Imperialism is Antithetical to the Sovereign Equality of States

How are Westerners to make sense of human precepts that espouse the goodness of sharing with those less fortunate while western corporations plunder the wealth from the land of those in dire need? How is it that Westerners can make sense of the professed desire for peace and love for fellow humans when western militaries wreak violence on smaller nations and blithely explain away civilian deaths as “collateral damage”?

It makes one wonder: on which side of the looking glass are we?

If one wandered to the other side of the looking glass — where up is down and down is up, where left is right and right is left, where good is bad and bad is good — what would one find? How does imperialism look like on the other side of the mirror?

Just imagine what would have been the reaction of the United States if Iran was running a covert spy operation against it and refused to discuss the matter?

What would have been the reaction if an Iranian drone had been brought down/crashed in the continental United States? One can easily imagine the outcry and indignation. It would certainly be described as a clear-cut casus belli. What if the Iranian reaction to its “lost” drone were merely to deny the authenticity of the drone? Or what if it the reaction were to deny its drone had been brought down by the US? ,

What if the reaction were merely to downplay US acquisition of Iranian technology? What if the Iranian reaction to the loss of its surveillance craft were unapologetic, as if spying on a sovereign nation was its right?

What if this were one of many preceding drone tresspasses?

What would the reaction be if Iran built a case against the US based on dollops of disinformation, manipulating international personnel charged with nonproliferation responsibility, and targeted the US economy by pressing for worldwide sanctions for failing to live up to many clauses in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty including the preamble which states,

Desiring to further the easing of international tension and the strengthening of trust between States in order to facilitate the cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery pursuant to a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control…

In the “real world,” the US has continued to maintain and update its nuclear stockpile in clear contravention of the NPT.

What if the Iranian president and foreign minister all declared that “no options were off the table” in how to deal with the nuclear threat posed by the United States?

Imagine if Iran had attempted to shut down nuclear facilities in the US and Israel with a computer virus? How would the US and Israel have responded?

Imagine if Iranian black operatives were assassinating nuclear scientists in Israel while denying it all back home “with a smile.” Imagine if explosions mysteriously erupted from Dimona? What would be the reaction in Israel – especially if a former Iranian head of state security hinted his state was behind it all acting as “the hand of Allah”?

What if part of the justification for destruction of Israeli nuclear facilities was that Israeli-made drones were used by Iran’s nemesis, the US, to overfly its neighbour state, Iraq? ,

If, as a part of modern historical record, Iran had plotted and helped bring about the overthrow of an elected US government and then replaced it with an authoritarian monarch kept in place with a draconian state security, how would Americans view the Iranian state?

If everything detailed here has happened mirror opposite against Iran, how then is it that a serial aggressor state like the US has any moral clout to denounce Iran? How is that Israel, a serial violator of international law, has any moral standing to pronounce on Iran?

Is the United Nations not based on the “sovereign equality of all its Members” as stated in the UN Charter? Why then should the reaction among UN members differ in response to similar provocations?

How does one state justify its possession of weapons of mass destruction while denying other states the same right of possession? What happened to Iraq and Libya when they gave up possessing WMD? What has happened to North Korea which gained possession of nuclear bombs? What conclusions should the Iranian state reach from all of this?

Does each state not have the inalienable right to self-defense equal to that of other states?