In an interview with IRNA on Tuesday, American journalist Robert Fantina said that the US government has shown no ability, or even desire, to learn lessons of history, referring to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
Asked about the lessons Washington can learn from the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan for its militant foreign policy around the world, Fantina said the Taliban’s return to power after 20 years of US’ struggle “should certainly tell the U.S. that diplomacy, not military action, should at least be tried, but it doesn’t seem that the US is ever interested in anything but forcing its will on other nations.”
The journalist said that Washington’s increasing tensions with Russia, China and Iran are not only unnecessary, but are fraught with danger for the entire world.
“US diplomats should engage with China, Russia and Iran, and seek common ground”, Fantina noted, “But this is not how the US has ever operated.”
“The US government would like to forget about the existence of Afghanistan,” Fantina said when asked if the US killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri signaled the deepening of tensions between the Taliban and the US in the coming months, adding that the actions against far-flung, imperial interests of the US caused by the tremendous amount of hostility encouraged among the Afghan people.
“So the US then will take whatever action it deems necessary to combat the ‘terrorism’ that it caused,” he continued, the killing of al-Zawahir “may not indicate any deepening tensions between the Taliban and the US, but is certainly a sign that those tensions did not end with the conclusion of the US war against the people of Afghanistan.”
On the situation of women in Afghanistan with the Taliban violating women’s rights, Fantina opined that Afghanistan has no geopolitical or natural resources-related significance to the US and the western nations covet, so what it does to its people is of no concern.”
“If it did, if Afghanistan had large oil supplies, or was situated in a location of global importance to the U.S., then the U.S. would condemn that fact that the Taliban violated its pledges, and has further marginalized the girls and women within its borders,” he added.
On the US policy of continuing sanctions against Afghanistan, Fantini said that the US government official have never leaned “the concept of actions causing consequences”, as they continue to keep the sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Venezuela, while they know that “it was never government officials who suffered.”
“US officials naively think that the people of Iran, for example, will become so enraged due to their U.S-caused difficulties, that they will demand a new government,” he accused US officials of failure to understand people of different nations.
He said that the US officials “don’t recognize that the people of Iran are proud of their revolution, have not forgotten that the US overthrew a democratically-elected government in 1953 and installed and supported for decades the brutal Shah of Iran, or that the US violated the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) in 2017. Their hostility is toward the source of their problems.”
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