U.S. sanctions, threats against Iran are part of a long war

Source: Press TV

Bill Dores, a writer for Struggle-La Lucha and longtime antiwar activist, said in an interview with Press TV on Tuesday that “U.S. sanctions and war threats against Iran are part of a long war.”

A U.S. senator has vehemently denounced former U.S. president Donald Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran, warning that the Iran hawks, who used to champion the wrong approach, are now trying to prevent his successor Joe Biden from opting out of it.

“Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign proved a catastrophic failure,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) tweeted on Monday.

“It’s important to understand the actual motivation for Washington’s long hate campaign against Iran. It is not really about nuclear power or military capability,” Dores told Press TV.

“When the tyrant Shah ruled Iran — before the Islamic Revolution — the country was basically a U.S. colony. U.S. companies sold Shah massive quantities of weapons and even had contracts to build nuclear power plants there, just as they supply unending quantities of weapons to the racist state of Israel today. In return the Shah dutifully parked Iran’s oil revenues in U.S. banks,” he stated.

“U.S. sanctions and war threats against Iran are part of a long war the United States has been waging since the first Bush administration to restore the monopoly U.S. companies once had on the world’s oil reserves, energy reserves. That war cannot be won. This is not 1953,” the analyst noted.

“There is a struggle going on now in Washington over what course to pursue. Senator Murphy speaks for those who fear Europe and the rest of the world will go ahead and work with Iran on their own, and that U.S. companies will be shut out, will be the losers. But there are powerful forces who want to not only continue the sanctions, but escalate to war,” he said.

“Today is the world day of action against the war in Yemen, the U.S.-Saudi genocidal war in Yemen. President Biden promised he would put an end to that war or put an end to U.S. participation. So far, that hasn’t been done. He also promised he would send out, the day after taking office, stimulus checks that many desperate people need. That hasn’t happened yet,” he said.

“Right now, in my own state in New York, they have cut off vaccines. They say there are not enough vaccines in New York State. The rollout has been a disaster. Meanwhile, they have endless money for war fleets in the Persian Gulf, in the Mediterranean, to arm Israel and to keep U.S.  troops in Iraq and Syria,” he said.

“We need a mass movement here to tilt the scale,  to demand an end to sanctions against Iran, against Venezuela, against Cuba, Zimbabwe  and other countries. We need money for jobs and housing, for medical care, not for war,” he noted.

“We need to end the sanctions. We need to bring all those ships and troops and planes home. And that’s going to take a mass movement to achieve that. The interests of the majority of people of this country are the same as that of the people of Iran, for peace and working together, not endless war, either economic or military,” the analyst concluded.