Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares
The Israel-US war on Iran is engulfing the entire Middle East and could escalate to global war. The economic consequences are already severe and could become catastrophic.
The Strait of Hormuz carries approximately one-fifth of all oil (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/oil) traded globally, and 30 per cent of the world’s LNG (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/lng). A sustained closure of the Strait would trigger an energy shock without modern precedent.
The conflict is likely to spiral out of control because the US and Israel are dead set on hegemony (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/hegemony) in the Arab world and West Asia – one that combines Israeli territorial expansion with American-backed regime control across the region.
The ultimate goal is a Greater Israel that absorbs all historic Palestine (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/palestine), combined with compliant Arab and Islamic governments stripped of genuine sovereignty, including on choices as to how and where they export their oil and gas.
This is delusional. No country across the region wants Israel to run wild as it is doing, murdering civilians across the entire region, destroying Gaza (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/gaza) and the West Bank (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/west-bank), invading Lebanon (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/lebanon), striking Iraq and Yemen (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/yemen), and carpet-bombing Tehran (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/tehran). No country wants its hydrocarbon exports under effective US control.
The war will end if and only if global revulsion at the US and Israeli aggression forces these countries to stop. Short of that, we are likely to see the Middle East in flames and the world in an energy and economic crisis unprecedented in modern history. The war could easily turn into a global conflagration, effectively into World War III.
Yet, there exists an alternative. The war could stop on rational grounds if Israel and the US are decisively called to account by the rest of the world. Ending the war requires a set of interlinked steps to provide basic security for all parties, and indeed for the world. Iran needs a permanent end to the US-Israel aggression.
The Gulf countries need an end to Iran’s retaliatory strikes. The Palestinians (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/palestinians) need an independent state. Israel needs lasting security and the disarmament of Hamas (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/hamas) and Hezbollah (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/hezbollah). The whole world needs the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and international monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program to ensure it abides by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as Iran says it wants to do. And all countries want, or should want, real sovereignty for themselves and their region.
Collective security could be achieved in five interconnected measures.
First, the US and Israel would immediately end their armed aggression across the entire region and withdraw their forces.
Second, Iran would stop its retaliatory strikes across the GCC and resubmit to monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency under a revised Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which President Trump recklessly abandoned in 2018.
Third, the Strait of Hormuz would reopen with the mutual agreement of Iran and the GCC.
Fourth, the two-state solution would be immediately implemented by admitting Palestine as a full member state of the UN. Israel would be required to end its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and Syria (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/syria).
Fifth, the UN recognition of the State of Palestine would form the basis for a comprehensive regional disarmament of all non-state actors, verified under international monitoring. The result would be a return to international law (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/international-law) and the UN Charter.
Who would win in this plan? The people of the region, of Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the rest of the world. Who would lose? Only the backers of Greater Israel, led by Benjamin Netanyahu (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/benjamin-netanyahu), Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, and Mike Huckabee (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/mike-huckabee), have brought the world to the brink of destruction.
Here are the five steps in more detail.
First: End the US-Israeli Armed Aggression.
Israel and the US would stop their aggression and withdraw their forces. In turn, Iran would cease its retaliatory strikes. This would not be a mere ceasefire. Rather, it would be the first step of an overall peace agreement and collective security arrangement.
Second: Return to the JCPOA.
The nuclear question would be resolved through strict monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency, not through bombing campaigns that merely put Iran’s enriched uranium beyond international monitoring. The UN Security Council would immediately reinstate the basic framework of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which Iran must strictly comply with IAEA monitoring and agreed limits on its nuclear program, while economic sanctions (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/sanctions) on Iran would be lifted.
Third: Reopen the Strait of Hormuz in an Iran-GCC Framework
The Strait of Hormuz would be quickly reopened, with safe passage jointly guaranteed by Iran and the GCC. The GCC countries would assert sovereignty over the military bases in their countries to ensure that the bases would not be used as launchpads for renewed offensive strikes against Iran.
Fourth: The Two-State Solution
The two-state solution would be implemented by admitting Palestine into the UN as the 194th permanent member state. This requires nothing more than the US lifting its veto. Palestinian statehood is in accord with international law and with the Arab Peace Initiative, which has been on the table since 2002. In turn, the countries in the region would establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and the UN Security Council would introduce peacekeepers to ensure the security of both Palestine and Israel.
Fifth: An End to Armed Belligerency
In conjunction with the two-state solution, all armed belligerency in the region would end forthwith, including the disarmament of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other armed non-state actors. In the case of Palestine, the disarmament of Hamas would underpin the authority of the Palestinian state. In the case of Lebanon, the disarmament of Hezbollah would restore Lebanon’s full sovereignty, with the Lebanese Armed Forces as the sole military authority in the country.
The disarmament would be verified by international monitors and guaranteed by the UN Security Council.
The key point is that the Israel-US war on Iran has not occurred in a vacuum. The Clean Break (https://www.dougfeith.com/docs/Clean_Break.pdf) strategy, developed by Netanyahu and his American neocon (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/neocon) backers in 1996, and implemented since then, calls for Israel to establish hegemony in the region through wars of regime change, with the US as the implementing partner.
We are therefore living through the culmination of a long-standing plan by Israel and the US to dominate the Arab world and West Asia, create a Greater Israel, and permanently block Palestinian statehood.
We are not optimistic about the likelihood of our plan. The Israeli government is murderous, and Trump is delusional about US power. We are perhaps already in the early days of WWIII.
Yet because the stakes are so high, it’s worth laying out real solutions even if they are long shots. We do believe, however, that the non-Western world—the part that is not vassal states to US power—understands the urgency of peace and security.
Who, then, could champion a peace plan that the US and Israel will resist with every means at their disposal, until the weight of global opposition and economic catastrophe leaves them no choice but to accept it?
There is one main group, and that is the BRICS nations.
Brazil (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/brazil), Russia, India, China, South Africa (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/south-africa), and the bloc’s expanded membership, which now includes the UAE, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/ethiopia), and Indonesia, represent approximately half of the world’s population and more than 40 per cent of global GDP (compared to 28 per cent for the vaunted but overblown G7 (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/g7) countries).
The BRICS have the credibility, the economic weight, and the absence of historical complicity in Middle East imperialism (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/imperialism) to bring the world to its senses. The BRICS should convene an emergency summit and present a unified framework incorporating the conditions for peace and security, which in turn would be pressed at the UN Security Council.
There, world opinion would tell the US and Israel to stop pushing the world towards catastrophe, and would remind all countries to adhere to the UN Charter.
* Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. Sybil Fares is a specialist and advisor in Middle East policy and sustainable development at SDSN. This article was originally published at https://www.commondreams.org/
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.
