“Your Land is My Land”

Before looking at the rift over Greenland in the hoary alliance between the US and Europe, let’s discuss Iran. Is the Khamenei regime close to collapsing? Will there be major Middle East clashes involving Iran, Israel, and the US? 

The connected questions are critical for the world as a whole, but I would like first to focus on something else underlined by the news from Iran: the demonstrated failure of the ideology of religious zeal and supremacy. 

My reason for this focus should be obvious. For twelve years, the people of India have faced a sustained bid to overthrow their nation’s secular format and establish a Hindu counterpart of Islamic Iran or Islamic Afghanistan. The demonstrated failure of the still-surviving Khamenei regime provides an unmistakable lesson for India. 

Though evidently suppressed for the time being, the Iranian people’s widespread protests have told India that profound and potentially explosive unrest will result from the bid to foist Hindu supremacy on the Indian polity, where at least on paper the constitutional pledges of freedom of belief and equal rights remain, and from the accompanying bid to impose rigid notions of Hinduism and Hindu practice on a heterogeneous population. 

WHO KILLED THE PROTESTERS? 

Ayatollah Khamenei and his supporters will no doubt object to the words “demonstrated failure.” They are claiming that the protests in Iran have been successfully suppressed. Here is what Khamenei said in Tehran on January 17: 

“We hold the American president guilty for the casualties, damages and accusations he has levelled against the Iranian nation. This was an American conspiracy... America’s goal is to swallow Iran … [T]he goal is to put Iran back under military, political and economic domination. [The authorities] must break the back of the seditionists. 

“We do not intend to lead the country to war, but we will not spare domestic criminals… [W]orse than domestic criminals, international criminals, we will not spare them either. 

“By God’s grace, the Iranian nation must break the back of the seditionists just as it broke the back of the sedition.” 

Though claiming that the revolt was suppressed, Khamenei publicly acknowledged in that same speech “that thousands of people were killed during recent protests.” Citing Iranian state media, the BBC quoted Khamenei as saying, “Those linked to Israel and the US caused massive damage and killed several thousand, some in an inhuman, savage manner.” 

Is Khamenei saying to the world that his nation’s protectors watched with folded arms as Iranians linked to Israel and the US killed several thousand compatriots, at times savagely and inhumanly? 

Is he saying that this sort of butchery took place in a hundred Iranian cities but Iranian officers, soldiers, and police were helpless and could do nothing to prevent it? If that’s what actually happened, should Khamenei remain as the Supreme Leader?

QUIET DEAL? 

A connected question is even more important. Can Iran’s precious people find a way out of hardships intensified by years of sanctions and by the bombings last year by Israel and the US? 

Meanwhile everyone can be glad that at least for the time being a fresh round of warfare involving Iran, Israel, and the US has been averted. While Khamenei evidently alleged on social media that “America’s goal is to swallow Iran,” the US state department claimed that it had “heard reports that the Islamic Republic is preparing options to target American bases”. On January 17 the state department said that Iran would be met with “a very, very powerful force” if it launched such an attack and warned Tehran not to “play games with President Trump.” 

It was interesting to learn that Israel’s prime minister, Netanyahu, cautioned Trump against fresh military strikes on Iran. Though torn from within and squeezed for decades from without, Iran is apparently not without the ability even today to inflict damage on Israel and on American assets in the region. Equally interesting was the word that Iran secured American restraint by suspending executions of rebels that had been planned. 

In our complex world, quiet deals coexist with loud words. 

Reporting in Karachi’s Dawn newspaper, Anwar Iqbal writes: 

“Vali Nasr, a prominent Iranian-American scholar in Washington, emphasised the durability of Iran’s security apparatus. For protests to seriously threaten the regime, he said, parts of the state — especially the security forces — would need to defect. 

“‘There is no sign of any defections … or that [the state] has in any way fractured,’ Nasr said. ‘I am not certain the balance of forces necessarily lies with the protesters.’ 

APPETITE FOR MONARCHY? 

‘Sustained unrest over a longer period would be required to alter that balance,’ he added, highlighting the gap between public anger and the state’s capacity to withstand it. 

“Scholars also note that the protests remain decentralised and leaderless. While symbolic support exists for former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi or, less frequently, [for] the MEK (Mojahedin) leader Maryam Rajavi, most Iranians appear focused on internal change rather than exiled leadership. 

“Most experts agree there is little appetite inside Iran for either the restoration of the monarchy or the return of the MEK.”

*

Now about Greenland, Europe, and Donald Trump. “This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security and Survival of our Planet,” Trump said on January 19, referring to what as of writing is the impasse over his resolve to annex Greenland. 

What imminent threat to our Earth’s survival would go away if Greenland were to be detached from Denmark and attached to the US?  Are Russia and/or China about to assemble formidable nuclear weapons in Greenland, menacing the US? No one in the US or anywhere else has suggested anything of that sort. 

Focused steadily on Greenland, NATO’s sharp eyes have seen no stirring there to cause concern. The navy or air force or space force of NATO’s strongest member, the US, does not seem to have noticed anything disturbing on or around the immense northern island. 

Trump has nonetheless said that he plans to take control of the island either “the easy way” or “the hard way”. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly told lawmakers in Washington that the American plan was “to buy rather than invade the island,” but no word ruling out the latter possibility has been heard. 

WHAT’S THE REAL REASON? 

What is the real reason behind Trump’s eagerness? The BBC notes “that in recent years there has been increased interest in Greenland’s natural resources, including rare earth minerals, uranium and iron. It could also have significant oil and gas reserves.” The melting of much of Greenland’s ice has eased extraction from the ground underneath. 

Trump has been candid about the reserves of Venezuela’s oil and their usefulness to the US, and also, he has conceded, to the people of Venezuela. When he spoke some days back about the Democratic Republic of Congo and the truce he claimed to have achieved between the DRC and neighboring Rwanda, he spoke of the DRC’s mineral wealth, known to be vast. 

Trump will not deny that he is moved by the gleam of the world’s mineral riches. Their magnetism finds an instant response in him. 

The reaction is entirely human. Some might even find it likeable. Will anyone call it presidential or statesmanlike? Healthy, on the other hand, is the opposition to Trump’s declared plan of possessing Greenland by the people of semi-autonomous Greenland, of Denmark (which has “owned” Greenland from 1721), and of every European country. 

When, a few centuries ago, the European forebears of many of today’s Americans dispossessed their land’s indigenous owners, the latter were helpless and silent. Today’s Greenlanders, most of them apparently of Inuit origin, may not be in a position to resist by themselves an invasion or a purchase. However, unlike the native Americans of the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, today’s Greenlanders have the support of the populations and governments of the countries of Europe. They will not allow themselves and their land to be quietly “transferred” or “sold,” and all of Europe appears to back them. 

Trump is sure he has an answer. Tariffs! In a joint statement issued on January 17, eight European countries -- Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Great Britain – opposed the extraordinary 10 percent tariff that Trump announced on goods they were exporting to the US, levied because of their opposition to Trump’s plan to annex Greenland. 

Trump’s response was to say: “These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable,” adding the words already quoted, “This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security and Survival of our Planet.” 

Asked if he would follow through on the tariff threat, Trump told NBC News: “I will, 100 percent.” According to the BBC, Trump has said he will charge a 10 percent tariff “on any and all goods” sent from the UK to the US from 1 February, increasing to 25 percent from 1 June, until a deal is reached for Washington to purchase Greenland from Denmark. 

In a personal comment on Facebook, Denmark’s Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, said that “Europe won’t be blackmailed” by Donald Trump’s tariff threats over Greenland. 

Will diplomacy soften this peculiar dispute? Is Trump merely seeking “attention”? What Trump says in his Davos talk scheduled for January 21 may indicate something. Meanwhile the world observes a divide in what used to be called the Western Alliance which may have long-term consequences. Speaking to BBC Newshour, Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, said that mutual respect for sovereignty was the “non-negotiable” core principle of international law and co-operation. 

CNN tells us that “on Russian state television, pro-Kremlin pundits rejoiced over Trump’s Greenland moves, which they assessed as ‘delivering a catastrophic blow to NATO’ and as being ‘truly tremendous for Russia.’ 

“The understandable view is that, with the NATO alliance facing its biggest crisis in decades and transatlantic unity potentially splintering, support in the West for Ukraine’s war effort is sure to falter, handing Moscow an even stronger whip hand on the battlefield.” 

SIMPLE “REMEDY” 

Across the world, newspapers have been displaying a map from Trump’s official Truth Social account depicting not merely Greenland but Canada as well in the red, white and blue of the American flag. 

For decades, a deep cultural and racial bond seemed to exist between Europe and the US. Is that bond intact? Macron, the French president, is not the only European who has said that Trump’s plan to annex Greenland, reaffirmed with an image issued by Trump of him standing on that country with an American flag, is “unacceptable”. Nations are sovereign, Macron added, wherever they exist. 

Macron has also declined an invitation to join Trump’s Board of Peace, where membership can be purchased for a billion US dollars, and which Trump evidently pictures as a superior alternative to the UN. 

We are being offered a simple way of managing humanity: bribe or bully those in the way.