Iran is rejecting Pakistan’s compromise proposal. Thus matters are moving towards a confrontation between Trump and the ayatollahs. They lack air defences, and Israeli and American aircraft can operate almost freely. Nevertheless, the Revolutionary Guard is defying the United States.
Iran says that it will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for a temporary ceasefire, and that it believes the United States is not inclined towards a permanent ceasefire. A source at the White House later told the AFP news agency on Monday that an agreement is under consideration, but that President Donald Trump has not yet approved it.
An Iranian official confirms that they have received the proposal, but makes it clear that they will not be pressured into accepting deadlines.
Iran continues to make demands as though it had anything with which to strike the table. Iran wants guarantees that it will never be attacked in the future.
That leaves a wide gulf to Washington.
Meanwhile the media are trying to bring Trump down as best they can by taking Trump’s statements and linking them together in a negative manner:
Trump defends possible war crimes in Iran: – They are animals
With such a headline, NTB is saying that it is Trump who is an animal who brushes aside possible war crimes.
US President Donald Trump rejects that he is concerned about committing war crimes in Iran and says that it is a war crime to possess nuclear weapons.
US President Donald Trump spoke to the press during an Easter event at the White House shortly before he was due to hold a formal press conference on Iran.
He repeated his threats of targeted attacks on Iran’s bridges, power plants and other civilian infrastructure.
When a reporter asked him how the United States could attack Iran’s bridges and power plants without that constituting a war crime, Trump referred to the Iranian authorities’ killing of demonstrators, according to NBC News.
What about the Allies’ bombing of German cities during the Second World War? Were they also war criminals?
Trump uses the term “animals” about the regime’s people because they hang young people from cranes.
Three men have been executed by hanging over the past couple of days in Iran, reports Mizan, the Iranian judiciary’s own news agency.
All three were arrested in connection with the nationwide demonstrations against the clerical regime in Iran in January this year.
On Monday, Ali Fahim was executed after being accused of acting on behalf of the United States and Israel during the protests. Iran claims that he was complicit in enemy-directed terrorism.
NTB brings up a statement Trump made to The New York Times a long time ago: that he does not need international law to know what is right and wrong. NTB makes it sound as though he does not care about morality at all. That is not what Trump said or meant.
– They are animals, and we must stop them, and we cannot let them have nuclear weapons. Very simple, said Trump, who also made it clear before the US war of aggression against Iran that he is limited only by his own morality, and that he does not “need international law”.
According to the US-based human rights group Hrana, at least 7,000 people, most of them demonstrators, were killed during the wave of protests in Iran in January.
Trump may well be thinking of securing control over Iran’s oil resources.
The President also said that he would prefer to use American military power to take control of Iran’s enormous oil resources.
– Take the oil because it is there, and you can just take it. There is nothing they can do about it. Unfortunately, the American people would not like to see us come home. If it were up to me, I would take the oil. I would keep the oil. I would make lots of money, said Trump.
After Trump last week threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age”, several critics and experts in international law have warned of the danger that the United States is committing war crimes in Iran.
But Trump also said on Monday in the same exchange that he is “not concerned” that bombing civilian infrastructure could constitute war crimes.
– I am not concerned about that. Do you know what is a war crime? To have nuclear weapons, said Trump.
The United States itself has one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, while both American intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, have concluded that Iran’s nuclear weapons programme was halted in 2003.
The United States has claimed that Iran may be in the process of developing nuclear weapons, and has used this as one of several justifications for it and Israel launching a war of aggression against Iran on 28 February. Iranian leaders have consistently maintained that their nuclear programme is exclusively civilian.
Iran has acknowledged that it previously had a nuclear weapons programme, but that this was dismantled in 2003, after the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had issued a fatwa – a religious decree – prohibiting such weapons. Khamenei was killed in an American-Israeli attack on the first day of the war.
Inspectors from the IAEA have in recent years had access to Iranian nuclear facilities and have not found evidence that the country has an active nuclear weapons programme.
Nor has American intelligence, confirmed the United States’ top intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, in a hearing in the Senate in March last year. (NTB)
NTB is engaging in apologia for a regime that has acquired intercontinental missiles and is in the process of developing nuclear weapons.
What is the point of lying about Iran’s nuclear weapons programme?