Peace for What?
There have been three major developments in the conflict in West Asia at this time of my writing this in mid-afternoon of California time on Monday, June 23: (1) most recently, as of two hours ago, Trump has claimed there is a ceasefire between Iran and Israel - there is no sure confirmation to my knowledge of this from either Israel or Iran; (2) in the evening of Sunday June 22nd (local time), Iran struck a US base in Qatar; and (3) there has been a meeting in Moscow early on Monday June 23rd of Iranian foreign minister Araghchi with Russisan President Putin. I should also note there have been a number of attacks on US bases in Iraq by militia sympathetic to Iran.
I will start with the attack on the US base, guided by the latest available report from Al Jazeera, the international news station headquartered in Qatar and largely funded by the Qatari government.
Attack on Al Udeid
Al Jazeera says that the attack was against “United States forces stationed at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar,” in retaliation for yesterday’s US attacks on three Iranian sites associated with its nuclear enrichment and centrifuges at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
The Iranian attack on Al Udeid has been confirmed by Iran’s IRGC. Consecutive flares, coupled with loud explosions, were seen in Qatar’s capital, Doha, and other parts of the country. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar serves as the command centre of the US Air Force and is the largest strategic asset of the American army in West Asia (hosting 10,000 US troops on its 60-acre location southwest of Doha. The base houses the Qatar Emiri Air Force, the US Air Force, the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force and other foreign forces.
Tehran went out of its way to stress that the attack was not intended as an act of hostility to the country of Qatar.
The number of missiles fired varies from source to source, with Qatar putting the number of missiles as high as 19, but saying that only one missile has actually hitd the base, and that there had been no casualties. Trump put it at 14 fired, and 13 shot down.
US President Trump called the Iranian response “weak.” The word “symbolic” may be far more appropriate given that Iran knew the base had been evacuated, Iran provided early warning, and Iran claims that the number of missiles fired was intended to be a nominal equivalent in some way to the US attacks on Iran the day before. This notion of proportionality seems inappropriate on the face of it, given that the US attacks did actually cause significant and expensive damage even if, as Iran and many others say, it is unlikely that the US attacks have actually destroyed Iran’s nuclear program, that Iran has many other nuclear facilities, and that Iran almost certainly retains its stocks of enriched uranium.
Araghchi-Putin Meeting
We don’t know the substance of the meeting, but published comments include a strong condemnation by Putin of the US attacks on Iran ‘s nuclear facilities which he described as unprovoked, unfounded and unjustified aggression, and a promise of Russian support for Iran although many commentators describe Russia’s response as luke-warm and lacking in real substance. We shall see.
Perhaps of rather greater interest was a comment by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to the effect that a number of countries (doubtless including Pakistan and North Korea) had offered to provide Iran with nuclear warheads. According to the New York Times, Putin told Araghchi that he had spoken with President Trump and with the leaders of Israel, the UAE, and Iraq. Putin, says the NYT, refrained from “directly calling out” the US or Israel.
Trump’s Ceasefire Claim
U.S. President Donald Trump says Israel and Iran have agreed to a “complete and total ceasefire” to be phased in over 24 hours, set to begin in about six hours for Iran and in twelve hours for Israel, with a complete and total ceasefire in 24 hours. In short, a garbled and inexplicable communication that seems premised on some calculation as to how soon each side can terminate ongoing operations (there are ongoing strikes by Israel on Iran and, according to Israeli sources, less effective attempted strikes by Iran on Israel).
The relationship between the concepts of ceasefire, peace and settlement remain very much in the air.
A Reuters report claims that an Iranian official confirmed that Tehran had agreed to a ceasefire, but that there was no immediate comment yet from Israel. Trump’s annoucement came within a day of his further dividing his MAGA base with claims that a regime change was very much in Iran’s interests, highlighting, of course, the real purpose of Israel’s initial attack on June 13th and US support for Israel’s aggression namely, to instal a new regime in Iran that will be more docile in the face of US global hegemonic and Israeli regional hegemonic aspirations.
One really has to ask, if Trump’s claims of a ceasefire have any substance, whether this is the result of his own efforts - which seems to me highly doubtful - or the result of something that Russia or China in collaboration with Iran and with the likely collapse of Israel in the forseeable future once its missiles run out in a few days -have made happen and for which Trump is being allowed to take the credit.
Takeaways
It is much too soon to be certain about anything concerning this latest development.
(1) What is certain is that Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran because Israel does not like the fact that Iran is exercising its international right under the terms of non-proliferation treaty to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. All major responsible sources agree that Israel was justifying its attack on Iran on the false pretext that Iran was very close to developing a nuclear weapon, about which there is not a shred of decent evidence.
(2) This war crime was aided and abetted, directly, by the US and in particular by the US President, without the consent of Congress, also a crime.
(3) The numbers of murdered Iranians varies between 400 and 900, with over 3,000 injured and 40,000 displaced, according to the Red Crescent.
(4) While this tragedy, for which the US and Israel are wholly responsible, was playing out, the even greater tragedy of the daily, random murder at the hands of the IDF and the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, of dozens or more starving Palestinians queueing for food was continuing to unfold on the cusp of the horrific and appalling catastrophe that awaits up to two million Palestinian people who, deprived of food, medical help, shelter, communication, electricity are being starved, bombed, and shot by Israel, the US its fully cognizant and enabling partner and the acknowledged funder of the program of genocide.
(5) The Israeli attack on Iran has fully exposed the duplicity of the IAEA as a neocon penetrated tool of the Washington war machine, with the cooperation of the major European powers. This was already clear when the board of the IAEA on the basis of wholly insufficient proof declared that Iran was out of complicance with the IAEA, providing a false pretext for the Israeli attack. Iran has published documents that it says show that IAEA chief Rafael Grossi “enjoys a close, clandestine relationship with Israelik officials and has frequently acted upon their orders.”
The IAEA is an autonomous international organization within the United Nations system. It has for many years enjoyed extensive access to Iranian nuclear facilities and is now believed to have passed on its information to Israel. It has joined the ranks of sister organizations such as the OPCW (chemical weapons), OSCE (ceasefire observers), for the decline in credibility of international regulatory agencies operating within a US-dominated global system. We should not expect to hear UN Secretary General Guterres weigh in on the matter any time soon.
(6) The crisis has raised worrying doubts as to the capacity for Global South leadership of both Russia and China on issues that extend beyond their immediate national interests.
(7) This episode has also, yet again, underlined the fecklessness of the US political system in the face of a drive towards domestic autocracy, robbing Congressional legislators of even the imagination to know how to seriously exercise their responsibility to weigh and determine matters of war and peace democratically.
(8) Further, in allowing Israel and the US President to attack the nuclear facilities of a sovereign nation, these layabout legislators have connived in the final dismantling of the global nuclear security architecture, opening the floodgates for the expenditure of untold trillions of dollars of citizens’ wealth around the world on an insane nuclear arms race on land, sea, air and space adding to the near certainty in the forseeable future of an uncontrollable escalation in the logic of species annihilation.
One might wish that Tehran was as resistant to ceasefire pressure over Israeli unprovoked aggression (in a 30 year campaign of Israeli provocation) as Russia is to ceasefire pressure over what Ukraine/NATO say is Russia’s unprovoked aggression of 2022 - when every serious analyst understands very well that this was absolutely and deliberately provoked over decades.
NATO
The NATO summit starts tomorrow in The Hague. Advance press coverage promotes the theme that the summit will largely be used as an opportunity for European countries to play nice for Trump and show their (actually not so convincing) determination to increase military expenditure towards 5% of each member’s GDP by 2035 (Spain is already seeking exemption), and to close ranks against allowing membership of NATO to Ukraine (the which would be rejected by a number of NATO members in any case).