Banned from entering the U.S. to attend Security Council meetings on Jan. 2 U.S. drone strike killing 62-year-old Al Quds chief Qassem Soleimani and 62-tyear-old Kataib Hezbollah chief Abu Mahid al-Muhandris and three others, 60-year-old Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif threatened the U.S. with revenge. Zarif cleverly appealed to U.S. journalists looking for any way to attack 73-year-old President Donald Trump. Calling Soleimani and al-Muhandis killing an “act of war,” Zarif buffaloed ABC News journalist Martha Raddatz and CBS News journalist Elizabeth Palmer, telling the journalists Iran would respond for the drone strike focusing on U.S. military targets. Whether that happens or not is anyone’s guess. Neither Raddatz nor Palmer asked Zarif to own the Dec. 28, 2019 attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, clearly orchestrated by Soleimani and al-Muhandris.
No, Raddatz and Palmer let Zarif control the narrative, rambling on how Iran was the victim of Trump’s aggression. Zarif said Iran would strike “against legitimate targets,” suggesting that Trump instead went after a top Iranian general, essentially the bodyguard of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Zarif finds himself threatening revenge against the U.S., without owning any of Iran’s state-sponsored terrorism under Soleimani’s watch. Soleimani was responsible for paying-and-arming Shiite militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, conducting a proxy war against Saudi Arabia since 2015. Soleimani was the primary architect of the proxy wars against Israel, supplying arms-and-cash to Hamas terrorists in Gaza and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Soleimani helped thwart the Saudi, U.S. and Turkey proxy war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Zarif told Raddatz and Palmer that Iran was the victim, especially after Trump cancelled the ill-conceived 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] AKA “Iranian Nuke Deal,” where the Obama administration gave Iran billions in cash and sanctions relief in exchange for an unverified nuclear arms deal. Zarif spent two years with former Secretary of State John Kerry negotiating a reduction in Iran’s uranium enrichment program, even though Iran vehemently denied working on an A-bomb. Yet once Trump cancelled Obama’s Nuke Deal May 8, 2018, Iran has threatened to ramp up enriched uranium production. U.N. weapons inspectors were never allowed into Iran’s highly-sensitive military sites to verify Iran’s compliance. No, Zarif prattled on with Raddatz and Palmer, insisting Trump’s the aggressor, ironically finding eager support in the U.S. media and Democrats presidential candidates.
When you consider Iran’s malign activities in the Mideast and North Africa, you’d think Raddatz or Palmer would have asked Zarif about last year’s Limpet mine bombing of oil tankers in the Gulf and bombing of Saudi’s Abaiq and Khurais oil refinery attack. No, Raddatz and Palmer asked nothing about these events. Nor did they question anything about the June 20, 2019 downing by Iran of a U.S. surveillance drone in the Persian Gulf flying over international waters. No, to the U.S. media, only Trump’s the aggressor, buying lock-stock-and-barrel Zarif’s fairytale. “The international law of war is very clear about legitimate targets,” Zarif told Palmer, talking about military infrastructure. Zarif and others in the Iranian regime were rattled when Trump talked about hitting “52” sites, not taking cultural sites off the list. Zarif was the first to accuse Trump of being a war criminal.
Trump warned Khamenei that any retaliation against the U.S. or its allies would be met with a devastating strike. Zarif plays like he’s on a level playing field with the U.S., not admitting that he battled Iraq’s Saddam Hussein [1980 to 1988] to loggerheads for an eight-year war, losing some 150,000-200,000 Iraqi and Iranian soldiers. It took the U.S. 20 days to topple Saddam Hussein in the 2003 Iraq War. Zarif plays like he’s in control of the retaliation to follow when he knows any retaliation on Trump’s watch would likely result in the total destruction of Iran’s oil infrastructure. When Trump talks about “52” targets in Iran, he’s focused mostly on doing as much damage as possible to Iran’s already battered economy. “We do not have proxies,” Zarif told Raddatz and Palmer, denying the elaborate network of Shiite militias that does Iran’s dirty work, including attacking Saudi’s oil infrastructure.
Zarif finds himself banned by the U.S. State Department from entering the U.S., directly related Iran’s constant threats against the U.S. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution where Iran seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran taking 52 hostages, holding them for 444 days, U.S. and Iran have had no diplomatic relations, essentially in a state of war. Zarif likes to blame the U.S. but when you consider Soleimani’s Iraq-based militia Kataib Hezbollah attacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, it was clear to Trump it was Iran’s aggression against a sovereign U.S. property. Soleimani and his surrogate al-Muhandis badly miscalculated Trump’s resolve to keep American properties safe. “Maximum pressure is dead, as is the U.S. presence in our region,” Zarif told Raddatz and Palmer, talking like he’s calling the shots. Taking out Soleimanin and al-Munandis sent a loud message to the Ayatollah.
