Larison: Trump Wreaks Havoc On The Iranian People

link

Threatening Europe over INSTEX is insane, as I said earlier, and trying to kill it by going after its Iranian counterpart is just as wrong and destructive. The fact that the administration is seriously considering doing either of these things shows that they have no problem cutting off Iranians’ access to humanitarian goods. There is no question that the administration wants to inflict as much pain on the Iranian people as possible, and to that end they are threatening to punish anyone involved in every effort to alleviate that pain. The story is very straightforward. Our European allies are trying to preserve legitimate trade with Iran, and our government is insisting on blocking every kind of trade, including humanitarian goods, to make the civilian population suffer as much as they can. Our government’s reason for this excessive, cruel, and vindictive policy is not any Iranian violation of its commitments, but rather because Iran has reliably complied with the JCPOA for more than three years and deprived Iran hawks of their pretext for conflict. The Iranian government made the mistake of trusting ours, and now they are being punished for agreeing to the restrictions on their nuclear program that our government demanded that they accept.