The logo of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is seen after a plenary session in Paris, France, October 18, 2019. (Reuters file photo)

American author and political commentator Stephen Lendman says the blacklisting of Iran by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is solely for political reasons because the US is waging war on the Islamic Republic by other means which is economic terrorism.

The Paris-based 39-member task force blacklisted Iran on Friday, claiming the country has failed to take measures against money laundering and the financing of terrorist groups. North Korea is already on the agency’s blacklist.
Iran slams FATF’s politically-motivated move to place Iran on terrorism financing blacklist

In an email interview with Press TV following the FATF’s announcement, Lendman said, Blacklisting Iran and North Korea is solely for political reasons, the US waging war on both countries by other means (economic terrorism), wanting their sovereign independence eliminated.

There’s another wrinkle with North Korea. China is its most reliable ally. Both countries share a common border. The US would love a way to isolate China regionally by getting Indo/Pacific countries as client states, including North Korea, he added.

The same strategy is in play against Iran, wanting the country isolated, a key reason for waging war on Syria -- to eliminate an Iranian ally and an Israeli rival state in the region, he noted.

US post-9/11 strategy failed, losing all the wars it waged, furthering its decline on the global stage while China, Russia, India, Iran and other nations I believe will gain significantly long-term, he said.

At the same time, I see no end to US wars of aggression against nonbelligerent nations threatening no one that the US doesn’t control, wanting pro-Western puppet regimes replacing their sovereign independence, he said.

It’s a losing strategy, not a winning one, shown by lost wars from against North Korea in the early 1950s to the present day. Countless trillions of dollars were poured down a black hole of waste, fraud and abuse -- one estimate over $20 trillion since the mid-1990s alone, he observed.

In 2017, a Michigan State University study found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending by the Pentagon and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) from 1998 - 2015, he added.

The Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and other US agencies and departments operate unaccountably. Richard Nixon’s economic advisor in the early 1970s, Herb Stein, wisely said what can’t go on forever won’t, he said.

US post-9/11 wars were waged to reverse its decline that’s been ongoing since its defeat in Southeast Asia. The more wars the US wages, hot ones and by other means, furthers its decline that’s coming this century, he said.

The US is its own worst enemy. Its recklessness and ruthlessness is furthering its own decline. It’s just a matter of when and how, he concluded.

SOURCE: PRESS TV