As parties struggle in Vienna to finally close the nuclear deal with Iran, the snooze button-free alarm goes on ringing about how weak and watered down the contract for reconciliation and peace is going to be from the perspective of P5 + 1. There is afoot a terrible last minute scramble to eviscerate any treaty. And we call the Iranians terrorists! Is such a thing really possible that we will have a truly botched up deal with so many heads of state in the thick of things? In the minds of many, yes! Why do we assess Iran the way we do? Is it just Iran or countries like Iran in general that we get all fussy and worked up about? What do these countries have in common: heritage? Yes, they are largely Muslims. So, it's not Iran, but Islam and Muslims that rub us the wrong way. Is this an outlandish statement? Consider the following before deciding.

It's a strange situation we have bred in the west about Muslims. It appears to be stopping us from accepting anything substantive they say. And, inevitably, by deduction, it's all their fault born of an ancient affliction. Yet whoever heard of clapping with one hand?

1. Against Israel we accuse them of Jihad - religious war, but Israel was forced on the region based on Judeo-Christian religiosity. However, whatever the ground for occupation is, in our remotest intellectual realization it has not risen to the status of Jihad.

2. Muslim women do not know what they are missing. They don't realize that they are being hoodwinked and oppressed when they wear hijab. It is our job to enlighten and free them.

3. Muslims don't care for Democracy. Yet when finally they have participatory election and vote in a party they know and respect but which we disparage, we start having ceaseless colic attacks and fits. Note Algeria, Palestine, Iran and Egypt. The Muslim polity cannot be allowed to evolve organically. From the outset, they have to be at par in their democratic aspirations as us. Whereas we hold hundreds of years lead and we subscribe to a very different value set than they. We present the Muslims a binary choice: Be like us right away or stay in the Stone Age.

4. Muslims are accused of not speaking up in the west but their modest, measured musings are regularly and uniformly turned down by the Press. In the Opinion Pages, yes. Why? Because they present the other point of view that we don't care to know, a view that we decided to brush away or crush. No employee or staff in the Media dare cross that line!
5. Calling a person a Dike, a Nigger, or a Jew is forbidden in our modern humanitarian state, but calling a Muslim a raghead is funny, and gratuitously belittling their Prophet or Faith constitutes a political statement secured by Freedom of Speech. What a joke we are making of our own values! If I was politician attempting to win over Muslims, would this be remotely proper PR?

6. Our monolithic stance is so absolute that none among us who is worth his salt has given a single coherent explanation about 9-11 as to why it happened, other than how it happened and what does one expect from those "nauseating" Moslems. So, we have sought no meaningful, lasting solution. We have simply decided to quell the unrest as if in a distant part of the empire.

7. Our Media has made a huge selling point about the lack of political freedom in Muslim countries. For the Muslims, that observation is a painful fact in most cases. However, the last Gulf War showed the world how voluntarily our Media gave up its mandate to serve up the truth by being unmindful of the fact that it needed to maintain a healthy distance from Authority for doing so. They happily became part of the embedded journalists, sitting knee to knee with colonels, sharing the canteen and what not. Following the Vietnam debacle, the US military learned two things, keep American body count down (hence, we got remote warfare) and make sure the journalists do not see too much (so, as one would do to one's arch adversary, the military literally decided to keep the Media at a hugging distance). Thus, the Media went AWOL, believing that the Iraq War and the long expected, much ballyhooed Iran War as virtuous wars. Today, our Media is spread thin and lacks depth. So, when it comes to Muslim matters, the public has been mis-served and under-served as the Media itself joined, in many cases, in inadequately portraying and even hackneying Muslims all around the globe.

8. The potential calamity of Iraq's "nuclearness" once and now Iran's has some of us wild-eyed, twisted and frothing at the mouth, but it is none other than us who introduced radioactive materials in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan through our use of tons of sophisticated munitions made up of spent nuclear fuel rods. Who would tell as we struggled to store our radioactive waste materials under Yucca Mountain when we found such convenient dump sites while chasing the enemy?

9. The accusation that Iran's bomb threatens Israel has a wrong-headed strategic assumption about that nation. If such a bomb were to exist and be used, it would not only kill the Jews of Israel, but the Arab people of Israel and Gaza, impact Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, to say the least. Even if the US and the UK accepted it and Palestine was liberated, it would be inhabitable. However, Israel would not go down quietly nor would her allies stay still. Also, what if the bomb was destroyed mid-air, then Syria and Iraq, and the entire Gulf area would receive massive fallout. After that, having failed to liberate Palestine, Iran as we know it today, would be decimated. So, what's really Israel's strategy in trying to prevent Iran from getting the Bomb? Possibly, it does not want the Muslim nations to grow a backbone to stand up to the repeated, random, unilateral hammering that Israel has meted out to every country in her neighborhood. Also, in case Israel itself sets off her own bombs, it does not want to worry about retaliation. Israel wants to remain the unchallenged local Superpower! Finally, it does not want to be forced to negotiate directly with the Muslims who would then be talking from a point of strength. It has repeatedly and predictably used so many ruses to stall and derail every peace talk over the past two decades. It wants to retain the hopelessly malleable, eternally biased and compromised, open-check US as the middlemen to be the negotiator for a deal which in the heart of hearts Israel knows is DOA. Also, Israel most likely uses its own WMD as bargaining chip with the west for their military support and continuous, massive, lethal infusion. Its argument likely is that "If you do not arm us to the teeth and defend us whenever and under whatever circumstance, then we will be forced to use the Bomb". But if the other party has the Bomb then that argument becomes moot for the Israeli weapon is neutralized and becomes literally useless. After all, Israel does not have a death wish. It just wants to be able to dominate, dictate and get away with it.

10. Being super religious, Iran is an awfully bad apple. We all accept that in absolute unison. Yet most of the time we don't believe in an Absolute! When they say that their religion forbids mass indiscriminate killing of people, we don't believe them. We have evidence of Saddam using chemical weapons on Iran upon our facilitation and acquiescence. Iran did not respond in kind. But that does not count as a proof of serious religiosity, good intention or even good restraint. While the fatwa on Salman Rushdie by the late Imam Khomeini is stuff of black legend for us, we are absolutely dismissive of the fatwa of Imam Khamenei that WMD are completely forbidden in Islam. That a people can take faith seriously may be beyond our norm, but does it have to be beyond the norm of others, too?

11. We supported Catholic Lech Walesa of Poland but we made sure all Stalinist governments in Central Asia remain secure in case Muslims take over. So also with Egypt as Mrs. Clinton made the point crystal clear with one cryptic comment just before stepping down: We support the Liberals. Some Liberal Sisi and his lot are! Stalinists funded by us, the US. Signing Sadat's Peace Treaty freed Israel, but it shackled the Egyptians because our money consolidated a vicious, ideological, kleptocratic regime. We didn't care. So, we didn't bother then and do not now.

12. In war-torn, ethnically cleansed Bosnia in the 1990's, we embargoed arms shipment for years publicly fearing Muslim uppityness while actually they were being slaughtered. Yet in a safe and secure USA where the return of a monarchy is absolutely impossible, IRA is the monarch and anyone can own (and carry) whatever lethal weapon they fancy. Eventually, our peace deal gave half of Bosnia to the Serbian aggressors without any pushback.

13. One remembers well that while we embargoed and bombed Iraq for 10 years, hundreds of thousand perished by independent count. The then Madame Secretary Albright was openly unfazed by the loss. The Muslims must have been aghast. Preceding that, we had pulled off a juggernaut in Afghanistan. Having won the war against the Russians with much fanfare and the help of the Mujahedeen, we abandoned Afghanistan. We could not spare even a billion dollar for socio-economic end. In fact, we watched silently and almost fanned the years long ensuing Civil War. Yet in Germany and rest of Europe after the WWII, 45 years earlier, we spend somewhere in the range of 50 billion dollars as Marshall Plan. Was all of that about face and crass ruthlessness supposed to sit well with people who we had trained to think outside the box while fighting the Soviets?

14. We dismembered Iraq for the WMD we were sure they had. Now we are ready to dismember Iran for the WMD we are sure they will obtain. Even when we falter and fail, we believe we are infallible. This is Democratic Imperialism!

15. Over the years, as a strategic policy, having bought up or bottled up Muslim governments, we marginalized their mainstream. Now, splinter groups from among them, some oppressed and suppressed and others disgusted and defiant, are acting up. We are faced with dealing with them. Over and again, we are doing so on the back of their mainstream.

16. Finally, we did Iraq in and now many want to do Iran in the same way. Why? Who gains? We never dare ask that question. It buys time. It delays peace talk. It cleanses the land of the natives just like it once devastated remote Tasmania of its last inhabitant. It makes two state solution moot.

When it comes to Muslims, we are living a self-fulfilling prophecy! No wonder Muslims believe we have launched an extended WWIII against them. Unlike in normal wars, in this war by subterfuge, our action and our propaganda are flying in opposite directions.