TrumpStein: ‘Not Good Enuff. Iran Can’t Require Ships in Its Own Waters to Coordinate with Them! Unlimited Numbers of Ships Must Go Through at Anytime w/o Regard to Safety or Space. My Master Said So’

From [FAIR] We’re joined now by Phyllis Bennis. She’s a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. She’s an international advisor for Jewish Voice for Peace, and author of many books, including, recently, Understanding Palestine and Israel, from Olive Branch Press. She joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Phyllis Bennis.

Phyllis Bennis: Great to be with you, Janine.

JJ: Let me just stick with today, July 8, for a minute, and ABC News’ rendering for a second. I think it’s not especially bad or good; I think it’s just reflective. So they say:

The 14-point MOU committed the signatories to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz for commercial traffic, with the US lifting its naval blockade of Iranian ports. Iran also committed not to pursue nuclear weapons—a commitment Tehran has previously made—while the US agreed to allow Iranian oil sales and to begin work on a $300 million reconstruction fund for the country.

So there’s numerous things that you might pick up on there, but where would you start? If you were talking to someone about this statement—and again, I’m not saying it’s inaccurate—but if you were to come along with folks reading news media coverage, what would you add or annotate?

PB: Well, there’s a lot, not surprisingly.

The MOU, the Memorandum of Understanding, is very short. It’s like a page and a half long. And it’s one of the reasons, one of many reasons, why there were so many questions about: Can you tell us the difference between this MOU and what was known as the JCPOA (because it was an actual agreement) that was negotiated during the Obama period?

And the first part of answering that question is that that, one, the Obama period JCPOA, was a nuclear deal. The MOU is a memorandum to talk about what we should talk about. It was an agreement about what we should talk about. So you can’t really compare them. It’s not just like apples and oranges; it’s kind of apples and rosebushes, or something. So let’s start with that reality.

Now, there are some things about the MOU that were pretty clear. Ironically enough, from the US vantage point, what was clear was what Iran is supposed to get out of this ‘agreement to go forward.’ One of which was the part you just referred to, Janine, about that they were going to allow free traffic through the strait of Hormuz, without charging anything, for 60 days. After that, the implication was, they could charge fees or service charges or other things; it wasn’t spelled out, but that was the implication. But that they were obligated to arrange for the safe passage.

The US decided that that clearly meant—because they say it with that kind of outrage—that clearly meant that Iran had to simply not do anything, and let any ships go through, without any power. Without acknowledging that part of this was the understanding that Iran has something to say about what ships in what order, at what time, and how many, traverse the Strait, which is both part of international waters and within Iran’s territorial waters. The same is true for Oman on the other side of the Strait, but that seemed to not be part of the MOU.

So the significance of that, it’s not just some technical, legal thing. It’s that the Iranian understanding of what the MOU said was that it had to arrange for ships to traverse safely through the Strait of Hormuz. And their position is, “That’s what we’re doing. We’re telling every ship they have to coordinate with us. If they want to coordinate with somebody else, that’s up to them, but they have to coordinate with us for this 60 days, and we will not charge them anything.”

The US says, “That’s not good enough.” They can’t require ships to coordinate with them. They have to just allow ships to go through, without checking in with anybody, without caring how many, are they going to crash into each other? What kind of naval restrictions are underway? Nothing.

And that’s what has led to this most recent occasion. For Iran, the ability to control the Strait of Hormuz has been the one strategic victory they have won through this horrific war that has been waged. And in that context, the notion that you might expect them to simply stand back and say, “Oh, the Strait of Hormuz? Yeah, we’re going back to what it was before the war. Before you destroyed almost 4,000 lives in our country, before you destroyed 170 school girls on your first day, before you assassinated our leader, before all of that—that’s the position we’ll go back to.” It’s kind of, what planet do they think they’re living on? So there’s those kinds of things in the MOU that the US is claiming should be the interpretation, but clearly is not. [MORE]