Author: Daniel Larison

Gil Barndollar and Sam Long do an excellent job of making the case against the noxious U.S.-Saudi relationship:

These attacks on individuals, however, paled in comparison to the Kingdom’s military misjudgments. The war in Yemen, pushed by Mohammed bin Salman when he became Minister of Defense in 2015, was expected to be a quick triumph. Instead it has become the worst humanitarian disaster on earth. American-made missiles and bombs have killed thousands of civilians due to some combination of Saudi carelessness, incompetence, and malice. The campaign has also been an embarrassment for Saudi Arabia’s paper tiger military, outfought by Yemen’s Houthi militia and trapped in an unwinnable war – a war backstopped by the support of both the Obama and Trump administrations.

These decisions ultimately damage the United States, rightly seen as Saudi Arabia’s unblinking protector. Though Congress took belated steps to end the Saudi campaign in Yemen, most Americans could and did ignore Saudi Arabia’s recent actions in its own neighborhood. But as job losses mount, ordinary Americans will finally face the consequences of our toxic relationship with the Saudi monarchy.

The U.S. has worked with some very nasty authoritarian states over the decades, sometimes out of genuine necessity in WWII and sometimes because it was deemed expedient for the sake of a larger policy goal. The US has usually come to regret the compromises that it has made by cooperating with these governments, and the benefits from these relationships have usually been few and limited. The U.S.-Saudi relationship serves no such purpose now if it ever did, and the US gets no benefits from it at all. Now there are only costs and risks, and they continue to increase as the reckless Mohammed bin Salman consolidates his hold on power.

Continue reading “Why the US Should Scrap the Useless, Noxious Saudi Relationship”

Originally appeared at The American Conservative.

Jackson Diehl comments on Mike Pompeo’s terrible performance during the coronavirus crisis:

Has any secretary of state been worse in an emergency? It’s impossible to think of a more feckless performance since World War II. Pompeo’s dreadful week followed a month in which he has been all but invisible on the coronavirus issue, apart from one appearance at Trump’s daily press conference-cum-reality show.

While more responsible leaders have struggled to contain the pandemic, Pompeo has pursued pet causes as if nothing else were happening. That’s especially true of the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which he, more than any other official, has promoted.

Pompeo was doing an abysmal job as Secretary of State in better times, so it comes as no surprise that he is doing even worse now that more is expected of him. His tenure has been defined by issuing lots of unrealistic ultimatums and flinging lots of undiplomatic insults. Neither of those is useful or constructive, especially in an emergency like this one. Pompeo’s main contribution to the administration’s response to the outbreak has been to troll Iran and China in public in a desperate bid to distract attention from the president’s bungling. Behind the scenes, he has been one of the leading officials agitating for military escalation in Iraq. In the ghoulish opposition to sanctions relief for the Iranian people, Pompeo has been the chief ghoul.

Continue reading “A Failed Secretary of State”

Originally appeared at The American Conservative.

The Wall Street Journal predictably rejects sanctions relief for Iran, but it is worth noting that they have to tell a lot of lies to make their argument:

Easing sanctions would shore up the regime’s shaky position without providing relief to the Iranian people. Tehran has money for medicine if it cuts spending on missiles, nuclear-weapons development and military adventurism. Diverting billions from the mullahs’ violent imperial project is the best way to relieve suffering in Iran and the broader Middle East.

Iran is not engaged in “nuclear-weapons development” and hasn’t been for more than a decade and a half, so we can dismiss that as the utter nonsense that it is. The rest of the editorial is just as divorced from reality. The one thing that the editorial gets right is when it says that the “sanctions campaign has starved the government of hundreds of billions of dollars.” Starving the government of all that revenue means that it has fewer resources to combat the current outbreak. Unlike non-sanctioned governments, Iran’s government cannot afford to undertake the costly measures needed to safeguard public health. Mahsa Rouhi and Narges Bajoghli explain this in their recent op-ed:

At the same time, the American sanctions and falling oil prices have severely weakened the Iranian economy. An impoverished Iran needs financial and medical resources – from food and medicine to cash transfers – to carry out an effective nationwide quarantine and other measures to curb the outbreak.

Iran can’t afford to halt its economy and enforce a complete lockdown. Tehran has sought to shore up the financial security of its poorest families through cash transfers over the past week but faces a huge budget deficit. Pirouz Hanachi, the mayor of Tehran, explained that a quarantine was nearly impossible to enforce because the government would be unable to financially support people unable to work.

Hard-liners in the U.S. take great pleasure in the economic damage and dislocation that their sanctions have caused, but as soon as someone tries to hold them accountable for inflicting misery and death on Iranians they suddenly start pretending that sanctions are harmless and irrelevant to conditions inside Iran. They are quick to declare that “maximum pressure” is “working” because of the havoc that sanctions wreak on Iran’s finances, but they don’t want to be held responsible when that havoc results in the preventable deaths of innocents. It is indisputable that US sanctions block Iranians from making transactions with the rest of the world because financial institutions refuse to do business with them, and that prevents them from being able to obtain vital medicine and medical equipment. Sanctions are collective punishment that hurt the weakest and most vulnerable people in Iran, but sanctions advocates don’t want to own the consequences of the economic war that they fanatically defend.

Continue reading “The Ghoulish Opposition to Sanctions Relief for Iran”

Originally appeared at The American Conservative.

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the start of the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. The war has not ended, and the humanitarian crisis created by the war has only grown worse over time. I have to apologize to my readers and to the people of Yemen, because I have not been covering the story in Yemen as regularly as I should have. There have certainly been many other important stories in the first three months of this year, but that is no excuse for ignoring what remains the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Our government’s role in creating that crisis and prolonging the misery of the people of Yemen cannot be forgotten. Despite the considerable efforts of many activists and members of Congress, illegal U.S. involvement in this war has continued into a new decade. The fault for that lies squarely with the president, who has vetoed Congressional resolutions that would end the shameful US role in wrecking and starving a country whose people have done nothing to us.

Continue reading “Five Years of the US-Backed War on Yemen”

Originally appeared at The American Conservative.

Barbara Slavin comments on the dire situation in Iran that has been made worse by U.S. economic warfare:

Iranian animosity toward the US is understandable, given the Trump administration’s decision to quit the 2015 Iran nuclear deal despite Tehran being in compliance with it and to impose crushing sanctions. But Iran, which is also seeking emergency relief from the International Monetary Fund, also needs the US to not block a requested $5 billion dollar loan.

Now would be a great time for some COVID-19 related diplomacy.

The US has been inflicting cruel collective punishment on the Iranian people for years, and if ever there were a time to stop that punishment and provide humanitarian relief it would be now. Neither Iran nor the US can afford further escalation. Continuing to wage an economic war on a country while it is in the throes of the same global pandemic that threatens us is vicious.

Continue reading “End the Economic Wars To Save Lives”

Originally appeared at The American Conservative.

U.S. forces in Iraq continues to come under fire with another rocket attack Saturday that targeted the same base that was hit earlier in the week. Iraqi officials are insisting that our troops withdraw from the country:

The US retaliation prompted protest from the Iraqi government, which called it a “violation of national sovereignty.” Iraqi officials said the attack killed five members of local security forces.

The government on Saturday repeated its appeal against unilateral US military action targeting actors in Iraq.

“We also refuse that the American forces or others take any action without the approval of the Iraqi government and the commander in chief of the armed forces, as they did on the morning of 3/13/2020,” it said. “In doing so, it does not limit these actions, but rather nurtures them, weakens the Iraqi state’s ability to provide its own security, and expects more losses for Iraqis. This necessitates the speedy implementation of the parliament’s decision on the issue of the coalition’s withdrawal.”

Continue reading “Withdraw From Iraq Now”