Sayyed Fadlullah: The world is living, albeit in different levels, under the pressure of the American empire that seeks to promote its own interests and impose its own laws. It pays no attention to international law and sees to ensure its domination over the entire world.

Asked in his weekly seminar the following question: Analysts are talking about the state of security and economic turmoil in the entire world as a result of the struggle between the "force of law" and the "law of force" that is demonstrated by the American and Israeli mentality…

How do you view this struggle and how do you see the image of the world in the future in the light of this struggle?

The Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah, said:

The world is living, albeit in different levels, under the pressure of the American empire that seeks to promote its own interests and impose its own laws. It pays no attention to international law and seeks to ensure its domination over the entire world.

To accomplish its hegemony, the US administration has chosen two means. The first is to resort to international law whenever it suits its interests, as in the Afghani war.

But if it does not, it will try to manipulate this law or find some loopholes in it, as in the war on Iraq which the UN Secretary General has declared lately that it was not illegal from the point of view of international law.

Yet, this declaration, although very significant did not provoke extraordinary political reactions whether inside the US or outside it, the fact that it is a crime that should be tried by international tribunals since it led to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians notwithstanding.

America is the only super power that is invading the whole world starting by the Arab and Islamic world, which it has invaded directly by its troops while it is trying to impose its hegemony over the rest of the world.

Therefore, we agree with what the official in the Vatican said when he described what is going on as World War Four that is led by the Americans. He added that the pervious wars used to be waged in certain parts of the world while this war has the entire world as its arena.

Yet, despite its entire devastating military machine, the US was not able to achieve any victory whether in Afghanistan or in Iraq, but rather it was stuck in their quicksand. President Bush himself admitted that he did not except to face such big obstacles; proving that his administration does not have a future view for change.

All it can do is using this machine to cause as much destruction as possible and kill thousands of civilians in a way that is unmatched in history except by Israel, whose brutal atrocities are in fact encouraged if not demanded by the US administrations.

America has supported Israel to act as a regional power in the region and an American extra arm. It supported the Israeli occupation of Palestine and some of the territories in other neighboring countries, and used it as military and nuclear club in the face of regional states. Thus Israel invaded at times and bombed at others, like its bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad.

It also resorted to threatening as in the case of threatening Iran due to the latter’s nuclear, but peaceful, program.

In Palestine in particular, Israel ignored the most basic rules of international law, killing civilians, demolishing houses, founding new settlements and building the racial separating wall.

All thus was approved by America, although it might sometimes claim that it is against certain practices, to the extent that it threatens to veto any resolution the Security Council might take against Israel, as in the case of the racist wall that the International Court ruled against.

America, therefore, is the world's first rogue state and the first creator of anarchy in the world. It is the one that helped Israel to become a nuclear superpower. And it continues to defend Israel's arrogance and crimes, as well as its possession of weapons of mass destruction, while at the same time promising not to let Iran possess nuclear technology although the Islamic Republic has declared that it considers nuclear bombs unlawful and that its use of nuclear power is solely for peaceful purposes. It has been pressurizing the EU states to ignore international law, although Iran has signed the additional protocol of the International Atomic Agency; an act that proves yet again that it wants to use International law as a tool that fosters its interests.

We call on all the nations and states of the world to confront this American arrogance that made the entire world live in a state of confusion and concern as a result of this deliberate disregard of international law and the following absence of legal and moral deterrents.

And we would like the European states whom we heard some of its ambassadors whisper that it is the American pressures that forced them to take such a stance against Iran, the Arab and Muslim states, to show their concern towards protecting the moral and humanistic rules that are being violated daily by America and Israel, or at least move to ask for the implementation of UN resolutions instead of adopting new resolutions asking Syria to withdraw from Lebanon while they are not making any effort to implement the UN resolutions that call for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied lands.

The World needs a degree of boldness in its stances, lest even the countries that do not consider themselves as developing or part of the Third World will be threatened, and become oppressed or at least forced to remain silent.