Iran declared war in us in 1979.
It seems to me it was the U.S. CIA that "
declared war on Iran" first -- in 1953.
For oil.
At the time the CIA man on the spot, Kermit Roosevelt, worked with thugs and even Islamic reactionaries to overthrow the famous old nationalist politician Mossadegh. I'm certainly no supporter of the theocratic state there. In many ways even the bloody Shah was better. But that was not how the Iranian people saw things at the time of the Khomeini Revolution. Those radical anti-Shah and anti-U.S. students who held U.S. diplomats during the first year of the Khomeini Revolution were hurting their own cause. It is certainly true that the U.S. Embassy there was filled with CIA men who worked closely with SAVAK (the secret police of the Shah). Fortunately, all U.S. embassy personnel including the CIA men and soldiers were eventually released.
The U.S. then backed
Saddam Hussein in a long and bloody war against Iran, even as he used poison gas against them. This only strengthened Khomeini and the theocratic regime, but killed perhaps a million people. Our bloody-mindedness, our "revenge" for being humiliated in 1979, our sanctions against the Iranian people and regime, and its hostility to us ... goes far back.
That regime is weak but still unified, and a decision now ending sanctions and providing medical assistance would be a very smart political move that would re-open cracks in its dictatorship. It would deeply appeal to and be appreciated by the Iranian people. Trump needs to negotiate with the regime, if he is ever to end "the endless wars" in the Middle East. If we do nothing, the Chinese will gain all the credit for their own assistance.
[Texas oil lobbyists and Gulf feudal monarchies desperately wanted to keep up the world price of oil. To protect our credit-financed expensive-to-produce domestic oil industry powerful lobbyists pushed sanctions against Iran, Russia (Nordstream2), Syria, earlier Libya and Iraq and Venezuela. Now our domestic producers are going bankrupt anyway, and our whole strategy of sanctions in the Middle East can be re-figured.]
It was Trump himself (backed by Republicans and Democratic Warhawks and Zionists) that unilaterally tore up the international agreements with Iran and re-imposed sanctions. This is an opportunity to gracefully extricate the U.S. from that dangerous mistake.
