US waging all-out war on Iran and other independent nations by other means

By Stephen Lendman

The US emerged from WW II as the only major power unscathed by its ravages and more powerful than ever when world peace was restored.

Instead of using its wealth, preeminence, and political influence on the world stage to foster a new era of peace, stability, mutual cooperation among nations, and efforts to stimulate economic growth worldwide to benefit everyone, it chose to seek dominance over other nations by any means to achieve its objectives.

Its favored strategies have been and remain endless wars by hot and other means on one nonbelligerent nation after another — the highest of high crimes under the UN Charter and other international law to which the US is a signatory.

The common thread defining countries on its target list for regime change is their independence from US control, their unwillingness to sacrifice their sovereign rights to its interests.

Its designated enemies threaten no one. Supporting peace over war and wanting normal, not hostile, relations with other nations marks them for regime change.

All of the above is what the scourge of imperialism is all about.

Merriam-Webster (MW) defines it as “the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas.”

MW omitted what’s vital to include in the definition. Imperial powers like the US seek dominance over other nations by brute force and other hostile means when pressure, bribery, and bullying fail to achieve capitulation.

Washington prioritizes subservience of other countries to its will, wanting them colonized and controlled as vassal states, their resources plundered, their people exploited as serfs.

Instead of explaining reality to viewers and readers, US-led Western media operate as virtual press agents for the imperial state, along with supporting the scourge of predatory/exploitive Western-style capitalism.

Maximum sales, profits, market dominance, and related aims alone matter — human welfare and ecosanity ignored when conflict with these priorities.

A personal note. I spent most of my formal working years in small family business. I mentioned it before in my writing.

As a private firm unbeholden to outside shareholders or Wall Street, we treated our staff as colleagues, associates, and team members engaged in a common mission.

We provided a needed service to customers, exploiting no one.

As a business with payroll and other expense commitments, enough sales and profits were essential to keep the firm viable, what’s true of all businesses.

Despite volatile market conditions through the years, we survived, retired, and passed on a viable firm to others.

We were lucky. The service we provided was needed. We originated the idea.

Economic conditions from the 1960s through the 1990s were world’s apart from the post-9/11 environment, notably what’s gone on since the 2008-09 financial crisis and now, causing a protracted main street depression, a virtual death knell to small businesses like ours.

We had a wonderful business idea at the right time that wouldn’t work now. Earlier success would be certain failure in today’s hostile environment to firms like ours.

One more thing. My 1950s MBA curriculum included no courses on maximizing sales, profits, and market share by exploitive practices.

Yet it’s the American way in how the country is run by its ruling class, politically and by big business — trampling on the rights of nations and ordinary people for unchallenged dominance.

Since the Korean peninsula was divided post-WW II, the DPRK sought normalization with the US and West in vain.

Throughout its near-75-year history, it never preemptively threatened or attacked another nation.

It developed a nuclear deterrent and ballistic missile delivery systems because of the existential threat posed by the US that once brought devastating war to the country, massacring its people, causing vast destruction.

Its ruling authorities have two choices. Surrender their nation’s sovereignty to US interests or defend it from the existential threat posed all these years, a perpetual sword of Damocles, an unacceptable reality it’s forced to challenge or perish.

The US uses North Korea as an invented threat that doesn’t exist, as a punching bag — China the main US regional and global adversary because of its growing development and prominence on the world stage.

Hegemons don’t tolerate potential or actual rivals, why China and Russia are Washington’s main designated adversaries — even though both countries threaten no others.

They support peace and mutual cooperation among nations globally — polar opposite what imperialism is all about.

Since its 1979 revolution, ending  generation of US-installed fascist dictatorship, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been and remains a prime US target for regime change — wanting the nation transformed back to its untenable 1953 – 1979 status.

Republicans and undemocratic Dems want control over the country’s immense hydrocarbon reserves, some of the world’s largest.

They want Israel’s main regional rival neutralized.

Make no mistake. The US is waging all-out war on Iran by other means.

Not a shred of credible evidence suggests that Tehran seeks nuclear weapons. Plenty of evidence indicates otherwise.

Yet the Big Lie about an Iranian nuclear threat is perpetuated by the likes of Netanyahu, Pompeo, and likeminded extremists.

If John Bolton and Pompeo had their way, things would have turned hot long ago — the region and planet earth at risk from their belligerent extremism.

They never met a sovereign independent state not controlled by the US they didn’t want smashed — what permanent war on humanity is all about, what risks humanity’s destruction.

Since Trump illegally abandoned the JCPOA nuclear deal, an international agreement adopted by the Security Council, making it binding international and US constitutional law, he’s escalated war on Iran by other means.

He and hardliners surrounding him want 84 million Iranians suffocated, starved, and immiserated.

They want Washington’s imperial boot stomping on them until they’re pressured, bullied, or bludgeoned into submission.

That’s how the scourge of imperialism works, why as practiced by bipartisan US hardliners, giving no quarter to anyone, it’s an unparalleled threat to humanity’s survival.

It’s why resistance is the only viable option. Submission is slow death.

We have a choice. Accept what’s intolerable or put our spirit and bodies on the line for revolutionary change.

The alternative is a permanent state of war that may consume us all if not challenged and stopped while there’s time.

In his April 4, 1967 “Beyond Vietnam, A Time to Break the Silence” address — one year to the day before his state-sponsored assassination — his most important public remarks consistently ignored by establishment media, Martin Luther King called the US “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” adding:

“We have a choice (between) nonviolent coexistence, or violent co-annihilation.”

“We must move past indecision to action.”

“If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”

Silence and inaction are “betrayal…This madness must cease.”

MLK called for a “declar(ation) (of) eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”

He quoted James Russell Lowell (1819 – 1891), saying:

“Once to every man and nation

Comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of truth and falsehood, For the good or evil side…”

The time for action is now, said MLK. The urgency is far greater today than 53 years ago when he spoke out against US aggression in Southeast Asia.

“(N)o one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America” can support militarism and violence, he stressed.

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

“We’ve committed more war crimes…than (virtually) any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it.”

Then the US waged war abroad on one part of the world. Today it’s on humanity with far more destructive weapons.

There’s no good ending to what’s going on.

If not challenged and stopped, the risk of eventual nuclear annihilation is ominously real.

If that’s not incentive enough to take to the streets en masse and stay there until the madness stops, what is!

US has been at war with Iran by other means since 1979

Since Iranians ended a generation of CIA-installed fascist dictatorship in 1979, the US has been at war on the Islamic Republic by other means, writes Stephen Lendman.

Stephen Lendman, born in 1934 in Boston, started writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient.

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