{"id":47436,"date":"2019-07-27T06:58:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-27T11:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47436"},"modified":"2019-07-27T06:58:04","modified_gmt":"2019-07-27T11:58:04","slug":"us-and-iran-stuck-on-negotiation-ground-zero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47436","title":{"rendered":"US and Iran Stuck on Negotiation Ground Zero"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2019\/07\/25\/pepe-escobar-us-and-iran-stuck-on-negotiation-ground-zero\/\">US and Iran Stuck on Negotiation Ground Zero<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Donald Trump says he\u2019s \u2018okay either way\u2019, whether there\u2019s war with Iran and Tehran seems to be okay &nbsp;with that too, warns Pepe Escobar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A<\/strong>ll bets are off in the geopolitical insanity stakes when we have the President of the United States (POTUS) glibly&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.asiatimes.com\/2019\/07\/article\/how-to-kill-10-million-afghans-and-not-win\/\">announcing<\/a>&nbsp;he could launch a nuclear first strike to end the war in Afghanistan and wipe it \u201coff the face of the earth\u201d in one week. But he\u2019d rather not, so he doesn\u2019t have to kill 10 million people.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Apart from the fact that not even a nuclear strike would subdue the legendary fighting spirit of Afghan Pashtuns, the same warped logic \u2013 ordering a nuclear first strike as one orders a cheeseburger \u2013 could apply to Iran instead of Afghanistan.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trump once again flip-flopped by declaring that the prospect of a potential war in the Persian Gulf \u201ccould go either way, and I\u2019m OK either way it goes,\u201d much to the delight of Beltway-related psychopaths who peddle the notion that Iran is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2019\/07\/why-iran-wants-to-get-bombed\/\">begging to be bombed<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No wonder the whole Global South \u2013 not to mention the Russia-China strategic partnership \u2013 simply cannot trust anything coming from Trump\u2019s mouth or tweets, a non-stop firefight deployed as intimidation tactics.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At least Trump\u2019s impotence facing such a determined adversary as Iran is now clear: \u201cIt\u2019s getting harder for me to want to make a deal with Iran.\u201d What remains are empty clich\u00e9s, such as Iran \u201cbehaving very badly\u201d and \u201cthe number one state of terror in the world\u201d \u2013 the marching order mantra emanating from Tel Aviv.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even the \u2013 illegal \u2013 all-out economic war and total blockade against Tehran seems not to be enough. Trump has announced extra sanctions on China because Beijing is \u201caccepting crude oil\u201d from Iran. Chinese companies will simply ignore them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US and Iran Stuck on Negotiation Ground Zero Donald Trump says he\u2019s \u2018okay either way\u2019, whether there\u2019s war with Iran and Tehran seems to be okay &nbsp;with that too, warns Pepe Escobar. All bets are off in the geopolitical insanity stakes when we have the President of the United States (POTUS) glibly&nbsp;announcing&nbsp;he could launch a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2487,130,6963,441,4076,1129,694,2662,862],"class_list":["post-47436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-afghanistan","tag-china","tag-consortium-news","tag-iran","tag-pepe-escobar","tag-persian-gulf","tag-russia","tag-tehran","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47437,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47436\/revisions\/47437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}