US should be paying damages to Iran: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Kevin Barrett, a political analyst, about Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s reaction to a US court ruling that authorized the seizure of around $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Essentially, when Dr. Zarif speaks of countermeasures, what do you think he has in mind? Is he referring to, let’s say, lodging a complaint with the ICJ?

Barrett: He certainly should. He should be pursuing this in every possible legal form, because it’s such a completely outrageous ruling. There may have been some Iranian attacks of one or another kind against US forces in the [Persian] Gulf. There were some skirmishes back in the 1980s and late 80s during the Iran-Iraq war, things like that, but if we look at the totality of the big picture, it’s clear which side has been committing terrorism against the other, and that is the United States has been committing vast amounts of terrorism against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

So, it’s really the United States that should be paying indemnities not only to Iran for things like the intentional shoot-down of the Airbus 655 by the USS Vincennes towards the end of the Iran-Iraq imposed war and the bombings of mosques, the assassinations of top Iranian leaders, supported by terrorist groups that are essentially organized, funded and supported by the US and Israel. There are up to many many thousands of Iranian victims of US-supported terror, even the scientists, who have been murdered by Mossad agents on motorbikes, with Stuxnet virus unleashed on Iran’s nuclear plants that could have cause Fukushima-style catastrophe.

The United States is really the biggest terrorist nation on earth. It’s killed over 50 million people worldwide in CIA military interventions according to Noam Chomsky and Andre Vltchek’s book On Western Terrorism.

So, this ruling is completely outrageous. There are major questions about these events that they’re claiming that Iran was responsible for. And there’s a lot of information that it actually wasn’t Iran that did it. So, this is completely insane.

Press TV: Regardless of the allegations, which are the basis of this court ruling supposedly, legalistically considered, to what extent do you think the American legal system enjoys extra-territoriality in its applications, in which case that would be the issue here?

Barrett: That’s right. Essentially we have a neo-conservative wing in power in the United States that never really stepped down after the Bush administration left. These people engineered the new Pearl Harbor on September 11, 2001 to destroy any vestige of real international law. And their vision is of a unipolar world dominated by a sole hegemon and that would be the US under the control of the Zionist international financial houses. And they don’t want any international law to get in their way and they haven’t allowed it to get in their way as they run all over the world, torturing people with impunity, they’ve been invading other countries, committing the supreme war crime of aggression according to the Nuremburg Principles.

So, this neo-conservative wing, which still is essentially in power in the United States, doesn’t want there to be any international law whatsoever. And I don’t understand why the world has allowed this to take place. And there are many people around the world who do believe in at least a certain amount of international law designed to prevent conflicts from getting out of hand.

So, I think if Iran pursues this in international for a, at the ICC, the ICJ, maybe the United Nations, all international fora available should be made use of. And we should be painting a very stark picture here of international law versus this attempt to impose a unipolar American power on the entire world that doesn’t respect anyone else’s laws, doesn’t respect anyone else’s sovereignty. And that has been essentially committing most of the terrorism that exists in today’s world.

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