SAEDNEWS: An independent scholar said that Israel attacked Iran amid the talks between Washington and Tehran to scuttle the negotiations and drag the United States into a war with Iran.
Shireen Tahmaaseb Hunter, a visiting professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, says that Israel sought to scuttle U.S.-Iran talks, show its military strength, and drag Washington into a war with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
According to Saednews, the Iranian-American academic said that the Israeli attack on Iran was, from the beginning, meant to scuttle U.S.-Iran talks aimed at finding a peaceful solution to the Iran nuclear file. Israel has never wanted a U.S.-Iran reconciliation. Israel’s attack on Iran was certainly an aggression and in contravention of the U.N. Charter.
Asked about the Israeli regime’s claim on “preemptive defense,” she said that the so-called preemptive defense is in fact aggression. Defensive action is when a state has been attacked. Moreover, Iran was ready to take other measures to reassure other countries that it is not in pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Regarding the United States’ hidden agenda, she said that it is hard to say whether U.S.-Iran talks were merely a ruse in order to catch Iran off-guard. Initially, the US was willing for compromise, but then President Donald Trump was persuaded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American hawks to change his position.
In response to a question on Trump’s contradictory rhetoric, the professor said that there is no real contradiction between diplomacy and war. As put by Carl von Clausewitz, war is diplomacy by other means. Wars are fought, but eventually are settled through diplomacy. The attacks on Iran were intended to make it more amenable to an arrangement acceptable to the U.S. and Israel. Meanwhile, Iran’s resistance and defense of its sovereignty showed that war would be costly even to the U.S.
On Trump’s slogan concerning “peace through strength,” Hunter said that peace through strength means that the US should demonstrate enough power that its opponents would not dare to challenge its supremacy. It is a very one-sided peace, which does not take the less powerful states’ legitimate concerns into account.
Answering a question on the U.S. president’s claims about diplomacy and returning to the negotiation table, she said that Iran’s mistrust of the U.S. intentions is understandable. However, without talks and mutual concessions, the risk of an even more destructive war would continue. Iran should build safeguards in any future agreements with the U.S., so that it is not again surprised by the changing American positions as it happened regarding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a nuclear deal Iran signed with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, from which the U.S. pulled out on May 8, 2018.
On the war-mongering nature of the Israeli regime and the ceasefire between Iran and the Israeli regime, she said that the ceasefire should be followed by more concrete measures which would prevent the resumption of hostilities.
The professor also said that by “more concrete measures,” she aims at resolving outstanding issues between Iran on the one hand and Western powers on the other, including the nuclear issue and certain matters of regional security, and of course, eliminating economic sanctions on Iran. Without addressing these issues, the risk of conflict would remain.
