Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

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The US has bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. A commentator asked recently why the nuclear site at Fordo, one of the three sites along with Isfahan and Natanz, was buried so deep if it was not intended to produce a nuclear bomb. One response was that innocent Iran was worried that others would mistake its intent and think it was making a bomb when it was not, so to guard against that they buried it beyond reach.

I don’t see it. It’s a weak argument. It is not what Iran would do if it wanted to proved to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that its intentions were peaceful.

We don’t have to argue it though, because in early June, the Board of Governors of the IAEA said there were unresolved questions about undeclared nuclear material and locations.

And now the US has followed up on the softening that Israel carried out. And commentators are complaining that President Trump did not have congressional approval for the bombing. That’s not too good an argument if the intention is to show how Trump is a rogue president compared to those that preceded him.

Both Clinton and Obama authorised bombing without prior approval from the U.S. Congress. Clinton authorised a 78-day bombing campaign over Kosovo to stop the ethnic cleansing of Albanians by Serbians. Obama authorised airstrikes to enforce a no-fly zone during the Libyan civil war and in Syria and Iraq during the campaign against ISIS.

Follow the money. And there’s a lot of it involved. In 2020 in the article Iran Nuclear Deal Dispute Resolution I wrote:

“A year and a half ago everyone knew that Iran was in breach of the nuclear deal. So why only now have the UK, France, and Germany triggered the Iran Nuclear deal dispute resolution process?”

And I laid out that it has to do with money invested in Iran by Europe.

Before that, in 2018 in an article Europe And The Iran Nuclear Agreement I wrote:

“Germany, France, and the UK have a lot invested in Iran – a lot of ongoing projects for the supply of major infrastructure. You don’t have to wonder therefore about the opposition of Europe to the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement. First of all, it cannot have come as a great surprise bearing in mind what Trump said about Iran in his Riyadh speech.”

And this his what Trump said in Riyadh in 2017. He made it crystal clear. And remember not just what he said but where he said it – not in Washington but in Saudi Arabia. Here is one short paragraph from his speech.

From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds arms and trains terrorists, militias, and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region. For decades, Iran has fuelled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror. It is a government that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing the destruction of Israel, death to America, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this very room.

The Why

We see the actions that countries take and we approve or complain on moral grounds. From the invasion of Iraq to the Syrian Civil War we know that underneath it all it is about oil and commerce and who gets to be top dog. It’s just a question of under which top dog you would prefer to live your life, because there will be a top dog, by accident or design.

Jodl and Keitel: Two Surrenders In May 1945

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The surrender by German forces to the Allies happened twice. Once in Reims by General Jodl and once in Berlin by General Keitel.

On May 7, 1945, General Alfred Jodl signed Germany’s unconditional surrender at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in Reims, France. This act was intended to end hostilities on all fronts. However, the Soviet Union objected to the surrender being signed in the Western theatre of war without their prominent involvement. The only Russian signatory at Reims was General Ivan Susloparov, who acted as the soviet representative for the signing ceremony.

Further, the text of the surrender in Reims did not conform to the wording which was previously agreed by the Americans, British and Soviets. This was an error by General Smith who forgot that the approved document of surrender was filed away in his personal top-secret cabinet.

Therefore, he sent three officers to prepare a new surrender document from miscellaneous reference material.

When the error came to light after the signing, the Western Allies had no choice but to agree that the act of surrender signed in Reims should be considered “a preliminary protocol of surrender” and another surrender ceremony should take place in Berlin.

Consequently, a second surrender ceremony was held in Berlin on May 8, where Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed the definitive surrender document in the presence of Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov and representatives from the Western Allies.

What Happened to Jodl and Keitel

Each of the four Allied powers – United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and France – were represented at an International Military Tribunal by a judge, a alternate judge, and a team of prosecutors and staff where Jodl and Keitel, among others were, indicted and convicted for the crimes of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Both Jodl and Keitel were hanged at Nuremberg.

Alfred Jodl in Paris and Wilhelm Keitel in Berlin for the vanquished, were ‘good’ enough for the purpose of signing the surrender documents, but they were not ‘good’ enough to avoid being indicted, convicted, and hanged after the war.

Some of the facts that led to their conviction came out after the war, but some described in the indictment were known from the start. So it seems strange to me that the vanquished were represented at the signing of the surrender by Generals who were later hanged for being perpetrators of the war.

Perhaps from the Allied point of view they really didn’t care who signed the surrender for and on behalf of the Germans, as long as the Germans themselves accepted it as a sign to put down their weapons. Perhaps that is the way to look at it.

Footnote

It turned out that General Susloparov was trying to contact his superiors to determine whether he should sign the surrender document in Reims but was overtaken by events when the time for the signing arrived. What was he to do? At the same time his superiors were trying to contact him to tell him not to sign. In the event, he survived the war and worked in the Military Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, dying in 1974.

Slavery West and East

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There is a movement in the UK nowadays to expose the slave-owning history of prominent people and businesses and institutions that sent slaves to the Americas. What is not acknowledged is the similar or greater slave-owning history that sent slaves not west, but north and east.

Slavery from Sub-Saharan Africa goes back millennia. Until the start of the Arab/Islamic slave trade in the 7th century of the Common Era it was localised and slaves were typically captives in war, criminals, or those in debt.

As Islam expanded in the 7th century, Arab traders began trafficking Africans north across the Sahara, and eastwards.

Slaves transported eastward were brought from the interior of Africa (especially Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Congo), and trafficked over the Indian Ocean to the Middle East, India, Persia, Indonesia, and China, and in large numbers.

The estimates of slaves transported on these routes range from 10–18 million people.

The transatlantic Slave Trade ran for a much shorter period, from the 15th to the 19th century. The Portuguese began it, and it was later dominated by British, French, Dutch, and Spanish traders. Over 12 million Africans were captured through raids, wars, or sold by other Africans and forcibly taken across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas from major slave-trading ports in Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, and Angola.

The wide range of the estimates of the numbers enslaved to northern and eastern destinations reflects that fact that many of the Arab-led slave trades had no documentation, unlike the Transatlantic slave trade run by Europeans who kept detailed shipping records.

The wide range of estimates for the northern and eastern trade also reflects the centuries-long time scale over which the trade occurred.

And a third reason is the lack of will to describe it, unlike the deep contemporary analyses in the West, beginning after the legal abolition of slavery.

All in all though, and this is a surprise to some, the northern and eastward slave trade was the equal to and likely more in numbers of slaves than the Transatlantic trade.

Count Your Blessings

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Who was the first person to say count your blessings? It must have been a long time ago. And over the years, like with all things, the meaning gets trampled down and overlooked.

So let’s start again and spend time counting them, looking at them, seeing what they are. It may be many people have similar blessings but we know that not everybody is blessed with the same. And what is a blessing? What’s implied in the word blessing is that whatever one is blessed with – that blessing comes from outside.

If we could control everything then we could say it’s not a blessing; it’s my characteristic and I started it and I begat it and I control it and I decide whether it exists or it doesn’t exist

And we know this isn’t true.

We have a choice to say we are not victims but rather we are recipients. We are the receivers and if we receive we must receive from outside and where the outside is, well that’s a different question and we don’t have to think about it now.

But we can recognise a blessing is what you are blessed with and we can take a moment to stand still and feel the outside; we can all do that.