On Monday, May 21st, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out a dozen demands upon Iran’s Government — demands which insult the sovereignty of Iran and dictate terms to its Government, as if the U.S. Government weren’t the one that routinely invades and perpetrates coups overthrowing other governments, so that the peoples of the world say that the U.S. Government (not Iran) is overwhelmingly “the world’s biggest threat to peace.”
We demand from Iran:
First, Iran must declare to the IAEA a full account of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear program, and permanently and verifiably abandon such work in perpetuity. [Israel and the U.S. get to keep our nukes but Iran must not keep theirs, and must instead do what these two rabidly hostile bully-Governments, Israel & U.S., say.]
Second, Iran must stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing. This includes closing its heavy water reactor. [Maybe Iran will do that when Israel and U.S. stop threatening Iran, and when Israel stops having nukes while Iran doesn’t.]
Third, Iran must also provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country. [The latest IAEA report on Iran actually says, “Since 16 January 2016 (JCPOA Implementation Day), the Agency has verified and monitored Iran’s implementation of its nuclear-related commitments.” Iran fulfills its obligations under the treaty, but now the U.S. does not (and insists that Europe must not).]
[Fourth,] Iran must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further launching or development of nuclear-capable missile systems. [Iran will do that when Israel and U.S. do.]
[Fifth,] Iran must release all U.S. citizens, as well as citizens of our partners and allies, each of them detained on spurious charges. [The U.S. dictates that the legal cases against those charged be terminated, and this demand assures that those cases will be fully prosecuted; so, Pompeo is hardly helping anyone by this arrogance.]
[Sixth,] Iran must end support to Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hizballah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. [All Islamic terrorism except against Israel comes from the Sunni-run nations that are allies of the U.S. against Shia-run Iran and that finance Al Qaeda and other such terrorist groups, all of which are Sunni and rabidly anti-Shia — and Iran is the leading Shia nation.]
[Seventh,] Iran must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi Government and permit the disarming, demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias. [ America overthrew Iraq’s Government in 2003 and now accuses Iran of violating “the sovereignty of the Iraqi Government.” Is Pompeo rehearsing for a role as Satan in some stupid play?]
[Eighth,] Iran must also end its military support for the Houthi militia and work towards a peaceful political settlement in Yemen. [The U.S., and two of its Sharia-law Sunni royal allies, Saudi Arabia and UAE, are bombing the hell out of and starving Yemen, and demand that Houthis and other Shia in Yemen stop their resisting that.]
[Ninth,] Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of Syria. [Iran might consider doing that after the U.S. and its fundamentalist-Sunni allies stop their invasion-occupation of sovereign Syrian territory.]
[Tenth,] Iran, too, must end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the region, and cease harboring senior al-Qaida leaders. [Pompeo lies: the Taliban are fundamentalist Sunnis who were trained and armed by Saudi Arabia and the United States and therefore are enemies of Iran; he’s like the wife-beater who demands that someone who isn’t wife-beating must cease wife-beating.]
[Eleventh,] Iran, too, must end the IRG Qods Force’s support for terrorists and militant partners around the world. [The Quds Force were created during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war in order to protect Iranians against Saddam Hussein’s invasions when Saddam was supported by the U.S. Government in order to re-conquer Iran in 1980. Iran will not take orders from the nation, America, that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Government in 1953, and that then backed Saddam’s attempt to reconquer Iran in the 1980s. The U.S. Government lies constantly about Iran.]
[Twelfth,] And too, Iran must end its threatening behavior against its neighbors – many of whom are U.S. allies. This certainly includes its threats to destroy Israel, and its firing of missiles into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It also includes threats to international shipping and destructive – and destructive cyberattacks. [These are just more lies and distortions.]
That list is pretty long, but if you take a look at it, these are 12 very basic requirements. The length of the list is simply a scope of the malign behavior of Iran. We didn’t create the list, they did.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
