Editor’s Note: This story is excerpts from an interview by Democracy Now! with economist Jeffrey Sachs; it is a rush transcript. See original story here.
‘This is the most brazen fascism that we have seen since the fascist era. And it is absolutely extraordinary, and it’s going to put us, I think, probably into World War III. And if it doesn’t do that, it’s going to put us into an economic calamity worldwide.’
AMY GOODMAN, DEMOCRACY, NOW!: The global economy has been rocked by the war in the Middle East, with Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatening energy flows and sending the price of oil soaring to its highest level in years. The United Nations Security Council responded to the unprovoked U.S.-Israeli war by passing a resolution this week condemning Iran — specifically for its attacks on U.S. allies in the region — while ignoring the role of the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government in instigating the bloodshed.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs joins Democracy Now! to discuss the fallout of the “war of choice” and why it also constitutes an assault on the United Nations. Jeffrey Sachs is director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He’s also served as adviser to three U.N. secretaries-general. He recently wrote an article headlined “This Illegal US-Israeli Attack on Iran Is Also an Assault on the United Nations.”
In an open letter to the U.N. Security Council in February, Professor Sachs said it was the U.S., and not Iran, that had walked away from negotiations and that U.S. threats against Iran violated international law. He said, quote, “The issue facing the UN Security Council in these perilous days is whether any member state, by force or threat of force, may place itself above the United Nations Charter that governs us all. At stake is the integrity of the UN-based international system.” Professor Sachs today joins us from Rome, Italy.
Thanks so much for being with us, Professor Sachs. Why don’t you elaborate on what is happening today with the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran and Iran’s retaliatory attacks?
JEFFREY SACHS: Thank you very much, Amy. And what a chilling show to hear Gideon Levy, to hear your report from Beirut.
We have a war of blatant aggression that is going to put the entire world into a disaster. This is a war of aggression and a war of choice by Israel and the United States. It is in the most blatant, frank violation of the U.N. Charter and the core of the U.N. Charter, its purpose, which says that nations “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” period. That is Article 2, paragraph 4, of the U.N. Charter.
Michael Waltz, the U.S. ambassador, says, “Oh, we’re acting under Article 51.” That is the article on self-defense. The United States is not acting in self-defense. Israel is not acting in self-defense. These two countries are committing flagrant aggression. And they’ve done it twice now in the context of negotiations, which makes it all the more pernicious. Twice the United States claimed it was negotiating with Iran, and twice it killed Iranian leaders in the midst of the so-called negotiations. This is the most blatant and brazen assault on the U.N. Charter and international law since it was founded in 1945. Even in the Iraq War and other U.S. wars — and Israeli wars of choice, they faked it at least. Here, they don’t even fake it. They just are blatant aggressors with no justification at all.
Our U.N. ambassador is a Green Beret [U.S. Army Special Forces.] They have militarized everything about our society. We are in a security state, not a constitutional order. No one asked the American people about whether to go to war or not, and our Congress doesn’t want to have anything to do with this. So, when they’re asked, they say, “Don’t ask us. This is — we give it to Mr. Trump and to Mr. Netanyahu.”
So, I think this is the most brazen fascism that we have seen since the fascist era. And it is absolutely extraordinary, and it’s going to put us, I think, probably into World War III. And if it doesn’t do that, it’s going to put us into an economic calamity worldwide.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Jeffrey Sachs, I wanted to ask you — this narrative that the Trump administration has been pushing in all of their pronouncements is that the [United States] is actually attempting to end the war Iran launched against the U.S. decades ago. And they make it seem like everything that’s happened has been around aggressing against the United States, forgetting, obviously, the role of our country in goading and supplying Iraq in its war against Iran in the 1980s and the various other attacks by Israel and the United States against Iran in the past.
JEFFREY SACHS: Every word that Donald Trump says is vile and ignorant. So, we can almost say for sure that every word he posts every day is a vile lie. But when it comes to the United States and Iran, yes, this does go back a long way. In 1953, when Iran had a fully functioning democracy, the CIA and MI6 overthrew the government of Mosaddegh, Prime Minister Mosaddegh. We installed a police state. We installed a police state that lasted from 1953 to 1979. When the Iranian people took back their country, we immediately armed Iraq, as you said, Juan, to go to war with Iran and to kill hundreds of thousands of people. When that war ended in 1988, the United States continued, through the CIA and other means, to do everything possible to destabilize the Iranian government, to crush the economy, to impose U.S. measures, sanctions and so on, to destroy the well-being of the population.
When the Iranians said, “We want to negotiate with you,” the United States rejected that at almost every stage, with one exception, which is that in the Obama presidency, the United States, together with Britain, France, China, Russia, Germany, the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, the P5+1, as it was called, negotiated an agreement with Iran that put Iran under strict U.N. supervision, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to ensure that what Iran said was actually carried out, which is that Iran did not want a nuclear weapon, and the IAEA would inspect. And for three years, the IAEA inspected hundreds and hundreds of times, and Iran was in full compliance. And then what happened? Netanyahu and Trump ripped up the agreement and went back to war, a hybrid war with Iran.
Everything Trump says, which is despicable, he is absolutely leading us to ruin and leading the world to World War III — everything he says is a lie, because he says, “I’m stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.” What he has done is rip up the agreement that already existed to ensure that; kill, assassinate Iranian leaders repeatedly; kill the Iranian religious leader, who for decades had said that a nuclear weapon would be against Islamic law, kill that person; invade or bomb the country with carpet bombing now; and is presiding over what is now already a regional war, with Israel behaving, as usual, in its completely fascistic way of genocide in Gaza, locking up the West Bank, as Gideon Levy just told us, and invading Lebanon and displacing already a million people, bombing the universities, bombing the hospitals, bombing the schools.
This is so out of control, without any logic, any rationality, even not any humane, moral, legal justification whatsoever. We have not seen anything like this since the fascists of World War II. And it is extraordinarily dangerous, what’s happening. It will lead to world war, the way we’re going, because we have two malignant narcissists, Netanyahu and Trump, that are leading us to disaster.
And listen to Netanyahu’s words. He explains this has nothing to do with the U.N. Charter. He says, “We’re not waiting. We are initiating.” Well, Mr. Netanyahu is against the U.N. Charter. You’re not allowed to initiate war under the U.N. Charter. You’ve explained it very clearly. You are making a war of aggression. And you, too, Mr. Trump, you are making a war of aggression, and you’re threatening the entire world. It’s really as simple as that.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Sachs, President Trump suggested skyrocketing fuel costs are a good thing. You’re an economist. Trump wrote, “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.” This contradicted what he said at the State of the Union, saying oil prices were lower than under President Biden, and he was very proud of that. Your response?
JEFFREY SACHS: He may put money into the hands of a few oil companies which pay his bills, which are corrupt, which pay his campaigns, but he’s going to impoverish Americans, and he’s throwing the entire world into a profound economic crisis. And the world is going to remember, and it’s going to know very soon. Israel and the United States have put the entire world into a profound economic crisis. Again, anything Trump writes is a combination of ignorance, malevolence and lies, including that statement.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeffrey Sachs, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Jeffrey Sachs is a world-renowned economics professor, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, has served as adviser to three U.N. secretaries-general, and is now a sustainable development solutions advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. We’ll link to your articles at democracynow.org.
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