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IN THE EARLY hours of Monday morning, anyone with an eye on US President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed would have seen a post that, even for him, appeared alarming.
Using all capital letters, Trump issued a stark warning to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani of the consequences that would follow from picking a fight with America.
He said: “Never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before.
We are no longer a country that will stand for your demented words of violence and death. Be cautious!
The US President was responding to comments made by Rouhani on Sunday, where he warned Trump not to “play with the lion’s tail”, and that getting into a conflict with Iran would be the “mother of all wars”.
This exchange came after months of tensions between the two nations, but these comments marked a significant escalation – and a new low – for relations between Iran and the US.
So what’s it all about? And how has it got so serious?
Back in 2015, Iran agreed a landmark agreement with a number of countries, including the US, dubbed the Iran nuclear deal framework.
Under the pact, sanctions were eased in return for a commitment from Iran not to pursue a nuclear bomb. The US also released billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets as part of the deal.
At the time, US President Barack Obama said a “historic understanding” had been reached with Iran, which had come after “months of tough, principled diplomacy”.
Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, meanwhile, said: “We have built mutual mistrust in the past and I hope that… some of that mistrust could be remedied.”
The international community, including top US officials, have said Tehran had been in compliance with the deal well into this year.
This accord, however, whose signatories also included the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany has been consistently criticised by Trump. The deal was not met favourably with US ally Israel, to whom Trump has dealt with favourably since taking office.
The US sees Iran as a destabilising force in the region, with the nuclear deal only emboldening its aggressive policies in countries such as Syria. Another US ally Saudi Arabia has also signalled warnings about Iran.
In a meeting in April with Emmanuel Macron in the White House, Trump slammed the deal as “insane” and “ridiculous”.
In May, he defied the pleas of his European allies and pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal, vowed to reimpose sanctions on Tehran and said that Iranians deserved a better government.
Calling the deal reached by Obama “defective at its core”, Trump said he had consulted America’s friends in the Middle East and concluded “that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement”.
“America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail,” Trump vowed.
The reaction from Iran was of outrage. Iran’s President Rouhani was furious, accusing Trump of “psychological warfare”.
Conservative publications went even harder, with paper Javan saying in an editorial: “It is time for unity and not for blaming others. It is the occasion for a renewal of Iran. Our slogan ‘Death to America’ is not just a slogan — the United States is effectively dead in our eyes.”
This was followed later on in May with a vow from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Iran would be hit with the “strongest sanctions in history”, as the US ramped up its campaign against Iran.
Trump’s rhetoric has set a clear tone for how exchanges have followed with his administration and the Iranians since May.
While Trump has been faced with a number of controversies in recent weeks – including the Putin summit, the separation of families at the border with Mexico and the threats of a trade war with the rest of the world – the tightening of sanctions against Iran had retained a comparatively lower profile than these issues until this week.
Trump and his administration have even sought to promote unrest among the Iranian people with Pompeo last week urging Iranians abroad to “support” anti-regime protests.
Pompeo also said that he wanted to try put a stop to countries importing Iranian oil by November in an attempt to continue the economic pressure on Tehran.
Speaking last week ahead of the speech by Pompeo, Rouhani warned the United States not to “play with the lion’s tail” on Sunday, saying that conflict with Iran would be the “mother of all wars”.
Addressing Trump, he said: “You declare war and then you speak of wanting to support the Iranian people. You cannot provoke the Iranian people against their own security and interests.”
It was these comments that provoked the all capital letters retort from Donald Trump. In a later riposte from Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, he tweeted (in English and in all capital letters): “Color [sic] us unimpressed… Be cautions!”
While the US has outlined conditions for any “new deal” between itself and Iran – including its withdrawal for Syria and an end to its support for Yemen – Iran has shown no willingness to engage on this, and has insisted it has kept to the terms of the original deal.
Tensions may be at their highest for some time between the two nations, but Trump’s presidency has been marked with unexpected turnarounds.
Less than a year from labelling Kim Jong-Un “rocket man” and saying the US was ready to “totally destroy” North Korea, Trump was meeting Kim and hailing a “big step back from potential nuclear catastrophe”.
This week’s testy exchange certainly does not mean war is imminent, but certainly signals an increasingly aggressive tone in the US’s dealings with Iran.
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I didn’t need to read that I read the headline….. pay up.
@John Hayes: Here’s me after reading the whole article agreeing with you John..
@Paul Gorry: sorry Paul I never jump in but unfortunately this is one of those times. These people have suffered enough.
@John Hayes: absolutely agree with you John.
@John Hayes: Agree 100%
@John Hayes: Show me the MONEY!
Whilst everyone can agree that the survivors should be looked after mentally and financially I do not believe that it should be paid for by the state. It was not the state that sent them into these institutions and it was not the state that ran them. The church got away with paying all of the money into the redress funds for what they did to children and so now must be held solely liable for any financial cost these survivors.
@lorcmulv: Even here in Germany it is well known that the church and the Irish Government were in this together. The state financed it while the church executed it. And yes…. lets not forget the ordinary people. They facilitated it with their shame
@lorcmulv: I agree, additionally it was men who got them pregnant and deserted them. They are liable, as are their own families who put them in their. The church is responsible for the bad treatment but not the state
@lorcmulv: I agree, additionally it was men who got them pregnant and deserted them. They are liable, as are their own families who put them in their. The church is responsible for the bad treatment but not the state government
@lorcmulv:The state knew what was going on and did not do anything about it.So church and state to blame.
@Johannes Baader: They would not have; ‘Shame’ but because of the Catholic Church , Church made the community ashamed of having a Girl among them having a Baby, outside wedlock. The Catholic Church ruled through fear, and shame, and naming people from the altar, after this; a person so shamed would loose their job, and not get work anymore in that community of Fear. The founder of Christianity Jesus was merciful and loving, he knew what it was like to be marginalized he was rejected, his mother Mary Conceived Jesus outside Wedlock, she would have experienced Fear in that situation until Joseph Married her.
Growing up in such a Community the Mother would have to depend on the charity of those people influenced by the Catholic Church. I am so glad they no longer have that control of minds.
@lorcmulv: whilst I see your point and agree on some level, personally I would struggle to separate or disentangle church from state with particular reference to the 1940’s through to the 1980’s. In recent decades the stranglehold of the church on Irish people has dissipated significantly, but for me there is no way that a nation of people so heavily cowed by the power of the Catholic God almighty, so mired and immersed in the fear and shame that breaking Gods holy rule brought, could be governed independent of Church involvement or influence
@Tom’s: and it was the men that got them pregnant in first place so why not sue sue the descendants of these men – that is the same as making the current taxpayer pay for what happened over 50 years ago.
It’s time the catholic church sold off their enormous property portfolio and paid up. Happy Easter boys!
@merely ed: we live in hope merely.
@Paul Gorry: They were poor mouthing the other day about money not coming in.
@David Corrigan: I find it funny that they can come out and have the poor mouth, when their boss in room literally sits on a gold throne, with more security to protect him than Biden does as US president, I mean they literally have their own city and complain cos covid has cut back on the collection plate….id say if they even sold off a third of their assets in Ireland they could pay victims, be sorted during covid and still have money left over for a new car
@merely ed: Dr Michael Woods of Fianna Fail signed a legal agreement with the Catholic Church to limit its liability and commit Irish taxpayers to pay all the bills. If any other Gov did a deal like that to cover up the abuse of innocents there would be public outcry, police investigations and jail for the corrupt. Irish people prefer to not know.
@David Corrigan: Pope asking for the Cardinals to take a pay cut from their Salary Of; € 5,000 a month.
What about them asking their own families who put them there – for compensation? The families and the church were in cahoots.
What about the men who got them pregnant and abandoned these women and their children. They are liable, not the state.
@Bleurgh: I am adopted. The church and the state contributed to my community’s mistreatment. The fact that government depts like the dept of foreign affairs organised so many passports for children to be trafficked, that it was reported on in national, US and German newspapers, is evidence alone that the State was directly involved.
Also the institution I was in was infamous as being a place where vaccine trials, drug trials and food/formula trials were conducted on us unaccompanied infants, mostly by British pharmaceutical companies and Irish universities. Ultimately whose responsibility was this? As I and other children were ‘wards of the State’, then the Irish State was responsible at the time and remains responsible still for this illegal and unethical experimentation and negligence.
@akaalison: whilst every compassion can be afforded to you as a survivor the brass tacks are that the majority of mothers got pregnant and the fathers wanted no more to do with the mothers of their children and the mothers own family forced them into these institutions out of some sense of shame fuelled by the church. The church ran the institutions and whilst the state had to be involved in some sort of collision – that was the state of government then and to maintain that the current taxpayer is solely financially liable is not fair or reasonable. A way should be found to make the families that put these women and children into these homes pay, as well as the fathers along with the church who ran the homes pay the majority of any financial costs.
@lorcmulv: so you can afford me compassion, but not redress!?!
And no one said “that the current taxpayer is solely financially liable”. The article doesn’t even hint at that.
Anyone responsible including the State, the religious orders, the State inspectors, the Adoption Board, the adoption agencies, the social workers, the private nursing homes, the county councils, the nuns, priests, bishops & archbishops, those who discarded babies & mothers bodies, the medical schools who used bodies as cadavers, the TD’s, the pharmaceutical companies, the universities, the hospitals, the deceptive medics (DeValera), the staff of institutions, the aircraft carriers who trafficked the ‘Banished Babies’.
ALL who were responsible &/or were complicit by doing nothing should be held accountable
…finally!
The state should pay some compensation and fully acknowledge the disgraceful atrocities that occurred at the mother and baby homes, but the pressure should be put on religious orders to pay up for not just this but other disgraceful acts they have been found to have been involved in…..and if they don’t do it, either start taking them and use the money to pay the compensation via the state or send in CAB and seize assets to sell off
FG/FF allowed this infanticide and slave labour to happen, for around 80 years.
So while the state oversaw this, it is the Church wealth that should be repossessed to compensate as they had a stranglehold on “Catholic Ireland” with their ‘purity’ views from a ‘holy’ book filled with atrocities.
Trials, repossessions and disband them.
Shame on the Roman Catholic Church & Government of the day. The Catholic Church can’t step any lower in the eyes of many people. The Catholic Church is already selling off property in secret and moving the funds.
Hi, can someone answer this for me please. At the time of the adoptions, were the actions (save for those cases where birth certs were altered) of the authorities/facilitators legal?
@Susan Keane: we don’t know. I’m adopted and am actively prevented knowing most of my info. For example, did my birth mother give informed consent to my adoption? Was I taken from my birth mother before the waiting period for full consent had elapsed? Was my birth mother informed of her entitlement to withdraw her initial consent? Was I forcibly taken or without her choice? Was I used as a guinea pig, unlawfully and unethically in vaccine trials, drug trials and food/formula trials while I was in an institution as ‘a ward of the State’?
Who was charged with my “care” and were they adults. Were they qualified to care for vulnerable children? Was I neglected, abused or did I receive medical attention for an incidents and/or accidents?
And there are MANY, MANY, more questions.
@akaalison: I also was adopted and always wonder about the same questions.And I know I was with my adopted family within around six weeks of my birth when legally you couldn’t adopt a child until the child was at least six months old.
As an adoptee who was in St Patrick’s home, I am deeply, deeply offended by the headline on this article.
What a ro**n headline trying to make survivors look like money grabbers!
The church was responsible for sending women who had their children taken from them, if they weren’t adopted they were placed in orphanages. They didn’t give their consent to have their children used as guinea pigs, no consent was sought from their parents it was illegal, A lot of children were made wards of court by the state, If a child lost a parent the state would take the child/children away from their surviving parent usually their fathers, so the state was responsible for their welfare. The state should compensate them
ask the state to pay, what? ask your real families to pay, they gave u away
have your say