Civilization and its Discontents

In most American coverage of the US bombing of Iran, there is an implicit acceptance that Iran “had it coming,” that after all it is a fanatical regime everyone understands is building a bomb to destroy Israel. We can thank Israel and its fleet of lobbyists for this narrative. We can also thank institutions like the New York Times, which endlessly recycle Israel’s talking points. Last week the NYT’s editorial board published a weasel-worded op-ed which contained this:

“A nuclear-armed Iran would make the world less safe. It would destabilize the already volatile Middle East. It could imperil Israel’s existence. It would encourage other nations to acquire their own nuclear weapons, with far-reaching geopolitical consequences.”

Naturally Israel’s own nukes or it’s ongoing genocide of Gazans weren’t mentioned and the article went on to describe the main defect of Israel’s bombing Iran:

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has acted to destroy Iran’s capacity to build nuclear weapons without first shoring up allies’ support.”

So according to the NYT editors, it’s not that bombing Iran is unwise or bad — they’ve already told you why they approve — it’s that Israel has thoughtlessly failed to get sufficient American support for its aggression. What the editors of the New York Times want is bloody war — but with an AUMF that specifically includes Iran:

“If Mr. Trump wants the United States to join the Israeli war against Iran, the next step is as clear: Congress must first authorize the use of military force.”

Where Liberals seem to part company from war hawks is solely in objecting to the current inhabitant of the White House doing bombing unilaterally; in their liberal world military savagery requires a war powers resolution — not even passing the Constitutional bar for Congress to actually declare war. In other words; it’s not bad for the United States to attack another country for no good reason; it’s simply how you go about doing it.

But in a post-nuclear world, does anyone think that any nation can responsibly build nuclear weapons without eventually using them?

Not really. Americans almost universally believe restrictions on nuclear weapons should be placed solely on Iran. Not on the U.S. itself, which actually used nuclear weapons on human beings — twice. Not on India, which has become an authoritarian, ethno-nationalist state like Israel or Hungary and frequently rattles sabres at Pakistan, another nuclear power. No restrictions on Russia, China or North Korea, who are serious nuclear rivals. Demanding “no nukes” of any of these three would only serve to highlight our own hypocrisy.

And of course Americans don’t fear the nukes any of the European nuclear powers — the UK or France — who are habitual partners in American and/or NATO-led colonial-imperialist adventures. Nor from Israel — the most reckless, bloodthirsty regime in the Middle East, possessing between 90 and 300 nukes, a nation that over the last 24 months has bombed pretty much every one of its neighbors.

No, somehow in the homogenous Western narrative only Iran must be prevented from having nukes.

Let us recall, however, that China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the EU, the United States, and Iran all signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on July 14, 2015 in Vienna. It came into force on January 16, 2016. The agreement called for Iran’s peaceful use of nuclear technology, placed limits on enrichment, set milestones for verification of peaceful uses of the technology, and provided a path to removing sanctions from Iran. The agreement anticipated “that full implementation of this JCPOA will positively contribute to regional and international peace and security.” And Iran was sticking to it.

But true to American and Israeli contempt for international agreements and the rule-based order, both objected to the JCPOA so Trump abandoned the agreement in his first term, on May 8, 2018. Despite the U.S. withdrawal from JCPOA, it hypocritically insisted that Iran stick to the agreement even while slapping additional sanctions on Iran in violation of the JCPOA. When Biden became president, he went through the motions of re-joining the agreement. But, like Trump, his goal was to re-negotiate a more restrictive JCPOA than Iran had originally signed, appease Israel’s lobbyists, preserve Trump’s sanctions, and show that Democrats could be every bit the war-mongers as their MAGA brethren. For all his dithering and excuses, Biden could have simply re-committed to the original JCPOA.

There are 32 countries with nuclear programs, and only a handful of them have weapons programs. Despite the Israeli propaganda thrown at us for decades, each time ringing the alarm that Iran is mere weeks away from nuclear weapons, Iran has plenty of legitimate uses for nuclear technology that have nothing to do with weapons or even nuclear power. Especially because of Western sanctions.

Typical commercial uses of nuclear technology include: food irradiation; sterilization of medical instruments and equipment; radiation therapy for insect control and crop protection; inspecting welds and materials in manufacturing; gauging and measurement in various industries; and radioisotope-based analysis for analyzing materials and detecting impurities.

Medical uses include: radiation therapy to treat various types of cancer; nuclear medicine techniques such as PET scans to diagnose and monitor disease; radioisotope-based therapies for targeted cancer treatments, such as thyroid cancer; sterilization of medical instruments and equipment; radio-pharmaceuticals for diagnosing and treating cancers, cardiovascular disease, and neurological disorders; diagnosing and monitoring bone density and osteoporosis; and nuclear medicine research.

Specific radioisotopes often used for cancer treatment include: technetium-99m, for diagnostic imaging and cancer treatment; iodine-131, for thyroid cancer treatment and diagnostic imaging; molybdenum-99, for diagnostic imaging and cancer treatment; samarium-153, for pain relief and cancer treatment; and radium-223, for prostate cancer treatment.

The 32 countries with nuclear technology represent over half the world population. Within these 32 countries (Israel won’t admit to having a nuclear program), there are 440 power plants and all of them require some sort of enrichment or processing. Armenia with 2.1 million people has nuclear power. Other nations under 50 million people with nuclear power include: Argentina; Belgium; Bulgaria; Canada; the Czech Republic; Finland; Hungary; Netherlands; Romania; Slovakia; Slovenia; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; Taiwan; Ukraine; and the United Arab Emirates.

Of the nuclear weapons states, France, with two-thirds the population of Iran, has 58 nuclear stations. The UK, also two-thirds the size of Iran, has 15.

All of these countries have programs much like the one the US just bombed at the behest of Israel. Miraculously, we have not bombed Switzerland or Canada. Yet.

In all of this is the inconvenient truth that Iran has never had a weapons program. If the Trump administration has any proof that Iran does, they won’t show us. The EU, the IAEA, various U.S. national security assessments, and even an opinion only weeks ago from National Security Advisor Tulsi Gabbard — before Mafia Don Trump leaned on her — was that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

Instead, Trump appears to be getting his “intelligence” from Israel and a small group of dubious “experts”, according to the Independent. These “advisors” include: Stephen Miller; Steve Witkoff, a luxury real estate developer; Steve Bannon; Marjorie Taylor Greene; Lindsay Graham; Tom Cotton; Candace Owens; John Ratliffe, a former CIA director with close ties to Israel; and a pro-Israel general, Michael Erik Kurilla.

When asked on Air Force One about Gabbard’s previous assessment, Trump shot back, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having it.” Similarly refusing to acknowledge the discrepancy between European and previous U.S. assessments that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons — and Trump’s “experts” — Marco Rubio was asked on “Face the Nation” where Trump’s “intelligence” came from. “It doesn’t matter!” he screamed at news anchor Margaret Brennon. “That’s irrelevant!”

For over 30 years American foreign policy makers have been looking for an opportunity to bomb Iran. Recall Senator John McCain singing “Bomb, Bomb Iran” to a Beach Boys tune 18 years ago. In the intervening years there were two Gulf wars — fought on equally spurious intel. Civil liberties were a casualty, a huge surveillance and police state were built, and the power of the President to declare war was handed over to him on a platter by a cowardly Congress using “war powers resolutions” which bypass the Constitutional requirement that it is Congress that declares war.

Ultimately, war hawks and Israel’s lobbyists found a president who didn’t give a damn about war powers resolutions or even Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Nor anything else in that wrinkly old document.

The “Art of the Deal” maker simply made a side deal with Israel, and in so doing blindsided the American Congress, lied about a two-week timetable during which Congress might have given him war powers anyway (so much for the New York Times argument), and then had his White Supremacist Crusader-tatted defense chief send B-2’s to bomb Iran.

Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have been deer in the headlights since the election, unable to get Democrats to fall into line. Some of them — for example, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, New Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer, former Clinton aide Jamie Metzl, and others — actually cheered the illegal bombings and sang Trump’s praises.

California Congressman Rohit Khanna penned a piece in the Nation arguing for support for his bipartisan war powers resolution, which so far has only a small number of cosponsors. In the Senate Tim Kaine of Virginia filed a similar resolution, which does nothing but attempt to claw back powers ceded to the president in previous AUMF agreements, and only in regard to Iran. Congress is neither bold enough nor smart enough to terminate all AUMFs and forcefully exercise its Constitutional rights.

Texas Congressman Al Green did actually file articles of impeachment citing Trump’s usurpation of Congressional powers. Not only is bombing a nation and killing hundreds of civilians without Congressional approval an unconstitutional act, doing so as an professional courtesy for [another] genocidal regime and lying to Congress about it ought to result in impeachment, prison, or the firing squad.

But neither resolutions nor articles of impeachment have accomplished anything more than to give Congress a platform for grand theatre. If we really want to hold criminal presidents accountable, the Department of Justice needs to stop treating them as emperors and to start prosecuting them. But because the Constitution unwisely placed the Department of Justice under the Presidential branch (which Washington felt was too similar to a King), prosecutions of a sitting president are virtually impossible. Any trials of past presidents must be held when a new regime comes to power. For that a simple DOJ memo would suffice.

But none of this alters the insanity and the depravity of bombing Iran in the first place.

A few nights ago I listened to Mehdi Hasan’s interview with Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute. Parsi knows more about Iran than Trump, his kooky Iran war panel, Hegseth, Rubio, Cruz, Schumer, Jeffries, and both Clintons put together. Parsi’s own father was jailed by the Shah and then again by the Ayatollah, so you don’t have to tell him about the sins of the Islamic Republic. Parsi also gave a shorter interview to CBS Mornings.

In both interviews Parsi alluded to the JCPOA, which was doing its job and was something Trump should not have abrogated. And for all the contempt in which Parsi holds the Iranian regime, he nevertheless does not regard Iran as a bunch of fanatical lunatics. Iran’s responses have been measured, restrained, strategic, and its counter-attacks have been measured and proportionate. For example, Iran called the White House to warn the U.S. of the reprisal missiles to Qatar in order to minimize loss of life.

Parsi has a pretty good idea of what comes next. And it’s a completely rational response on Iran’s part. Parsi told CBS Mornings, “I frankly think that what has been done here [by Trump] more or less guarantees that Iran will be a nuclear weapons state five to ten years from now.”

Iran and every other target of American foreign policy and military “intervention” have surely noticed that the only country that the U.S. will not bomb is one with nuclear weapons.

So the bombing of Iran is the result of the conventional wisdom — of both the Dr. Strangeloves and also the liberals who mumble in their sleep that Iran is a “fanatical” state.

Because of ingrained, irrational, and institutionalized American hostility toward Iran, our Israel-influenced refusal to accord Iran’s non-defense nuclear program the same rights as dozens of other nations (especially Israel), or to honor an international agreement both nations signed, Iran has now been forced to start developing nuclear weapons in earnest.

And, now, as Israel and the U.S. contemplate even more bombings, there’s a quick solution for this too.

Iran can simply acquire nukes from Russia.