Mike Whitney

MIKE WHITNEY—f Iran had a nuclear weapon, Israel would never have launched its attack on June 13. That is the one irrefutable fact that should guide Iranian decision-making in the future. Nukes equal security. It’s that simple.

Iranian leaders still oppose the development of nukes for religious reasons. They think that any weapon that unavoidably kills millions of innocent people cannot be morally justified. But this is not the right way to look at the issue. The reason Iran needs nukes is to save lives not to end them. Iran is not looking to expand its borders or invade other countries, but to ensure the safety of its people and the continuation of its civilization. With that in mind, it needs an arsenal that will deter foreign aggressors who use their access to nuclear weapons to advance their own foreign policy objectives.

MIKE WHITNEY—We should note that there is no formal agreement between Iran and Israel. (No signed document or explicit commitments) The ceasefire was brokered through back-channel diplomacy, primarily mediated by Qatar. A senior White House official and a diplomat briefed on the talks indicated that Israel agreed to halt strikes if Iran ceased its attacks, and Iran signaled compliance with these terms through Qatari mediation. Trump announced the ceasefire as a “complete and total ceasefire” to be phased in over 24 hours, although there have been numerous violations by both sides since the original deal was made on June 23.

• There are many reasons why China is doing better in this regard than the United States (Special interests, corruption, etc), but certainly incentives play a significant role. In the US, millionaires can become billionaires overnight without contributing anything of value to society. It’s just a matter of how adept they are at trading paper assets on Wall Street. In America, the market system is so degraded that companies are allowed to buy back hundreds of billions of dollars of their own stock in order to push share prices higher allowing them to skim hefty profits off the shuffling of paper. These stock buyback transactions are entirely legal even though the capital is deployed in a way that fails to boost productivity, R&D, worker training, innovation or anything else. It is simply a way to fiddle the system in order to enrich professional speculators.

EDITOR—The increase in warnings along with the deployment of B-2 bombers has caused a stir among analysts, many of who now believe that Trump is planning to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with “low yield” nuclear bunker buster bombs that are designed to penetrate and destroy underground, fortified facilities. If that action were to take place, Iran would be forced to launch massive retaliatory attacks on US and Israeli bases, naval assets, critical infrastructure and oil facilities across the Middle East. And, if those attacks were able to inflict significant damage on US or Israeli targets, then we could see a rapid escalation to a nuclear war, a scenario that seems more likely now than ever before.

MIKE WHITNEY—It’s worth noting that Iran has made significant progress in modernizing its military capability while the US is gradually falling behind. There is no doubt that Iran’s air defense systems and hypersonic missiles are more technologically advanced than anything comparable in the US arsenal. Iran also has a large and well-disciplined army that is trained to repel invaders, and a rugged, mountainous terrain that would blunt any potential military offensive. More importantly, it is not at all certain that the US would prevail in a war with Iran. In fact—judging by the war games that have been used to simulate the conflagration—US Forces would lose.