Time for US to Abandon Fallacy of ‘All Options on Table’

Former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the US has a history of facing humiliation, advising Washington to abandon its illegal use of force and its fallacy of “all options on the table.”
In a tweet, the former top diplomat said, “US humiliation in Afghanistan is the rule and not an exception,” and named a list of countries where the US policies and actions have faced defeat, including Afghanistan and Syria.
He reminded the US that its “use of force is not just illegal, it is SUICIDAL,” and advised American officials to quit resorting to the policy of “all options on the table” to intimidate other countries into submitting to their demands.   
“High time to abandon the fallacy of ‘all options on the table,’” the tweet stressed.
The remarks came days after the US officially left Afghanistan on Monday, pulling out the last of its troops from the war-torn country, which once again fell under the Taliban’s rule.
The departure ended the longest military mission in US history, which cost over $2 trillion, claimed thousands of lives and culminated in a takeover by the very militant group that the US had sought to remove.
The US, analysts believe, left Afghanistan with its tail between its legs as a majority of Americans had wearied of the war with no clear picture of what victory would look like.
However, a day after the departure of the last troops from Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden hailed what he called the “extraordinary success” of the evacuation of Kabul in a speech in which he offered no apologies for the disorderly way in which his administration executed the exit mission and instead strongly defended his decision to end America’s two-decade war.
The US, together with its allies, invaded Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks, under the pretext that the country was providing sanctuary to those who carried out the assaults.
The US invasion removed the Taliban from power, but militancy persisted in Afghanistan despite the presence of thousands of foreign forces. The military aggression also set the stage for other militant groups to gain a foothold in the country.
The United Nations has warned about a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan, in the wake of the US completion of its withdrawal.
The UN mission in Afghanistan reported in its Afghanistan Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict midyear update 2021 that there were 1,659 civilians killed and 3,254 wounded.
It said that is a 47% increase compared with the same period last year.