Author: Daniel Larison

From The American Conservative:

Joshua Landis and Steven Simon detail the cruel and destructive effects of U.S. sanctions on the people of Syria:

The Trump administration designed the sanctions it has now imposed on Syria to make reconstruction impossible. The sanctions target the construction, electricity, and oil sectors, which are essential to getting Syria back on its feet. Although the United States says it is “protecting” Syria’s oil fields in the northeast, it has not given the Syrian government access to repair them, and US sanctions prohibit any firm of any nationality from repairing them – unless the administration wishes to make an exception. Such an exception was recently made for a US firm to manage the oil fields, but oil leaks continue to drain into the Khabour and Euphrates Rivers. US sanctions not only punish people, who receive only an hour or two of electricity a day, but also poison their environment.

The sanctions even prevent non-U.S. aid organizations from delivering reconstruction assistance. Humanitarian exemptions are deliberately vague, as are the requirements that the Syrian government would have to meet in order to obtain sanctions relief. Such uncertainty is meant to deter aid suppliers and investors who might otherwise help Syria rebuild but who can’t be wholly confident that they are in the clear to do so. This chilling effect, known as overcompliance, is a rational response to the fear of inadvertent entanglement in complex legal issues that could destroy a nongovernmental organization or a firm.

Blocked from reconstructing their country and seeking external assistance, Syrians face “mass starvation or another mass exodus,” according to the World Food Program.

Current US sanctions on Syria are among the most extensive and sweeping on any country in the world. Like sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, they are meant to inflict pain on the entire population in order to punish them for the actions of governments they do not control. Crippling Syria’s ability to rebuild from the war will cause more suffering to a population that has already endured more than eight years of conflict. There is no discernible American interest that is served by “competing with Assad over who can hurt Syrian peasants more,” as Landis and Simon put it, but as of right now that is the policy that our government is pursuing. This policy is exacerbating a humanitarian crisis in Syria, and it threatens to trigger a new refugee crisis that will have consequences for all of Syria’s neighbors and for Europe. It is very destructive and needlessly destabilizing. There is nothing peaceful about waging economic war on entire nations.

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From The American Conservative:

The State Department attempted to spin the results of the Inspector General investigation into the bogus emergency that Pompeo declared to expedite arms sales to the Saudis and the UAE last year, but the full report included some damning details about Pompeo’s disregard for civilian life in Yemen:

The State Department did not fully consider the risk of civilian casualties when it approved more than $8 billion in arms sales to Middle Eastern countries last year, according to a redacted inspector general report released Tuesday.

An unredacted version of the report, obtained by POLITICO, also raised questions about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s assertions that an emergency situation existed, allowing him to greenlight the sales over congressional objections.

The risk to civilians from the weapons that the U.S. has been selling the Saudis and the UAE is the main reason why these arms sales have encountered such strong resistance from Congress. It is not surprising that Pompeo’s State Department did not weigh this risk seriously, because their priority has been to get the weapons to the Saudi coalition no matter what the coalition does with them. That is why Pompeo previously certified that the Saudi coalition was seeking to reduce harm to civilians when all of the evidence and the majority of his own officials said the opposite: he wanted to protect current and future arms sales at any cost. The purpose of abusing the emergency declaration last year was to avoid Congressional scrutiny, because it is undeniable that the Saudis and the UAE have been and would be using these weapons to commit war crimes against innocent people in Yemen. Because the Trump administration could not defend its indefensible Yemen policy, they sought to go around Congress by abusing this provision in the law governing arms exports.

It is significant that the IG report does not give an evaluation of Pompeo’s decision to declare an emergency, so the report does not and cannot exonerate Pompeo on the most important question. The Post reports:

Because the Arms Export Control Act does not define the word “emergency,” the report said, the IG did not evaluate whether Pompeo’s stated reason – aggression from Iran – constituted one. But in making the emergency declaration, it said, the State Department did not meet other requirements to “fully assess risks and implement mitigation measures to reduce civilian casualties and legal concerns associated with the transfer of” precision-guided munitions.

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From The American Conservative:

The New York Times reports on the resignation of Brian Hook, who will be replaced by none other than Elliott Abrams:

Mr. Hook will be succeeded by Elliott Abrams, a conservative foreign policy veteran and Iran hard-liner who is currently the State Department’s special representative for Venezuela.

As the administration’s special envoy, Hook had no success in gaining support from other governments for the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. His brief stint as a negotiator with our European allies yielded nothing, and when he was trying to negotiate with them Trump famously had no idea who he was. He mostly served as one of the administration’s leading propagandists. He was responsible for lies about Yemen, cringe-inducing video messages, promoting the administration’s weird fixation with Cyrus the Great, and embarrassing historical revisionism about the 1953 coup. When he wasn’t trying to bribe ships’ captains to steal Iranian cargo, he was insulting our intelligence with phony claims of wanting to normalize relations with Tehran. Last year he came under fire from the State Department’s Inspector General for his role in the mistreatment of Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, who was the target of political retaliation at the department on account of her support for the JCPOA and at least partly because of her Iranian heritage. Hook is described in the Times‘ report as a “survivor,” but they neglect to mention that the reason he has survived so long in the Trump administration is his cowardice.

Perhaps the most bizarre thing about the coverage of Hook·s resignation is that it is framed as somehow undermining the chances of diplomacy with Iran.

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From The American Conservative:

On Tuesday, there was a horrific explosion in the port of Beirut that ripped through the city and killed more than seventy people as well as injuring at least 4,000:

Lebanon’s health ministry said that at least 78 people had died and 4,000 suffered injuries in the explosions and fire that shook Beirut on Tuesday.

The numbers climbed steadily through the day, and with the wounded still streaming into hospitals and the search for missing people underway, they were likely to go higher still.

The blast appears to have been caused when a fire set off a huge store of ammonium nitrate that had been confiscated from a ship and kept at the port for the last six years. Such a huge quantity of explosive material was a disaster waiting to happen, and the citizens of Beirut have suffered a devastating blow as a result. The Lebanese prime minister has vowed that there will be accountability for those responsible for keeping this material there. Initial reports and video show that the city’s port has been wrecked, and it is not known at this time how long it will take to repair and resume operations there.

Lebanon was already suffering from a severe economic and financial crisis exacerbated by U.S. sanctions on Iran and Syria, and the country was also coping with a serious coronavirus outbreak. Lebanon’s hospitals were already under strain because of the pandemic, and now they are being overwhelmed by the huge number of people injured in the blast. The port explosion affected the entire city and was felt as far away as Cyprus. The damage from the blast was massive and far-reaching.

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From The American Conservative:

Trump’s nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, former Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, ran into an obstacle when the Senate Armed Services Committee abruptly canceled his confirmation hearing today. His past anti-Muslim and conspiratorial statements on Twitter and elsewhere have made him politically radioactive:

A U.S. Senate committee on Thursday canceled a confirmation hearing for the Pentagon’s top policy job of a former Army one-star general widely criticized for spouting conspiracy theories, making inflammatory statements about Muslims and suggesting that a former CIA director should suffer sexual humiliation in prison.

Retired Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, 60 years old, nominated by President Trump to be undersecretary of defense, was to face the Senate Armed Services Committee following a wave of criticism from retired generals, civil rights groups and others.

But Gen. Tata’s nomination lacked the votes to advance, said a senior Republican Senate aide.

“The administration should consider nominating people who are qualified,” the aide said.

Tata’s past statements have been dogging his nomination for months since they were first reported on by CNN. Tata has since deleted the tweets in question, but some of them have been preserved here. After several high-profile retired generals withdrew their endorsement of his nomination because of Tata’s statements, he has tried to do damage control and apologize for what he said, but opposition to his nomination has only grown.

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From The American Conservative:

Ali Hashem describes how U.S. “maximum pressure” on Iran is wrecking Lebanon and simultaneously making Lebanon more dependent on Iran:

The more the United States ratchets up its pressure on Lebanon, the more opportunities will open up for Iran to exert power and influence in the disintegrating state. This will not necessarily come via the Iranian government; influence could flow directly through Hezbollah, which has vowed not to allow Shiites in Lebanon to die of hunger. The United States’ maximum pressure strategy could therefore easily play into the hands of its avowed enemy.

The administration’s cruel and destructive Iran policy has wreaked havoc on the civilian population in Iran for the last two years, but its harmful effects on other countries in the region tend to get overlooked. When the U.S. wages relentless economic war against an entire country, every other country that is connected to the targeted state economically suffers. Lebanon has been hit particularly hard because Hezbollah has also been targeted as part of the coercive campaign. The effect on the Lebanese economy has been devastating:

As part of the U.S. government’s campaign of maximum pressure on Iran, and because of Hezbollah’s footprint, maximum economic pressure is being brought to bear on Lebanon. To say this has sent Lebanon into free fall is an understatement: Banks are empty of dollars, power cuts in the capital are widespread, businesses are closing their doors for lack of customers, and the dollar value of the national minimum wage has fallen from around $450 per month to $80 as of this writing. A government minister whose monthly salary a few months ago was around $8,500 today earns roughly $1,500. Much the same can be said of the country’s president, speaker, and prime minister – and they are the fortunate ones.

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