since it came into existence except Iraq, when the Western powers were supporting Saddam Hussein and all his atrocities because he was attacking Iran. Saddam attacked Iran very soon after the latter’s revolutionary change of regime but within three months its offensive stalled and it began to get pushed back despite the support of the Western powers (including the supply of chemical weapons by the USA and Germany) and the international isolation of the Iranian clerical leadership. Nevertheless the war lasted eight years and was extremely draining for Iran, in particular since it was also facing US-led economic and financial sanctions.
Currently Iran has full diplomatic relations with 97 states and although it has some territorial disputes with the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf and some Caspian sea disputes with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, along with some outstanding issues from the Iraq-Iran war, these are being dealt with on the whole peacefully.
In the midst of slanted or even hysterical “reporting” — or beating of war drums — we should be aware of these facts.
End.
USA Ally States with Bases Surrounding Iran. (Source image: Internet)
NOTE: NOT “NATIONS”
By the way, the news report headline “European nations urge Iran” etc. (see below) is inaccurate: France and Britain (sic, actually the UK) are not “nations” but states, each one containing a number of nations and for example in a number of sporting bodies the existence of nations within the UK is recognised. That a number of such states are permitted to call themselves “nations” for membership of various bodies does not change that fact and journalists should be more exact in using the term.
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