“President Trump went to war against Iran without explaining his strategy to the American people or the world”, the New York Times editorial board stated yesterday, under the headline “Trump Can’t Spin His Way Out of This War”.
“It now appears that he might not have had much of a strategy at all”, the lead paragraph adds.
The Times objects that, nearly three weeks into the war, Trump “has no apparent plan for bringing about the demise of the Iranian regime”; nor has he offered “credible ideas” for “the seizure of Iran’s nuclear materials”; nor has he planned for the “predictable side effect” of “a disruption of oil supplies that causes a price spike and impairs the global economy.”
“Almost daily,” the Times says, “he demonstrates why he cannot be trusted with the most consequential matters of government.”
The editors then go on to credit Trump for “some tactical successes” that they think are “important to acknowledge”.
Here, they repeat the same false pretexts cited by Trump for launching the war in the first place: Iran has been “sponsoring terrorism”, “oppressing its own people”, and “pursuing a nuclear program.”
I say those are false pretexts because they cannot possibly be among the true reasons Trump launched this war on Iran jointly with Israel.
As I detailed in my article “The US-Israeli War on Iran Is Illegal and Immoral”, it cannot possibly be true that the US is opposed to criminal violence because it is a habitual perpetrator of criminal violence on a scale incomparably greater than any violence Iran is accused of supporting.
The US government’s bipartisan support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza proves that the real issue has nothing to do with opposition to criminal violence, and the war on Iran itself is an act of aggression, “the supreme international crime”, as defined at Nuremberg.
It also cannot possibly be true that this war is about freeing the Iranian people from their own government. If the US government really cared about Iranians, for instance, it wouldn’t have imposed crippling sanctions designed to collectively punish the civilian population for their crime of living under a regime that the US views as an official enemy.
And the war also cannot possibly be about stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The US intelligence community has assessed since 2007 that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also emphasized that there is no evidence Iran has an active weapons program.
The lesson from Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 is also conveniently ignored. The pretext was that it was necessary to stop Saddam Hussein from developing nukes, but in reality, Iraq’s nuclear program had been operating compliantly under IAEA’s safeguards, and it was Israel’s bombing that caused Iraq to start seeking a nuclear weapons capability to prevent any further aggression by Israel.
Notably, the US, which supported Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s (including his war on Iran), joined other UN Security Council members in condemning Israel’s bombing of the Osirak reactor. Security Council Resolution 487 recognized the “inalienable sovereign right” under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for states to develop nuclear programs for civilian purposes, condemning Israel’s attack as “a serious threat to the entire safeguards regime” of the IAEA.
Also, Trump claimed to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program last June, when he joined Israel in launching strikes on several of its nuclear facilities. He said any suggestions to the contrary were “fake news”. So, if Iran’s nuclear program was already obliterated, clearly that cannot possibly have been the reason for the war launched jointly by the US and Israel on February 28!
Of course, the Times could argue that Trump was lying then, that Iran’s nuclear program survived “Operation Midnight Hammer”. But the specific wording of the New York Times’ praise for an ostensible “tactical” success is revealing.
The editors notably do not accuse Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons capability; instead, they accurately describe Iran’s sin as “pursuing a nuclear program.”
That is correct.
The policy under the George W. Bush administration had been that Iran could not enrich uranium at all, even though Iran’s right to do so for civilian purposes is explicitly recognized as “inalienable” under the NPT.
In 2015, under the Barack Obama administration, that policy was shifted with the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which imposed a very strict IAEA safeguards regime, requiring Iran to accept limitations well beyond the prohibitions on militarization of nuclear technology under the NPT.
Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed not to enrich uranium beyond the level of 3.67% and to strictly limit its stockpiles of low-enriched uranium, with excess materials being held by Russia. In exchange, sanctions against Iran would be eased.
Iran was complying with the agreement when, in May 2018, during his first term, Trump violated it by reimposing sanctions, resulting in Iran expanding its nuclear activities beyond the strict limitations of the JCPOA—but without engaging in any activities proscribed by the NPT itself.
Prior to launching “Operation Epic Fury” on February 28, the Trump administration was in negotiations with Iranian officials about a nuclear deal, with Oman’s foreign minister acting as mediator.
But instead of seeking a deal where Iran’s rights under the NPT were respected, with an IAEA safeguards arrangement ensuring non-diversion of nuclear materials for military purposes, Trump was demanding that Iran cease all uranium enrichment.
By demanding that Iran surrender its right to enrich uranium under an illegal threat of force and then launching his war while Iran was engaged in diplomacy, Trump proved to the world that the US government cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith.
We know that the claimed pretexts for war cannot possibly be the true reasons. Instead, this is just another instance of a longstanding neocon foreign policy agenda being pushed through by Trump.
The war is about US military and dollar hegemony. Iran’s true sin is disobedience, a willingness to defy Washington’s diktats and to operate independently of the US petrodollar system. Iran is also guilty of standing in the way of Israel’s aims to take over more Palestinian land and to expel or exterminate the land’s indigenous inhabitants.
But the New York Times will never explain the geopolitical truths about any US war to the American people. The newspaper dares not shatter Americans’ delusional belief that their government, while capable of making “mistakes”, is generally a benevolent force for good in the world, a shining beacon of light showering the planet with its blessings of democracy and civilization.
What is so telling about the New York Times’ editorial is how narrow its criticism is of Trump’s war. While praising the “tactical” aims as though justification for the use of force, it criticizes three “strategic problems”.
Trump should know, the Times complains, that air power alone couldn’t topple the Iranian government to implement regime change, and that only ground troops “can seize the instruments of state power and install a new leader.”
The Times also complains that there is no clear plan to seize Iran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium, with total obliviousness to how the illegal threats and use of armed force only heighten the risk of Iran pursuing a nuclear deterrent to any further US and Israeli aggression.
The third complaint is that Trump miscalculated “that Iran’s government would capitulate before it could close the strait or that the U.S. military could keep the strait open”, but instead Iran has succeeded in “throttling the traffic of ships in the Strait of Hormuz”, and consequently the price of oil has “jumped more than 40 percent.”
The New York Times, of course, served as the standard-bearer of US war propaganda during the run-up to the launch of the illegal war on Iraq on March 19, 2003. Its uncritical parroting of US government disinformation served to manufacture consent for the war by deluding people into the belief that Iraq possessed stockpiles of “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) and had active weapons programs, including efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability.
My book Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict includes numerous case studies of how the New York Times has served to manufacture consent for the longstanding US government policy of supporting Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, which include the crimes against humanity of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and now genocide.
The propaganda function of the Times is further revealed by the extreme narrowness of its criticisms of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Instead of properly educating Americans about the true reasons for the war, it endorses the same false pretexts cited by Trump himself.
If only Trump had done a better job of strategically planning and executing this war, then the Times could be more supportive.
The fact that the war violates the US Constitution and international law is of no consequence, as far as the Times is concerned.
The clear lesson is that the New York Times has absolutely no problem with lawlessness if it is the US government acting lawlessly, and as long as Washington’s criminal violence serves its intended purpose both tactically and strategically.
The good news is that, despite the best efforts of the criminal organization in Washington to propagandize, with complicity from even “liberal” mainstream outlets like the New York Times, only a quarter of Americans approve of Trump’s war on Iran.
The bad news is that at least a quarter of Americans refuse to learn from the lessons of history and gullibly fall for the same old war propaganda regurgitated with slight variations every time.
It is the responsibility of every American who truly believes in freedom, peace, and justice to stand up and speak out in opposition to the criminal violence of the lawless regime in Washington, DC.
