Geography Archives: Iran

The British, it is clear, seized the Iranian tanker at the urging of the United States. There was no previous British warning that it might enter in such a muscular way into the U.S. attempt to suffocate Iran.

On 6 August 1945, the United States military dropped a bomb that contained 64kg of uranium-235 over the city of Hiroshima (Japan). The bomb took just over 44 seconds to fall from 9,400 metres and detonated 580 metres above the Shima Surgical Clinic. Over 80,000 people died instantly. This was the first use of the nuclear bomb.

The problem for any negotiations is that the U.S. position is untenable. The U.S. wants to prevent Iran from exercising its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) to enrich uranium even to low levels. It is this impossible position by Washington that will prevent diplomacy.

It is impossible to predict what will happen in West Asia. Impossible to know whether the United States will conduct a military strike against Iran, which has already faced the full brunt of a U.S.-driven hybrid war against it for the past seven decades.

The United States is leading a process to create a naval force that would patrol the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. has said it will send “command and control” ships to coordinate the escort naval vessels from different countries. But there are cracks in the coalition.

The U.S. objection to Iran is not based on international law, but merely based on its political objectives. This is clearly illustrated by open U.S. support for nuclear energy and nuclear weapon development in India; and nuclear weapon stockpiling in Israel, which the U.S. has always fully backed.

Hubris is usually a forewarning of impending calamity. Extreme arrogance blinds the hubristic person to the limits of their power. So, blindly, they push on with reckless excess, leading to potentially disastrous results.

There are signs of a new tanker war in the Persian Gulf, with Britain joining a coalition that wants a war with Iran.

In the last week of June 2019, as this article was being written, tensions between the U.S. and Iranian governments escalated sharply. On June 20, 2019, in response to aggressive U.S. actions, including the mobilization of troops, naval forces, and aerial provocations, Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance drone flying  near the Iranian border.

Trump might not have sent in a suite of missiles to hit Iran last week, but the United States has—of course—already opened up a certain kind of war against Iran.

Palestinian resistance literature helped break the bounds of many of the literary taboos holding Arabic literature back. A whole new genre within a genre developed with the Palestinian intifada. It is a shame that there is no science fiction as future-oriented as Palestinian resistance literature is.

Quick question: Does the U.S. ever break, breach or violate its international agreements?

Mike Pompeo, in a press conference, accused Iran of engineering the attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Oman. However, he cited unnamed intelligence reports and other vague references in support of his claim.

A war against Iran–as Hamid says–will be catastrophic, not only for Iran but for Eurasia. It would divide the world into two, vultures and hyenas feasting on both halves.

China has increased its oil purchases from Saudi Arabia by 43 percent in April. There is every indication that China will continue to increase its buys from the kingdom during the course of this year—to substitute for Iranian oil and, perhaps, for U.S. oil.

It’s obvious that Bolton and Pompeo are trying to create a Gulf of Tonkin incident with Iran.

The UN’s position against Iran is in bad faith. All the member states and the UN secretariat know that Iran has no nuclear weapons programme. Yet, they have allowed the U.S. and Israel to push against Iran.

Organizers of the far-right AfD hoped to get 10,000 adherents for a march on Sunday in Berlin, but their ranks were far thinner, even with buddies from openly pro-fascist gangs. After distributing a thousand or more big German flags, they joined ranks and set off on their anti-foreigner, anti-Islam, anti-leftist Berlin crusade.

Contrary to a widely-held belief that U.S. President Trump acts only out of impulse or is being unpredictable, I believe that the opposite is the case.

Trump’s anti-Iran move on Tuesday was deeply worrying for allies of the US. It is a blow for those countries, especially in Europe, that were hoping to build on the big expansion of trade with and investment in Iran after the July 2015 nuclear deal was signed.