American Assassination a Year Later
The Hypocrisy of American Security & the US War Machine
One year ago, on January 3rd, 2020 at 1am local time, Iranian General Qasem Soleimani landed at Iraq’s Baghdad International Airport reportedly hand delivering the Iranian reply to a letter from Iraq attempting to broker a peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Upon landing, a US drone strike killed Qasem Soleimani and four others, members of Iraq’s state sponsored Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the military coalition tasked with ridding Iraq of ISIL, the fundamentalist terrorist organization that had invaded an Iraq and committed acts of genocide and crimes against humanity.
General Soleimani, the second most powerful official in the Iranian government, had led the coordinated fight against ISIL in Iraq, freeing the cities of Amirli, Jurf Al Sakhar, Tikrit, and Fallujah. However, General Soleimani was also instrumental in assisting Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government lift the sieges of Nubl and Al-Zahraa, and eventually the retaking of Aleppo from western-backed jihadists and militias during the Syrian Civil War. This support for Syria, which for Iran is fundamental to their national interests in the Middle East, goes directly against US interests in the region, as the US, Britain, and France engineered the civil war against the Syrian government, with assistance from partners Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (Erlich, 2014).
The US drone strike was authorized by President Donald Trump and supported by Secretary of Status Mike Pompeo. Several rationales were offered post assassination that General Soleimani was directly responsible for American deaths abroad, that he supported terrorists in the Syrian war, and that he was planning imminent attacks on Americans. The Administration offered the US House Foreign Affairs Committee a memorandum citing both Article II of the US Constitution, as well as the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq (2002 AUMF), as the legal justification allowing the US Commander in chief the use military force to protect “United States forces and interests in the Middle East region” that had been attacked in previous months by “Iran and Iran-backed militias.”
The memorandum also mentioned the US had observed International Law, which is also US Federal Law, forbidding assassination against foreign leaders unless a “direct imminent threat” existed. The US Media gushed in its coverage of US Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s assertion that General Soleimani had been planning “an attack within days,” while other talking heads filled the airwaves with positive spins on the elimination of an enemy of America, including Trump himself, offering that four US embassies were targeted. While Iran is greatly influential in the Middle East, it is afforded the right to have its own military and national interests, including sending its leaders to foreign states, even to neighboring Iraq where the US has unilaterally pursued its own interests since 2003. Moreover, the US is not at war with Iran, nor has the US provided the International community any kind of evidence of Iran’s or General Soleimani’s “direct imminent threat.”
US claims that Iran threatens US forces and interests in the Middle East region belies THE FACT that it is the US that directly threatens Iran, and has done so directly since the 1950’s in its long history of duplicitous dealings with Iran.
The CIA and Britain’s MI6 launched the 1953 coup d’état that ousted democratically elected, secular Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddegh and re-installed the secular Shah of Iran, as well as helped to create the SAVAK secret police (Hiro, 1991). For 25 years the Shah and the SAVAK engaged in autocratic repression of Iranian public who dared publicly declare support for a return of democracy. By 1978, a popular movement of national strikes and non-violent protests primarily led by women and students resulted in revolution and the ousting the Shah in January 1979 (Ritter, 2010). The Iranian Revolution directly challenged US interests, as the Islamic religious cleric Ayatollah Khomeini took power and established an Islamic influenced republic.
The next year in 1980 Iraq invaded Iran, embroiling the young revolutionary republic in a protracted war lasting nine years and claiming one million lives. Several years later, it was learned the CIA had during that time been covertly selling arms to Iran directed out of the White House by Oliver North, redirecting the proceeds to the Nicaraguan Contra army in direct contravention of US law, in what is known as the Iran–Contra affair. The investigation of Irangate never thought to ask of Vice-President Bush direct involvement, focusing the narrative upon Reagan and North, with those that were prosecuted later granted full pardons by George H.W. Bush once he became President (Draper, 1991).
Two decades later, the US led global War on Terror (GWOT) of the 2000’s, engineered by President George W. Bush and the neoconservatives, saw at first coordination with Iran to target Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but later in 2002 designated Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil.” That turn of phrase sought to create public support for war against Iran, Iraq and North Korea, states defying US interests and supposedly pursuing nuclear deterrents against US aggression. The launching of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on the false pretext as protection from “weapons of mass destruction” has ever since greatly harmed not only Iraq, but the entire Middle East, creating the largest refugee population since WWII. Good faith attempts at securing an International treaty to deter Iran from pursuing nuclear arms were negotiated and reached, only to be scuttled unilaterally by US President Trump.
The US Occupations in the Middle East and Central Asia during the GWOT and after have seen the construction of US military bases in the region surrounding Iran, leading to an important question:
Exactly what are the real US interests in the region? Why are American forces clearly targeted Iran at the center of the bullseye? And how has this happened under an International system with a United Nations and International Criminal Court created in order to prevent this very type of aggression?
Would the International community even condemn the US or take any kind of legal action against President Trump if it were to discover that the US fabricated the intelligence used to justify its killing of Qasem Soleimani?
Has the UN ever done so after the US and Britain fabricated the evidence used to justify the invasion of Iran’s neighbor Iraq in 2003?
Does the International system show independence from US interests?
Is the United Nations or any of its agencies functionally independent from US interests or influence?
The United Nations was formed directly after WWII as a worldwide structure for cooperation among nations in an effort to prevent another world war. The UN Security Council (UNSC) operating as the central executive body comprised of five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — each having veto power that can stop any and all actions by the General Assembly or the other ten elected Security Council member states. The UN General Assembly (UNGA) operates as the general body comprised of (currently) 193 nations each having an equal share vote for electing the UN chairperson as the Secretary General to a five year term, as well as electing judges to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for nine year terms. The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) co-ordinates the various specialized agencies that include the World Bank Group (WBG), World Heath Organization (WHO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Food Program, as well as dozens of others.
The UN system has had some successes in overseeing the transition of former colonial territories into independent nations, as well as globally eradicating diseases like smallpox, polio, river blindness and leprosy. However, the UN’s history is shockingly poor in global Development from programs implemented by the IMF and WorldBank, in UN Peace Keeping missions which have failed numerous times to stop genocides, and in containing the UN’s own corruption. The unilateral veto power of the 5 permanent members have continually derailed efforts to find peaceful solutions, particularly by the US continually vetoing solutions to Middle East peace.
Moreover, the UN has been unable to prevent the kind of aggression it was designed to prevent, as the US invasion of Iraq did not have UN Security Council approval for aggressive action against Iraq, despite General Powell’s UN sworn testimony of secret evidence of Iraq’s effort to secure “yellow cake” for weapons of mass destruction, a clear prevarication. Yet, the UN and its governing body have not pursued a legal challenge to the US, the North American Treaty Organization (NATO), or the Atlantic Council (NATO’s governing body) who have engaged in the central crime of launching an aggressive war, the very violation the US used to prosecute Nazi’s at Nuremberg. The prophetic words of US Justice Robert Jackson at Nuremberg captured the universality of International Law:
“If certain acts of violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. And we are not prepared to lay down the rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us. We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.”
This is the moral standard set by the victors of WWII, set into International Law and adopted by the US as Federal Law. The aggressors of the current world conflagration, which since the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq has seen the death of millions of civilians and the forced displacement of tens of millions of civilians, still awaits Justice. The disregard for International Law shown by the US under President Bush, Obama, and now Trump as well as Vice Presidents Cheney, Biden and Pence, expose the hypocrisy of the United States.
Even if the US were to pull out from the International treaties, agreements, and institutions it helped to create, the principle of mandatory multilateralism in International Law requires that all nations “remain subject to norms that prohibit them from adopting measures or positions that undermine the efforts of other states to develop an equitable multilateral framework…(and) subject to the obligation to continue to pursue good faith efforts to reach a mutually acceptable outcome” (Criddle & Fox-Decent, 2019: 53). It doesn’t matter if the US decides to ignore International laws or norms or treaties, they still apply and require the US do nothing to other nations making attempts to pursue peace.
One year later, on a day that sees the Fox News’ of the world broadcasting the Iranian threat against an outgoing President Trump while regurgitating the unsupported claims that General Soleimani was a “terrorist butcher” whose murder made the world much safer place, the International community owes it to safety of the world right now, and to future generations, to begin a full investigation into the targeted assassination of a foreign, senior government official by the US in direct violation of US and International Law.
Whether for targetd assassination of senior foreign government officials, extra-judicial killing of american citizens overseas, or aggression against other states based on prejudiced and false pretensenses, the actions authorized by US Presidents Trump, Obama, and Bush, respectively, are morally wrong and violations of International Law. They do not make the world safer, but have brought the world to the brink.
The time is NOW for the world to enforce International Law and mandatory multilateralism to stop the illegal US global use of force. Demand it of our elected leaders and of our fellow citizens. Demand the UN and International Criminal Court reform and hold the US accountable. Decades ago the US helped establish this International system in hopes of preventing future global wars. That tommorrow of historical judgment has come today.
Bibliography:
Criddle, E.J. & Fox-Decent, E. (2019). Mandatory Multilateralism. 113 American Journal of International Law (2019 Forthcoming). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3328928
Draper, T. (1991). A Very Thin Line. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 978–0671778149.
Erlich, R. (2014). Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. ISBN: 978–1616149482
Hiro, D. (1991). The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict. New York: Routledge. ISBN: 978–0586090381.
Ritter, D.P. (2010). Why the Iranian Revolution was Nonviolent: Internationalized Social Change and the Iron Cage of Liberalism. The University of Texas at Austin.
