Monday Mezze: Trump’s Illegitimate Ramadan War on Iran / Hubris. Ignorance. Islamophobia
Mezze - المزة - a wide selection of small dishes served as appetizers, including such delicacies as hummus, cheese, eggplant, brains, stuffed grape leaves, calamari, and much more
To my dear Sisters and Brothers who are observing Ramadan I hope that your fasting and prayers this month will be blessed and rewarded.
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Dear Family, Friends, Colleagues, and Loved Ones,
I first learned of the Strait of Hormuz in the 1970s when I was assigned by National Geographic to photograph and report on the Sultanate of Oman. That’s when I learned that there was a non-contiguous part of Oman territory called the Musandam Peninsula, which jutted into the Persian Gulf at the very Strait of Hormuz.
Of course, I had to go there to photograph it (photo below) - It was very beautiful.
Everything else I’m feeling about Hormuz today I’ve written below the photo.
Salamaat,
Robert
Trump’s Ramadan War on Iran / Hubris. Ignorance. Islamophobia.
“I travelled (from the land of Oman) next to the land of Hormuz. Hormuz is the city on the sea-coast also called Mughistan. Opposite it in the sea is New Hormuz which is an island, and between them a sea passage of three farsakhs (nine miles),” fabled 14th century Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta reported in his Rihla, his journal of his travels ...
“We came to New Hormuz,” he continued, “which is an island whose city is called Jarawn. It is a fine large city, with magnificent bazaars, as it is the port of India and Sind, from which the wares of India are exported to the two ‘Iraqs ...”
Iran knows all this.
Today, I worry about what Donald Trump doesn’t know.
His ignorance, his hubris, his lack of humanity, matters to all of us and is, I believe, an existential threat not only to our security and economy but to America’s very identity as a democratic republic.
Historically, as Venetian merchant and explorer Marco Polo, known for traveling the Silk Road, reported in the 14th century, “Merchants came [to Hormuz] from India, with ships loaded with spicery and precious stones, pearls, cloths of silk and gold, elephants’ teeths ...” primarily, but not exclusively, for the purpose of connecting the Middle East with India.”
Today, they come as agents of death, seeking different riches.
Today, while the conflicts in the Persian Gulf are primarily about energy they are also, in the case of Israel and America, neo-colonial manifestations of a western supremacist conceit that threatens, to this day, much of the non-western, non-white, world.
The Strait of Hormuz, at its entry into the Persian Gulf, is slightly over 20 miles wide at its narrowest point, today making it a “choke point” for tankers daily ferrying millions of barrels of crude oil and petroleum product from Gulf states like Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE, and Saudi Arabia to an unquenchably energy-thirsty world.*
It appears to me that the United States, Israel, and their submissive allies consider access to Middle Eastern energy theirs by droit du seigneur, except that instead of the lord having sexual intercourse with the brides of his vassals on their wedding night they get to rape, exploit, and bomb many more peoples and their assets over which they lust.
Droit du Seigneur.
It’s not new: the peoples of the Persian Gulf have been exploited and abused by the west since 1908, when the British Anglo-Persian Oil Company first discovered oil in Iran.
In the 1920s Winston Churchill, for example, suggested that chemical weapons like mustard gas be used to protect themselves and their assets “against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment,” and he dismissed objections as “unreasonable” arguing”I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized [Arab] tribes _ [to] spread a lively terror ...” *
Iran knows all this.
In the late 1940s, in an act of unbelievable hubris, America and Great Britain actually researched and designed plans to destroy all oil wells across the Persian Gulf region in the event the Soviet Union ever decided to threaten and occupy the region.
They decided to blow up all the oil wells.
The plans - incredibly including a nuclear option - were approved and signed by President Harry Truman. The oil denial operations modified over time but a version of them remained in place at least until the Kennedy administration - plans that were never shared with the rulers of the countries where the western-controlled energy-assets were actually buried.
Droit du Seigneur.
They know that Britain and the United States were willing to sacrifice not just the energy assets in the Gulf but also the resident populations in order to protect their political interests - all in secret.
Iran knows all this.
In 1951 the Iranian mejlis elected Mohammad Mossadegh as prime minister, who then announced Iran’s intention to nationalize the nation’s oil industry, including what was at the time the world’s largest oil refinery at Abadan.
Mohammad Mossadegh got to serve as prime minister only until 1953.
Mossadegh was overthrown by a CIA-led coup, a coup led by Kermit Roosevelt and approved by President Eisenhower, a coup attempt previously requested by the British government of President Truman - who said America wouldn’t do it.
Ike and the Dulles brothers said Yes!
Iran knows all this.
We’re all still paying for that ‘Yes,’ the highest price being paid by the vast majority of people in Iran struggling still - since 1979 - to survive under a fanatical, tyrannical, misogynistic theocracy that is today, sadly, more deeply entrenched by the war crimes being inflicted upon Iran - during Islam’s Holy Month Ramadan - by Israel and the United States.
What is relevant today - and what most people other than readers of this column don’t know - is that a major aspect of the British-inspired coup against Mossadegh in the 1950s was the fact that the British Royal Navy established a blockade around the port of Abadan and prevented any Iranian oil tankers from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
That’s right: the British denied the Strait of Hormuz to its perceived enemy - Iran.
They were Strait-Jacketed and Mossadegh was deposed.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was installed as Shah by western powers. He ruled until 1979 when he was, thankfully, overthrown.
And the Iranian people - disrespected, disenfranchised, marginalized - pay the price still.
They again paid the price when Trump cancelled the President Obama-initiated JCPOA accord - which was working - perhaps the most significant anti-proliferation accord of the last half-century.
“The JCPOA, which went into effect in January 2016, impose[d] restrictions on Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program. At the heart of negotiations with Iran were the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and Germany—collectively known as the P5+1. The European Union (EU) also took part.” ****
Incapable of processing all that America has historically done to destabilize the Middle East – especially considering the 1953 CIA-led overthrow of Iran’s democratically-elected prime minister and the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 – today’s toxic brew of lies, ignorance, fear, and rage being presented by Donald Trump denies many Americans the opportunity to understand or move beyond a need to strike out at peoples whom they believe are challenging their western, privileged world order.
Iran knows all this.
Most critically the west continues to ignore Frantz Fanon’s warning that for “... colonized people[s] the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”
It’s not about being rich: it’s about dignity and respect, values that persist long after the missiles have fallen and bombers have been grounded.
It is, above all, about dignity - and the land.
We should all know this.
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Notes:
* Diplomatic Reflections on a “Murky” Waterway.
https://mailchi.mp/a97522bb4810/hormuz?e=4dcca596f8
*** https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/21817-truman-ok-d-sabotage-plot
**** https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/what-iran-nuclear-deal
These are difficult times.
Draw your keffiyehs close - RESIST.
Salamaat,
Robert