Skip to main content

Military Threats (U.S. and Israel) vs. De-escalation (Everyone else)

The Iran conundrum is on a side burner for a little while, with Gaza-Palestine and Ukraine on the main burners. It appears that the U.S. administration has little interest in a deal with Iran, preferring military threats as a lead up to more military action. President Trump’s appetite for using his military power may be growing; we see him bragging about ordering the killing of Venezuelans. Recall that he did order the assassination of Suleimani. 
        Nobody but the Trump administration and Israel is happy about this bubbling situation. Here is a capsule summary of what was said in the past two days, as reported in the Washington Post and Iran International.

        Trump administration believes that now is the time to dial up pressure, and that snapback sanctions will “create the environment” for “a diplomatic solution.” 
        U.S. fuel tankers have been deployed to the U.S. base in Qatar, supporting the purpose of the snapback sanctions to “pave the way for military threats.” 
        Further military action against Iran could trigger waves of regional instability. “Diplomacy has to be the way forward,” said an Arab official. 
        “This is a dangerous gambit,” said Vali Nasr. “The bottom line is this: If the United States actually starts negotiating with Iran, it would be de facto cessation of hostilities between Israel and Iran,” 
        European official: “The diplomatic door is still open, and we don’t believe in a military solution to the proliferation crisis.” 
        Senior Arab government official: “The region today cannot go through the same Iranian-Israeli war or the other wars of the last two years. The cost is too high, de-escalation” is the only alternative. 

        What can stop this march of Netanyahu and Trump to war with Iran? Hopefully that question has high priority in other capitals.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘New war with Israel at any moment’, ‘still digging through rubble’

The news about Iran has taken an ominous tone in the last couple days. Here is some reporting and commentary.  Newsweek on August 18, 2025, reported that Yahya Rahim Safavi, senior military adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said ‘ We are not in a ceasefire; we are in a stage of war. No protocol, regulation, or agreement has been written between us and the U.S. or Israel. A new war with Israel could break out at any moment .’  Yonah Jeremy Bob commented in The Jerusalem Post on August 19, 2025, that ‘ Khamenei can either “drink from the poisoned chalice” of diplomatic concessions … or face more airstrikes, possibly next time some targeting him directly ’.   Bob also noted that ‘ right now Iran is still digging through rubbl e’. The U.S. attacked Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan on June 22. Two months of digging. No surprise that there has been no public news about that.
Post a Comment
Read more

Assessing possible outcomes of the snapback mechanism

The initiation by the E3 of the 30-day snapback mechanism in the UN Security Council makes everything more difficult and there is great uncertainty about the outcome. Will it be peaceful with a new nuclear deal with Iran, negotiated by the U.S., endorsed by the UNSC and verified by IAEA, or will Iran withdraw from NPT with further military action by Israel and the U.S.?                 To perhaps shed a little light on what the outcome will be, here is my analysis of how the players - Iran, U.S. and E3 - may be assessing the acceptability of the range of outcomes. Four levels of acceptability were used: 1 Fully acceptable; 2 Less acceptable; 3 Just acceptable; and 4 Not acceptable. Four near term 30-day outcomes are listed, and two optimistic outcomes with an interim U.S.-Iran agreement reached within a 6-month extension.                 For the 30-day near term, the best outcome would b...
Post a Comment
Read more

‘Making nuclear fuel’ under the NPT

It is with some hesitation that I take issue with the latest publication of the renowned Henry Sokolski and Sharon Squassoni on August 15 in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, titled: “ Actually, the NPT doesn’t guarantee a right to make nuclear fuel .”  But someone should defend the IAEA and international safeguards! Here are points in question.            ‘ The [NPT] treaty was designed to prevent dangerous bombmaking activitie s.’  NPT is far more complex than that. It is common to state the three pillars of NPT: nuclear disarmament; nuclear nonproliferation; and peaceful uses of nuclear technology. Nonproliferation involves the commitment of non-nuclear states not to pursue nuclear weapons and to accept IAEA inspection to confirm that commitment is being followed. Perhaps Sokolsky intends to refer to INFCIRC/153, which lays out how IAEA and the state cooperate to carry out that confirmation. If so, INFCIRC/153 is not designed to ‘prevent’...
Post a Comment
Read more