How Victims of the US’ “Maximum Pressure” Campaign Are Coping with Coronavirus
Despite crippling sanctions, years of war, military intervention and a “maximum
pressure “campaign that has only increased since the coronavirus began, victims
of America’s heavy-handed foreign policy are rising to the challenge.
by Vanessa Beeley
March 18th, 2020
By Vanessa Beeley
As Western nations descend into a panic over the coronavirus pandemic,
Americans are getting a taste of what it’s like for the millions who have been
living under U.S. sanctions and warfare.
Iran has been hit hard by the pandemic with 850 confirmed deaths to date. It’s
Rial lost 80 percent of its value and food costs have nearly doubled. With the
country scrambling to handle the crisis, nations are refusing to sell the
Islamic Republic medical supplies for fear of running afoul of U.S. sanctions.
Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif has decried the sanctions numerous times on
Twitter.
Javad Zarif
✔
@JZarif
Unlawful US sanctions drained Iran's economic resources, impairing ability to
fight #COVID19.
They literally kill innocents
It is immoral to observe them: doing so has never saved anyone from future US
wrath
Join the growing global campaign to disregard US sanctions on Iran.
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On March 14, Zarif tweeted that “Viruses recognise no politics or geography.
Nor should we,” adding that U.S. sanctions against Iran had been seriously
hampering the country’s efforts to combat COVID-19.
Last week, Both Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Zarif penned letters to
their foreign counterparts and to the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres
demanding that U.S. sanctions be lifted so that Iran could deal more
effectively with a global crisis of seemingly unprecedented proportions.
Javad Zarif
✔
@JZarif
In letter to UN SG @antonioguterres, I urge the world body—and member states—to
disregard inhuman US sanctions on my country. And insist that they be lifted.
As the #COVID19 ravages Iran, we should recognize that viruses don't
discriminate. To fight them, neither should humans.
View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter
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In one of his tweets, Zarif expressed his frustration in the strongest terms,
“it is immoral to let a bully (US) kill innocents,” he said. And this is
precisely what U.S. sanctions are doing. The U.S. and its EU and UK allies have
systematically imposed sanctions upon target nations with the knowledge that
these measures collectively punish the ordinary people in those nations.
Sanctions are an integral component in modern hybrid war strategies, designed
to weaken a nation chosen for destabilization.
.
Sanctions: a “small price to pay”
Ostensibly, sanctions are a means of bringing a recalcitrant government into
line with U.S. foreign policy agendas. The reality is that they hit the weakest
sectors of the population, depriving them of essential infrastructure and
healthcare. This was witnessed in Iraq where Madeleine Albright notoriously
described the deaths of 500,000 children as a “price” that was “worth it” to
fulfill U.S. policy objectives in the region.
In that same country, the United States deliberately targeted almost every
water treatment plant, seven out of eight dams were destroyed and then
sanctions targeted supplies of water purification components, even chlorine. As
a result, the potential for waterborne illnesses was increased exponentially.
Combined with wartime poor sanitation, these orchestrated conditions would
expose hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to U.S. engineered disease and misery.
All this to provide post-war leverage for the U.S. and its allies.
US Sanctions Coronavirus
Dehydrated and malnourished, seven-month-old Sahra is comforted by her
grandmother at the Mansour Children’s Hospital in Baghdad, February 22, 1998.
According to UNICEF, 30 percent of Iraq’s children under five were malnourished
at the time thanks to US-led sanctions. Peter Dejong | AP
In an article originally published in 2001, Professor Thomas Nagy describes the
discovery of Defence Intelligence Agency documents (DIA) which proved beyond
any shadow of a doubt that the U.S. “used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the
country’s water supply after the Gulf War.” The primary document, “Iraq Water
Treatment Vulnerabilities,” is dated January 22, 1991. It spells out how
sanctions would prevent Iraq from supplying clean water to its citizens.
“Iraq depends on importing specialized equipment and some chemicals to purify
its water supply, most of which is heavily mineralized and frequently brackish
to saline,” the document states. “With no domestic sources of both water
treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue
attempts to circumvent United Nations Sanctions to import these vital
commodities. Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure
drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased
incidences, if not epidemics, of disease.”
Today, very similar conditions are being seen in Yemen, where the quagmire of a
Saudi-led war is increasing the risk of disease exacerbated by a UN-endorsed
land, air and sea blockade. The Saudi coalition could not operate effectively
without military assistance from the U.S., UK, and EU and it is systematically
destroying water, sewage and desalination plants across Yemen, leaving tens of
thousands without clean water and with inadequate sanitation facilities.
In March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded a horrifying
2,263,304 cholera cases in Yemen and 3,767 related deaths since 2017 when the
epidemic took hold in the battered and besieged nation. Without the sanctions
and the Saudi blockade, this disease would be both preventable and curable.
Internal documents from the Sana’a-based Ministry of Health confirm that while
the Sana’a government is responding to COVID-19 by banning all flights and
closing its borders, the Saudi-backed regime of fugitive President Abdul
Mansour Hadi has actually increased the number of flights into Yemen,
especially from Cairo, which is predicted to develop into a major
Coronavirus-affected location. The Health Ministry in Sana’a has accused the
Hadi administration of gross negligence regarding national security and has
warned of catastrophic consequences if the pandemic arrives in Yemen as a
result of this irresponsibility.
The actions of the Saudi Coalition, which effectively control the Hadi regime’s
policies, risk the introduction of a more potent pandemic into the midst of a
country already battling a five-year humanitarian blockade and a
disproportionate, unjustified war of aggression that has seen the country
dealing with a host of devastating epidemics. The flaunting of safety measures
by the Saudi Coalition, endorsed by the UK and US, must be effectively
considered as biological warfare and a crime against humanity.
Much like the Saudi-led Coalition aggression against Yemen, the 2011 NATO
bombing campaign in Libya was intended to destroy that country’s standard of
living. According to journalist and academic, Professor Michel Chossudovsky,
“the objective of the NATO bombings from the outset was to destroy the
country’s standard of living, its health infrastructure, its schools and
hospitals, its water distribution system.” In Libya too, the combination of
sanctions and devastation of infrastructure would ensure an unprecedented rise
in epidemics among weakened and immune-system-deficient wartime populations.
Wartime carpetbaggers profit from postwar misery
Corporate carpetbaggers historically arrive in the wake of the destruction they
have manufactured with rebuilding campaigns and projects almost invariably
financed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. “War is good
for business” for predator nations and disease is profitable for the purveyors
of “humanitarian” military intervention.
With the explosion of COVID-19, Iran had no other option but to approach the
IMF for funding to fight the coronavirus. The head of Iran’s Central Bank,
Abdolnaser Hemmati, confirmed that a request has gone to the IMF for $5
billion. It remains to be seen how the IMF, of which the United States is the
largest shareholder, will respond to the request and if it will honor its
commitment to help all countries to overcome the pandemic, regardless of
historic enmity or ideological differences. The decision ultimately lies with
the United States, as it holds veto power over the IMF.
What is apparent is that the combination of the so-called maximum pressure
campaign being waged by the United States and the coronavirus have brought
about unexpected dividends for those levying the sanctions, and those dividends
will be paid out in potential IMF loans to Iran. Interest on IMF debts
inevitably leads to greater pressure on education, healthcare, and other social
services when limited funds have to be diverted to pay off the loan. Meanwhile,
those sectors will still be negatively impacted by sanctions.
Will the U.S. exploit global desperation or will it discover a hidden well of
humanity hitherto concealed? History tells us that America’s long term
predatory reflex will be the dominant feature of its response to cries for help
from nations it has historically perceived as prey or competition to U.S.
unipolar supremacy.
Beirut-based political science professor Amal Saad summed it up in a single
succinct tweet:
Amal Saad
@amalsaad_lb
The Corona pandemic's potentially devastating impact on every aspect of human
existence illustrates how superfluous the concept of *national security* is.
There can be no national security without human security--protecting people
from disease, poverty, environmental degradation
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Iran and Yemen are not the only countries devastatingly affected by U.S.
sanctions that threaten their ability to cope with a pandemic as ferocious as
COVID-19. Venezuela and Syria are also besieged and weakened by what is
effectively economic terrorism.
As MintPress News recently reported, the United States’ hybrid war on Venezuela
has de facto intensified since the global outbreak of COVID-19. According to
former United Nations special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, U.S sanctions have
already been responsible for the death of over 100,000 Venezuelans. As
elsewhere, the effects of sanctions are most damaging on the health sector,
which directly impacts Venezuela’s ability to deal with a pandemic on the scale
of COVID-19.
Leonardo Flores, a Latin America policy expert says that if it “were it not for
the solidarity of China and Cuba, which sent testing kits and medicine,
Venezuela would be woefully ill-equipped to handle the coronavirus. The
sanctions are worsening an already dangerous situation, forcing Venezuela to
spend three times as much for testing kits as non-sanctioned countries.”
Venezuela was the first country affected by COVID-19 to seek a loan from the
IMF. The request for $ 5bn was rejected by the IMF “claiming a lack of
certainty over the legitimacy of President Nicolas Maduro’s government”. A
“lack of certainty” that has been generated largely by Washington and their
aligned media.
US Sanctions Coronavirus
A worker of the state-owned Concepción Palacios Maternity Hospital manufactures
face masks in Caracas, Venezuela, March 17, 2020. Ariana Cubillos | AP
The collective punishment meted out by U.S. sanctions inflicts damage on entire
populations in prey nations, under the 1949 Geneva Convention, this is a war
crime. To maintain such punitive economic pressures during a time of global
health insecurity must be a supreme crime against humanity as defined by the
United Nations International Law Commission in 1947. Yet we see no chink in the
U.S. armor, no response to demands for humanity from peoples already decimated
and ravaged by U.S. neo-colonialist policies.
The United States leaves target nations with no other option but to break the
blockade by any means possible and to find ways to circumnavigate the draconian
restrictions imposed upon them by successive U.S. administrations. The WHO,
despite its own apparent funding issues, has been instrumental in providing
essential medical equipment and testing kits to Venezuela and Iran and has
heaped praise upon Iran’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis and in particular the
rapid, dedicated response of health workers in the city of Qom, south of Tehran.
Other non-aligned nations such as China and Cuba have been responding
proactively to the world health crisis, despite China having just emerged from
an intense period of combat against the virulent disease themselves.
Cuba allowed the docking of a British cruise ship after five passengers tested
positive for COVID-19. The MS Braemar, carrying six hundred passengers, the
majority of whom are British, had been stranded at sea for two days while
trying to find a country that would permit docking. Cuba was the only nation to
respond positively and the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs said:
“These are times of solidarity, of understanding health as a human right, of
reinforcing international cooperation to face our common challenges, values
that are inherent in the humanistic practice of the Revolution and of our
people”
In Syria, a perfect storm is brewing
There are no confirmed cases of COVID-19 yet in Syria. Syria’s health sector
has been severely affected and decimated by a 9-year proxy military campaign to
topple the elected and popular government headed up by President Bashar Al
Assad. Aside from financing and arming extremist and terrorist groups, among
them al Qaeda and ISIS, the U.S.-led intervention has turned the economic
screws on the Syrian people across all sectors.
Syria’s overburdened health sector trying to rebuild in liberated areas and to
recover its equilibrium after almost a decade of war and terrorist occupation
is going to be hard-pressed to respond adequately to a pandemic as rapacious as
COVID-19. The United States and allies are well aware of this and despite all
pretensions of caring about the welfare of the Syrian people, we see no move by
any of the countries involved to ease the sanctions even temporarily. This,
combined with the military campaign in Idlib, north-west Syria, the inevitably
high numbers of displaced civilians and the looming threat of COVID-19, has the
potential to create the “perfect storm” in Syria unless western countries
respond humanely to the situation.
Bear in mind, these sanctions, imposed by the United States, UK and European
Union, are “the most complicated and far-reaching sanction regimes ever
imposed” according to UN special rapporteur, Idriss Jazairy. The fact that the
Syrian state has not collapsed is a testament to the unity of the people behind
their government and their resistance in the face of U.S. efforts to
destabilize the region.
The Syrian Health Ministry is responding efficiently to the crisis, working
closely with the WHO and despite nine years of war, the University Medical
Faculties and public hospitals across liberated Syria are still operating fully
staffed and offering free health services. Despite these measures, the threat
of COVID-19 entering Syria must be taken very seriously.
US Sanctions Coronavirus
Syrian workers spray disinfectant as a precaution against the coronavirus
outbreak in a public bus in Aleppo, March 15, 2020. Photo | SANA via AP
The neighboring countries of Lebanon, Turkey, Palestine and Jordan have all
reported cases. Syria’s borders are not secure, particularly with Turkey where
inbound and outbound foreign mercenaries and refugees have transited almost
without restriction for nine years. Despite all measures taken by the Syrian
government and Health Ministry, which include some border closure and controls,
the risk remains perilously high.
What does COVID-19 reveal about the world we live in?
While the United States, the EU and UK populations respond with panic to the
COVID-19 pandemic that is sweeping their nations, countries like Yemen and
Syria who have been dealing with humanitarian siege warfare, economic sanctions
and full-scale military war for extended periods of time, are responding with a
more sanguine approach.
These countries know what it means to survive unimaginable hardship and
COVID-19 is another test of their resolve and steadfastness, one they will not
fail.
In 2019, a number of countries met at the United Nations in New York to discuss
the United States’ unilateral sanctions that violate the UN Charter. This was
an attempt by the non-aligned resistance movement to create a formal group to
challenge and combat these economic pressures and imperialist doctrine on a
global scale. It is indicative of the emergence and strengthening of a global
resistance movement against neo-colonial expansion and the solidarity of
nations resisting the predation by the U.S.
COVID-19 is a test for humanity, an unprecedented catalyst for real, organic
transformation. Will we allow our governments to imprint upon us an even more
profound level of isolationism driven by fear and panic, enforced by martial
law, or will we realize that the only way humanity can survive, now and in the
future, is by uniting and responding to the crisis in solidarity with all
oppressed nations in this world?
Secretary Pompeo
✔
@SecPompeo
The U.S. is taking action to sanction Assad regime Lt. General Ayoub for the
violence perpetuated against the people of northern #Syria. Such violence that
impacts civilians, humanitarian workers, and hospitals must not be tolerated.
We stand on the side of the Syrian people.
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The litmus test is how governments in the West respond to what is a global
health crisis. Will they genuinely put human beings first and lift the punitive
sanctions that make it almost impossible for many countries to combat
Coronavirus or will they exploit the situation in a last-ditch attempt to bring
these nations to their knees. A recent tweet from U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo suggests that the U.S. will double down on its hybrid war against Syria
while claiming to “stand on the side of the Syrian people.”
The United States should be aware that their humanitarian fig-leaf no longer
exists, more and more people have seen through the charade. With a resistance
axis in ascendance, the U.S. is in real danger of losing its full-spectrum
dominance in an increasingly multi-polar world where nations demonized by the
United States are stepping up to the plate to assist countries affected by the
pandemic. Will Coronavirus be the final nail in the empire’s coffin? Only time
will tell, but one thing is for sure, the U.S. is not looking good and
non-aligned nations are showing the world what the world should really look
like during a global crisis.
