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Azadeh,
a graduate law student from Tehran University, on the sidelines of Iran’s Third
Annual Hollywoodis (www.hollywoodism.orghttp) reminded her interlocutors, of
the obvious damming admissions last week by two US politicians:
“It
would be a defense lawyer’s worst nightmare wouldn’t it? I mean to have one’s
clients, in this case the Vice-President of the United States and the outgoing
Secretary of state confess so publicly to serial international crimes against a
civilian population?”
The
confessions and the crimes, she correctly enumerated to her audience, were
those admitted to by US Vice-President Joe Biden and outgoing Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton this past week.
Both
of the US officials, in discussing US relations with the Islamic Republic,
openly admitted that the US-led sanctions against Iran (and Syria) are
politically motivated and constitute a “soft-war” against the nearly 80 million
people of Iran (23 million people in Syria) in order to achieve regime change.
Mrs.
Clinton, was the first of the dynamic duo to be heard from. She acknowledged
that the harsh US sanctions were intended to target and send the people of Iran
a message. “So we hope that the Iranian people will make known their concerns…
so my message to Iranians is do something about this.”
Some
listening concluded she meant food riots and inflation riots to overthrow the
Iranian government. An Australian Broadcasting Company interviewer asked
Clinton on January 31 of last year: “If you have issues with the government of
Iran, why destroy the Iranian people with the current sanctions in place? It’s
very difficult to find certain medicines in Iran. Where is your sense of
humanity?”
What
the Clinton interrogator had in mind, she explained later, were the US-led
sanctions reducing Iran’s GDP growth (-1.1% GDP) resulting in an inflation of
21.0% that is being felt mostly by the civilian population. As well as periodic
food shortages in the supermarkets of such staples such as rice, there are
price rises on everything.
For
example, per page printing for students is up as much as 400% and the cost of a
used car up 300%. In general, supermarket items have risen 100 to 300 percent
or higher over the past twenty-four months and, devastating for many, certain
lifesaving medicines are no longer available.
Clinton:
“Well, first, let me say on the medicine and on food and other necessities,
there are no sanctions.” This statement is utter nonsense and Mrs. Clinton
knows it.
The
targeting process by the US Treasury Department is well entrenched in
Washington. When dear reader is next in Washington, DC, perhaps on a tour bus
riding down NW Pennsylvania Avenue following a visit to the US Capitol, consider
getting off the bus at 15th and Pennsylvania at the US Department of the
Treasury. Walk around the main building and you will see an Annex
building.
This building, as Clinton knows well, and like Biden, has visited more than
once, houses the Office of Financial Assets Control (OFAC).
The
well-funded agency’s work includes precisely targeting “food and medicines and
other necessities” in order to force the civilian population of Iran to achieve
regime change.
For
more than two hundred years, since the War of 1812, when OFAC was founded to
sanction the British, the office has become expert at imposing sanctions and it
has done so more than 2000 times. OFAC currently uses a large team of
specialists and computers to think-up, design, test, and send to AIPAC and
certain pro-Zionist officials and members of congress their work-product topped
off by recommendations.
OFAC
and its Treasury Department associates have had a hand in virtually every US
sanction applied to Iran since President Jimmy Carter issued Executive Order
12170 in November 1979 freezing about $12 billion in Iranian assets, including
bank deposits, gold and other properties.
From
the State Sponsor of Terrorism Designation Act in 1979 to the Syria
Accountability Act of 2004, more than a dozen Presidential Executive Orders
including the 2011-2012 Executive orders which froze the US property of
high-rankling Syrian and Iranian officials and more broadly E.O. 13582 which
froze all governmental assets of the Syrian government and prohibited Americans
from doing business with the Syrian government and banned all US import of
Syrian petroleum products.
What
OFAC does with its data base is science not art. It can calculate quite
precisely the economic effect on the civilian population of a single action
designating one company, bank, government entity or infrastructure system of a
country. OFAC, on behalf of its government, electronically wages a cold war
against its civilian targets.
This
week OFAC and the Treasury Department blacklisted Iran’s state broadcasting
authority, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, responsible for broadcast
policy in Iran and overseas production at Iranian television and radio
channels, potentially limiting viewing
and listening opportunities for Iran’s civilian population. Its director,
Ezzatollah Zarghami, was included in the action.
Additionally
sanctioned are Iran’s Internet-policing agencies and a major electronics
producer. David S. Cohen, the pro-Zionist Treasury undersecretary for terrorism
and financial intelligence, who oversees the OFAC sanctions effort, reportedly
following meetings with Israeli officials, said last week’s actions were meant
to “tighten the screws and intensify the economic pressure against the Iranian
regime.”
In
reality, the sanctions target the civilian population and the “Iranian regime”
won’t be much affected. The same applies to Syria. Despite the public relations
language that “food and medicine are exempted from the brutal US-led sancitons,
as OFAC well knows, the reality is something else. They know well the chilling
effects of the sanctions on international suppliers of medicines and food
stuffs with respect to a targeted country.
The
US Treasury department has thousands of gigabytes of data confirming that the
boards of directors of international business do not, and will not allow their
companies to risk millions of dollars in profits by technically violating any
of the thousands of details in the sanctions — many of which are subject to
interpretation — for the sake of doing business with Iran or Syria.
This
is why there are severe shortages of medicines and certain foodstuffs in these
sanctioned countries and to state otherwise is Orwellian News-Speak.
OFAC
does not operate in a vacuum. It works closely with other US agencies including
the 16 intelligence agencies that together make up the UN Intelligence
Community. Together they have applied sanctions of great breadth and severity
against the civilian populations of Syria and Iran.
These
sanctions have been bolstered on occasion by several direct and/or
green-lighted Israeli assassinations and cyber-assaults, hoping to foment civil
unrest to achieve regime change and other political goals.
A
few days after Mrs. Clinton’s somewhat inadvertent confession that the US
government intentionally targets the civilian population of Iran, Vice
President Joe Biden chimed in on the 4th of February that the US was ready to
hold direct negotiations with Iran but added the caveat, “We have also made
clear that Iran’s leaders need not sentence their people to economic
deprivation,” acknowledging as did Hillary that the US sanctions are intended
to target and harm the Iranian and Syrian people.
A
senior Obama administration official described the latest step as “a
significant turning of the screw,” meaning that the people of Iran face a
“stark choice” between bowing to US demands and reviving their oil revenue, the
country’s economic lifeblood or more and more sanctions will follow until they
do.
This
targeting of Iran’s and Syria’s civilian population by US-led sanctions is a
massive violation of the principles, standards and rules of international law
and their most fundamental underpinnings which is the protection of civilians.
Some
examples:
The
1977 Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibit any measure
that has the effect of depriving a civilian population of objects indispensable
to its survival. Article 70 of Protocol I mandates relief operations to aid a
civilian population that is “not adequately provided” with supplies and Article
18 of Protocol II requires relief operations for a civilian population that
suffers “undue hardship owing to a lack of supplies essential for its survival,
such as foodstuffs and medical supplies.”
Prohibition
on Starvation as a Method of Warfare
•
Under international humanitarian law, civilians enjoy a right to humanitarian
assistance during armed conflicts.
•
Art. 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention obligates states to facilitate the free
passage and distribution of relief goods including medicines, foodstuffs,
clothing and tonics intended for children under 15, expectant mothers, and
maternity cases.
•
Art. 70 of Additional Protocol I prohibits interfering with delivery of relief
goods to all members of the civilian population.
•
US-led sanctions are prohibited by the principle of proportionality found in
Arts. 51 and 57 of Additional Protocol I.
•
Under the terms of Art. 3 common to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, humanitarian
and relief actions must be taken. Pursuant to Art. 18(2) of Additional Protocol
II, relief societies must be allowed to offer their services to provide
humanitarian relief.
•
The US-led sanctions violate the Rule of Distinction between civilians and
combatants.
The
Right to life
The
US-led sanctions violate the right to life incorporated in numerous
international human rights instruments including Art. 6 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966; Art. 2 of the European Convention
for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 1950; and Art. 4
of the African Charter of Human Rights, 1981.
The
Rights of the Child
One
of the groups most vulnerable to US-led sanctions in Syria and Iran are
children. The rights of children are laid down in the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child, 1989, which currently stands as the most widely
ratified international agreement.
Most
relevant in the context of the US-led sanctions are Arts. 6 and 24 of the
Convention, according to which every child has the inherent right to life and
the right to the highest attainable standard of health and access to medical
services.
If
“terrorism” means, as the United States government defines it as the targeting
of civilians in order to induce political change from their government, what is
it called when the American government itself applies intense economic
suffering on a civilian population, causing malnutrition, illnesses, starvation
and death in order to induce regime change?
The
US-led sanctions against Iran and Syria are illegal, inhumane, ineffective,
immoral and outrageous. They must be resisted every day by every person of good
will, everywhere, until they are withdrawn.
