IRAN

Two highly dependable commentators—Moon of Alabama and Eric Zuesse—reach the same conclusion: the latest round of US sanctions on Iran, calculated to bring Tehran to its knees, may accomplish some of its squalid goals because the corrupt and complicit EU, despite its sanctimonious liberal rhetoric, refuses to stand up to the Great Hegemon and instead joins in its global campaign of war and intimidation. In their arrogant quest for dominance at any cost to their victims, the Washington cliques are actually forcing countries like Iran to become fully self-sufficient, and thereby more powerful and more independent than ever before. Russia should be a lesson, but their boundless arrogance does not allow them to see the obvious.

MANSOUREH TAJIK—Questions (be they real, cynical, or rhetorical) forming in the mind of those without real familiarity with Quran and Islam might include the followings: If Islam as a religion and Quran as a Book of God have qualities that they could produce such contrary products and opposite leaderships as a wise leader like Ayatullah Khamenei and a weasel like Sultan Erdogan Junior, then what good is such religion and of what use is such Book?! Random and lottery picking could have a 50/50 chance of either of the two outcomes, too. So, why bother with God, Islam, the religion, and the Book?

These are rational questions and I am glad that some are asking them, albeit with their inner voices. The short answer to these questions is that the two are not both products of the same religion and Book. They are the products of the degree to which they stay on or astray from the Right Path as set by this religion and this Book. The Leader is an example of someone who is genuinely striving to be on the Right Path to the best of his abilities.

EVE OTTENBERG—What the idiotically bellicose U.S. policy toward Iran – including the recent U.S. push for more sanctions – has mainly achieved is a warm embrace between Iran and China. And that’s not a matter susceptible to piracy on the high seas – the preferred U.S. approach to tankers taking Iranian fuel to Caracas. Nor will wild charges about planned assassinations of obscure, random U.S. bureaucrats affect this relationship. The Trump regime has blustered, threatened, insulted and caused the great Iran-China friendship to sink deep roots and blossom. It probably would have anyway, but Trump surely deserves credit for nourishing it.

SOUTHFRONT—On August 14, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah already declared that the movement “will not remain silent on the crime of the bombing the Port of Beirut if it is proven that Israel is behind it.” According to Nasrallah, Hezbollah would wait for results of an investigation into the Beirut port explosion and if it turns out to be an act of sabotage by Israel then it would “pay an equal price”. The August 4 blast in the port of Beirut is still surrounded by mystery and uncertainties, and many sources, including the top US leadership, still consider the possibility that the tragedy was caused by some kind of ‘attack’. In this event, the main suspect is Israel, which has always been interested in the destabilization of neighboring Arab states to secure own dominance in the region.

Washington’s high-seas score stems from a July court complaint demanding the four tankers in question “forfeit all petroleum-product cargo” due to its having been shipped by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to the statement. The US designated the IRGC a terrorist organization last year at the behest of Israel as it ramped up its “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. Since pulling out of the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2018, the Trump administration has leveled a bewildering array of sanctions against Iran, flooded the Persian Gulf with US military assets, and offered millions of dollars in bribes to Iranian ship captains to deliver their oil tankers into the hands of Uncle Sam.