The introduction of new sanctions against Iran at the very moment the US and Europe are saying Iran is complying with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is appalling. It is cynical.

If as soon as the US ends sanctions, it restores them for different reasons, then clearly it or at least a number of its powerful lawmakers have no interest in justice or peace.

I’m reminded of the story of the lamb. When the wolf ran out of things to blame on the lamb, he ate the lamb the anyway. The US seems to be acting like this towards Iran right now, based on the report linked above.

When Iran agrees to scale back its nuclear industry in exchange for sanctions relief, the US at the same time places new sanctions to cripple Iran based on some other excuse. This time, it’s Iran’s conventional weapons and missile technologies that alarm them and convince them that Iran is still a threat.

It would not surprise me if the US gradually reintroduces all the sanctions on Iran for other reasons now, such as “human rights”, “terrorism”, “missiles”. Anything it can think of. In their own words, “Iran’s support for terrorism, regional destabilization, human rights abuses, and ballistic missile program”. So when the main core issue is gone, they blabber about something else and continue behaving the same way. My analysis would have to stress one thing: a superpower trying to master the world will never allow other countries to develop independently.

History has heard this story a thousand times already. All is exactly as I have stated in my Catalyst thesis and associated op-eds back in 2013. I have said and will always say that the Western powers are the arrogant powers, exactly as Iran claims. They assume a right to attack anyone and they assume others have no right to defend themselves, or even possess so much as a weapon that might have the slightest chance of letting them defend themselves.

Imagine it. Iran could hand over every missile, every bomb and every bullet it possesses to the US and yet the US and Israel would still go there and kill scientists, apply new sanctions and eventually invade to prevent the country developing properly.

Anyone who can harm the US military in any conceivable conflict is considered hostile by the United States. Russia is the enemy because it also has nuclear weapons, China is the enemy because it has nuclear weapons. The US is obsessed with full-spectrum global dominance. It has even said so.

For as long as any homestead, person, or country has the ability to stand up against US authority and prevent it from attacking with impunity, those people will be targeted by the US using sanctions, airstrikes, arrests, assassinations, blockades, isolation and every other tactic in the American state’s arsenal.

How can anyone not be offended by this behaviour? Imagine if you were the target. This strikes at the heart of what it means to be human, the right to develop and innovate at one’s own speed, the right to defend oneself against cruelty and violation. The US, intoxicated on shallow lies about democracy and human rights, has sabotaged and opposed nefariously humanity’s most precious right to develop without interference.

In its finest moments, America spoke of reaching for the stars, while its boot crushed humanity.