Eldar Mamedov responds to the hawkish screeching about the deal that the administration reached to get the Iranian government to free five American prisoners that it had been unjustly detaining:
The outcry is clearly politically motivated, as it seeks to depict Biden as weak and soft on Iran. Yet on substance, the hawks’ objections to the deal are based either on ignorance or the deliberate distortions of facts.
To begin with, the $6 billion is not the money the U.S. is going to pay Iran to “buy” the prisoners’ freedom. These are Iranian assets in South Korea earned from the oil sales and frozen by Seoul under pressure by the Trump administration following its unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran known as the JCPOA. This was followed by the introduction of unprecedented sanctions against Tehran, even though according to Trump White House officials Iran had been complying with its commitments under the 2015 deal.
Iran is essentially getting access to its own money which was withheld on no other legal basis than unilateral US sanctions. And even that access is subject to a number of conditions.
Iran hawks are opposed to any agreement with Iran, so they freak out even when the US secures the release of Americans at the low cost of letting Iran have conditional access to a portion of its own money. They would rather have five Americans remain in the Iranian government’s custody indefinitely rather than concede anything that could get them released. As concessions go, releasing funds that were frozen as part of a destructive economic war that primarily hurts innocent Iranians is one of the least offensive imaginable. Granting access to these funds through a channel that can only be used for humanitarian goods is even less objectionable.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
Diplomacy is not on the table at all. The Pentagon never stops when they have a so called plan.
Dec 20, 2016 General Wesley Clark: Wars Were Planned – Seven Countries In Five Years
“This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”
https://youtu.be/FNt7s_Wed_4
Wars were planned even before W became the president. Rumsfeld was more interested in war with Iraq because of its oil. W planned a war with Iraq before he became the president, he wanted to accomplish what his father didn’t, to overthrow Hussein.
Wesley Clark said W was interested in wars in the Middle East because of oil. He should have also said it was because of Israel which was created on land it takes away from the Palestinians.
Rumsfeld was more interested in wars with Iraq and Syria which were secular. He wanted there to be a clash of civilizations.
Oil is traded in dollars referred to as the Petro-Dollar. Ike who created the MIC said this as well, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Dwight D. Eisenhower