Undoubtedly,
the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and its brutal crimes in the West Bank,
Lebanon and beyond are rooted in the policies pursued by Carter. Carter
played a key role in aiding and abetting the Israeli apartheid regime by
brokering a seemingly peace deal between Egypt and Israel in 1978.
Then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and
then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat signed Camp David Accords on
September 17, 1978, that led in the following year to a peace treaty between
the two sides. The agreements became known as the Camp David Accords
because the negotiations took place at the US presidential retreat at Camp
David, Maryland.
The
agreements were the first normalization deal between Israel and an Arab
country. More than four decades on, it is crystal clear that the deals were a
stab in the back of Palestinians and their cause.
The Carter administration had painted a scenario to motivate
Arab states to reduce their support for Palestine amid the Israeli occupation.
He also wanted Arab leaders to consider their own interests separate from those
of the Palestinians. So far, an overwhelming majority of the Arab public has
not recognized Israel and remained opposed to normalizing ties with the regime.
Nonetheless, Carter’s political ploy led to the Abraham
Accords. Despite rising sentiment against Israel’s atrocities against
Palestinians, Donald Trump oversaw the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020,
which normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain
as well as Morocco. Sudan joined the US-brokered deal a year later.
The
normalization deals not only failed to improve the situation of Palestinians,
but also strengthened Israel's resolve to intensify its apartheid practices. With
no doubts, Israel’s recent brutal war on Lebanon and the war of genocide in
Gaza are the results of US-brokered normalization deals that began in the
Carter era.
Proponents of Carter, who earned the Nobel Peace Prize in
2002, characterize him as a champion of peace and democracy. However, the
negative consequences of his policies on the Palestinian and Lebanese
populations suggest that he may be more accurately remembered as a hawkish
president rather than a dovish one. An examination of his statements regarding
Iran further clarifies the debate over whether he should be classified as a hawk
or a dove.
Carter served one term as president and lost his reelection
bid to Ronald Reagan. His successes eclipsed at the polls by a stagnant economy
and the 1979 US embassy takeover in Tehran.
In November 1979, a group of university students took over
the US embassy in the Iranian capital. They believed Washington had turned its
embassy into a center of espionage against the newly established Islamic
Republic. Consequently, dozens of American diplomats were taken captive for 444
days.
Carter made futile attempts to secure the release of the
Americans.
On
April 25, 1980, the US revealed it had attempted a military
operation known as Operation Eagle Claw to rescue the release of the
captives. But the operation failed and eight US servicemen were killed and
several others were injured.
Carter explicitly demonstrated his enmity toward Iran in an
interview 10 years ago.
“I
could have been re-elected if I had taken military action against Iran. It
would have shown that I was strong and resolute and manly. ... I could have
wiped Iran off the map with the weapons that we had,” he said in a 2014
interview with CNBC.
In the interview, Carter acknowledged his aspiration to
entirely obliterate Iran, yet he had found himself unable to achieve this dream
either through military or political means.
Courtesy: Tehran Times
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