Eminent American scholar and political commentator Noam Chomsky has blasted US President Donald Trump for continuing crippling sanctions on Iran as the country is fighting the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“When the US imposes devastating sanctions – it’s the only country that can do that, everyone has to follow … the master. Or else they are kicked out of the financial system,” Chomsky said in a recent interview, which is a part of a series by Democracy in Europe Movement 2025.
A number of countries have called for the lifting of the US sanctions to help Iran access and utilize its resources in the fight against the pandemic, which has killed more than 4,100 and infected over 66,000 people in the country.
Despite the harsh US sanctions, Iran has battled the COVID-19 more efficiently than Italy, Spain, France and the United States, where the disease has killed about 14,700 and infected over 431,000 people.
The US death toll now exceeds that of Spain, which has suffered 14,555 deaths, but has not surpassed Italy, where the virus has killed a total of 17,669 people. In France, at least 10,869 people have died.
A total of 90,000 people worldwide have died in the coronavirus crisis, which has sent the global economy spiraling.
In his interview, Chomsky praised China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore which “have sort of pretty much seemed to have contained at least the first surge of the crisis.”
He condemned Germany’s selfish behavior and for not helping the rest of Europe in its fight against the virus.
“Germany … did have spare diagnostic capacity and was able to act in a highly selfish fashion, not helping others but for itself at least, to evident reasonable containment,” he said.
“Other countries just ignored it. The worst was the United Kingdom and the worst of all was the United States,” he added.
Trump is a ‘sociopathic buffoon’
Calling Trump a “sociopathic buffoon,” Chomsky said, “One day [Trump] says, ‘There is no crisis, it’s just like flu.’ The next day, ‘It’s a terrible crisis and I knew it all along.’ The next day, ‘We have to go back to the business, because I have to win the election’. The idea that the world is in these hands is shocking.”
‘We are racing to the edge of disaster’
The 91-year-old intellectual said while the coronavirus is serious, “it’s worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching. We are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that’s happened in human history.”
“Donald Trump and his minions are in the lead in racing to the abyss. In fact there are two immense threats that we’re facing – one is the growing threat of nuclear war … and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming,” he noted.
He said that the coronavirus can have “terrifying consequences, but there will be recovery,” but regarding the other threats, “there won’t be recovery, it’s finished.”
