As always is the case with European leaders, appeasement comes at a high price for others, usually ending in the mass death of innocent people, from nations that have been sacrificed to ensure peace remains in Europe, and that future trade deals won’t suffer, as profits always come above the loss of human life.
The most highlighted example of appeasement, was that conceived by the UK’s Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, which came about just before the start of World War II, when within days of signing an ill-conceived peace deal made with the German dictator Adolf Hitler, Chamberlain’s olive branch was swallowed up by the winds of war.
When Chamberlain stepped off a plane at Heston Aerodrome on 30 September 1938, he made the naïve claim that Hitler was a man the world could deal with, much in the same way that Obama later did with Rouhani. As the world’s press photographed Chamberlain at Heston, clutching a scrap of paper, which he triumphantly announced would bring “peace for our time”, he later added assurance from the upstairs balcony of his official residence No 10 Downing Street, where he told a jubilant crowd below him, who were singing: “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”, “I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds”.
But Adolf Hitler already had in place plans for setting of World War II, so rather than sleeping quietly in their beds, a rude awakening came for the British people in March 1939, when Hitler’s troops marched into Czechoslovakia. Then after taking over Czechoslovakia, on 1 September 1939, the Nazi hordes marched into Poland, forcing Chamberlain to call for a declaration of war, and within months, Chamberlain was forced to resign.
The Munich Agreement was cobbled together in a last-ditch attempt to squirm out of war with Germany, and within this sickening covenant of appeasement, without any thought for international law, it was stated within its lines, how Hitler would be offered a slice of Czechoslovakia – known as the Sudetenland – as long he agreed not to invade the rest of country.
But as far as Hitler was concerned, he had no intention of sticking to his end of the deal, and once the Sudetenland was safely in his hands, he invaded Poland, and set off the deadliest conflict in world history, ending in the deaths of over 70 million people. So, when European leaders decide upon doing deals with deadly dictatorships, like today’s mullahcracy in Iran, it should remember that oft-repeated quote: “Those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it”!
Not to be trusted
The Iranian regime has proven since the founding of its Islamic Republic, it is an administration not to be trusted, as too are its allies, which come in the form of Bashar al-Assad, and Iran’s infamous terror proxy Hezbollah. With the Iranian people crying out for change, they have now come onto the streets in their thousands, and so as the momentum builds for another revolution, now is the time to aid them in their struggle, and rein in this brutal regime once and for all.
Although Chamberlain’s moment for peace for our time, might have long past into the annals of history’s greatest blunders, a new road towards an international conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran could soon be facing us, which could be brought on by a fresh take on that “Chamberlain moment”.
So far, Europe hasn’t learnt a thing about deals of appeasement, even after it was humiliated during the 2003 to 2005 nuclear talks, when Hassan Rouhani, as the chief Iranian nuclear negotiator, had promised to suspend all enrichment and reprocessing activities. But despite this promise, Iranian boffins had forged ahead to install them, extending Iran’s nuclear program rather than halting it. As Rouhani clarified in 2006, during an interview: “by creating a calm environment”, he boasted. “We were able to complete the work on Isfahan” – which is a nuclear facility where uranium ore is enriched.
Despite all of this, Europe still wants to make deals, even though the Obama administration was a striking example of recent erroneous deals, which also blew up in the face of those making them. The first blunder in Obama’s peace for our time moment, came about after U.S. intelligence had discovered that Syria had a stockpile of chemical weapons, which included blister agents and mustard gas, as well as nerve agents including VX and Sarin, all of which could be delivered via aerial bombs, ballistic missiles, or artillery rockets.
Forcing Obama’s hand
So, in a “forceful” statement, President Barack Obama threatened Bashar al-Assad with his now infamous “Red Line” address, in which he threatened that U.S. bombers would move in, should the Syrian dictator ever use chemical weapons. But just like the Chamberlain deal that was cobbled together with Hitler, the Obama administration was side-lined into cobbling one together with Assad with the aid of the Russians, which also proved just as disastrous.
It was the Russians that had forced Obama’s hand, wheedling him into making his ill-fated Syrian deal, after the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was giving a press conference in London, alongside Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague, made what appeared to be an off-the-cuff flippant remark, suggesting that if President Bashar al-Assad was willing to give up his entire chemical weapons stock in the next week, handing them over to the international community, the Syrian dictator could avoid a military strike on his country.
In no time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had called Kerry’s bluff, and using Russia’s influence over Assad – no doubt giving him the wheeze that the deal would only be temporary – the Russians had supposedly convinced Assad to “destroy” all of his chemical weapons arsenal to avoid a U.S. attack.
But as history has shown with such erroneous deals, Assad continued to use chemical weapons, innocent people died, and the Americans never bombed Assad. The end result of this deal, was a strengthening of Assad’s position, leaving America looking weak through the politics of inaction. But as far as Russia and Iran were concerned, fast following this debacle, they spotted an opportunity to muscle their way into the conflict, and with Putin soon able to call the shots, Obama’s inane Red Line statement led to the undoing of US policy across the Middle East, leaving his “appeasement” deal a laughing stock.
Even with Obama’s red line deal turning out to be a complete disaster, Europe followed his administration into the latest nuclear deal, signed by the P5+1 – the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and China, in which Iran was allowed to keep its nuclear program on hold rather than dismantle it. It mattered not that the so-called “moderate” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, was the very man who had reneged on the 2003 to 2005 nuclear accord, and was now the architect of this new deal, Europe blindly followed the Obama administration into cobbling together another useless agreement.
With Hassan Rouhani, we are talking about trusting a man who has signed off on previous devastating terror attacks, including two in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The first attack was in 1992, against the Israeli embassy which killed 29 people, the other was in 1994, against the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA), which killed 85 people. Both attacks were carried out by the IRGC Quds Force and Iran’s main proxy Hezbollah, with Rouhani being implicated due to his membership of the Supreme National Security Council, which would have most certainly approved both bombings.
As well as this, during his term in office as president, Rouhani has overseen thousands of executions of his own people, many of whom were convicted on trumped up charges, whose only guilt was to criticize the regime that was oppressing them.
With Obama gone, President Donald Trump is now in the White House, and having always been a major critic of the Iran Deal, his administration stepped away from it, leaving those in Europe determined to keep it afloat, no matter what the cost to both world security, and the safety of Iran’s heavily oppressed citizens. Donald Trump was angered by Iran’s interference in its neighbours’ affairs, its execution of foreign wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, all of which were at the behest of the mullah’s hegemonic policies.
While the Iran Deal was fully in place, Iran was strengthening its army with money that had been returned to it, which had originally been impounded through its past noncompliance to suspend its nuclear program, money of which had now been returned to it through its “compliance” to the present Iran Deal. But not only this, Trump was angered by the sloppy way the deal had been put together, as Iran could easily restart its nuclear program at a moment’s notice, and when they were ready to do so, the missile program they have been working so hard at, would eventually allow them to reach the USA with a nuclear payload.
Where Hitler was concerned, he did enough damage with conventional warfare, but where Iran is concerned, it will soon have nuclear weapons at hand, and should a full-scale war materialise, millions could also end up dead. This is no rational regime, this is one that believes it needs to hasten a catastrophic war by any means necessary, to bring about the return of its messianic Hidden Imam, whom they believe will return to earth to set up his kingdom, after saving his flock from the final battle of mankind.
But European leaders care not what the Iranian regime is planning, they ignore the history of its past, all they see is a huge amount of lucrative trade deals, with vast amounts of money to be made from them. These deals have already brought about much prosperity to those closely connected to the Iranian regime itself, especially leading clerics and commanders in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, all at the detriment of their own people, many of whom suffer in abject poverty.
Source » alarabiya