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War with Iran was planned in 1996

Posted by M. C. on February 9, 2021

https://mailchi.mp/e64b770ac913/the-us-celebrates-30-years-of-bombing-iraq-4196737?e=de2d0eded6

What you need to know when your friends think war with Iran is a good idea:
Neoconservatives wrote a policy paper for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu back in 1996, to overthrow Saddam and eventually conquer Iran.Seven years later, at Benjamin Netanyahu’s behest, the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam.That 1996 neocon plan became the blueprint for U.S. foreign policy. The crown jewel of the plan has always been a war with Iran.Media corporations—which are little more than the broadcast system of the military industrial complex—always have fresh reasons to advertise war with Iran. But it is all based on an old plan written decades ago that serves the interests of a foreign power at the expense the American people.In Chapter 6 of Gus Cantavero’s video adaptation of Scott’s new book Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, Scott delves into the neoconservative policy paper “A Clean Break,” and explores the personal incentives each man in the Bush administration had for toppling Saddam.
https://youtu.be/3Wx-8VLtQ0c
Arm yourself with knowledge so you can fight for peace. Buy Scott’s new book, Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism

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Facing up to Israel’s destabilizing behavior – Responsible Statecraft

Posted by M. C. on December 17, 2020

The contrast with the state that killed Fakhrizadeh is stark. Israel, which is not a party to the NPT, is generally believed to possess a sizable arsenal of nuclear weapons. It has acquired that stockpile clandestinely, closed off from any international scrutiny or regulatory regime, and with Israel never admitting what it has.

Don’t look to any of our Middle Eastern “friends” for peace and tranquility.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/12/02/facing-up-to-israels-destabilizing-behavior/

Written by
Paul R. Pillar

Responsibility for the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is still officially a matter of speculation, but it is highly likely that Israel did it. Israel has the motive, the methods, and the moxie. It also has the record, including not only a string of murders of other Iranian nuclear scientists some eight years ago but also a more widely used killing machine that has made Israel the world’s leader in targeted assassinations.

The killing of Fakhrizadeh was not a blow for nuclear non-proliferation. The demise of no one individual will make a significant dent in Iran’s nuclear program. Fakhrizadeh’s work on a possible nuclear weapon took place in the past, before Tehran suspended that work some 17 years ago. The knowledge on a shelf remains, even if this man does not.

The killing did not pre-empt an Iranian attack or any other untoward Iranian action, and instead is more likely to stimulate such an attack. Iran, which has no nuclear weapons and as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is committed never to acquire any, closed all possible paths to a bomb several years ago through the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multilateral agreement that gutted Iran’s nuclear program and opened what remained of it to intrusive international monitoring.

The contrast with the state that killed Fakhrizadeh is stark. Israel, which is not a party to the NPT, is generally believed to possess a sizable arsenal of nuclear weapons. It has acquired that stockpile clandestinely, closed off from any international scrutiny or regulatory regime, and with Israel never admitting what it has.

The recent assassination did not even serve a purpose comparable to, say, the extraterritorial rubout of a terrorist who will never see the inside of a courtroom and, it might be argued, can be eliminated as a threat in no other way. Instead, the assassination itself was an act of terrorism. It certainly meets the official definition that the State Department uses in compiling statistics on international terrorism, which is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience”.

Failure to acknowledge that reality while fulminating about terrorism in other contexts or at the hands of other actors represents a double standard. The double standard becomes all the clearer by imagining what the reaction would be if Iran or someone else had assassinated an Israeli nuclear scientist — or an American one.

The Netanyahu government’s evident objective — probably pursued with the encouragement of the lame duck Trump administration, as part of its salting of the earth on its way out the door — is to subvert the Biden administration’s diplomacy with Iran and efforts to return to compliance with the JCPOA. The timing of the Fakhrizadeh assassination is too much of a coincidence to have merely reflected when an operational opportunity happened to arise.

A dangerous road ahead

The next phase in this story depends on the Iranian reaction. If the leadership in Tehran can resist Iranians’ understandable anger and desire for revenge, Netanyahu will at least have humiliated Iran and shown it to be weak. But his favored scenario would be for Iran to do something in retaliation that in turn could become the rationale for escalated military action against Iran by Israel and especially by the United States. The fact that President Trump has already looked into a possible attack on Iran must lead Netanyahu to conclude that he has a good chance of instigating just such a military confrontation, which would be his most effective way yet of pre-emptively trashing the incoming U.S. administration’s diplomacy.

Instigation and provocation of Iran already were part of an Israeli campaign before the Fakhrizadeh killing and before the U.S. election. A probable facet of that campaign was a series of unclaimed explosions in Iran this summer, which hit not only military-related and nuclear facilities but also other targets such as power plants and oil pipelines.

Netanyahu’s government has consistently promoted unending, unqualified hostility toward Iran aimed at keeping it forever ostracized, sanctioned, and loathed. This campaign of permanent confrontation keeps a potential regional rival weak and aims to keep Israel’s U.S. patron away from doing any diplomatic or other business with Tehran. Keeping Iran as a perpetual bête noire to be blamed for everything wrong in the Middle East helps to deflect blame for those wrongs from others, especially Israel. The value to Netanyahu’s government of the bête noire as an all-purpose distraction is reflected in how often that government responds to unwelcome attention to its own conduct by proclaiming, “But the real problem in our region is Iran…”

Partly, but by no means wholly, because of this Israeli demonization campaign, Iran’s conduct routinely gets discussed in the United States in shorthand terms that refer to Tehran’s “malign” or “destabilizing” behavior and support for terrorism. The shorthand obscures inattention to exactly what Iran has been doing and why it does it. It leaves unsaid that most of what Iran does in the region is reaction to what others do — including in response to what Israel has done with terrorism or other destructive action.

By any objective measure of destabilizing behavior, Israel in recent times has been doing at least as much as Iran to destabilize the Middle East, and probably more. This is true of terrorism, sabotage, and other clandestine operations, as illustrated most recently by the assassination of Fakhrizadeh.

It is true of the use of violent proxies, which in Israel’s case has included an Iranian cult/terrorist group that has American blood on its hands. It is true of aggressive military action across international borders — including Israel’s current sustained campaign of aerial assaults in Syria — which is much different from a consensual relationship in which military assistance is given in support of, and in alliance with, an incumbent government.

And it certainly is true when looking at who is urging a return to diplomacy to settle differences, and who instead is subverting diplomacy and promoting confrontation, even to the point of trying to trigger a new war.

A policy challenge for the new administration

All this is grim reality for the incoming Biden administration as it shapes its relationship with Israel. The smart money in Washington is betting against Biden spending much of his precious political capital in trying to make progress in resolving the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That’s too bad for the Palestinians and for justice and human rights, but it also is too bad for regional stability, especially given how Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians has long been a prime motivator for extremism and terrorism.

The destabilization goes well beyond the Palestinian conflict, however, and includes the Israeli terrorism, sabotage, and provocations aimed at Iran. The grimmest of the grim realities is that the current government of Israel is not only actively trying to subvert the new administration’s foreign policy but also is trying to drag the United States into a new Middle East war.

That is an unfriendly act. The Biden administration somehow will have to take that into account in shaping a bilateral relationship that has been characterized — even before the extreme obeisance toward Israel of the Trump administration — by protective vetoes in the U.N. Security Council and $3.8 billion annually in unrestricted aid. The Biden people can start by being honest — consistent with the president-elect’s pledge of truthfulness — about the sources of instability in the Middle East.

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When Deplorables Become Ungovernables — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on December 17, 2020

A perverse form of blowback is already in effect as informed global citizens may now see, crystal clear, the astonishing depth and reach of Deep State power – the ultimate decider of what happens next in Dystopia Central.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/12/16/when-deplorables-become-ungovernables/

Pepe Escobar

China, Russia and Iran are the top three existential “threats” to the U.S., according to the National Security Strategy. Three features distinguish the top three. They are all sovereign powers. They are under varying degrees of sanctions. And they are the top three nodes of the 21st century’s most important, evolving geopolitical process: Eurasia integration.

What do the three sovereigns see when they examine the dystopia that took over Exceptionalistan?

They see, once again, three – discombobulated – nodes in conflict: the post-historic Pacific and Atlantic coasts; the South – a sort of expanded Dixieland; and the Midwest – what would be the American heartland.

The hyper-modern Pacific-Atlantic nodes congregate high-tech and finance, profit from Pentagon techno-breakthroughs and benefit from the “America rules the waves” ethos that guarantees the global primacy of the U.S. dollar.

The rest of America is largely considered by the Pacific-Atlantic as just a collection of flyover states: the South – which regards itself as the real, authentic America; and the Midwest, largely disciplined and quite practical-minded, squeezed ideologically between the littoral powerhouses and the South.

Superstructure, tough, is key: no matter what happens, whatever the fractures, this remains an Empire, where only a tiny elite, a de facto plutocratic oligarchy, rules.

It would be too schematic, even though essentially correct, to assert that in the presidential election, invisible campaigner Joe Biden represented the Pacific-Atlantic nodes, and Trump represented the whole South. Assuming the election was not fraudulent – and that remains a big “if” – the Midwest eventually swung based on three issues.

  1. Trump, as much as he relied on a sanctions juggernaut, could not bring back manufacturing jobs home. 2. He could not reduce the military footprint across the Greater Middle East. 3. And, before Covid-19, he could not bring down immigration.

Everything that lies ahead points to the irreconcilable – pitting the absolute majority that voted Dem in the Atlantic-Pacific nodes versus the South and a deeply divided Midwest. As much as Biden-Harris is bound to isolate the South even more, their prospects of “pacifying” the Midwest are less than zero.

Whose ground control?

Beyond the raucous altercations on whether the presidential election was fraudulent, these are the key factual points.

  1. A series of rules in mostly swing states were changed, through courts, bypassing state legislatures, without transparence, before the election, paving the way to facilitate fraud schemes.
  2. Biden was de facto coronated by AP, Google and Twitter even before the final, official result, and weeks before the electoral college vote this past Monday.
  3. Every serious, professional audit to determine whether all received and tabulated votes were valid was de facto squashed.

In any Global South latitude where the empire did “interfere” in local elections, color revolution-style, this set of facts would be regarded by scores of imperial officials, in a relentless propaganda blitz, as evidence of a coup.

On the recent Supreme Court ruling, a Deep State intel source told me, “the Supreme Court did not like to see half the country rioting against them, and preferred the decision be made by each state in the House of Representatives. That is the only way to handle this without jeopardizing the union. Even prominent Democrats I know realize that the fix took place. The error was to steal too many votes. This grand theft indicts the whole system, that has always been corrupt.”

Dangers abound. On the propaganda front, for instance, far right nationalists are absolutely convinced that U.S. media can be brought to heel only by occupying the six main offices of the top conglomerates, plus Facebook, Google and Twitter: then you’d have full control of the U.S. propaganda mill.

Another Deep State source, now retired, adds that, “the U.S. Army does not want to intervene as their soldiers may not obey orders.

Many of these far right nationalists were officers in the armed forces. They know where the nuclear missiles and bombers are. There are many in sympathy with them as the U.S. falls apart in lockdowns.”

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden’s dodgy dealings simply will not be made to vanish from public scrutiny. He’s under four different federal investigations. The recent subpoena amounts to a very serious case pointing to a putative crime family. It’s been conveniently forgotten that Joe Biden bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations

that he forced Ukraine’s chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin to be fired exactly when he was investigating corruption by Burisma’s founder.

Of course, a massive army of shills will always invoke another army of omniscient and oh so impartial “fact checkers” to hammer the same message: “This is Trump’s version. Courts have said clearly all the evidence is baseless.”

District Attorney William Barr is now out of the picture (see his letter of resignation). Barr is a notorious Daddy Bush asset since the old days – and that means classic Deep State. Barr knew about all federal investigations on Hunter Biden dating back to 2018, covering potential money laundering and bribery.

And still, as the Wall Street Journal delightfully put it, he “worked to avoid their public disclosure during the heated election campaign”.

A devastating report (Dems: a Republican attack report) has shown how the Biden family was connected to a vast financial network with multiple foreign ramifications.

Then there’s Barr not even daring to say there was enough reason for the Department of Justice to engage in a far-reaching investigation into voting fraud, finally putting to rest all “baseless” conspiracy theories.

Move on. Nothing to see here. Even if an evidence pile-up featured, among other instances, ballot stuffing, backdated ballots, statistical improbabilities, electronic machine tampering, software back doors, affidavits from poll workers, not to mention the by now legendary stopping the vote in the dead of night, with subsequent, huge batches of votes miraculously switching from Trump to Biden.

Once again an omniscient army of oh so impartial “fact checkers” will say everything is baseless.

A perverse blowback

A perverse form of blowback is already in effect as informed global citizens may now see, crystal clear, the astonishing depth and reach of Deep State power – the ultimate decider of what happens next in Dystopia Central.

Both options are dire.

  1. The election stands, even if considered fraudulent by nearly half of U.S. public opinion. To quote that peerless existentialist, The Dude, there’s no rug tying the room together anymore.
  2. Was the election to be somehow overturned before January 20, the Deep State would go Shock and Awe to finish the job.

In either case, The Deplorables will become The Ungovernables.

It gets worse. A possible implosion of the union – with internal convulsions leading to a paroxysm of violence – may even be coupled with an external explosion, as in a miscalculated imperial adventure.

For the Three Sovereigns – Russia, China and Iran – as well as the overwhelming majority of the Global South, the conclusion is inescapable: if the current, sorry spectacle is the best Western liberal “democracy” has to offer, it definitely does not need any enemies or “threats”.

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Is Trump Exiting Afghanistan—To Attack Iran? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on November 21, 2020

Over two decades, Arabs and Muslims have died in the hundreds of thousands from these wars. But what have any of these wars availed the USA?

Not the best Legacy to leave US with.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/11/patrick-j-buchanan/is-trump-exiting-afghanistan-to-attack-iran/

With the Pentagon’s announcement that U.S. forces in Afghanistan will be cut in half — to 2,500 — by inauguration day, after 19 years, it appears the end to America’s longest war may be in sight.

The Pentagon also announced a reduction of U.S. troop levels in Iraq to 2,500 by mid-January. In 2003, we invaded and occupied Iraq to remove a perceived threat from Saddam Hussein and to disarm that nation of weapons of mass destruction we discovered it did not have.

No WMD were ever found, and the war George W. Bush launched to find and destroy them has been called the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history.

These two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, cost us some 7,000 dead, 50,000 wounded and trillions of dollars. And as they preoccupied us for two decades, China rose to become a strategic, military and economic superpower to rival the United States.

Iraq and Afghanistan were the longest wars in U.S. history, and the most costly of the Mideast wars we have fought there, but there were others.

In 2011, we attacked Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s army in the early days of Libya’s civil war. We intervened on the side of the rebels in Syria’s civil war. We assisted Saudi airstrikes in Yemen after Houthi rebels arose up in 2015 to dump over a Saudi-backed regime.

Over two decades, Arabs and Muslims have died in the hundreds of thousands from these wars. But what have any of these wars availed the USA?

Libya is split between a Turkish-backed government in Tripoli and Russian- and Egyptian-backed rebels under Gen. Khalifa Hifter in Benghazi and the east of the country.

The Syrian regime of Bashar Assad has largely won its civil war, thanks to timely and decisive intervention by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, which came to the regime’s rescue when it was on its last legs.

Today, Iran-backed militias in Iraq with ties to Tehran have far greater influence in Baghdad than Iran did before the Americans arrived in 2003.

And the Americans are now going home.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, Trump is terminating the U.S. presence. It is impossible to believe a President Joe Biden would emulate President Barack Obama and surge 100,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan in some new crisis to stave off a Taliban victory.

Thus, what we are looking at is not only the end of America’s war in Afghanistan but the possible, if not probable, eventual victory of the Taliban.

If the Afghan army and security forces could not put away the Taliban with 100,000 Americans fighting at their side in 2011, they are unlikely to do so when all of the Americans are gone.

The outcome of this war could well be a reenactment in Kabul of what happened in Saigon in 1975, two years after the Americans ended their role in the Vietnam War.

Yet, as Trump is halving U.S. forces in Afghanistan, The New York Times is reporting an Oval Office meeting with his national security inner circle to discuss a strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz.

According to the Times, Trump had to be persuaded not to order the attack by Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley.

Why Trump would order an attack on Natanz seems on its face inexplicable. The facility is under regular U.N. inspection and has never enriched uranium to the 90% level needed for a bomb.

Even today it is enriching uranium only to 4.5%.

U.N. inspectors have regular access to the facility. While the small stockpile of low-enriched uranium Iran has produced is in violation of the nuclear deal, Trump walked away from that deal in 2018.

And Tehran could return to compliance easily by halting production and shipping its small stockpile out of the country.

As America exits from the seemingly endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, what strategic U.S. interest is imperiled by Iran’s enrichment of low-grade uranium to justify a new war with a nation larger, more populous and more powerful than any of those with which we have been involved in the last 20 years?

As Trump is mulling over an attack on Iran, the Israelis are carrying out strikes in Syria on Iranian-backed militias and boasting about it.

Thus, if the election of 2020 turns out the way most now expect, with Biden taking the oath on Jan. 20, the new president could be faced in his first days with a crisis with Iran and the prospect of a collapse of the Afghan regime in Kabul in his first year in office.

The Best of Patrick J. Buchanan Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever See his website.

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Pompeo’s Iran Failures Make War More Likely

Posted by M. C. on August 24, 2020

Unfortunately for America, he followed through with this policy in 2018. Though he promised that by pulling out of the deal the US would get a far better deal in its place, the truth is Trump’s Iran policy has produced nothing but negative results. The Iranians have not knuckled down under the weight of Pompeo’s pressure, and putting regime change specialists like Elliot Abrams in charge of Iran policy has just moved us closer to an unnecessary war.

Iran is not a threat to the United States, no matter what lies the neocons put forth.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/august/24/pompeo-s-iran-failures-make-war-more-likely/?mc_cid=2556336bb2

Written by Ron Paul

The US foreign policy establishment has for decades been dominated by neoconservative interventionists and falsely-named “humanitarian” interventionists. These people believe that because the United States is the one “exceptional nation,” no conflict anywhere in the world could possibly be solved without our butting our noses into it.

One of President Obama’s few foreign policy successes was to work with European countries on a deal that would see a reduction of sanctions on Iran in exchange for a series of Iranian moves demonstrating its abandonment of a nuclear weapon.

The American neocons as well as the hardliners in Saudi Arabia and Israel were furious at the compromise, but for a couple of years it showed real promise. Trade between Europe and Iran was increasing and there was no evidence that Iran was reneging on its obligations. Even American companies were looking to Iran for business opportunities. Whenever goods flow between nations, war becomes less likely.

President Trump has had problems with policy consistency throughout his first term in office. But, unfortunately, his few policy consistencies have been the most ill-advised ones. On the campaign trail Trump relentlessly attacked Obama’s Iran policy and promised to pull the US out of the JCPOA Iran agreement.

Unfortunately for America, he followed through with this policy in 2018. Though he promised that by pulling out of the deal the US would get a far better deal in its place, the truth is Trump’s Iran policy has produced nothing but negative results. The Iranians have not knuckled down under the weight of Pompeo’s pressure, and putting regime change specialists like Elliot Abrams in charge of Iran policy has just moved us closer to an unnecessary war.

Iran is not a threat to the United States, no matter what lies the neocons put forth.

These past two weeks the weakness in the US “maximum pressure” policy toward Iran has been exposed for the world to see. First, Pompeo spent the summer lobbying European nations to support a US motion in the UN Security Council to extend an arms embargo against Iran. As Iran has been judged in compliance with the Iran deal, the arms embargo is scheduled to be lifted in October. Pompeo’s diplomatic skills did not produce the desired results: not a single party to the Iran nuclear deal voted with the US to extend the embargo.

Undeterred, the Trump Administration is now determined to trigger the “snap-back” sanctions on Iran, which means if Iran is judged to be in violation of the Iran nuclear agreement all the previous sanctions would snap back into place.

But there’s a problem with this: because the US has formally withdrawn from the Iran agreement it has no legal standing to trigger the “snap-back” of UN sanctions on Iran. If you take your marbles and go home, you don’t get to still dictate the rules of the game.

Last week Pompeo attempted to trigger the “snap-back” and was laughed out of the room by the countries who have remained in the deal.

US policy toward Iran is an unwise consistency and the Trump Administration is hopelessly floundering on the bad advice of the neocons. They want nothing more than war on Iran. But the American people do not. It’s time to end this failed policy of confrontation with Iran.

Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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Exposing Pompeo’s phony UN snapback stunt in two sentences – Responsible Statecraft

Posted by M. C. on August 24, 2020

Of course there are two big problems with this approach, the first of which is that while yes, Iran has violated some of the JCPOA’s terms, it has done so only after Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement and reimposed crushing sanctions. And second, in order to trigger the “snapback” mechanism built into the agreement, you have to be a participant in the agreement, which of course, the U.S. ceased to be when Trump exited it in 2018.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/08/21/exposing-pompeos-phony-un-snapback-stunt-in-two-sentences/

Written by

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo failed miserably in his efforts on Thursday to force the United Nations to reimpose its pre-JCPOA sanctions on Iran.

To briefly summarize, the Trump administration and its allies in Washington have been pushing to pile even more sanctions on Iran, and to do that, it hatched a plan to try to get the U.N. to “snapback” its pre-JCPOA sanctions for purportedly violating the nuclear deal’s terms.

Of course there are two big problems with this approach, the first of which is that while yes, Iran has violated some of the JCPOA’s terms, it has done so only after Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement and reimposed crushing sanctions. And second, in order to trigger the “snapback” mechanism built into the agreement, you have to be a participant in the agreement, which of course, the U.S. ceased to be when Trump exited it in 2018.

So the U.N. Security Council has snuffed out this bad faith effort for what it is, as its permanent members have already said they will reject it. What’s more is that Pompeo himself inadvertently revealed the folly of this whole exercise during a press conference on Thursday after notifying the Security Council of the U.S.’s request for snapback.

After a reporter wondered how the U.S. can snapback U.N. sanctions while no longer being part of the deal, an exasperated Pompeo responded, “This — look, just, it’s important to emphasize this,” he said, adding that the U.N. Security Council Resolution endorsing the JCPOA “gave every one of the participant states the right to execute snapback unconditionally.”

And he’s right. U.N. Resolution 2231 states that “the Security Council, within 30 days of receiving a notification by a JCPOA participant State of an issue that the JCPOA participant State believes constitutes significant non-performance of commitments under the JCPOA, shall vote on a draft resolution to continue in effect the terminations of the provisions of previous Security Council resolutions.”

But of course, the United States is no longer “a JCPOA participant state,” a fact that Pompeo himself said back in May, 2018 (emphasis added):

“Two weeks ago, President Trump terminated the United States participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, more commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal.

Of course none of these bad faith efforts on Iran and shameless lying should be a surprise. But the question now is how the U.N. will ultimately deal with the U.S. snapback request in an official capacity. Indeed, the International Crisis Group has a suggestion for those at the U.N. who want to preserve the JCPOA: “ignore the U.S. drive to restore terminated sanctions on Iran.” And if that’s indeed the path they take, it may mark the first time in history that the U.N. Security Council has ghosted the U.S.

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The Washington Post and Its Cold War Drums – CounterPunch.org

Posted by M. C. on July 20, 2020

It is customary for the political rhetoric to get heated during a presidential campaign, which will find Donald Trump and Joe Biden vying for honors in the field of national security and militancy, but there should be some balance and context from the mainstream media.  The increasingly hard line of the Washington Post on the competition with China, Russia, and Iran suggests that the political contenders will be goaded—and not ameliorated—by the nation’s key newspapers.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/10/the-washington-post-and-its-cold-war-drums/#gsc.tab=0

by Melvin Goodman

The Washington Post has taken its Cold War campaign against China, Russia, and Iran to a new level.  In the Sunday edition of its Outlook section, the Post gave front-page coverage to long articles by former ambassador Michael McFaul and former New York Times’ writer Tim Weiner to trumpet Russia’s “constant aggression” and its “brutal Cold War rules.”  There was no hint whatsoever of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to improve Russian-American relations over the past two decades, and no suggestion that the actions of the United States over the past 25 years have significantly contributed to the poor state of relations between Moscow and Washington.

The companion pieces have supportive titles, which suggests an editorial decision to express an authoritative point of view.  McFaul’s article is titled “Trump always finds a way to let Putin win….”, and Weiner’s screed follows with “….even when Russia plays by brutal Cold War rules.”  Their joint thesis is a simple one: Donald Trump’s complacency has enabled President Putin’s “litany of belligerent acts.”  Neither writer notes U.S. actions over the past quarter-century that have worsened the international environment and helped to create a  revival of the Cold War.  Indeed, they absolve the last four American presidents of any responsibility for the current state of affairs, ignoring their actions that have been consistent with Cold War policymaking.  Is anyone going to address the importance of restoring a Russian-American dialogue revolving around arms control and disarmament as well as Third World conflict resolution?

McFaul’s article is particularly interesting in view of his role as the architect of President Barack Obama’s “reset” policy toward Russia, his standing as one of the leading scholars on post-communist Russia, and his appointment as the first non-career diplomat to be U.S. ambassador to the Kremlin.  His two-year tour was hardly a success as McFaul, only several days after his arrival in Moscow, chose to invite a number of organizers and prominent participants in the anti-Putin protest movement to the U.S. embassy.  McFaul immediately became an Internet celebrity in the tight-knit world of Russian opposition, which demonstrated a lack of awareness of Russian political sensitivities, particularly if the Obama administration was genuinely trying to “reset” relations.

McFaul’s article is totally one-sided.  He argues that “Trump has received nothing” from Moscow despite his concessions to the Russian president, citing “no new arms-control treaty, no help in deal with worsening relations with Iran.”  But it was Trump who backed away from arms control and disarmament with Russia, abrogating the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty and walking away from the Outer Space Treaty.  Conversely, it is Putin who is trying to get back to arms control negotiations, particularly to extend the New START Treaty, which expires in January 2021.  Moreover, it is Putin who supports the Iran nuclear accord, and nowhere does McFaul explain what Russian leaders could possibly do to reverse the damage that the Trump administration has done to relations with Iran as well as to political stability in the Persian Gulf.

Weiner is welcome to his opinion that the CIA’s covert action in Afghanistan was the “last great battle of the Cold War,” but the Russians have dealt with genuine facts for the past 25 years that point to U.S. responsibility for the current disarray in Russian-American relations.  In the 1990s, it was the United States and President Bill Clinton who decided to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, bringing former Soviet republics into NATO, a betrayal of commitments that President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker gave to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze not to “leap frog” over Germany in order to go into East Europe.

President George W. Bush went one terrible step further by bringing former Soviet republics into NATO; it took German Chancellor Angela Merkel to get him to stop flirting with membership for Ukraine and Georgia. Merkel convinced Bush that introducing Ukraine and Georgia to NATO would violate Putin’s red line regarding NATO membership.  Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland used her cell phone to discuss specific individuals who would be in the government or out.  When the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine told Nuland that the European Union would have problems with her intervention, she replied “Fuck the EU.”  The Kremlin intercepted the call and had a field day spreading the news.  The Russian actions toward Ukraine and Georgia that McFaul and Weiner cite were, in fact, a response to U.S. manipulation of the politics and policies of both nations, which followed Putin’s red-line warnings to the United States.

One of the most severe moves reminiscent of the Cold War was President George W. Bush’s abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002.  It was noteworthy that John Bolton served in influential administration positions in 2002 and 2019, when the ABM Treaty and the INF Treaty, respectively, were abrogated.  Bush followed up the abrogation with another offensive maneuver, the deployment of a regional missile defense in Poland and Romania, claiming the defense was designed to counter a possible attack from Iran.  This made no sense at the time, and even less sense during the Obama administration when the Iran nuclear accord was completed.  Not only has Donald Trump demonstrated no interest in the importuning from Putin regarding the need to return to disarmament negotiations, he has created a Cold War-like Space Force and suggested that U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Germany might end up in Poland.  McFaul needs to reconcile the fact that additional U.S. forces will be sent to Poland with his notion that “Trump always finds a way to let Putin win.”

It is customary for the political rhetoric to get heated during a presidential campaign, which will find Donald Trump and Joe Biden vying for honors in the field of national security and militancy, but there should be some balance and context from the mainstream media.  The increasingly hard line of the Washington Post on the competition with China, Russia, and Iran suggests that the political contenders will be goaded—and not ameliorated—by the nation’s key newspapers.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent book is “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing), and he is the author of the forthcoming “The Dangerous National Security State” (2020).” Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.

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To Understand Iran’s 150-Year Fight, Follow the Trail of Blood and Oil — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on May 26, 2020

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/23/to-understand-irans-150-year-fight-follow-trail-of-blood-and-oil/

Cynthia Chung

This past Sunday, April 17th, a dispute between Iran and the U.S. occurred over the U.S.’ decision to increase its military presence in Caribbean and Eastern Pacific waters, with the purported reason being a counter-narcotics campaign.

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote to the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres this past Sunday, that the real purpose for this move by the U.S. is to “intervene and create disruption in the transfer of Iran’s fuel to Venezuela.” In the same letter, Zarif expressed concern over “the United States’ intention to consider dangerous, unlawful and provocative measures against Iranian oil tankers engaged in perfectly lawful international commerce with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”

The Iranian deployment consists of five tankers carrying around $45.5million of gasoline and related products, as part of a wider deal between Iran and Venezuela. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on both nations’ oil exports.

For the first time since 1962, Iran has requested IMF assistance due to severe shortages created by the COVID-19 pandemic, with Iran requesting an emergency loan of $5 billion. However, the request is currently being blocked by the U.S., which accounts for slightly more than 16.5% of IMF’s voting shares and has an effective veto over decisions.

Iran is presently experiencing a critical shortage of medicines and equipment amid the pandemic, and yet is prohibited from purchasing medicines and supplies because of the banking sanctions.

It is clear that these manoeuvres against Iran are not on behalf of anyone’s “security” but rather an attempt to force Iran to finally bend the knee and be reduced to a state of complete dependence.

Iran has fought a long fight to claim its independence from western powers.

However, what if I were to tell you that once there was a time when Iran and the U.S. had good relations and that the U.S. was in fact the leading promoter and supporter of Iran’s sovereignty?

Almost out of a Shakespearean play of tragedy and betrayal, the relationship was jeopardised by a third player. As identified by John Perkins, in his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the first ever U.S. coup against a foreign country was the overthrow of Iran’s nationalist Prime Minister Mosaddegh in 1953. However, what is often left out…is that it was a British authored and designed operation.

In order for us to understand how and why the U.S. was dragged into such an affair, our story starts 150 years ago…

Dieu et mon droit

Read the rest of this entry »

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AIPAC Finally Gets the Best of Ilhan Omar | The American Conservative

Posted by M. C. on May 7, 2020

This is what AIPAC wants. It sent out this letter and got 390 members of Congress to sign it, including Omar. The fact AIPAC was able to get these signatures is a testament to its influence and the hurt that it can bring down on politicians when comes to re-election. Like Omar.

That will ensure that the other embargoes, the ones that affect food, medicine, basic necessities, continue to strangle ordinary Iranians. This is about “maximum pressure” and it’s what AIPAC and the hawks in Congress want. In her own “narrow” way, Omar is supporting their vicious cycle, one that she has already admitted, will not work. 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/state-of-the-union/aipac-finally-gets-the-best-of-ilhan-omar/

The Congresswoman has signed onto one of the lobby’s letters calling for an extended embargo on Iran.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-MN. (Screenshot from Al Jazeera, via CBN)

May 5, 2020

| Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

It looks like AIPAC, the most influential pro-Israel organization in the U.S., has gotten to Rep Ilhan Omar.

The Muslim-American congresswoman who had been targeted by the lobbying behemoth a year ago for her “anti-Semitic” comments about “dual loyalty” in regards to members of Congress supporting a ban on American’s boycotting Israel businesses (BDS), has now signed onto a typically loaded AIPAC letter calling for the extension of a UN arms embargo against Iran.

The move has her supporters and political observers scratching their heads. The wider sanctions regime against Tehran, by all reports, was crushing the Iranian people long before the COVID virus began spreading through the country. Oil revenues, imports of basic necessities, all have been brought to a grinding halt thanks to the Trump Administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign. Now Iranians are struggling for life-saving equipment and medicines in the wake of a pandemic.

In a tweet on April 22 she seemed to be of the mind that sanctions are a dead end:

 

Omar’s office released a statement after the AIPAC letter story broke, saying  the congresswoman still opposes wider economic sanctions, but “has consistently, for a long time, supported arms embargoes against human rights abusers.” It is not that she “supports [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo’s tactics or that her position on sanctions has changed, or that she is not in support of the [nuclear deal]. It was just a narrow ask that we couldn’t find anything wrong with.”

So what is this “narrow ask”? AIPAC, which has spent millions of dollars opposing the JCPOA, otherwise known as the “Iran nuclear deal,” wants to make sure a United Nations weapons embargo on Iran does not sunset as proscribed in the agreement, this fall. That will mean whatever is remaining of the deal since the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018 will fall apart. That will likely trigger an escalation in the Iranians’ uranium enrichment, which was capped in the deal, and likewise lock all economic sanctions in, this time with the wider support of the other P5+1 countries that originally signed onto it (China, Russia, Germany, the European Union, the UK, and France).

This is what AIPAC wants. It sent out this letter and got 390 members of Congress to sign it, including Omar. The fact AIPAC was able to get these signatures is a testament to its influence and the hurt that it can bring down on politicians when comes to re-election. Like Omar. A tough Democratic primary candidate has emerged in Antone Melton-Meaux, an African-American attorney and civil rights mediator who said in an April op-edin the Minnesota Star-Tribune that Omar was disconnected from her district, has gotten no legislation passed for Minnesota, and  cut a divisive figure on Capitol Hill. Furthermore, Melton-Meaux said:

Omar has repeatedly made divisive statements that have been hurtful to members of our Jewish community. She creates distraction and drama, not results. That doesn’t work for us.

Rep. Omar believes that sanctions are economic warfare and is a vocal advocate for abolishing them, particularly for Iran. Yet she supports sanctions on Israel. She has repeatedly refused to explain this inconsistency. That doesn’t work for us.

Melton-Meaux is one of three primary challengers, but he has already raised nearly $500,000, more than any of them. He seems to have touched a nerve and is not afraid to use Omar’s reported issues with the pro-Israel crowd to his political advantage. According to a glowing profile in the Jewish Insider, Melton-Meaux already “has the endorsement of “pro-Israel America.” More:

In 2012, during a Jewish Community Relations Council meeting in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Melton-Meaux delivered a Dvar Torah, expounding on the connections between Leviticus 19 and Matthew 26, which calls for all people to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” He added: “If there was ever a time when Jews, Christians, and all people of faith need to be reminded that we share a common bond, the time is now.”

And:

Melton-Meaux alleges that his opponent, who has risen to prominence as a member of “The Squad,” has not worked to find common ground with others, including many of her Jewish constituents.

“Omar has made statements that have been reckless and harmful to the Jewish community,” Melton-Meaux told Jewish Insider. “I have spent time with the Jewish community and have met with Jewish leaders, and there’s a deep sense of betrayal by her actions and displeasure with the way that she has handled herself in the process with regard to the residents in this district.”

And according to Gateway Pundit, Omar’s top Republican opponent, Lacy Johnson, got a huge boost from donors this week after an endorsement from President Trump.

Omar has been accused of anti-Semitic comments, but a closer look of course reveals a muddier picture. In an all-consuming debate last year on whether banning U.S. companies and citizens from boycotting Israeli businesses for its treatment of Palestinians was an infringement of Constitutional rights, the tweets and public attacks on both sides were flying. Omar made comments about AIPAC “funding” Republican support for Israel and decried its influence operations (which are notorious by the way on Capitol Hill, described by one former Hill staffer and AIPAC as a system of “rewards and retribution”). After this, Omar  was accused by other members of Congress and by AIPAC of promulgating the trope that some Jewish-Americans have “dual loyalty,” and her words were condemned as anti-Semitic.

She ended up apologizing for a February 2019 tweet saying that support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins.”

“Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes,” Omar said in a statement released on Twitter, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the entire Democratic leadership publicly scolded her for engaging in “deeply offensive” anti-Semitic tropes.

“My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole,” Ms. Omar wrote, adding, “I unequivocally apologize.”

But she did not take back her comments about AIPAC.

Omar’s recent signature on a letter that would have garnered hundreds of her colleagues’ support and made a splash with or without her, is a signal to AIPAC that she knows her seat is at risk, and that she would rather neutralize the feud with the pro-Israel powerhouse than send it flocking to the aid of her opponents. AIPAC spends millions each year lobbying Congress on behalf of its agenda, but does not give directly to candidates. However, its members do, and it works with other pro-Israel groups and individuals who give tons of money each election cycle (more than $12.4 million so far in 2020, compared to $15.5 million in all of 2016). Omar’s comments about “the Benjamins” could come back to bite her, and it will be, all about the Benjamins. That’s how campaigns rise and fall.

So why should we care? Omar says it’s a “narrow ask” to support extending the arms embargo, but it’s clear the Trump Administration is using this embargo to further kill the deal. If the deal is crushed, the hardliners in Iran will blow through uranium enrichment restrictions (in fact they already have, in response to U.S. sanctions). That will ensure that the other embargoes, the ones that affect food, medicine, basic necessities, continue to strangle ordinary Iranians. This is about “maximum pressure” and it’s what AIPAC and the hawks in Congress want. In her own “narrow” way, Omar is supporting their vicious cycle, one that she has already admitted, will not work.

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With apparently fabricated nuclear documents, Netanyahu pushed the US towards war with Iran | The Grayzone

Posted by M. C. on May 2, 2020

Graham Fuller, a 27-year veteran of the
CIA who served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and
South Asia as well as Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence
Council, offered a similar assessment of the Israeli claim. “If the
Israelis had such a sensitive source in Tehran,” Fuller commented, “they
would not want to risk him.” Fuller concluded that the Israelis’ claim
that they had accurate knowledge of which safes to crack is “dubious,
and the whole thing may be somewhat fabricated.”

In this time of trouble it is comforting to know some things never change.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/29/fabricated-nuclear-documents-netanyahu-war-iran/

An investigation of supposed Iranian nuclear documents presented in a dramatically staged Netanyahu press conference indicates they were an Israeli fabrication designed to trigger US military conflict with Iran.

By Gareth Porter

President Donald Trump scrapped the nuclear deal with Iran and continued to risk war with Iran based on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim to have proven definitively that Iran was determined to manufacture nuclear weapons. Netanyahu not only spun Trump but much of the corporate media as well, duping them with the public unveiling of what he claimed was the entire secret Iranian “nuclear archive.”

In early April 2018, Netanyahu briefed Trump privately on the supposed Iranian nuclear archive and secured his promise to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That April 30, Netanyahu took the briefing to the public in a characteristically dramatic live performance in which he claimed Israel’s Mossad intelligence services had stolen Iran’s entire nuclear archive from Tehran. “You may well know that Iran’s leaders repeatedly deny ever pursuing nuclear weapons…” Netanyahu declared. “Well, tonight, I’m here to tell you one thing: Iran lied. Big time.”

However, an investigation of the supposed Iranian nuclear documents by The Grayzone reveals them to be the product of an Israeli disinformation operation that helped trigger the most serious threat of war since the conflict with Iran began nearly four decades ago. This investigation found multiple indications that the story of Mossad’s heist of 50,000 pages of secret nuclear files from Tehran was very likely an elaborate fiction and that the documents were fabricated by the Mossad itself.

According to the official Israeli version of events, the Iranians had gathered the nuclear documents from various locations and moved them to what Netanyahu himself described as “a dilapidated warehouse” in southern Tehran. Even assuming that Iran had secret documents demonstrating the development of nuclear weapons, the claim that top secret documents would be held in a nondescript and unguarded warehouse in Central Tehran is so unlikely that it should have raised immediate alarm bells about the story’s legitimacy.

Even more problematic was the claim by a Mossad official to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman that Mossad knew not only in what warehouse its commandos would find the documents but precisely which safes to break into with a blowtorch. The official told Bergman the Mossad team had been guided by an intelligence asset to the few safes in the warehouse contained the binders with the most important documents.  Netanyahu bragged publicly that “very few” Iranians knew the location of the archive; the Mossad official told Bergman “only a handful of people” knew.

But two former senior CIA official, both of whom had served as the agency’s top Middle East analyst, dismissed Netanyahu’s claims as lacking credibility in responses to a query from The Grayzone.

According to Paul Pillar, who was National Intelligence Officer for the region from 2001 to 2005, “Any source on the inside of the Iranian national security apparatus would be extremely valuable in Israeli eyes, and Israeli deliberations about the handling of that source’s information presumably would be biased in favor long-term protection of the source.” The Israeli story of how its spies located the documents “does seem fishy,” Pillar said, especially considering Israel’s obvious effort to derive maximum “political-diplomatic mileage” out of the “supposed revelation” of such a well-placed source.

Graham Fuller, a 27-year veteran of the CIA who served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia as well as Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, offered a similar assessment of the Israeli claim. “If the Israelis had such a sensitive source in Tehran,” Fuller commented, “they would not want to risk him.” Fuller concluded that the Israelis’ claim that they had accurate knowledge of which safes to crack is “dubious, and the whole thing may be somewhat fabricated.”

No proof of authenticity

Netanyahu’s April 30 slide show presented a series of purported Iranian documents containing sensational revelations that he pointed to as proof of his insistence that Iran had lied about its interest in manufacturing nuclear weapons. The visual aides included a file supposedly dating back to early 2000 or before that detailed various ways to achieve a plan to build five nuclear weapons by mid-2003.

Another document that generated widespread media interest was an alleged report on a discussion among leading Iranian scientists of a purported mid-2003 decision by Iran’s Defense Minister to separate an existing secret nuclear weapons program into overt and covert parts.

Left out of the media coverage of these “nuclear archive” documents was a simple fact that was highly inconvenient to Netanyahu: nothing about them offered a scintilla of evidence that they were genuine. For example, not one contained the official markings of the relevant Iranian agency.

Tariq Rauf, who was head of the Verification and Security Policy Coordination Office at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 2001 to 2011, told The Grayzone that these markings were practically ubiquitous on official Iranian files.

“Iran is a highly bureaucratized system,” Rauf explained. “Hence, one would expect a proper book-keeping system that would record incoming correspondence, with date received, action officer, department, circulation to additional relevant officials, proper letterhead, etc.”

But as Rauf noted, the “nuclear archive” documents that were published by the Washington Post bore no such evidence of Iranian government origin.  Nor did they contain other markings to indicate their creation under the auspices of an Iranian government agency.

What those documents do have in common is the mark of a rubber stamp for a filing system showing numbers for a “record”, a “file” and a “ledger binder” — like the black binders that Netanyahu flashed to the cameras during his slideshow. But these could have easily been created by the Mossad and stamped on to the documents along with the appropriate Persian numbers.

Forensic confirmation of the documents’ authenticity would have required access to the original documents.  But as Netanyahu noted in his April 30, 2018 slide show, the “original Iranian materials” were kept “in a very safe place” – implying that no one would be allowed to have any such access.  Read the rest of this entry »

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