The United States has abandoned the rules and habits of diplomacy in favour of threats, sanctions and violence. If the west wants peace, it must relearn how to talk to its enemies.

“You close it and you won’t have a country. You won’t even make it back to your fking country.”** Donald J Trump, the President of the United States of America.

Too many people have been killed by the Americans, including thousands of children, for us not to take seriously the genocidal threats made by the ‘Leader of the Free World’.  This particular threat about the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was directed at the Iranian delegation in Switzerland. We need to seriously talk about the state of American diplomacy.

Back in April Trump had warned that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”. Instead of being forced into a straitjacket and held somewhere for the criminally insane, the man continues to sit in the Oval Office.

We have become so used to this vicious psychopathic language from the President that the recent threat to Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and his delegation was mainly buried deep in the coverage by the mainstream media. The increasingly disappointing Guardian even pretended it was a threat to simply ‘bomb’ the country and ‘kidnap’ the negotiators.  Tell that to victims of US-Israeli violence such as Ismail Haniyeh (Hamas Political Chief), Saleh al-Arouri (Hamas Deputy Political Chief), Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (The Supreme Leader of Iran) and many of his family and advisors, Ali Larijani, Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, all the high-ranking Iranian officials killed in the US-Israeli attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, the Hamas negotiators lured to a location in Qatar to advance negotiations between the US and Hamas only to be targeted with airstrikes last year.

‘Decapitation strikes’ by the US and Israel have become such normalised behaviour that people increasingly see it as normal. It’s not; it is depraved and........

© Pearls and Irritations