by Pepe Escobar (cross-posted with the Asia Times by special agreement with the author)
On the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, this past Friday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei made an effort to express Iran’s geopolitical stance in simple terms: ‘We have good relations with all nations in the world, we don’t want to break relations with any European nation’, and an explanation of the slogan ‘Death to America’.
The Ayatollah said ‘Death to America’ “means death to Trump, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. It means death to American rulers. We have no problems with the American people.”
So, the slogan is indeed a metaphor – as in death to US foreign policy as conducted for much of the past four decades.
That includes, of course, the dismantling, by the Trump administration, of the nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA).
In a rash rebuke of the centrist government of President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif – who negotiated the JCPOA with the Obama administration, as well as Russia, China, France, the UK and Germany – Khamenei stressed he would not have signed it. His legendary distrust of the US now seems more than vindicated.
Payment system
For the Europeans who signed the JCPOA, what’s left is trying to pick up the pieces. Enter Instex – the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, a mechanism backed by the European Union, with its headquarters in Paris and run by a German banker, which in theory allows European banks and companies to keep trading with Iran without being fined, extra-territorially, by the US Department of Justice, or being totally excluded from the American market.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called it “an important geopolitical gesture.” But a “gesture” may not be enough, especially because initially it just covers humanitarian goods sold to Iran, such as pharmaceuticals, food and medical supplies.
Tehran pays Instex, and Instex reimburses the food and pharma companies involved. Further on down the road, small and medium-sized European companies might also use Instex to trade with Iran without being slapped with US sanctions.
What’s crucial in the long run about Instex is that the mechanism bypasses the US dollar. So, it will be under immense scrutiny all across the Global South. Instex won’t replace the Swift payment system anytime soon, because the capitalization is set at only $1 billion. The thing is whether other heavyweights, such as Russia, China and Turkey, will start using Instex to bypass US dollars and sanctions, trading way beyond “humanitarian goods”.
Instex, although an embryonic response, shows how Brussels and major European capitals are exasperated by the Trump administration’s unilateralism. Diplomats have been saying on and off the record that nothing will prevent the Europeans from doing business with Iran, buying their energy, investing in their market, and bypassing the US dollar in the process.
This has the potential to offer some breathing space to President Rouhani. The latest internal polls reveal that 40 years after the Islamic Revolution, over 70% of Iranians of all social classes have zero trust in any negotiations involving the US government. And that even includes an increasing number of millennials, for whom the Islamic Revolution is just an echo of a distant past.
That may not be the exact sentiment in Teherangeles, California – the capital of the Iranian diaspora, which may number over half a million people worldwide, mostly upper-middle-class. But it does reflect the pulse of the nation.
PayMon, crypto alternative
Over and over again, the Rouhani administration must tackle an insurmountable contradiction. National pride, boosted by Iran recapturing its role as a major power in Southwest Asia, is always undermined by intimations of social despair, as in countless families surviving on less than $200 a month, under rampant inflation and suffering the effects of the non-stop fall of the rial, whatever the feel-good factors constantly exhorted by the government.
Already in regard to Instex, there has been a backlash. Iran has been told it must join the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global body that seeks to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and that it must compromise on its missile program, which it regards as non-negotiable. The chief of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani, branded the two conditions set by the Europeans as “humiliating”.
And on the European front, there’s no evidence yet that small companies trust that the Instex payment system will make them immune to retaliatory action by the US.
Iranians though are opening other creative fronts. Four banks – Bank Melli, Bank Mellat, Parsian Bank and Bank Pasargad – have developed a gold-backed cryptocurrency named PayMon, and negotiations are already advanced with the Europeans as well as Russia, Switzerland and South Africa to expand PayMon trading. Iranian officials are adamant that blockchain will be crucial to improve the nation’s economy.
The Iranian move mirrors Venezuela’s action in launching its own oil-backed cryptocurrency, the petro, last October. But count on the Blocking Iran Illicit Finance Act to swing into overdrive in the US Congress.
Meanwhile, Russia and Iran have all but bypassed the US dollar in bilateral trade, using only ruble and rial and “in case of urgent need, the euro, if we have no other options”, according to the Russian Ambassador to Iran, Levan Dzhagaryan.
China, Russia, Iran and Turkey – the four key vectors of ongoing Eurasia integration – are investing in bypassing the US dollar on trade by any mechanism necessary. The Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) is also working on a common system for “boosting economic sovereignty”, as defined by President Putin. It has free-trade agreements with an array of partners, including China and Iran.
Arab NATO roll-call
This is the background in the run-up towards what is essentially an anti-Iran conference convened by the Trump administration in Warsaw this Wednesday.
No one in Europe that really matters wants to be publicly associated with Iranian demonization. Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief, is not going. EU-wide businesses increasingly tell their puny political leaders that the way to go is Greater Eurasia – from Lisbon to Vladivostok, from Murmansk to Mumbai, with Tehran in between, and everything linked to the China-driven Belt and Road Initiative.
Poland is an exception. Ruled by hardcore nationalists, it has been lobbying for a permanent US military base, which President Andrzej Duda wants to call “Fort Trump”.
Unable to force France, the UK, Germany and Italy out of doing business with Iran, what’s left for Washington is to have Persian Gulf governors plus Israel assembled in the same room, pledging their efforts towards an ill-defined, anti-Iran Arab NATO.
What this will certainly accomplish inside Iran is to promote even more hardliners and “Principlists” who are lobbying for a return to former President Ahmadinejad’s “Look East” strategy.
Iran is already looking East – considering its top Asian energy clients and the close ties with the Belt and Road Initiative and the EAEU. Team Rouhani now knows, in realpolitik terms, they cannot trust the US; and the EU is an immensely problematic partner. The next major step would be for Iran to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China wants it. And Russia wants it.
Venezuela looks to have been targeted for regime change essentially because it’s trying to bypass the US dollar on trade. That should not be a problem for Iran, which has been a target for regime change for decades.
Yes, Iran will look towards the East, as will Turkey. The only thing preventing Germany joining the Eurasian Economic Union is the presence of US troops in the country and the fact that it’s a member of NATO and the EU. However, times are changing. Even George Soros has warned that the EU is facing dissolution, which is inevitable, as it’s not functioning. The only thing you can expect from the US is more of the same, and these unilateral imperial policies are already turning countries away from the US. We shall see what the US does in 2019, namely if it will be tempted to launch another imperial war, either against Venezuela or Iran.
Was only albe to find this at asiatimes because of the title. No indication the item was authored by Pepe. Asiatimes search engine still comes up empty when trying to find Pepe Escobar. I hope this info will get passed along to Saker then to Pepe as he’s being filtered by his employers.
So, the EU payment system doesn’t even add up to a “gesture” given the strings attached. And its billion $ equivalent capitalization was to tiny in any event. Over 70% of Iranians “have zero trust” in anything connected with the USA. A more interesting revelation would be the % of Iranians having any trust in the Outlaw US Empire. Pepe’s reporting when combined with other sources show the EU to be a complete basket case that will eventually disintegrate that will provide Europe with another opportunity to get it right by integrating with the EAEU/BRI nodes.
Hi Outlaw
Asia Times just launched a redesigned website – all of Pepe’s articles went missing – he knows, he posted about it on his Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pepe.escobar.77377/posts/10156937286996678
pepe in the asiatimes search box brought up 137 Pepe Escobar articles for me
I get zero, zip, nada, just a blank page.
Thanks for the info, Grieved. Seems asiatimes has finally succumbed and is now a 5Eyes tool.
the site is new and flakey. navigate to home and then search “pepe”
237 articles
Thierry Meyssan has a much more explicit, one could say explosive, reading of what Iranian leadership faces given it’s history of collaboration with Trotskytes in the West.
Iran is cornered
https://www.voltairenet.org/article205087.html
An excerpt:
Contrary to a popular idea, the neoconservatives are not the enemies of Iran, and not the friends either. They have always considered that it was necessary to maintain a balance between Arabs and Persians. This was why Elliott Abrams participated in the « Iran-Contras operation », which notably consisted of selling Israëli weapons via Cheik Hassan Rohani (currently the Iranian President) to Ayatollah Hachemi Rafsandjani (who consequently became the richest man in his country) in order to resist the Iraqi attack (which was also commanded by Washington). This operation was carried out without the knowledge of Congress, then condemned, and later amnestied by President Bush Sr.
During this period, Abrams was implicated in several massacres, in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The Trotskyites from the magazine of the American Jewish Committee, Commentary, who rallied, like him, to Reagan, intended both to combat the USSR in order to pursue Leon Trotsky’s struggle against Joseph Stalin, and at the same time to realise a world-wide coup d’état, if this idea even has any meaning. Elliott Abrams thus participated in the creation of the US Institute of Peace (which used the humanitarian platform to promote imperialism) and the National Endowment for Democracy (which orchestrated the colour revolutions) of which he is still one of the directors. This is how we should understand theopolitics, as a religious justification of a world-wide power grab.
The founding Congress of theopolitics was financed by the Izmaïlovskaya, a Russian criminal organisation of which, according to the Spanish Judiciary, Michael Cherney, Oleg Deripaska and Iskander Makhmudov were members at the time [4].
Do Atlanticist Trotskytes exert disproportionate influence on the Kremlin? Increasingly I ask myself this question.
I would recommend to take Thierry Meyssan with a pinch of salt. Imho a lot of his writings are alarmist and conspirationalist. He is also a fanboy of the orange clown.
It seems the article does the usual mistake of the “Iran-friendly commentator”: it underestimates the number and power of the US-friendly Iranian people. These people just consider “Trump” as the problem (thus their hatred against him), disturbing the otherwise peaceful harmony with the USA (not caring what else the USA is doing).
The article “Iran is cornered” by Thierry Meyssan is interesting here: “Cheikh Rohani was betting on his secret agreement with the US Democrats. … Cheikh Hassan Rohani, who campaigned in 2013 by repeating ceaselessly that his country should no longer spend one rial to liberate Palestine and support Hezbollah and Syria, has undertaken nothing with his allies since his election”
In every country there is a fraction of the populace who are pro-American. They are usually the stupid, ignorant and greedy. The stupid who are unable to comprehend the wickedness of Americanism and Exceptionalism. The ignorant who know nothing of Thanatopia’s unmatched record of aggression, genocide, destruction and extra-territorial arrogance and belligerence. And the greedy who see the USA as the ‘Shining City on the Hill’, for all the planet’s parasites, exploiters and haters of others. Moreover, the sufficiently intelligent and informed know that ordinary Americans, despite their grotesque jingoistic brainwashing, are just as much victims of ‘The American Way’ as any of the millions of dead slaughtered by the ruling elites of the USA.
“The next major step would be for Iran to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China wants it. And Russia wants it.”
I hear you, and myself and others have espoused the same sentiments for sometime.
I thought last year Iran would have secured full membership, but it was not to be.
But why the hold up?
What exactly is preventing Iran from securing full membership?
If India and Pakistan – who are essentially at daggers drawn – can be accepted as full members, then why no Iran?
Who, are what is preventing it, pray tell?
Selah
The EU squanders its potential relevance by striving to toe Washington’s line, in matters of geo-political importance, and this is one of the reasons why it will never be taken seriously.
It equivocates and vacillitates, instead of being objective and decisive.
Look how it botched the JPCOA, which is a legal agreement with Iran, that was sanctioned by the UNSC.
Instead of robustly defending the agreement, the EU exhibited abject servility towards Washington, and failed to adequately defend it.
And it prostituted it self by foolishly choosing to “recognize” that self-declared jackass in Venezuela as the country’s president.
That was one of the dumbest decision ever made, in the history of international politics, in a long time, honestly.
The unravelling of the EU would be a good thing for Europe and the world.
Selah
“Unable to force France, the UK, Germany and Italy out of doing business with Iran, what’s left for Washington is to have _Persian Gulf governors plus Israel_ pledging their efforts towards an anti-Iran Arab NATO.”
Like the anti-Iran alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But please, Pepe, do not call it an _Arab_ NATO. As I have said before, all the Gulf States are Anglo Zio Capitalist oil companies masquerading as Arab Sheikdoms. And Israel itself is wellknown to be an Anglo-Rothschild project from the Anglo-French oil war of 1914-1918. So the alliance, that Pepe mentions here, would not be an _Arab NATO_. It would really be a _Jewish NATZO_ in the ME. In essence, a sneak projection of the EU$A’s NATZO into the ME after their resounding defeats in Iran, Lebanon and Syria.
Iran will most certainly look east , expecting anything from the European vassal would be reckless and foolhardy. Imperial US has now become an uncontrollable monster, unapologetically ignoring international laws and treaties and devouring country after country in its lust for almighty power ! This unsustainable behaviour will end in its indisputable implosion and this will probably take the EU with it. Israel is on tenderhooks….it needs US money and military clout to maintain the aggressive stance it has always used with its neighbours. The demise of the US , with the repercussions for other its cohorted warmongers may finally herald an era of peace and stability for this planet
Poland is an exception. Ruled by hardcore nationalists, it has been lobbying for a permanent US military base, which President Andrzej Duda wants to call “Fort Trump”.
LOL.
“Fort Trump” in Poland will soon be a hotbed of sex crimes and other thuggish behavior committed by American colonial troops in the area–not to mention drug trafficking that is tacitly supervised by the US military and CIA.
And for the pièce de résistance, Fort Trump could also host a really garish casino like the ones that the Donald had in Atlantic City.
Enjoy, Poland!