AMERICA is at it again. Muddling the Middle East. Trigger-happy President Donald Trump has lived up to his capricious past. Killing an Iranian general — Qassem Soelimani — and several others in a third country is a war by another name.
The United States has again violated the sovereignty of Iraq. Previously, the US invented an excuse: weapons of mass destruction. This time yet another. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claims Qassem was planning an “imminent attack” on US lives. Why is it that this sounds so familiar? It must be March 19, 2003 all over again. The US thinks it can act with impunity and get away with it. The rest of the world must stop runaway America. America is a threat to peace.
Sadly, the only world body that can do anything isn’t able to. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is often paralysed by vetoes of its permanent five — the US, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France.
Any attempt by Iran or its allies to get a UNSC resolution passed will fail because the US will veto it. Thus US state terrorism continues unabated. This notwithstanding, Iran wants the UN to condemn the US killing of its general and others as a criminal act. In this, Iran will have the support of many countries.
For it is also a violation of international law. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said this much to Pompeo in a phone conversation on Friday.
Russian news agency Tass quotes Lavrov thus: “The purposeful actions of a UN member state on eliminating officials of another UN member state, especially on the territory of a third sovereign state without giving it prior notice, blatantly violate the principles of international law.”
Allies or otherwise, nations which claim to conduct the affairs of state by the rule of law must not hesitate to condemn the action of the US. The US has been errant so long that it thinks it is right.
Trump’s ill-considered action is bound to have grave consequences for peace in the Middle East. One, it is a declaration of war.
At least Iran sees it so. But the problem is no one is sure what form and shape Iran’s promise of “severe revenge” will take. Writing an opinion piece in the weekend edition of the Financial Times, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, says it “will not be a traditional conflict fought by uniformed soldiers on clearly defined battlefields”. The whole region or even the world is a possible arena. But what is more worrying is this.
Haass sees the war between Iran and the US as “unlikely to have either a clear start or a clear end”.
The other grave consequence is the nuclearisation of the Middle East. Iran will certainly hurry along the nuclear path now that the US is a clear and present danger to the country.
Capricious Trump must be held responsible. It was he again who pulled the US out of the 2015 nuclear deal signed with Iran in 2018, even when all evidence pointed to it adhering to the agreement. Expect the Middle East to barrel towards a nuclear arms race.
Trump really knows how to kill peace.