​Iran does not now have, nor is there any proof that it was or is attempting to develop an arsenal of nuclear weapons, in contradistinction to Israel which in 1969 as a result of a secret agreement between PM Golda Meyer and President Nixon, started to develop such an arsenal, and furthermore, unlike Iran, Israel never signed on the NPT treaty AND in the 80’s has proliferated the weaponization of nuclear energy technology to the white supremacist regime os South Africa.

Finally, Iran is NOT a “terrorism sponsoring” country.   As Miko Peled, the son of  Israeli Major General Matti Peled​ has authoritatively pointed out, Iran has reached out the Shiite communities in Southern Lebanon and in Gaza as they were attacked and invaded by Israel.  It so happened that the former community created its Hezbollah militia to protect themselves form  the Israeli aggression and occupation which lasted years and resulted in the death of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians in Lebanon refugee camps, and the latter community democratically elected Hamas to govern it and to protect it from Israel’s murderous aggression and blockade.

Iran, unlike Israel, is not occupying in defiance of international law, the land of others, and in fact for the last 250 years Iran has never invaded any country, but it had to defend itself from the Iraqi invasion by  Saddam Hussein who was then supported militarily by the United States.   Donald Rumsfeld literally and metaphorically embraced Saddam Hussein during that 8 year against Iran, and the U.S. at the time supplied Iraq with weapons to carry out the invasive aggression on Iran.

As many of this writer’s readers know, he is not of Iranian background.   This writer’s background is  German/Brazilian and he is the son of parents who were declared stateless by the Nazis and managed at the last hour to escape to Bolivia where he was born and whence they emigrated to Brazil to only then once more feel that the time had come for them to leave  just before the military coup in 1964 which was U.S. supported and which crushed Brazilian democracy and ushered in an era of torture and economical stagnation.  Said democracy was crushed just like the Iranian democracy was  by Anglo/American interventionism and just like on 9/11 of 1973 the Chilean democracy of Dr. Salvador Allende was crushed in Chile with active support of the President Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the CIA, when two Chilean Air Force planes bombed the Moneda Palace in Santiago.

The point this writer is trying  to make is that we today continue to support hegemonism, survival of the fittest, and might makes right by our unconditional support of criminal regimes not only in Israel but as well crimes against humanity of our so-called “allies” namely Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Bahrain who are nothing but murderous authoritarian dictatorships.   But, relentlessly, since 1979 when the Iranian people cast themselves off the yoke of the Shah tyranny which was U.S. supported and with which Israel had excellent relations, the U.S. has continuously vilified Iran as it chose a development path which was not approved by the West.   The same was the case with Cuba for 52 years.

Finally President Obama has shown the strength of principle and had the courage to start the process of engaging with Cuba and Iran diplomatically.   He must highly be commended for this.  These are achievements which will immeasurably enrich his legacy if they are move forward notwithstanding the right-wing neocon Congressional saboteurs who supported avidly the war on Iraq on false claims, which has led to catastrophic consequences and is directly responsible for the emergence of Daesh (aka ISIS).

To constantly vilify Iran and glorify Israel  is also to only postpone the inevitable consequence of such a bizarre policy which is bound to lead to an even more catastrophic popular explosion in the region than the one which already exists.

As legendary Phyllis Bennis of the prestigious Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) recently stated, what we now need is to demand that the present Apartheid Israel become a nuclear weapons free zone, in addition to forcing it by the peaceful BDS means, of the kind which we imposed on Apartheid era South Africa, to once for all withdraw from its illegally occupied lands of the autochthonous Palestinians.

Given the current state of affairs in the Middle East, if the P5+1, now having succeeded in the Iran nuclear issue can be prompted to non-interventionistically and non-militarily move the two only major stable nations in the Middle East, namely the relatively moderate Sunni Turkey and relatively moderate Shiite Iran to pool resources and thereby contain and defuse Daesh, then this Sunni Shiite cooperation with Western humanitarian and logistical backing could potentially evolve into a type of nucleation agent which could crystallize inspirationally a new dynamic for trans sectarian reconciliation and reconstruction.

Once the decadent Netanyahu and  co-conspirators regime collapses, and younger rational and progressive humanist Jews declare an end to the so-called  exclusivist “Jewish Character” of Israel, then Israel can morph evolutionarily into a very welcomed player in such vibrantly revitalized Middle East mosaic.

We cannot and must not characterize Iran ad nauseam and ad absurdum as an “adversary” and by the same token we cannot and must not characterize the present Israel as an “ally” when it is part and parcel of the problem as the Gaza massacres last summer vividly have proven and as the continuing  blockade of Gaza further aggravate the literal insult addition to injury which is incessantly and provocatively being carried out by Israel the perpetrator all the while it insidiously and kafkaesquelly  attempts to project its fake image of being a victim.

This writer salutes Rabbi Lerner, for his devoted, loving, sensitive, principled great work in support of peace and justice and respect for human rights and sovereignty of nations.

This writer also condemns most energetically the more than repulsive move by the Democratic  New York Senator Schumer who has decided to yield to  pressure, most probably accompanied by the monetary enticement,  by  the power structure of what is now the outlaw and Apartheid state of Israel which operates in combination with its  reckless, ignorant, and corrupt  neocon Republican acolytes in our Congress and further in synergy with the undue influence of the Israeli AIPAC et al. lobbies, to the point that said Senator decided to literally betray the best interests of the Democratic party and the best interests United States, by joining the would-be mafioso-type hate and war mongering saboteurs of the Iran deal diplomacy.