Obama decriminalizes killer drone war: Prominent academic

An eminent academic says US President Barack Obama’s push to seek legal cover for the US assassination drone attacks in different countries in the world amounts to a criminal move to “legalize the illegal.”

“Obama is committing crimes against humanity under the guise of ‘a nice man’; as ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing,’ he is making every brazen effort to legalize the illegal and justify the unjustifiable,” prominent Iranian political analyst Dr. Ismail Salami wrote in an article on Press TV website on Tuesday.

“Under the pretext of combating terrorism, Obama has followed in the footsteps of former President George Bush and even intensified the killer drone attacks in different parts of the world, a move which has terminated in the unfortunate deaths of multitudes of innocent people,” the Iranian author further pointed out.

According to a report published by the New York Times on November 24, the US has been drawing up a formal rulebook to “legalize” its assassination drone attacks in six Muslim countries.

The rulebook would give the new government “clear standards and procedures” to continue its targeted killing program.

Salami then referred to the US administration’s illegal sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran and described the bans as an act of “silent killing.”

“In parallel with the illegal CIA-operated killer drone attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and many other secret destinations, Obama has initiated a system of silent killings in Iran by imposing sanctions which have indirectly but agonizingly targeted the Iranian patients, endangering the lives of 6 million people and claiming the lives of many,” he noted.

“On November 26, Dr. Seyed Alireza Marandi, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences, wrote a letter to Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General and voiced grave concern over the health of the ailing people in Iran and called on him to take necessary steps for the effective removal of the sanctions so brutally targeting the Iranian patients,” he added.

Though US rules have not imposed any bans on American firms to sell medicine and medical supplies to Iran, exporters have been required to apply for special licenses. Besides, as the aftermath of the sanctions, the impossibility of transferring money through banks has cast its cumbersome shadow upon medicine and healthcare in Iran and has gravely affected the import of medicines to Iran.

At the beginning of 2012, the US and the European Union imposed new sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors with the goal of preventing other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Central Bank of Iran.

The illegal US-engineered sanctions were imposed based on the unfounded accusation that Iran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Although the US-led sanctions do not directly ban selling medicine and medical supplies to Iran, the sanctions on the banking sector are effectively hindering the import of medicine to the country, thereby jeopardizing the lives of millions of patients suffering from special diseases such as thalassemia, hemophilia, hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and many others.

Salami also cited Obama’s failure in keeping his campaign promises to the American people and the Muslim community, “as he made no tangible efforts to eliminate poverty in the US and deracinate Islamophobia in the country and the West.”

“On the contrary,” the Iranian analyst said, “he has consciously augmented the phenomenon to a degree of inconceivable horror.”

“As a peace Nobelist, Obama is indeed a man dressed in borrowed robes. Needless to say, those who awarded him with the peace prize should now be hanging their heads low in shame,” Salami concluded.