Iran 2 bak

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RATCLIFFE DNI NEO-CON?

TARGET FOX HANNITY MARK LEVIN

see ISLAMOPHOBE XIAN NAT’L

phish hack roger stone

see iran nuke deal

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MMA

### Mark Levin’s clarion call for Trump to wage war on Iran

02/19/26

### Sean Hannity is demanding regime change in Iran to stop the country's nuclear program ... which Hannity previously claimed Trump had “obliterated”

02/19/26

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an 2 26

Donald Trump is reportedly on the "knife-edge" of starting a new war in the Middle East, with The iPaper reporting Tuesday that officials are scrambling behind-the-scenes to stop it.

On Trump's orders, the U.S. military is currently building up a "massive" deployment of naval hardware in the Persian Gulf, the outlet explained. The president has been inching closer to an all-out conflict with Iran since bombing three of its nuclear facilities last summer. More recently, he has threatened to take military action against the Middle Eastern nation in response to reports that the government has brutally cracked down on recent nationwide protests, allegedly killing thousands in the process.

“If we don’t make a deal, we’ll see what happens," Trump said of the situation on Friday.

In its report from Tuesday, The iPaper laid out the efforts underway to stop a war between the U.S. and Iran from breaking out. On Friday, Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, took a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Upon his return to Tehran, he reportedly took another meeting with Qatari Prime Minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, with The iPaper reporting that the PM was there to deliver a "final warning" from the U.S.

Despite Trump's recent rhetoric about Iran's treatment of protesters, the tension between the two nations is still dominated by nuclear matters.

"Iran’s stockpile and the possibility of enriching more uranium in future are key points of contention for the U.S.," The iPaper explained. "Last year, the International Atomic Energy Agency raised 'serious concerns' that Iran was enriching uranium to 60 per cent – a short step from the roughly 90 per cent needed for weapons-grade. Reports have suggested that since the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites last summer, Iran has been trying to rebuild those sites deeper underground. Any US talks are bound to demand significant concessions on Iran’s nuclear program."

After a meeting with Iranian officials, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly contacted the Trump administration to offer Turkiye's help in facilitating negotiations with Iran. As of Tuesday, the White House had not responded to the offer.

Trump's persistent threats of military action against various foreign nations have been a major departure from his 2024 campaign, where he promised to keep the country out of more costly conflicts. This reversal has been a significant factor in his plummeting approval ratings, especially among Gen Z voters, who do not want to have to fight in Trump's wars.

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icn gmail 1 265

Iran’s Regime Has Survived War, Sanctions and Uprising. Environmental Crises May Bring It Down.

BY KATIE SURMA

Decades of water depletion, dam building and repression of scientists and environmentalists have driven Iran toward ecological crises that are fueling protests rocking the country.

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MMA

Fox let chief Trump propagandist Hannity lead special coverage of the US strikes on Iran

Hannity said the attack “will go down in history as one of the greatest military victories”

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 06/23/25

Fox News turned to Sean Hannity, the Donald Trump political operative who hosts a weekday prime-time show, to help the president sell his new war with Iran, airing two hours of special coverage after Trump’s Saturday night announcement that the U.S. military had struck three Iranian nuclear strikes. The wildly unethical choice emphasized Fox’s role as a Trumpist outlet whose primary mission is propagandizing its audience to support the president’s actions.

Bret Baier, Fox’s chief political anchor, broke the news on the network’s airwaves at 7:52 p.m. ET, minutes after Trump posted about what he deemed the “very successful attack.” Baier and his guests provided overly credulous coverage that nonetheless resembled a normal news broadcast. But just under an hour into that coverage, an on-screen bug revealed that Hannity would be taking over the network’s coverage live beginning at 9.

Fox executives, knowing that Trump intended to speak at the White House at 10 p.m., made the conscious decision to ensure that for the hour before and after those remarks, the network’s coverage would be guided by Hannity, not its “news side” team.

Hannity spent the last decade shattering every possible ethical norm on Trump’s behalf: He has appeared in and even scripted his campaign ads, spoken at a campaign rally, and advised presidential decisions on staffing, communications, and policy — all while regularly interviewing Trump himself on his Fox show. He has also advocated for a U.S. military strike on Iranian nuclear sites for more than a decade.

Hannity predictably used the opportunity on Saturday to shower Trump with praise and host a parade of shills who touted the president’s decision to bomb Iran.

“I just spoke to the president of the United States,” Hannity said at the top of his broadcast. “I have some new information and breaking details to share about tonight's, what is [an] historic air campaign. Now tonight, Iran's nuclear ambitions, they are officially dead. It appears the United States just completely obliterated Iran's top secret Fordo nuclear facility.” Hannity added that two other Iranian nuclear sites had been “wiped out.”

“This is a huge development tonight, and I believe the world is a much safer place,” he concluded.

Video

Citation

From Fox News's June 21, 2025, special coverage

“Maybe it's a little early to go there, but this will go down in history as one of the greatest military victories — taking out the No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” Hannity later added. “They've been responsible for hundreds of thousands of missiles between themselves and their proxies being fired into Israel. They have threatened to wipe Israel and the U.S. off the map, and that threat has been removed tonight.”

“There is no doubt we are watching history tonight,” Hannity said after Trump’s address. “There's no doubt that — I agree with the president — this is one of the most skilled, important, imperative peacekeeping, peace-through-strength-keeping operations in the last 40 years, and certainly the reign of terror in Iran, whether they know it or not, is coming to a quick end.”

Hannity turned to Mark Levin, the hawkish Fox weekend host who reportedly counseled Trump to back Israel’s strikes on Iran over lunch at the White House earlier this month, during both hours of coverage.

Levin praised Trump as “a historic figure” and screamed at Fox’s audience that they could now “go to bed peacefully tonight” because Trump had stopped “these Islamo-Nazis [who] were building nuclear weapons to attack us with ballistic missiles.”

“This mission was never going to fail under this commander in chief,” he ranted. “This is historic, he is historic, the United States military is historic,” Levin continued, comparing the strikes to those of “Reagan and Thatcher defeating the Soviet Union.”

Video

Citation

From Fox News' June 21, 2025, special coverage

“It's about time we rally around this president, rally around our United States military, [and] accept the fact that this is a high point in American history and world history,” he later added, claiming Trump “protected the entire Earth from these barbarians” and “prevented World War III.”

Fox viewers also heard from Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton (“I commend President Trump for his resolute and strong action”), Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin (“peace through strength is what President Trump has been talking about from Day 1”), Fox contributor Katie Pavlich (“God bless President Trump, God bless the U.S. military, and God bless the Israelis for paving the way so the mission could be as successful as it was tonight”), and Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson (“the world heard the president speak tonight and that’s what leadership looks like, that’s what commander in chief looks like”).

Hannity returned to Levin for the “last word” of the night. Levin took some credit for the strikes, praised Trump for going through with them, and engaged in score-settling with unnamed figures who had opposed them.

“To be perfectly honest about this, there were a handful of us who encouraged this night, who said that we needed to take military action to bring about this result. It is not so much that we had to convince President Trump — he knew what to do, he instinctively knows what to do, he is a brilliant, brilliant man,” Levin said. “But there are other people. I was laughing because they are now believers, and they are now talking about what a fantastic night this is.”

In the hours since Hannity signed off, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine effectively contradicted Trump’s Saturday night statement that Iran’s nuclear sites were “completely and fully obliterated,” saying it was still too soon to fully assess the damage; U.S. officials acknowledged that Iran had may have moved its supply of enriched uranium to an unknown location before the attack; Trump floated a goal of “regime change”; and The New York Times detailed how “the president was closely monitoring Fox News, which was airing wall-to-wall praise of Israel’s military operation and featuring guests urging Mr. Trump to get more involved,” in the days leading up to the strike.

If Trump tuned in to his favorite network on Saturday night, he heard a host who functions as his chief propagandist showering him with praise for following through. That’s apparently exactly what the Fox executives wanted. And that bodes ill for how the network will handle a war against Iran based on obvious lies and featuring rapidly shifting aims.

### Trump’s Fox News obsession is driving the U.S. toward war with Iran

06/18/25 2:03 PM EDT

### A guide to Sean Hannity’s role as Trump’s chief White House propagandist

01/22/25 12:56 PM EST

### How Fox powered Trump’s first term — and what that means for his second

11/19/2

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...Griffin stated that U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat, “believes that that more shoes could drop, is suggesting that there are more firings to come.”

Kaine also talked about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Griffin said, and “had expressed extreme concern about a late night tweet by defense Secretary Hegseth, in which he threatened Iran with potential military action, if they don’t control the Houthies.”

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the hill

At the end of January, President Trump issued executive orders that revoked security details for former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeoand Dr. Anthony Fauci— despite ongoing, credible threats against their lives.

“Do you want to have a large detail of people guarding people for the rest of their lives?” Trump asked. “I mean, there’s risks to everything.”

Asked if he would feel partially responsible if something happened to any of them, Trump replied, “Certainly I would not … They made a lot of money. They can hire their own security.” The president offered to give them the phone numbers of “some good security companies.”

A few days ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cancelled the security detail protecting retired Gen. Mark Milley and ordered an inquiry to determine if he should be demoted.

Combined with his pardons and commutations for Jan. 6 rioters and convicted seditious conspirators, and the cancellation of security clearances for dozens of his political adversaries, Trump’s actions have launched what could be called the “imperious presidency.”

The federal government has an obligation to protect its public servants from job-related threats. One can hope that all Americans will condemn putting these men in harm’s way because they corrected, criticized or condemned their former boss.

Think Tanks cashing in on dark money; orgs keep funding sources a secret: Interview

John Bolton, U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush, had a well-deserved reputation as a brutally candid, hard-to-like foreign policy hawk. He replaced Gen. H.R. McMaster as Trump’s National Security Advisor in 2018. At the time, Trump praised Bolton as a patriot, “well-respected and a tough cookie,” saying he “has strong views on things but that’s okay.”

Bolton helped craft the administration’s hard line on Iran, but he opposed what he regarded as Trump’s dovish overtures to North Korea and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nor was he a fan of the president’s “we’ll have to see response” to questions about whether the U.S. would recognize Russia’s territorial claims in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Trump fired Bolton in 2019. “He wasn’t liked at all and wasn’t respected very much,” Trump declared in 2020. “Personally, I thought he was crazy.”

By then, Bolton was casting doubt on Trump’s fitness to be president. He subsequently Trump “incapable of advanced thinking” and as a way of life.”

In 2022, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was charged with plotting to murder Bolton. An Iranian was subsequently charged (in absentia) for offering $300,000 to kill Bolton. Officials in two federal agencies recently informed Bolton that the threat level is just as strong now as it was then.

Mike Pompeo, a member of the House from 2011 to 2017, occupied high-level positions throughout Trump’s first administration. When Trump elevated Pompeo from CIA director to secretary of State, the president declared he had “earned the praise of members of both parties” and would “do a fantastic job.”

Pompeo briefly considered running for president in 2024, criticized Trump for mishandling classified documents and “staring into the rearview mirror, claiming victimhood,” and promised voters “solutions, not tweets.” He still went on to endorse the former president and called Trump “a great guy” on the eve of the 2024 election.

Iran has vowed retaliation against Pompeo for helping plan the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. Informed that Trump had revoked security details for members of his administration, a CIA officer predicted that “somebody is going to get killed.” Pompeo explained the order as “a reflection of Trump’s character or lack thereof.”

Anthony Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022. President Bush awarded him the National Medal of Freedom in 2007 as the architect of the President’s Emerging Plan For AIDS Relief, which saved millions of lives by distributing drugs in Africa.

As a member of the Trump administration’s Coronavirus Task Force, Fauci was initially praised by Trump, who said, “He has become a major television star for all the right reasons.” But, while declaring that Trump’s briefings were “helpful,” Fauci corrected misstatements about, for example, the likelihood of COVID-19 disappearing with the onset of warmer weather, the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and a claim that 99 percent of cases were harmless.

As Trump Republicans and libertarians condemned mask mandates and lockdowns of public buildings, Trump asserted that “people are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.” Before the end of Trump’s term, Fauci had become the administration official whom COVID critics loved to hate.

In 2022, a West Virginia man was sentenced to three years in prison for threatening to drag Fauci, his wife and children into the street, beat them to death and set them on fire. Since then, the threats have kept on coming.

Trump appointed Gen. Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019. A year later, Milley apologized for inserting himself into domestic politics by accompanying Trump as he walked through Lafayette Square, ostensibly to clear racial justice protestors, in what turned out to be a photo op.

At his retirement ceremony, Milley declared that he had taken an oath to the Constitution, not “to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”

Trump has said that Milley committed treason and deserves the death penalty for supposedly going behind his back in dealing with Chinese officials at the end of his administration. And like Bolton and Pompeo, Milley has been threatened with death by Iran for his role in the killing of Soleimani.

Trump has often compared himself to Abraham Lincoln. But he clearly has not yet signed on to the 16th president’s call for “malice toward none” nor for “charity for all,” let alone tried “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

*Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

Tags Anthony Fauci Anthony Fauci Donald Trump Iran John Bolton Mark Milley Mike Pompeo Mike Pompeo security protection

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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/27/us/politics/iran-hacking-trump-campaign.html

U.S. Charges Iranians With Hacking Trump Campaign

The indictment highlighted the heightened threat posed by hostile international actors — Iran, Russia and China chief among them — who hope to disrupt the U.S. election.

An individual holding an iPhone takes a photo of former President Trump.

The material stolen from the Trump campaign was sent to journalists at The New York Times and other outlets but was not widely published.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

By Glenn Thrush and David E. Sanger

Reporting from Washington

Sept. 27, 2024

A federal grand jury in Washington has indicted three members of a cyberespionage unit associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps for mounting wide-ranging attacks targeting politicians, officials and journalists that led to the hacking of the Trump campaign this summer.

The Iranians unleashed a barrage of malicious emails to a wide array of targets over the past four years, hoping to gain access to email accounts and databases. In 2024, the group, linked to Iranian military intelligence, sharpened its focus to undermine former President Donald J. Trump, whom they regard as their most implacable enemy, according to an indictment unsealed on Friday.

The attacks were “part of Iran’s continuing efforts to stoke discord, erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process and unlawfully acquire information related to former and current U.S. officials,” prosecutors wrote.

The hackers — identified in the indictment as Masoud Jalili, Seeyed Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi — all live in Iran, making it unlikely they would face justice in an American courtroom. They have been charged with wire fraud, identity theft, providing material support to a terrorist organization and a variety of cybercrimes.

“The defendants’ own words made clear that they were attempting to undermine former President Trump’s campaign in advance of the 2024 U.S. presidential election,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said during a news conference.

The influence campaign described in the indictment suggests that Iran’s cyberskills and ambitions have expanded sharply in recent years, learning from techniques that Russia and China have mastered. It suggests rapid progress over the past 15 years, when Iran created its first “cybercorps,” partly in response to a successful American-Israeli breach into its nuclear production facility at Natanz, destroying hundreds of the country’s nuclear centrifuges.

In the 2016 election, Iran was barely capable of initiating a successful cyberattack, and in 2020, its interventions were clumsy. But by this June, it was able to provide people in President Biden’s camp “final prep” materials from the Trump campaign on the day of the first presidential debate, prosecutors said.

The indictment, while expected, highlighted the heightened threat posed by hostile international actors, using cyberattacks in hopes of disrupting the U.S. election and intimidating domestic dissidents abroad. But those three powers, Iran, Russia and China, partners in many arenas, are pursuing different strategies. Russia has been intervening on Mr. Trump’s behalf, intelligence officials say, while Iran has opposed him. China has not taken a clear side, but has worked to advance its interests more broadly.

From 2020 to May 2024, the three men named in the filing, all experienced hackers, targeted dozens of current and former officials at the White House, National Security Council, Defense Department, C.I.A. and a former U.S. ambassador to Israel — “apparently without success,” according to the 37-page indictment.

They also tried to compromise the account of at least two journalists as well as members of international nongovernmental organizations, think tanks based in Washington, foreign intelligence agencies, human rights groups, officials with Afghanistan’s government and United Nations personnel, mostly without success.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations has repeatedly denied the accusations. “The Iranian government neither possesses nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States presidential election,” it said in a statement last month when U.S. intelligence officials publicly accused Iran of hacking the Trump campaign.

The indictment did not identify the Trump campaign officials whose accounts had been hacked, but one person targeted was Susie Wiles, a senior adviser to the former president, according to someone familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose details intended to be private.

Iran was able to infiltrate the Trump campaign after gaining access to the email accounts of a longtime political adviser, Roger J. Stone, in a type of breach that allows a hacker to infiltrate a circle of people by impersonating someone they communicate regularly with.

The material, stolen in what the government called a “hack-and-leak” operation, was sent to journalists at The New York Times and other outlets but was not widely published. The Times, and other news organizations, concluded that its publication was likely to serve the interests of the attackers. Even then, Iran was the lead suspect.

Iran’s hostility to Mr. Trump also includes an apparent effort to kill him, U.S. officials have said. Intelligence agencies have been tracking a potential Iranian assassination plot against Mr. Trump, and in August, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man who had recently visited Iran with trying to hire a hit man to assassinate political figures, including the former president.

The hackers were motivated, in part, out of a desire to avenge the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran in January 2020 in a drone attack approved by Mr. Trump. They also blame Mr. Trump for reimposing economic sanctions on Iran after he pulled out of the 2015 nuclear agreement, in which Iran agreed to give up 97 percent of its nuclear fuel and vastly reduce its capabilities to make more.

Soon after, the Iranian hackers began creating false online personas as a precursor to launching spear-phishing attacks, including targeting the spouse of a Supreme Court justice and prominent conservatives.

But Iran’s efforts intensified drastically this year, with a push to infiltrate Mr. Trump’s inner circle, obtain compromising internal communications and leak them to the news media and Democrats. The indictment documents detail those efforts, from May to August, starting with the successful attempt to engage Mr. Stone, followed by the steps the hackers took to gain access to email accounts of people in his trusted circle.

On June 27 — hours before President Biden’s fumbling debate performance against Mr. Trump, which ultimately led to his decision to drop out of the presidential race — the Iranians, using a false identity, reached out to people in Mr. Biden’s camp to offer up the stolen materials.

“I’m going to be pass some materials along to you that will be useful in defeating” Mr. Trump, one of the hackers wrote in an email that included the pilfered information in its body. “Read and be strong and ready or tonight.”

The Iranians seemed to be following the election so closely, they offered punditry, opining that the debate was Mr. Biden’s “last chance” — and accurately predicting that he would have to step aside if he foundered.

Mr. Garland would not comment on the Biden campaign’s subsequent actions, other than to say that it did not respond to the hackers, and that both the Harris and Trump campaigns have cooperated fully with the F.B.I.’s investigation.

“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign — a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” said Morgan Finkelstein, a spokeswoman for the Harris campaign.

In July, the Iranians began sending stolen vetting materials about Mr. Trump’s running mate JD Vance to reporters, and continued to extract internal communications from Trump-related accounts as recently as Aug. 12, according to the indictment.

“Let’s be clear what we’re talking about — attempts by a hostile foreign government to steal campaign information from one presidential candidate, and shop it around to that candidate’s opponent and the media,” Christopher A. Wray, the director of the F.B.I., said in a statement.

In coordination with the indictment, the State Department offered a reward of up to $10 million for information on the hackers, while the Treasury Department issued sanctions against the men.

Hours after the indictment was unsealed, prosecutors in Washington also charged a naturalized U.S. citizen from Iran, who once worked for as a private contractor with the Federal Aviation Administration, with acting as an illegal foreign agent.

The man, Abouzar Rahmati, 42, who lives in Washington’s Virginia suburbs, is accused of providing Iranian intelligence officials with nonpublic details about the U.S. solar industry, along with information about airport radar systems and control towers.

Iranian intelligence officials appear to have been interested in “new ideas” that could be appropriated to improve Iran’s domestic infrastructure, according to the filing.

Maggie Haberman and Adam Goldman contributed reporting.

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons. More about Glenn Thrush

David E. Sanger covers the Biden administration and national security. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written several books on challenges to American national security. More about David E. Sanger

See more on: 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (Quds Force), U.S. Justice Department, Roger Stone, Donald Trump

one yr soulemani death commemorated, reports of wag the dog, nimitz not rotated out

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/republican-sen-mike-lee-lashes-out-and-spits-fire-over-trump-administrations-briefing-on-iran-strike/

NATIONAL SECURITY

Court ruling on NSA spying can’t wait, activist says

BY JULIAN HATTEM

05/27/15

conservative legal activist Larry Klaymanis suing President Obama and members of Congress over a deal on Iran’s nuclear program that he claims flies in the face of the Constitution.

The lawsuit, Klayman says, aims to block both the treaty and the “unconstitutional” law that Congress passed to guarantee a review of the multinational nuclear accord.

{mosads}The White House and Congress “gave away, abrogated and undermined [Klayman’s] constitutional rights, putting him in danger, including the protections inherent in the Constitution requiring a two-thirds vote to ratify a treaty,” he said in the lawsuit.

Under the Constitution, two-thirds of the Senate needs to approve any international treaty signed by the president.

But there will be no such vote on the Iran deal, which sets restrictions on the country’s nuclear activity over the next decade in exchange for the rolling back of sanctions on its oil and financial sectors.

The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA), which lawmakers passed earlier this year to give them oversight of the deal, violates the Constitution “by changing the method and radically altering the requirements by which treaties are ratified, who ratifies treaties, and the voting requirements to do so,” Klayman alleges in his lawsuit.

“As a result, INARA is unconstitutional, invalid, and void,” he added.

The constitutional argument has become popular among some conservatives, who feel that Congress sold them out by passing the Iran review bill, which allows lawmakers to pass a resolution for or against the deal, or to do nothing.

However, the definition of a treaty is tricky, and presidents have tended to have the power to declare whether an agreement is a formal treaty or not. Lawmakers have insisted that the passage of the Iran review bill actually gave them leverage in the White House’s negotiations.

In addition to Obama, Klayman — a Florida resident — also names Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.) in the lawsuit.

Rubio, a 2016 contender and critic of the Iran deal, said Thursday that Obama’s successor could unilaterally kill the agreement.

Klayman has a long history of aggressively filing lawsuits, which have occasionally become a thorn in the side of political officials.

For instance, a lawsuit of his against the National Security Agency succeeded in having a top federal court declare a controversial spying program illegal earlier this year.

TAGS IRAN LARRY KLAYMAN

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/iran/

no lnx twt map

reports of secret meeting between Netanyahu, MbS and Pompeo 'extremely alarming': foreign policy analyst

Jake Johnson and Common Dreams November 23, 2020

The alarming possibility of a military attack on Iran—a nation that has long been in the sights of war hawks in the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel—was immediately invoked by foreign policy analysts Monday following reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in secret late Sunday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

First divulged by unnamed Israeli officials and publicly denied Monday morning by the Saudi foreign minister, the reported covert meeting in Neom, Saudi Arabia comes on the heels of news last week that U.S. President Donald Trump asked his senior advisers for options to bomb Iran's primary nuclear energy site, prompting Iran to vow a "crushing response" to any attack.

Trump's request for military strike options came days after he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden, who has pledged to act quickly to reenter the Iran nuclear agreement that Trump violated in May of 2018. Contrary to baseless and ongoing allegations by the U.S. and Israel, Iran says it is not developing and has no plans to develop nuclear weapons—a claim U.N. inspectors have repeatedly verified in recent years.

The context of the Trump administration's aggressive posturing and militaristic threats against Iran fueled critics' concerns following word of the secret meeting between MbS, Netanyahu, and Pompeo, which was also reportedly attended byYossi Cohen, director of the Israeli spy agency Mossad.

"It is extremely alarming that the warmongers most reliant on Trump's blank checks are secretly meeting in the middle of the night as the clock nearly runs out on the Trump administration," tweeted foreign policy analyst Omar Baddar. "Do they have Iran in the crosshairs?"

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft,echoed Baddar's fears and raised the additional concern that the "actual target" of the meeting was "the incoming Biden team, with the aim of deterring the U.S. from seeking diplomacy with Tehran."

Despite the public denial by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan—who tweeted early Monday that "the only officials present" at the meeting "were American and Saudi"—unnamed Saudi officials told the Wall Street Journal that Netanyahu attended the meeting with Pompeo and MbS.

Among the topics discussed at the hours-long meeting, according to the Journal, were Iran and normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Both Netanyahu and Pompeo refused to comment on the meeting, but neither denied that it took place.

Joe Cirincione, a distinguished fellow at the Quincy Institute, warned in an op-ed last week that while unlikely, an attack on Iran by either the U.S. or Israel is a possibility worth taking seriously and guarding against.

"A member of Netanyahu's cabinet, Settlements Minister Tzahi Hanegbi, flatly predicted in early November that Israel will attack Iran if Joe Biden is elected president," Cirincione pointed out. "Ominously, the U.S. Central Command announced... that it moved a detachment of F-16 fighter-bombers from Germany to the UAE, across the Gulf from Iran."

Returning the U.S. to compliance with the Iran nuclear agreement, argued Cirincione, "would allow the United States to establish a more robust relationship with Iran with regular contacts—as was the case during the Obama administration—that would reduce the risks of conflicts that could escalate, intended or unintended, into a war that would make the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan look trivial in comparison."

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Iran sentences French academic to 5 years: lawyer Agence france

targeting Iran

Amid Coronavirus Chaos, U.S. and Iran Edge Closer to War

Murtaza Hussain

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/why-sanctions-against-iran-and-venezuela-during-a-pandemic-are-cruel/

no lnx

Why sanctions against Iran and Venezuela during a pandemic are cruel

President Donald J. Trump signs an Executive Order to place further sanctions on Iran Monday, June 24, 2019, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

Written by Vijay Prashad, Paola Estrada / Independent Media Institute March 16, 2020

Swiftly moves the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), dashing across continents, skipping over oceans, terrifying populations in every country. The numbers of those infected rises, as do the numbers of those who have died. Hands are being washed, tests are being done, and social distance has become a new phrase. It is unclear how devastating this pandemic will be.

In the midst of a pandemic, one would expect that all countries would collaborate in every way to mitigate the spread of the virus and its impact on human society. One would expect that a humanitarian crisis of this magnitude would provide the opportunity to suspend or end all inhumane economic sanctions and political blockades against certain countries. The main point here is this: Is this not the time for the imperialist bloc, led by the United States of America, to end the sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and a series of other countries?

Medical Shortages

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza told us recently that the “illegal and unilateral coercive measures that the United States has imposed on Venezuela are a form of collective punishment.” The use of the phrase “collective punishment” is significant; under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, any policy that inflicts damage on an entire population is a war crime. The U.S. policy, Arreaza told us, has “resulted in difficulties for the timely acquisition of medicines.”

On paper, the unilateral U.S. sanctions say that medical supplies are exempt. But this is an illusion. Neither Venezuela nor Iran can easily buy medical supplies, nor can they easily transport it into their countries, nor can they use them in their largely public sector health systems. The embargo against these countries—in this time of COVID-19—is not only a war crime by the standards of the Geneva Conventions (1949) but is a crime against humanity as defined by the United Nations International Law Commission (1947).

In 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump enacted tight restrictions on Venezuela’s ability to access financial markets; two years later, the U.S. government blacklisted Venezuela’s Central Bank and put a general embargo against the Venezuelan state institutions. If any firm trades with Venezuela’s public sector, it could face secondary sanctions. The U.S. Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) in 2017, which tightened sanctions against Iran, Russia, and North Korea. The next year, Trump imposed a raft of new sanctions against Iran which suffocated Iran’s economy. Once more, access to the world banking system and threats to companies that traded with Iran made it almost impossible for Iran to do business with the world.

In particular, the U.S. government made it clear that any business with the public sector of Iran and Venezuela was forbidden. The health infrastructure that provides for the mass of the populations in both Iran and Venezuela is run by the State, which means it faces disproportionate difficulty in accessing equipment and supplies, including testing kits and medicines.

Breaking the Embargo

Arreaza, the Venezuelan foreign minister, told us that his government is alert to the dangers of COVID-19 with a health infrastructure that has been affected by the sanctions. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez is leading a presidential commission to manage whatever resources are available. “We are breaking the blockade,” Arreaza said, “through the World Health Organization, through which we have obtained medicine and the tests to detect the illness.” The WHO, despite its own crisis of funds, has played a key role in both Venezuela and Iran.

Nonetheless, the WHO faces its own challenges with sanctions, particularly when it comes to transportation. These harsh sanctions forced transportation companies to reconsider servicing both Iran and Venezuela. Some airlines stopped flying there; many shipping companies decided not to anger Washington. When the World Health Organization tried to get testing kits for COVID-19 from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) into Iran, it faced difficulty—as the WHO’s Christoph Hamelmann put it—“due to flight restrictions”; the UAE sent the equipment via a military transport plane.

Likewise, Arreaza told us, Venezuela has “received the solidarity from governments of countries such as China and Cuba.” This is a key issue. China, despite its own challenges from COVID-19, has been supplying testing kits and medical equipment to Iran and to Venezuela; it was China’s vigorous reaction to the virus that has now slowed down its spread within China itself. In late February, a team from the Red Cross Society of China arrived in Tehran to exchange information with the Iranian Red Cross and with WHO officials; China also donated testing kits and supplies. The sanctions, Chinese officials told us, should be of no consequence during a humanitarian crisis such as this; they are not going to honor them.

Meanwhile, the Iranians developed an app to help their population during the COVID-19 outbreak; Google decided to remove it from its app store, a consequence of the U.S. sanctions.

End the Sanctions

Yolimar Mejías Escorcha, an industrial engineer, tells us that the sanctions regime has put a lot of pressure on everyday life in Venezuela. She says that the government “continues to make an effort to ensure that people who most need it get health care, education, and food.” The opposition has tried to say that the crisis is a consequence of the government’s inefficiency rather than a result of the imperialist blockade on Venezuela. On March 6, she tells us, a new campaign was launched in the country called “Sanctions Are a Crime.” She hopes that this campaign will explain clearly to people why there are shortages in her country—the sanctions being the core reason.

In 2019, a group of countries met at the United Nations in New York to discuss the U.S. unilateral sanctions that violated the UN Charter. The intent was to work through the Non-Aligned Movement to create a formal group that would respond to these sanctions. Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Arreaza told us that Venezuela supports this initiative but also the declaration of principles drafted by Iran against unilateralism and the Russian formal complaint about denial of visas for officials to visit the UN building in New York. “We hope to resume meetings this year once the difficulties presented by COVID-19 are overcome,” he said. They want to meet again, Arreaza said, to “advance joint, concrete actions.”

What Arreaza told us are initiatives at the interstate level. At the same time, there are ongoing initiatives led by popular movements and political organizations. In November 2019, an anti-imperialist solidarity meeting was held in Havana, Cuba, with representatives from 86 countries. At this meeting, it was decided that attention must be focused on the inhumane use of power in our time; a call was sent out to hold a week of anti-imperialist struggle between May 25 and May 31. The aim of the week is to alert the world’s public about imperialism and—in this context—about the murderous sanctions regime driven by the United States, more murderous in this time of COVID-19.

The question that a week of activities such as this poses is quite simple: What kind of moral fiber holds together an international system where a handful of countries can act in a way that goes against all the highest aspirations of humanity? When the United States continues its embargos against more than 50 countries—but mostly against Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela—when there is a global pandemic afoot, what does this say about the nature of power and authority in our world? Sensitive people should be offended by such behavior, its mean-spiritedness evident in the unnatural deaths that it provokes. When the U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked about the half-million Iraqi children who died because of U.S. sanctions, she said that those deaths were a price worth paying. They were certainly not a price that the Iraqis wanted to pay, nor now the Iranians or the Venezuelans, or indeed the majority of humankind. We march in May against this desiccated worldview; we march for humanity.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than twenty books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (The New Press, 2007), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013), The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016) and Red Star Over the Third World (LeftWord, 2017).

Paola Estrada is in the Secretariat of the International Peoples Assembly and is a member of the Brazilian chapter of ALBA Movements (Continental Coordination of Social Movements toward the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America).

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

bak 819

see contra and nuke deal

not vettedn bktv

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

Black Wave

Kim Ghattas, who covered the Middle East for the BBC and the Financial Times for 20 years, talked about the decades-long rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/as-coronavirus-pandemic-sweeps-the-globe-trump-authorizes-new-bombing-campaign-in-the-middle-east

no lnx

As coronavirus pandemic sweeps the globe, Trump authorizes new bombing campaign in the Middle East

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams March 13, 2020

Authorized by President Donald Trump, U.S. forces late Thursday carried out a wave of airstrikes across Iraq purportedly targeting an Iran-linked militia that the Pentagon claims was behind a rocket attack that killed two American servicemembers earlier this week.

The airstrikes risk sparking yet another dangerous escalation of military tensions between the U.S. and Iran at a uniquely perilous moment: Both nations are struggling to contain and combat the novel coronavirus, with Iran hit particularly hard by the pandemic as it works to muster adequate medical resources while in the vice grip of Trump administration sanctions.

The Trump White House, meanwhile, is under fire for bungling its response the the outbreak and failing to devote sufficient government resources to fighting COVID-19, which has infected over 1,400 people in the United States—a number that experts say is likely to rise dramatically in the coming days as the disease spreads and the remarkably slow rate of testing picks up speed.

“This moment is the last three decades of U.S. foreign policy in miniature: spare nothing for war and military dominance and find little to spare for true threats like climate change and pandemic disease,” tweeted Stephen Wertheim, deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, noted Thursday that “the annual Pentagon budget is $738,000,000,000.”

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is 1.5% the size,” Sanders tweeted. “If we can find money on bombs and missiles to kill people, we can damn well afford to protect everyone’s health and take care of each other.”

A senior Trump administration official told the Washington Post late Thursday that the president directed U.S. forces to bomb five Kataib Hezbollah weapons facilities with the stated goal of reducing the group’s “ability to carry out future attacks.”

Kataib Hezbollah is the same Iran-linked militia group that the Trump administration blamed—falsely, according to Iraqi officials—for a rocket attack last December that the White House used as a justification to assassinate Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani with a drone strike in Baghdad, a move that nearly sparked an all-out war.

It is not clear whether there were any casualties from the latest round of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq. Harakat al-Nujaba, a separate Iran-backed militia, “accused the United States of hitting militia and Iraqi army headquarters, as well as a civilian airport,” the Post reported.

“In the middle of a global pandemic—while people across the country quarantine in fear and struggle to pay their rent—Trump is bailing out fossil fuel corporations and bombing the Middle East,” tweeted Michael Galant, senior communications associate with advocacy group Win Without War. “It’s all laid bare. For everyone to see.”

Assal Rad

@AssalRad

Remember escalation w/#Iran is Trump’s manufactured crisis.

Stories from #Italy & Iran describe fight against #CODVID19 like war. All hands on deck needed. This is when we’re reminded of real crisis & global challenges. We need diplomacy & cooperation now more than ever.

?????? https://twitter.com/katekizer/status/1238130441359679492 …

Kate Kizer ??

@KateKizer

escalating into a direct conflict with Iran is the last thing the U.S., Iran, and the world needs right now. https://twitter.com/JackDetsch_ALM/status/1238128480581234691 …

Ryan Costello, policy director with the National Iranian American Council, said in a statement late Thursday that “without a radical change in U.S. policy, we risk repeating the escalatory cycle, threatening to plunge the region in yet another conflict and sucking the U.S. into another endless war.”

“Fortunately, Congress just sent a bipartisan resolution to the president’s desk clarifying that he does not have authority to start a war with Iran and urging him to withdraw troops in hostilities with Iran,” Costello said, referring to the War Powers Resolution passed by the House Wednesday. “Rather than ignore Congress and the American people’s wishes on war and peace, he should sign the resolution and urgently seek diplomacy to put the war threat on ice.”

https://time.com/4025406/lindsey-graham-iran-deal-obama/

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graham Nuclear Deal...

Know Right Now: Democrats Secure 41 Votes for Iran Deal

Senate Democrats rallied 41 votes in support of the Iran Nuclear Deal

BY PHILIP ELLIOTT SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

Sen. Lindsey Graham blamed President Obama’s pursuit of an Iranian nuclear deal for everything from Russian’s invasion of Ukraine to Chinese cyber-attacks and the collapse of Yemen’s government.

In a scathing speech Tuesday, the Republican presidential contender argued that Obama was willing to overlook festering international problems in order to get cooperation on the Iranian agreement.

“He has neither the will nor the understanding of the Middle East,” Graham said at an appearance at the National Press Club. “Evil is doing well on his watch and he has been a poor champion of freedom.”

The South Carolina Republican, a longtime foreign policy hawk, faces an uphill climb to his party’s presidential nomination. But he is in broad agreement with many in his party on the deal with Iran, which now has enough support in the Senate to overcome Republican opposition.

“The only way to reset the table is to get a new President,” Graham said.

In a rare scripted speech, Graham said rival nations took advantage of the United States during the negotiations. He said Russia went into Ukraine, largely unchecked, because it saw Washington as unwilling to intervene. China, too, has been aggressive in its cyber warfare because the United States needed Beijing’s cooperation for an Iran deal, he argued. “They’re getting away with almost everything,” Graham said.

Meanwhile, Iranian-backed Houthi militants toppled the pro-American government of Yemen, and Tehran has also expanded its influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, Graham chided. He called Syrian President Bashir al-Assad a “puppet” of Iran.

China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States negotiated the nuclear deal, under which Iran will get relief from sanctions and regain access to international oil markets. That is expected to bring it a windfall of about $100 billion to Iran. In exchange, Iran must dispose of most of its low-enriched uranium, stop efforts to produce or acquire more nuclear fuel and consent to inspections.

Republicans in Congress are trying to block the deal, although they lack the votes to derail it. “We don’t have the votes to do that,” Graham acknowledged Tuesday. But, he added, even the deal’s supporters should allow at least an open debate on the floor of the Senate when it convenes on Wednesday. “What the hell are we here for, if not to talk about this?” Graham asked.

pow

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/05/iran-coronavirus-medicine-sanctions/

DESPITE A MASSIVE coronavirus-related public health crisis, an anti-Iran pressure group with close ties to the Trump administration is urging major pharmaceutical companies to “end their Iran business,” focusing on companies with special licenses — most often under a broadly defined “humanitarian exemption” — to conduct trade with Iran.

With a novel strain of coronavirus rapidly spreading around the world, Iran has been hit particularly hard, with 107 deaths and 3,515 infections recorded so far. Yet the pressure group, United Against Nuclear Iran, is carrying on with its campaign targeting medical trade with Iran despite the Trump administration’s special financial channels for humanitarian goods and medicine to reach the beleaguered country.

“U.S. sanctions have had a long-term impact on Iran’s ability to freely import medical supplies,” said Tyler Cullis, an attorney specializing in sanctions law at Ferrari & Associates. He pointed to “outside groups” that seek to bolster the Treasury Department’s investigatory heft and provide information on companies doing trade with Iran. “In tandem with U.S. sanctions,” Cullis said, “these groups have sought to impose reputational costs on companies that engage in lawful and legitimate trade with Iran, including humanitarian trade.”

“These groups have sought to impose reputational costs on companies that engage in lawful and legitimate trade with Iran, including humanitarian trade.”

The medical and humanitarian trade are carved out of crippling sanctions against Iran through special licenses issued by the Treasury Department. But companies must apply for the licenses then carry out the trade — something United Against Nuclear Iran, known as UANI, seeks to discourage.

“Their efforts are not insignificant,” Cullis said. “It is, after all, not an altogether lucrative enterprise selling medical supplies to Iran, so the name-and-shame operations of outside groups have a significant impact on the cost-benefit analysis associated with doing business with Iran.”

Joshua Silberberg, a spokesperson for UANI, declined to respond to questions about the group’s effort to name and shame companies doing medical trade with Iran. “UANI has a long history of expressing support and solidarity with the Iranian people,” he said, pointing to a statement applauding the finalization of the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement, an agreement arranged by the U.S. and Swiss governments.

UANI says it aims to persuade “the regime in Tehran to desist from its quest for nuclear weapons, while striving not to punish the Iranian people.” (The U.S. intelligence community does not believe that Iran has any desire or plans to build nuclear weapons.) UANI’s efforts, however, have extended beyond sanctions into pressuring companies that do legal trade with Iran, often under the Treasury Department’s humanitarian exemptions to sanctions — including medical-related trades that would presumably aid in combating a massive public health crisis like this coronavirus outbreak.

UANI operates an “Iran Business Registry” that provides an online database of companies it believes are conducting business in or with Iran — a name-and-shame strategy to increase Iran’s economic isolation. The pressure campaign has targeted multiple medical companies with Treasury Department licenses to conduct trade with Iran. Nine pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical-device corporations, all with special licenses, are listed on UANI’s business registry. Companies urged by UANI to “end their Iran business” include Bayer, Merck, Pfizer, Genzyme, AirSep, Medrad, Becton, Dickinson & Company, Eli Lilly, and Abbott Laboratories.

The legal channels for humanitarian trade are widely reported to be failing to provide a sufficient flow of medicine and other humanitarian goods.

UANI’S EFFORTS ARE particularly notable in light of the group’s close ties to the Trump administration; Iran’s regional adversaries Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel; and the Republican Party’s biggest donors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson.

Senior UANI adviser John Bolton worked for UANI both before and after his stint in the Trump administration as national security adviser. UANI’s umbrella group, Counter Extremism Project United Inc, paid Bolton $240,000 between 2016 and 2017. Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser was quickly followed by Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran.

Besides Bolton, the Trump administration twice sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to UANI’s annual conference, held during the United Nations General Assembly. Pompeo used the occasions to promote outlandish claims about Europe purportedly financing Iranian terrorism and to present the administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy to UANI’s audience, which included senior diplomats and intelligence officials from the Persian Gulf and Israel.

The group’s last summit, held in September, featured U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who is now Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, as well as a who’s who of the Trump administration’s hawkish Middle East partners, including top diplomats from Persian Gulf monarchies and Israel. (UANI and its affiliated organizations have a number of links to Gulf monarchies, including a 2014 email from a UANI advisory board member soliciting “support” from the United Arab Emirates.)

UANI’s top funder, billionaire Thomas Kaplan — an investor whose companies have looked to profit from “political unrest” in the Middle East — was also in attendance at the summit.

Finally, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson’s financial support for UANI closely tracks the Republican megadonors’ hawkish views toward Iran. In 2013, Sheldon Adelson told an audience at Yeshiva University that Obama should launch a nuclear strike on Iran and threaten that Iran will be “wiped out” if it doesn’t dismantle its nuclear program. The Adelsons were Trump’s biggest funders in the 2016 election and the GOP’s biggest funders in the 2018 cycle. They are expected to contribute at least $100 million to Trump’s reelection efforts and Republican congressional candidates in the 2020 cycle.

While the Trump administration’s extreme financial pressure against Iran is coinciding with the coronavirus outbreak, Tyler Cullis, the sanctions lawyer, was careful to note that issues with ensuring a robust trade of medical and humanitarian supplies to Iran began under previous administrations. “While those problems have been exacerbated under the Trump administration,” Cullis said, “their origination takes place more than a decade ago when prior administrations first started imposing enormous sanctions pressure on Iran’s financial sector.”

mma press

On January 2, President Donald Trump ordered an airstrike killing Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who commanded Iran’s Quds Force, a branch of the nation’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Following the strike, coverage of Iran dominated cable news as tensions between the two countries escalated, resulting in Iran launching a missile attack on military bases housing U.S. and coalition troops and accidentally downing a Ukrainian passenger plane.

The overall most frequent guests on cable news were:

Ayman Mohyeldin -- 13 appearances (MSNBC)

Barry McCaffrey -- 11 appearances (MSNBC)

Ben Rhodes -- 11 appearances (MSNBC)

Brett McGurk -- 11 appearances (MSNBC)

Sen. Bob Menendez -- 10 appearances (5 CNN, 5 MSNBC)

Jack Keane -- 10 appearances (Fox News)

Cedric Leighton -- 9 appearances (CNN)

Sen. Chris Murphy -- 9 appearances (4 CNN, 5 MSNBC)

Rep. Dan Crenshaw -- 9 appearances (1 CNN, 5 Fox News, 3 MSNBC)

Daniel Hoffman -- 9 appearances (Fox News)

James Stavridis -- 9 appearances (1 CNN, 8 MSNBC)

Max Boot -- 9 appearances (CNN)

Peter Baker -- 9 appearances (MSNBC)

Walid Phares - 9 appearances (Fox News)

Top Fox News guests

Jack Keane - 10 appearances

Daniel Hoffman - 9 appearances

Walid Phares - 9 appearances

Dan Bongino - 8 appearances

Johnny Joey Jones - 8 appearances

Rep. Michael Waltz - 7 appearances

Marc Thiessen - 6 appearances

Pete Hegseth - 6 appearances

Rep. Dan Crenshaw - 5 appearances

Bret Baier - 5 appearances

Top CNN guests

Cedric Leighton - 9 appearances

Max Boot - 9 appearances

James Marks - 8 appearances

John Kirby - 8 appearances

Mark Hertling - 8 appearances

Dana Bash - 7 appearances

Philip Mudd - 7 appearances

Susan Hennessey - 7 appearances

David Sanger - 6 appearances

Gloria Borger - 6 appearances

Top MSNBC guests

Ayman Mohyeldin - 13 appearances

Barry McCaffrey - 11 appearances

Ben Rhodes - 11 appearances

Brett McGurk - 11 appearances

Peter Baker - 9 appearances

James Stavridis - 8 appearances

Christopher Hill - 8 appearances

Jonathan Lemire - 8 appearances

Ned Price - 6 appearances

Richard Stengel - 6 appearances

Here is a complete list of guests CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News have brought on to discuss Iran in the wake of the January 2 attack.

120 aha

kind of scary 6 drivers to war:

1) BO remark there's just a penchant/bias for it in DC

2) red calf dominionist lunacy 3 p's?!

3) general islamophobia, but boosted by bannon clash of of BS

terrorism fear/hyped, vote gop to keep you safe/nat'l security traf BS ploy now breaking down?

4) djt accuse BO of wag the dog war, so projection, plus IMPEACHMENT

5? legit fear of iran hegemony? why do we care? oil? straits of H?

new

trump spokesman tries to defend Iran strike by attacking Obama — but it completely backfires

Alex Henderson

One of the “justifications” that officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have been using to defend the killing of Qasem Soleimani is that the Iranian military commander was planning “imminent…

new

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/world-war-iii-trends-as-hawks-rejoice-at-trump-decision-to-assassinate-iranian-military-leader/

no lnx

‘World War III’ trends as hawks rejoice at Trump decision to assassinate Iranian military leader

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams January 3, 2020

As peace advocates voiced alarm at the very real prospect of all-out conflict with Iran following the assassination Thursday night of that country’s top military leader on orders from U.S. President Donald Trump, war hawks who have had their crosshairs trained on Iran for years enthusiastically celebrated Trump’s decision—and even suggested the president should go further by targeting the nation’s oil refineries.

“To the Iranian government: If you want to stay in the oil business leave America and our allies alone and stop being the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world,” tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a longtime supporter of regime change in Iran.

Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Jim Risch (R.-Idaho), and Ben Sasse (Neb.) joined the chorus of applause, hailing Trump for taking “decisive action.”

Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, tweeted in response to the torrent of praise that “hawks are celebrating [Qassem] Soleimani’s assassination not because they believe it weakened Iran. Or the IRGC. Or that Iran will lose in Iraq. But because they believe we have passed an irreversible point of escalation.”

“From here, war is unavoidable, they believe,” Parsi added. “And celebrate.”

The likely unlawful U.S. assassination of Soleimani—and the jingoistic applause it provoked—led many to express fears of a global conflict, briefly catapulting “World War III” to the top of Twitter’s trending list. Trump, for his part, simply tweeted an image of an American flag following the strike:

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani, as well as at least six others, with a drone strike in Baghdad came after the Pentagon threatened Iran with preemptive action in response to supposed indications it was planning attacks on U.S. forces in the region.

Though the Pentagon did not offer a shred of evidence that Soleimani or militia groups were planning attacks, corporate media outlets dutifully echoed the Trump administration’s line, leading some commentators to see parallels with the buildup to the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“I don’t see any way to stop what is coming, war from the Mediterranean to the Indus and harsh repression in the U.S. that may vitiate the 2020 election,” said Barnett Rubin of the Center on International Cooperation. “This is the test for the Democrats: have our leaders learned anything since 2003? I fear the answer.”

Observers warned the U.S. assassination of Soleimani, on top of the Trump administration’s violation of the nuclear accord last year and other aggressive actions, effectively foreclosed the possibility of peaceful negotiations with Iran.

“Whatever happens next, understand and never stop pointing out that Donald Trump walked into office with no crisis with Iran,” said Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War. “He then filled his cabinet with warmongers, walked away from a multilateral diplomatic accord, and purposefully engaged in ‘maximum pressure.’ He owns this.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei quickly vowed “harsh retaliation” in response to Soleimani’s assassination, and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accused the U.S. of committing “an act of state terrorism.”

Amid fears of revenge attacks, the State Department on Friday urged U.S. citizens to leave Iraq immediately.

“Trump’s Iran policy has been seeking to incite war with Iran since he reneged on the nuclear deal in May 2018,” said Sina Toossi, senior research analyst with the National Iranian American Council. “If a war breaks out, the blame lies squarely with this disastrous policy and its proponents.”

“Trump thinks he got his Bin Laden moment in an election year,” Toossi added. “In reality, he’s made the worst strategic mistake by an American leader since the Iraq invasion. The consequences will be felt for years to come.”

https://theintercept.com/2019/11/27/iran-environmentalists-panthera-thomas-kaplan/

new 1219 an

Videos Emerge of Iran’s Bloody Crackdown Against Protesters

djt renounces

bolton gone but

drone attacks on maduro and saudi oil (iran shot down one of our disputed airspace)

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/this-not-the-price-of-oil-is-the-real-threat-to-prosperity/

[push sanctions to brk pt --> refinery attack

... this blog I talk a lot about biases. So I would be remiss if I didn’t note that an obvious bias was at work in both Japan and Iran. To preserve themselves regimes will dream up any excuse they can manufacture to justify the actions they take to survive. The excuse need not be credible to outsiders. It is for domestic consumption. Owing to a natural desire to justify their own country’s behavior, people will readily accept said rationalization. This is human nature.

When the Trump administration cavalierly withdrew from the nuclear agreement with Iran they were playing with fire. A Pearl Harbor response was almost inevitable. When it came no one should have been taken by surprise.

I would guess that former National Security advisor John Bolton and President Donald Trump have never visited the Japanese War Museum. Too bad. There’s plenty to be learned from a war exhibit, even one that’s as badly biased as the one I saw back in 2003. (And apparently little has changed since then. According to news stories the museum still presents a warped right-wing view of the events that led to war.)

Stone Age Brain is the blog of Rick Shenkman, the founding editor of the History News Network. His newest book is Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics (Basic Books, January 2016).

new

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trumps-pressure-valve-against-iran-is-approaching-a-bursting-point/

no lnx

Trump’s pressure valve against Iran is approaching a bursting point

Written by Jefferson Morley / Independent Media Institute August 29, 2019

Israeli attacks in three Middle East countries are pushing a volatile region that is already the scene of two long-running wars closer to a third. The lethal strikes show how the Trump administration has effectively outsourced the military component of its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran to the Israel Defense Forces. As a result, one U.S. ally—Israel—is attacking another American ally—Iraq—supposedly for the sake of advancing American interests.

U.S. policy is literally at war with itself. More than 4,500 U.S. soldiers have been killed defending the Iraqi government and armed forces that Israel is now attacking. Last year, the United States gave Iraq $1.2 billion in total assistance. But then Washington gave Israel $10.8 billion, which it is now using to debilitate the forces the U.S. military has spent years building up.

On Saturday, Israel confirmed that its warplanes struck an Iranian-operated base in Syria that was allegedly preparing to launch a major drone attack against Israel. On Sunday, an armed drone struck a Hezbollah media center in the suburbs of Beirut. Hezbollah said it was the first Israeli attack in Lebanon since Israel and Hezbollah fought to a draw in 2006. Later Sunday, another drone strike in Iraq killed a commander of one of the Iranian-backed militias, known as Popular Mobilization Forces (PMFs).

Israel did not confirm or deny the latter two attacks, but most news sites, including Israeli sources, assume Israel was responsible. Last week, “senior American officials” told the New York Times that Israel was behind several other unattributed attacks in Iraq.

Israel says that the PMFs constitute a threat to its security, by enabling Iran to move its short-range ballistic missiles closer to Israel. But Iraqis see the PMF, a coalition of some 60 militias, as necessary protection against ISIS. The PMF sprang up in 2014 when ISIS routed the Iraqi government forces and took over much of western Iraq. Supported by Iran and blessed by Iraq’s Ayatollah Sistani, the PMF fought alongside U.S. troops in driving ISIS out of western Iraq. Without the PMF, ISIS would probably still hold large swaths of the country.

Since 2017, the Iraqi government has been incorporating PMF personnel and weapons into its armed forces, with the goal of lessening the country’s dependence on Iran and gaining military units with battlefield experience. Faleh al-Fayadh, the chairman of the PMF coalition, is Iraq’s national security adviser. The idea was to weave the two forces together. Now Israel hopes to divide them.

Not surprisingly, the Israeli attacks are being denounced in a country where the U.S. is far from popular.

Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdul Mahdi ordered the U.S. military to ask permission before undertaking any flights in the country. (U.S. commanders said they would comply “immediately.”) Iraq’s ceremonial president Barham Salih called the attacks “a blatant, hostile act” that crossed the red line of Iraqi sovereignty. A pro-Iranian bloc holding 10 percent of the seats in the Iraqi parliament called the attacks a “declaration of war.”

But if Iraqis think the Israeli attacks are a declaration of war on them, there’s no doubt whom the Americans favor. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted Sunday that the U.S. fully supports Israel’s “right to defend itself.” More than 15 years after attacking Saddam Hussein’s regime, the United States supports a secret war on the government that replaced him.

“The attacks in Iraq underscore the contradictions in U.S. policy,” said Paul Pillar, former CIA analyst for the region. “Here we have the administration not only not criticizing but actually applauding Israel for an armed attack on the territory of a friendly state that we are trying to help in other ways.”

Pressuring Iraq to join the campaign of “maximum pressure,” Pillar said in a phone interview, “is totally contradictory to the prosperity and stability of Iraq. They are dependent on trade with Iran and they are dependent on the popular mobilization forces for security. The attacks only increase Iraqi resentment of [the] United States and increase Iraq’s sense of dependence on Iran to protect itself.”

The reason why Israel and the United States are so hostile to Iran is that the Islamic Republic has taken advantage of U.S. blunders since 9/11 to consolidate its prestige and allies, while the U.S. and its allies have lost strength.

The U.S. policymakers sought to replace Saddam Hussein’s government with an anti-Iranian regime in 2003. They failed. Iran cultivated good relations with the new government and gained power and influence in Baghdad where it once had none.

In 2011, U.S. policymakers thought they could overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria by supporting Syrian “moderates” (of whom there were few) and al-Qaeda linked fundamentalists (of whom there were many). They failed. Iran supported Assad and (with Russian, Iranian and U.S. help) has mostly routed ISIS. Iran is now entrenched in Assad’s Syria as it never was before.

In 2015, U.S. policymakers thought Saudi Arabia could defeat the Houthi rebels in Yemen and deal a blow to Iran, the Houthis’ ally. They thought wrong. The Saudi coalition has inflicted the world’s worst humanitarian crisis on Yemen, yet achieved none of its goals. Now the U.S. is seeking peace talks to end the war, and the Houthis are openly embracing the Iranians.

Now U.S. policymakers expect the Iraqi government to ignore Israeli attacks and support the U.S. campaign against Iran, a larger neighboring country that supports its economy and bolsters its security. With the U.S. track record in the region, there’s little reason to think this will succeed. What Trump’s Iran policy lacks in coherence, it makes up for with recklessness.

Of course, the incoherent Trump could change his mind. He ordered and called off an attack on Iran for shooting down an unmanned surveillance drone, a sign that he has no desire to be a wartime commander-in-chief going into an election year. At the G7 summit, he played along with the gambit of French President Emmanuel Macron to open the door to talks with Iran. If the U.S. lifts sanctions, Iran is willing to talk, President Rouhani replied.

The Israelis are worried Trump might accept. After all, Trump threatened North Korea with fire and fury, only to warm up to Kim Jong Un and embrace negotiations over the objections of his advisers. Israeli escalation in Iraq—and the expected response from Hezbollah—will make it harder for Trump to change directions on Iran, which is why the attacks are likely to continue.

Jefferson Morley is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., since 1980. He spent 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He was a staff writer at Arms Control Today and Washington editor of Salon. He is the editor and co-founder of JFK Facts, a blog about the assassination of JFK. His latest book is The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton.

This article was produced by the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

819 intercept

Here Are Five Lies About Iran That We Need to Refute to Stop Another Illegal War

Mehdi Hasan

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/us-issues-warrant-to-seize-iranian-oil-tanker-as-foreign-policy-expert-warns-bolton-is-desperate-to-start-a-war/

US issues warrant to seize Iranian oil tanker as foreign policy expert warns ‘Bolton is desperate to start a war’

"John Bolton" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams August 18, 2019

After the Gibraltar Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s effort to stop the release of an Iranian oil tanker seized by the U.K. last month, the Justice Department further escalated tensions with Tehran by issuing a warrant on Friday in a last-ditch bid to seize the tanker before it sets sail.

“Bolton is desperate to start a war,” tweeted Quincy Institute executive vice president Trita Parsi, referring to President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.

The warrant, unveiled by the Justice Department Friday night, states that “all petroleum aboard [the Grace 1 tanker] and $995,000.00 are subject to forfeiture based on violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), bank fraud statute, and money laundering statute, as well as separately the terrorism forfeiture statute.”

According to Al Jazeera, “There was no immediate word from Britain or Gibraltar over whether they would act on the warrant, as Iran said it was sending a new crew to pilot the tanker.”

As Common Dreams reported after British forces seized Grace 1 in waters east of Gibraltar last month, the U.K. alleged the tanker was carrying oil to Syria in violation of European Union sanctions.

Iran denied the accusations and said the U.K. captured Grace 1 under orders from the Trump administration.

On Thursday, the Trump Justice Department filed an appeal to seize the tanker, but the Gibraltar Supreme Court rejected the U.S. effort and ordered the release of Grace 1.

Following the court’s decision, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accused the Trump administration of a “piracy attempt.”

“Having failed to accomplish its objectives through its economic terrorism—including depriving cancer patients of medicine—the U.S. attempted to abuse the legal system to steal our property on the high seas,” said Zarif.

On Twitter, journalist Gareth Porter said the Trump administration’s warrant issued Friday “perfectly illustrates the U.S. trying to impose its domestic laws on the rest of the world.”

“It should provoke worldwide outrage,” Porter added.

U.S. Puts Pressure on Crew of Iranian Oil Tanker Seized in July

https://original.antiwar.com/danny_sjursen/2019/06/03/the-view-from-tehran-americas-sordid-history-of-meddling-in-iran/

The

View From Tehran: America’s Sordid History of Meddling in Iran

by Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.) Posted onJune 04, 2019

No war yet! That’s the good news…for now. A few weeks have passed since unhinged National Security Advisor John Bolton – who never saw a regime he didn’t want to change – reportedly ordered the Pentagon to update plans to send 120,000 additional troops into the Persian Gulf. All this preparation and the inherent threat to strike Iran was ostensibly based on vague and unsubstantiated intelligence that Tehran had planned attacks on U.S. troops in the region. Murky and secretive intelligence, preemptive war plans, and unrepentant neocons sowing fear within the American populace. We’ve all seen this movie before, in Iraq, just sixteen years ago, and it didn’t end well. US troops are still there and may be so indefinitely.

If the purported Iranian threats seem manufactured, its because they likely are. And all the wrongs Tehran allegedly perpetrated against the US are exaggerated and overblown. Sure, Iran is, like all countries, an imperfect actor. The Islamic Republic did hold America’s embassy staff hostage during the Carter years. Tehran has backed Hezbollah and Hamas, both of whom once specialized in suicide bombing attacks on civilians.

Still, its worthwhile – particularly in the serious business of war and peace – to step back, slow down, and walk a proverbial mile in others’ shoes. Let me offer, then, the view from Tehran; to see the world and the US through Iranian eyes. An honest historical appraisal of the complicated U.S.-Iranian relationship demonstrates that it was often Washington and its western allies that meddled in the region and acted as the aggressors.

Let us begin in 1941. Though Tehran declared neutrality in that war, Russia and Britain jointly invaded and occupied the country to secure control of its oil reserves. Then, in 1953, when a democratically elected prime minister – Mohammad Mossadegh – dared nationalize Iranian oil (which had been largely under foreign, Western corporate control) the CIA coordinated a coup with MI6 to overthrow the government. The dictatorial Shah was promptly put in power and ruled with an iron fist for the next 26 years. So much for America’s self-proclaimed title as the "beacon of democracy."

Then, in 1980, when Iraq invaded and threatened to destroy Iran, the US openly backed the Saddam Hussein’s aggressive regime. The US provided key intelligence in the form of satellite photos to the Iraqi Army, and granted Baghdad over $1 billion in economic aid. President Reagan, in absurd twist of irony, sent a special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, to meet with Saddam. Their now infamous picture shaking hands is all over the web. Saddam regularly employed poison gas to attack Iranian formations. It is largely agreed that U.S.-supplied satellite imagery allowed Iraq to better calibrate these illegal, immoral, chemical attacks. Remember how this was viewed from Tehran: the American superpower, which had already overthrown Iranian democracy, was now backing Saddam in an aggressive war that posed an existential threat to the Islamic Republic.

During the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, which caused perhaps a million deaths, the US Navy waged an undeclared maritime war in the Persian Gulf. In the "Tanker War," the US again tacitly backed Iraq, flew the stars and stripes on Kuwaiti vessels to protect them from attack, and, finally, overtly sank the majority of the Iranian Navy in a one-sided sea battle. At the end of the war, a US naval vessel even shot down a civilian Iranian airliner, killing 290 people. The US commander, Captain Rogers, claimed his crew mistook the jet for an Iranian fighter, but even so the plane was fully in Iranian airspace.

In a final twist of the diplomatic "knife," then Vice President George H.W. Bush refused, during a presidential campaign stop, to apologize for the shoot-down. He callously announced "I will never apologize for the United States – I don’t care what the facts are. … I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy." Oh, and as for Captain Rogers – he was awarded the Legion of Merit for "exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service." This, despite the fact that his ship, the USS Vincennes, was actually in Iranian territorial waters when it murdered the innocent civilians onboard the flight.

Then, after the 9/11 attacks – which Iran had nothing to do with – Bush the Younger counted Tehran among Iraq and North Korea in an "axis of evil." Soon enough, Bush II illegally invaded Iraq and toppled America’s one-time friend, Saddam Hussein. By 2003, Iran had American armies stationed on its western (Iraq) and eastern (Afghanistan) borders. It felt genuinely threatened, which was understandable given recent American military actions nearby and the fact that administration neoconservatives were itching for regime change in Iran. "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran," was a common trope around neocon circles in Washington. Given this history, it becomes rather more understandable that Iran would back militias and seek to keep the US military mired in an Iraqi quagmire. If it didn’t, Iran’s leaders worried – they might be next!

None of this sordid history should be misconstrued to obviate Iran of responsibility for its own imperfect foreign affairs, but it does add complexity and nuance to a challenging relationship. Remember that the USstill imposes crippling sanctions on Tehran, surrounds Iran with its military bases, and maintains a naval presence along its coastline. Combined with America’s nefarious history of meddling in and threatening Iran, its hard not to empathize with the Iranian point of view.

Seen in this light, one understands why an average Iranian sees America as the aggressor in the Mideast. Well, frankly, it sort of is!

Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and regular contributor to Antiwar.com. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, Truthdig, Tom Dispatch, among other publications. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/iran-seizes-british-oil-tanker/

no lnx

Iran seizes British oil tanker

Written by Matthew Rozsa / Salon July 22, 2019

Recently leaked audio reveals a tense conversation between members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and a British naval officer prior to Iran’s seizure of the British oil tanker on Friday.

The member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was heard in the audio saying, “If you obey, you will be safe. Alter your course 3-6-0 degrees immediately,” according to USA Today.

A British naval officer can be heard replying, “I reiterate that as you are conducting transit passage in a recognized international strait, under international law your passage must not be impaired, intruded, obstructed or hampered.”

The Iranian official attempted to reassure his British counterpart by saying, “No challenge is intended. I want to inspect the ship for security reasons.” Shortly after saying that, however, members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard boarded and seized the oil tanker.

The seizure is likely retribution for a similar act against Iran from the British government two weeks ago. After British marines suspected that an Iranian tanker off the coast of the Iberian peninsula was violating oil sanctions against Syria, the British government seized that Iranian vessel. Iranians reacted with outrage on Friday when a court in Gibraltar ruled that the tanker could remain seized for 30 more days, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reportedly later told British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt that the seizure of the Stena Impero was a “tit-for-tat” move. Officially Iran has offered a number of explanations for seizing the Stena Impero.

The seizure of the British oil tanker comes at a time of increasing tensions between Iran and the West, with much of that having been brought on by President Donald Trump’s abandonment of the Iranian accord signed during the final years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Zarif hinted at that himself in a tweet on Sunday which said, “Make no mistake: Having failed to lure @realDonaldTrump into War of the Century, and fearing collapse of his #B_Team, @AmbJohnBolton is turning his venom against the UK in hopes of dragging it into a quagmire. Only prudence and foresight can thwart such ploys.”

Zarif’s comments most likely referred to Trump’s decision last month to hold back on aggressive military actions against Iran after they downed an American military drone, even though he had been urged to pursue them by National Security Adviser John Bolton. Trump also insulted Bolton, who is notoriously hawkish, by saying in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd that “if it was up to him he’d take on the whole world at one time.” As a result, it is unclear how Trump will respond to Iran’s actions against the United Kingdom, especially given a recent New York Times report indicating that some of Iran’s leaders are considering opening up a line of dialogue with the president.

“Mr. Trump is a man of action. He is a businessman and therefore he is capable of calculating cost-benefits and making a decision. We say to him, let’s calculate the long-term cost-benefit of our two nations and not be shortsighted,” former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the Times. He was cited as just one of many examples of Iranian politicians who believe, despite the recent acts of aggression by the Iranian government, that dialogue with Trump could be established.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/the-bolton-gambit-succeeded-critics-warn-top-trump-adviser-has-put-the-uk-on-path-to-war-with-iran/

no lnx

‘The Bolton gambit succeeded’: Critics warn top Trump adviser has put the UK on path to war with Iran

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams July 22, 2019

With the United Kingdom and Iran in the midst of a tense and dangerous standoff after the tit-for-tat seizure of oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, international observers are warning that the British government has fallen into a trap set by hawkish U.S. national security adviser John Bolton that could lead to a devastating military conflict.

After British commandos earlier this month swarmed and detained Iran’s Grace 1 oil supertanker in waters east of Gibraltar, Bolton applauded the move as “excellent news” and said “America and our allies will continue to prevent regimes in Tehran and Damascus from profiting off this illicit trade.”

Simon Tisdall, foreign affairs editor and commentator for The Guardian, wrote over the weekend that “Bolton’s delighted reaction suggested the seizure was a surprise.”

“But accumulating evidence suggests the opposite is true, and that Bolton’s national security team was directly involved in manufacturing the Gibraltar incident,” wrote Tisdall. “The suspicion is that Conservative politicians, distracted by picking a new prime minister, jockeying for power, and preoccupied with Brexit, stumbled into an American trap.”

Shortly after British forces seized Grace 1, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said the U.K.’s capture of the tanker was carried out under orders from the United States.

Tisdall pointed to a story last week by Spanish newspaper El Pais, which reported that the Iranian tanker “had been under surveillance by U.S. satellites since April.”

“Although Spanish officials, speaking after the event, said they would have intercepted the ship ‘if we had had the information and the opportunity,’ Spain took no action at the time,” Tisdall wrote. “But Bolton, in any case, was not relying on Madrid. The U.S. had already tipped off Britain. On 4 July, after Grace 1 entered British-Gibraltar territorial waters, the fateful order was issued in London—it is not known by whom—and 30 marines stormed aboard.”

The U.K.’s seizure of Grace 1—denounced by the Iranian government as an act of “maritime piracy“—led Iran to counter on Friday by capturing a British tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, ratcheting up tensions in the Persian Gulf and prompting the British government to warn of “serious consequences” if the tanker was not released.

The perilous standoff, Tisdall argued, is precisely the outcome Bolton was seeking.

“The Bolton gambit succeeded,” Tisdall wrote. “Despite its misgivings, Britain has been co-opted on to the front line of Washington’s confrontation with Iran. The process of polarization, on both sides, is accelerating. The nuclear deal is closer to total collapse. And by threatening Iran with ‘serious consequences,’ without knowing what that may entail, Britain blindly dances to the beat of Bolton’s war drums.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif offered a similar assessment in a series of tweets on Sunday.

Make no mistake:

Having failed to lure @realDonaldTrump into War of the Century, and fearing collapse of his #B_Team, @AmbJohnBolton is turning his venom against the UK in hopes of dragging it into a quagmire.

Only prudence and foresight can thwart such ploys.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) July 21, 2019

The B Team is the name Zarif has given to a group of officials that consists of Bolton, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Bolton in particular has been at the center of escalating military tensions between the U.S. and Iran, which were sparked by Trump’s decision last year to violate the Iran nuclear accord.

As Common Dreams reported in May, Bolton used the routine deployment of a U.S. bomber task force to the Middle East to threaten Iran with “unrelenting force.”

After Iran in June shot down an unmanned U.S. drone that it said violated its airspace, Bolton was among the group of officials urging Trump to retaliate with airstrikes. The president approved the strikes then backed off at the last minute.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, warned Sunday that by following Washington’s orders in the Gulf, the U.K. is repeating the mistakes it made in the lead-up to the U.S.-led invasion if Iraq.

“In 2003, the U.K. broke with the E.U. and foolishly sided with Bush over Iraq. London not only devastated the Middle East, it also undermined the E.U.,” Parsi tweeted. “Now, the U.K. is at it again by doing Bolton’s bidding and allowing him to make the U.K./E.U. collateral damage in his war plans with Iran.”

“Why did the U.K. agree to Bolton’s request to confiscate an Iranian oil tanker, knowing very well Iran would retaliate by taking a British one in return?” Parsi asked. “Does the U.K. want war? Does E.U. interest not matter to London? Stunned these questions haven’t been asked. Answers are needed.”

kpfa interviw:

608 KIA US in iraq b/c of iran; Petreus went after Al-Sadr which led to ctr-attack (IED?); petr spox --> prss--> congress reso? --> dick c pretext for air strikes? opposed by Jt chief?

IRANIAN BOATS ATTEMPTED TO STEAL BRITISH TANKER Five armed Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps boats unsuccessfully tried to seize a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf Wednesday, according to two U.S. officials with direct knowledge. [CNN]

July 11, 2019

Tomgram: Michael Klare, It's Always the Oil

What more did you need to know once Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted that a suicide bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, claimed by the Taliban, was Iranian-inspired or plotted, one “in a series of attacks instigated by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its surrogates against American and allied interests”? In other words, behind the Sunni extremist insurgents the U.S. has been fighting in Afghanistan since October 2001 lurks the regime of the Shiite fundamentalists in Tehran that many in Washington have been eager to fight since at least the spring of 2003 (when, coincidentally enough, the Bush administration was insisting that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime had significant ties to al-Qaeda).

It couldn’t have made more sense once you thought about it. I don’t mean Pompeo’s claim itself, which was little short of idiotic, but what lurked behind it. I mean the knowledge that, only a week after the 9/11 attacks, Congress had passed an authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF, that allowed the president (and any future president, as it turned out) “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

In other words, almost 18 years later, as Pompeo knows, if you can link any country or group you're eager to go to war with to al-Qaeda, no matter how confected the connection, you can promptly claim authorization to do your damnedest to them. How convenient, then, should you be in the mood to make war on Iran, if that country just happens to be responsible for terror attacks linked to the Taliban (which once did harbor al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden). Why, you wouldn’t even need to ask Congress for permission to pursue your war of choice. And keep in mind that, recently, Congress -- or a crew of corrupted, degraded Republican senators -- simply couldn’t muster the votes or the will to deny President Trump the power to make war on Iran without its approval.

Let me hasten to add that the supposed link to al-Qaeda isn’t the only thing the Trump administration has conjured up to ensure that it will be free to do whatever it pleases when it comes to Iran. It’s found various other inventive ways to justify future military actions there without congressional approval. Pompeo and crew have, in that sense, been clever indeed. As TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author of the upcoming book All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, points out today, there’s only one word largely missing from their discussions of the increasingly edgy situation in the Persian Gulf, the most obvious word of all. But read him yourself if you want to understand just how, when it comes to Iran and that missing word -- to steal a phrase from the late, great Jonathan Schell -- the fate of the Earthis at stake. Tom

The Missing Three-Letter Word in the Iran Crisis

Oil’s Enduring Sway in U.S. Policy in the Middle East

By Michael T. Klare

It’s always the oil. While President Trump was hobnobbing with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the G-20 summit in Japan, brushing off a recent U.N. report about the prince’s role in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Asia and the Middle East, pleading with foreign leaders to support “Sentinel.” The aim of that administration plan: to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. Both Trump and Pompeo insisted that their efforts were driven by concern over Iranian misbehavior in the region and the need to ensure the safety of maritime commerce. Neither, however, mentioned one inconvenient three-letter word -- O-I-L -- that lay behind their Iranian maneuvering (as it has impelled every other American incursion in the Middle East since World War II).

Now, it’s true that the United States no longer relies on imported petroleum for a large share of its energy needs. Thanks to the fracking revolution, the country now gets the bulk of its oil -- approximately 75% -- from domestic sources. (In 2008, that share had been closer to 35%.) Key allies in NATO and rivals like China, however, continue to depend on Middle Eastern oil for a significant proportion of their energy needs. As it happens, the world economy -- of which the U.S. is the leading beneficiary (despite President Trump’s self-destructive trade wars) -- relies on an uninterrupted flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to keep energy prices low. By continuing to serve as the principal overseer of that flow, Washington enjoys striking geopolitical advantages that its foreign policy elites would no more abandon than they would their country’s nuclear supremacy.

[Click here to read more of this dispatch.]

This logic was spelled out clearly by President Barack Obama in a September 2013 address to the U.N. General Assembly in which he declared that “the United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests” in the Middle East. He then pointed out that, while the U.S. was steadily reducing its reliance on imported oil, “the world still depends on the region’s energy supply and a severe disruption could destabilize the entire global economy.” Accordingly, he concluded, “We will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world.”

To some Americans, that dictum -- and its continued embrace by President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo -- may seem anachronistic. True, Washington fought wars in the Middle East when the American economy was still deeply vulnerable to any disruption in the flow of imported oil. In 1990, this was the key reason President George H.W. Bush gave for his decision to evict Iraqi troops from Kuwait after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of that land. “Our country now imports nearly half the oil it consumes and could face a major threat to its economic independence,” he told a nationwide TV audience. But talk of oil soon disappeared from his comments about what became Washington’s first (but hardly last) Gulf War after his statement provoked widespread public outrage. (“No Blood for Oil” became a widely used protest sign then.) His son, the second President Bush, never even mentioned that three-letter word when announcing his 2003 invasion of Iraq. Yet, as Obama’s U.N. speech made clear, oil remained, and still remains, at the center of U.S. foreign policy. A quick review of global energy trends helps explain why this has continued to be so.

The World’s Undiminished Reliance on Petroleum

Despite all that’s been said about climate change and oil’s role in causing it -- and about the enormous progress being made in bringing solar and wind power online -- we remain trapped in a remarkably oil-dependent world. To grasp this reality, all you have to do is read the most recent edition of oil giant BP’s "Statistical Review of World Energy," published this June. In 2018, according to that report, oil still accounted for by far the largest share of world energy consumption, as it has every year for decades. All told, 33.6% of world energy consumption last year was made up of oil, 27.2% of coal (itself a global disgrace), 23.9% of natural gas, 6.8% of hydro-electricity, 4.4% of nuclear power, and a mere 4% of renewables.

Most energy analysts believe that the global reliance on petroleum as a share of world energy use will decline in the coming decades, as more governments impose restrictions on carbon emissions and as consumers, especially in the developed world, switch from oil-powered to electric vehicles. But such declines are unlikely to prevail in every region of the globe and total oil consumption may not even decline. According to projections from the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its “New Policies Scenario” (which assumes significant but not drastic government efforts to curb carbon emissions globally), Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are likely to experience a substantially increased demand for petroleum in the years to come, which, grimly enough, means global oil consumption will continue to rise.

Concluding that the increased demand for oil in Asia, in particular, will outweigh reduced demand elsewhere, the IEA calculated in its 2017 World Energy Outlook that oil will remain the world’s dominant source of energy in 2040, accounting for an estimated 27.5% of total global energy consumption. That will indeed be a smaller share than in 2018, but because global energy consumption as a whole is expected to grow substantially during those decades, net oil production could still rise -- from an estimated 100 million barrels a day in 2018 to about 105 million barrels in 2040.

Of course, no one, including the IEA’s experts, can be sure how future extreme manifestations of global warming like the severe heat waves recently tormenting Europe and South Asia could change such projections. It’s possible that growing public outrage could lead to far tougher restrictions on carbon emissions between now and 2040. Unexpected developments in the field of alternative energy production could also play a role in changing those projections. In other words, oil’s continuing dominance could still be curbed in ways that are now unpredictable.

In the meantime, from a geopolitical perspective, a profound shift is taking place in the worldwide demand for petroleum. In 2000, according to the IEA, older industrialized nations -- most of them members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) -- accounted for about two-thirds of global oil consumption; only about a third went to countries in the developing world. By 2040, the IEA’s experts believe that ratio will be reversed, with the OECD consuming about one-third of the world’s oil and non-OECD nations the rest. More dramatic yet is the growing centrality of the Asia-Pacific region to the global flow of petroleum. In 2000, that region accounted for only 28% of world consumption; in 2040, its share is expected to stand at 44%, thanks to the growth of China, India, and other Asian countries, whose newly affluent consumers are already buying cars, trucks, motorcycles, and other oil-powered products.

Where will Asia get its oil? Among energy experts, there is little doubt on this matter. Lacking significant reserves of their own, the major Asian consumers will turn to the one place with sufficient capacity to satisfy their rising needs: the Persian Gulf.According to BP, in 2018, Japan already obtained 87% of its oil imports from the Middle East, India 64%, and China 44%. Most analysts assume these percentages will only grow in the years to come, as production in other areas declines.

This will, in turn, lend even greater strategic importance to the Persian Gulf region, which now possesses more than 60% of the world’s untapped petroleum reserves, and to the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passagewaythrough which approximately one-third of the world’s seaborne oil passes daily. Bordered by Iran, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, the Strait is perhaps the most significant -- and contested -- geostrategic location on the planet today.

Controlling the Spigot

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the same year that militant Shiite fundamentalists overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran, U.S. policymakers concluded that America’s access to Gulf oil supplies was at risk and a U.S. military presence was needed to guarantee such access. As President Jimmy Carter would say in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980,

“The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two thirds of the world's exportable oil... The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world's oil must flow... Let our position be absolutely clear: an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

To lend muscle to what would soon be dubbed the “Carter Doctrine,” the president created a new U.S. military organization, the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), and obtained basing facilities for it in the Gulf region. Ronald Reagan, who succeeded Carter as president in 1981, made the RDJTF into a full-scale “geographic combatant command,” dubbed Central Command, or CENTCOM, which continues to be tasked with ensuring American access to the Gulf today (as well as overseeing the country’s never-ending wars in the Greater Middle East). Reagan was the first president to activate the Carter Doctrine in 1987 when he ordered Navy warships to escort Kuwaiti tankers, “reflagged” with the stars and stripes, as they traveled through the Strait of Hormuz. From time to time, such vessels had been coming under fire from Iranian gunboats, part of an ongoing “Tanker War,” itself part of the Iran-Iraq War of those years. The Iranian attacks on those tankers were meant to punish Sunni Arab countries for backing Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein in that conflict. The American response, dubbed Operation Earnest Will, offered an early model of what Secretary of State Pompeo is seeking to establish today with his Sentinel program.

Operation Earnest Will was followed two years later by a massive implementation of the Carter Doctrine, President Bush’s 1990 decision to push Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. Although he spoke of the need to protect U.S. access to Persian Gulf oil fields, it was evident that ensuring a safe flow of oil imports wasn’t the only motive for such military involvement. Equally important then (and far more so now): the geopolitical advantage controlling the world’s major oil spigot gave Washington.

When ordering U.S. forces into combat in the Gulf, American presidents have always insisted that they were acting in the interests of the entire West. In advocating for the “reflagging” mission of 1987, for instance, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger argued (as he would later recall in his memoir Fighting for Peace), “The main thing was for us to protect the right of innocent, nonbelligerent and extremely important commerce to move freely in international open waters -- and, by our offering protection, to avoid conceding the mission to the Soviets.” Though rarely so openly acknowledged, the same principle has undergirded Washington’s strategy in the region ever since: the United States alone must be the ultimate guarantor of unimpeded oil commerce in the Persian Gulf.

Look closely and you can find this principle lurking in every fundamental statement of U.S. policy related to that region and among the Washington elite more generally. My own personal favorite, when it comes to pithiness, is a sentence in a report on the geopolitics of energy issued in 2000 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank well-populated with former government officials (several of whom contributed to the report): “As the world’s only superpower, [the United States] must accept its special responsibilities for preserving access to [the] worldwide energy supply.” You can’t get much more explicit than that.

Of course, along with this “special responsibility” comes a geopolitical advantage: by providing this service, the United States cements its status as the world’s sole superpower and places every other oil-importing nation -- and the world at large -- in a condition of dependence on its continued performance of this vital function.

Originally, the key dependents in this strategic equation were Europe and Japan, which, in return for assured access to Middle Eastern oil, were expected to subordinate themselves to Washington. Remember, for example, how they helped pay for Bush the elder’s Iraq War (dubbed Operation Desert Storm). Today, however, many of those countries, deeply concerned with the effects of climate change, are seeking to lessen oil’s role in their national fuel mixes. As a result, in 2019, the countries potentially most at the mercy of Washington when it comes to access to Gulf oil are economically fast-expanding China and India, whose oil needs are only likely to grow. That, in turn, will further enhance the geopolitical advantage Washington enjoyed as long as it remains the principal guardian of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. How it may seek to exploit this advantage remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that all parties involved, including the Chinese, are well aware of this asymmetric equation, which could give the phrase “trade war” a far deeper and more ominous meaning.

The Iranian Challenge and the Specter of War

From Washington’s perspective, the principal challenger to America’s privileged status in the Gulf is Iran. By reason of geography, that country possesses a potentially commanding position along the northern Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, as the Reagan administration learned in 1987-1988 when it threatened American oil dominance there. About this reality President Reagan couldn’t have been clearer. “Mark this point well: the use of the sea lanes of the Persian Gulf will not be dictated by the Iranians,” he declared in 1987 -- and Washington’s approach to the situation has never changed.

In more recent times, in response to U.S. and Israeli threats to bomb their nuclear facilities or, as the Trump administration has done, impose economic sanctions on their country, the Iranians have threatened on numerous occasions to block the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic, squeeze global energy supplies, and precipitate an international crisis. In 2011, for example, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi warned that, should the West impose sanctions on Iranian oil, “not even one drop of oil can flow through the Strait of Hormuz.” In response, U.S. officials have vowed ever since to let no such thing happen, just as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta did in response to Rahimi at that time. “We have made very clear,” he said, “that the United States will not tolerate blocking of the Strait of Hormuz.” That, he added, was a “red line for us.”

It remains so today. Hence, the present ongoing crisis in the Gulf, with fierce U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil sales and threatening Iranian gestures toward the regional oil flow in response. “We will make the enemy understand that either everyone can use the Strait of Hormuz or no one,” said Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of Iran’s eliteRevolutionary Guards, in July 2018. And attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz on June 13th could conceivably have been an expression of just that policy, if -- as claimed by the U.S. -- they were indeed carried out by members of the Revolutionary Guards. Any future attacks are only likely to spur U.S. military action against Iran in accordance with the Carter Doctrine. As Pentagon spokesperson Bill Urban put it in response to Jafari’s statement, “We stand ready to ensure the freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce wherever international law allows.”

As things stand today, any Iranian move in the Strait of Hormuz that can be portrayed as a threat to the “free flow of commerce” (that is, the oil trade) represents the most likely trigger for direct U.S. military action. Yes, Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and its support for radical Shiite movements throughout the Middle East will be cited as evidence of its leadership’s malevolence, but its true threat will be to American dominance of the oil lanes, a danger Washington will treat as the offense of all offenses to be overcome at any cost.

If the United States goes to war with Iran, you are unlikely to hear the word “oil” uttered by top Trump administration officials, but make no mistake: that three-letter word lies at the root of the present crisis, not to speak of the world’s long-term fate.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. His most recent book is The Race for What’s Left. His next book, All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change (Metropolitan Books) will be published in November.

...

Mr. Papadopoulos, the 28-year-old campaign adviser, did not know this when he met in the cafe of the London hotel with Mr. Putin’s “niece” (he has no niece) and an obscure Maltese professor in late March. The academic had taken an interest in Mr. Papadopoulos when he joined the campaign.

F.B.I. agents have identified the professor, Joseph Mifsud, as a likely cutout for Russian intelligence, sent to establish contact with Mr. Papadopoulos and possibly get information about the direction of the Trump campaign. He disappeared after his name surfaced last October, and his whereabouts is unknown. At one point he changed his WhatsApp status to a simple, if cryptic, message: “Alive.”

Professor Mifsud arranged an email introduction between Mr. Papadopoulos and a Russian foreign ministry official. The American also exchanged emails with Olga Polonskaya, the woman in the cafe. “We are all very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” she wrote in one message, and the two discussed a possible meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump.

Over time, though, Mr. Papadopoulos came to question whether the messages were actually from Ms. Polonskaya. The woman he had met in the cafe barely spoke English. The emails he received were in nearly perfect English.

“I even remember sending her a message asking if I’m speaking to the same person I met in London because the conversations were so strange,” he said during an interview this month.

In late April, Mr. Trump gave his first major foreign policy address in the ballroom of a historic Washington hotel. Some of the speech was a familiar litany of Republican policy positions — hawkish warnings to Iran and pledges to be tough on terrorism. But midway through the speech, as Russia’s ambassador to the United States watched from the front seats, Mr. Trump pivoted and said the United States and Russia should look for areas of mutual interest.

“Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility, must end, and ideally will end soon,” he said....

Putin warned US before drone was shot down not to attack Iran

https://nypost.com/.../putin-warned-us-before-drone-was-shot-down-not-to-attack-iran...

Jun 20, 2019 - Putin warned US before drone was shot down not to attack Iran ... Putin acknowledged that US and EU sanctions had cost Russia an estimated ...

Under pressure from Trump, OPEC embraces Putin - Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/...putin.../under-pressure-from-trump-opec-embraces-putin-i...

1 day ago - Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh initially expressed outrage about Russian President Putin's pre-announcement of the extended output cuts.

Iran–Russia relations - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Russia_relations

Relations between the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Persian Empire (Iran), officially ..... Following the JCPOA agreement, President Vladimir Putin lifted the ban in 2015 and the delivery of the S-300 missile defense system to Iran was agreed ...

no lnx

‘Trump Doctrine’ is sinking fast — here’s why

White House

written by Common Dreams June 30, 2019

Tehran resident Dariush is exactly the kind of person that the Trump Administration claims to be supporting. He is a middle-class businessman who hates the clerical regime. The White House thinks Iranians like Dariush would welcome the overthrow of their government. But when I talked to Dariush by phone, he was more angry at President Donald Trump.

Dariush’s mother requires regular injections of medicine. The cost of the drug has increased threefold in the past year, and he must buy it for her on the black market. He blames inflation on the US sanctions: “They are just hurting normal people.”

I ask his reaction to Trump’s on-again, off-again threats of war against Iran. “If a war happens,” he says, “I will defend my country. I don’t like my government, but I will fight.”

Over the past several weeks, the Trump Administration has managed to infuriate ordinary Iranians, traditional US allies, and US war hawks. The emerging “Trump Doctrine” uses economic sanctions and tariffs to bully other countries, accompanied by fiery threats of military action without actual attacks. Not only is the doctrine foolhardy, it isn’t working.

Of ships and drones

Since May, six oil tankers in the Persian Gulf area have come under attack. The Trump Administration immediately blamed Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps for attaching mines to the ships, and provided grainy video as evidence. Iran denies attacking the tankers.

Then, on June 20, Iran shot down a US Global Hawk surveillance drone, which cost an estimated $130 million. The US claimed the drone was flying over international waters. Iranian officials said the drone entered Iranian airspace and displayed drone wreckage at a press conference to bolster their argument.

The next day, in a bizarre sequence of events, Trump ordered the Pentagon to attack an Iranian missile battery, and then called back the planes at the last minute. He claimed this was because he had learned the raid could cause 150 Iranian casualties, but an investigation by The Daily Beast revealed he had known the body count prior to green-lighting the attack.

Rightwing hawks in the US criticized Trump for calling off the attack. Liberal Democrats pointed out that he started the whole mess by withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Trump supporters tried to pass off the flip flop as a brilliant tactical move that threw the Iranians off balance.

In fact, the Iranian government saw Trump’s vacillation as a sign of weakness, according to a Tehran journalist with close government ties, who is not authorized to speak to the media.

“Iran was ready to retaliate on an unbelievable scale,” the journalist tells me in a phone interview. “After the first US missile launch, Trump wouldn’t be able to control the consequences, not only in the Persian Gulf but from Saudi Arabia to Israel.”

So, instead of dropping bombs on Iran, Trump announced new sanctions claiming toseize financial assets of top officials such as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Since the sanctioned leaders don’t have western bank accounts or other such assets, the sanctions mean nothing.

Yet they were an insult not only to Iran but to Shia Muslims, according to William Beeman, an Iran expert at the University of Minnesota.

“Ayatollah Khamenei is Iran’s spiritual leader,” he says. “Trump is attacking Shia Islam itself with this move, and that is how it will be interpreted in Iran.”

The Trump Doctrine

Now the Trump Administration is caught in a bind of its own creation. It would have great difficulty invading and occupying Iran because of the huge financial cost and potential for an astronomical death toll on both sides. So-called limited military strikes can destroy installations, but they also rally people to support their government.

Unilateral sanctions won’t work either because, among other reasons, no European or Asian country supports them. Harsh sanctions can cause a lot of human suffering, but they won’t lead Iranians to rise up and install a pro-US regime.

So Trump is stuck trying to come up with new sanctions and ever more bombastic ways to threaten military assaults without actually doing so. Trump has turned Teddy Roosevelt’s famous slogan on its head: talk loudly but carry a teensy-weensy stick.

Of course it’s possible that Trump’s ultra-right wing advisors will persuade him to launch an attack, according to Professor Foad Izadi, an expert on US-Iran relations at the University of Tehran. If he did, he tells me by phone, “There would be a major military response.” Iran can’t afford to look weak, he says. “The US must understand the cost is high.”

More crises ahead

The European signers of the nuclear accord, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, object to the US pulling out of the 2015 nuclear accord and oppose unilateral US sanctions. But they haven’t done anything in practice to live up to the legally binding agreement.

Iran has given those countries until July 8 to lift their de facto sanctions on Iran, specifically, to facilitate trade in Iranian oil and gas. Russia and China have taken such steps, so could Europe.

If nothing changes by July 8, Izadi says, Iran will take a number of calibrated steps to increase the amount of enriched uranium used for generating electrical power, and increase the level of enrichment to as high as 60 percent. That would bring Iran closer to the 90 percent level needed to produce a nuclear bomb. Even with enough uranium for a bomb, however, experts say Iran has no ability to build one. Iran would increase production as a bargaining chip.

How Trump could end the crisis

In keeping with Trump’s doctrine of avoiding large troop commitments, I offer the following handy hints on how to resolve the Iran crisis:

Fire National Security Adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other hawks whose bankrupt policies will lead to yet another war in the Middle East.The US now has acting heads of the Defense Department, Homeland Security and dozens of other agencies. Nobody will notice a new acting National Security Advisor or a missing Secretary of State;

Declare that his campaign of “maximum pressure” is a great success and has forced Iran not to build nuclear weapons. Then rejoin the 2015 nuclear accord, which does exactly that;

In further celebration of the US victory and Trump’s brilliant tactics, lift all unilateral sanctions imposed on Iran; and

In a man-to-man summit with President Hassan Rouhani, Trump should sit down for serious negotiations on a grand bargain. The comprehensive agreement could create a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, pull all foreign troops out of Syria, normalize US-Iran diplomatic relations and help combat terrorist organizations such as ISIS.

You don’t think such plans would work? Hey, they have no worse chance than Trump’s current policy plans.

* * * *

Remember Trump’s “plan of the century” that would solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict once and for all? Well, the White House finally revealed the plan this week at a meeting in Bahrain. The plan promises Palestinians economic improvements through $50.7 billion in foreign aid and private investments, although the US would provide no funds.

There’s no mention of the key political issues such as creating a Palestinian state, stopping settlements and returning occupied West Bank land, the status of Jerusalem or returning the Golan to Syria. The plan was denounced by all Palestinian political parties and leaders. The plan is an insult to the Palestinians and everyone else in the Middle East.

But when it comes to Trump grand plans, what else is new?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/the-hybrid-war-against-iran/

no lnx

The hybrid war against Iran

written by Vijay Prashad / Independent Media Institute June 25, 2019

U.S. President Donald Trump sat in the White House and contemplated a war against Iran. His army had been sending surveillance aircraft along the Iranian coastline, teasing Iranian radar, which tracked these manned and unmanned planes as they skirted the 12 nautical mile limit of Iranian sovereignty. Last week, the United States had two planes alongside Iran’s coast—an unmanned Global Hawk drone and a manned P-8 spy plane.

Iranian air command radioed the U.S. forces to say that both the drone and the spy plane had come inside Iranian territory. The P-8 shifted course to leave Iranian airspace, while the Global Hawk continued. Iranian officials say that it was because the Global Hawk remained in Iranian airspace that it was shot down last Thursday morning at 4 a.m.

Trump and his team threatened to retaliate. They wanted to shoot at Iranian radar and anti-aircraft facilities. At the 11th hour, Trump said, he decided not to fire at Iranian targets. The Pentagon had warned him that this would threaten U.S. troops in the area. It was to protect these troops that Trump did not launch a strike.

Sanctions

Trump might not have sent in a suite of missiles to hit Iran last week, but the United States has—of course—already opened up a certain kind of war against Iran. A few days before the drone was shot down, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council—Ali Shamkhani—gave a talk in Ufa, Russia, on security matters. In his talk, Shamkhani said that the United States had squashed the sovereignty of a number of countries. The U.S. Treasury Department, he said, had become a kind of financial CentCom (Central Command). Shamkhani said that the policies pursued by the United States should be considered to be “economic terrorism.”

U.S. unilateral sanctions are at the heart of this “economic terrorism.” The United States is able to use sanctions as an effective instrument against other countries because it has such enormous power over the world financial and monetary system. The U.S. dollar is the main reserve currency and the main currency of international trade. Reliance upon the U.S. dollar and on U.S. financial systems means that most countries are unwilling to stand up against U.S. pressure.

Sanctions have meant that Iran—reliant upon the export of oil and natural gas—has seen its external revenues collapse. The domination by the United States over the world financial system—including the international financial institutions (the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) has meant that Iran has not been able to raise credit on the international market. Difficulty in importing medicines and food has produced grave challenges for the Iranian people.

Hybrid War

Since the Western media continues to set the terms of international understanding, Washington’s interpretation of events around Iran predominates. Iran has never attacked the United States, but the U.S. has in fact intervened several times in Iran. In 1953, the U.S.—with the UK—overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq and over the course of the next two decades provided full support to the unpopular government of the shah of Iran. When the Gulf Arabs pushed Saddam Hussein to attack Iran in 1980, it was the U.S.—and Western Europe—that provided Iraq with arms and money for a bloody eight-year war. All of this context is lost to the Western media, which hyperventilate about fantasy stories such as Hezbollah in Venezuela or Iranian control over the Houthis. It is always Iran that is the aggressor, even when it has been Iran at the receiving end of U.S. aggression.

Iran is seen as the cause of the problem; the idea that Iran is a rogue or terrorist state is hard to shake off. This is part of the information war that Iran faces, unable—even with a sophisticated foreign minister (Javad Zarif)—to argue its case that it has not been belligerent, but it has been at the receiving end of threats and sanctions from Washington.

Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists were killed. These scientists—Masoud Alimohammadi, Darioush Rezaeinejad, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan and Majid Shahriari—were killed either by Israeli intelligence, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) or U.S. intelligence, or some combination of all of them. These scientists were killed inside Iran, in broad daylight. It sent a chill through the scientific community. A U.S. and Israeli created computer worm—Stuxnet—hit Iranian computer systems in 2010, creating damage to Iran’s computers that held part of its nuclear work. It was announced that more such attacks were possible. These took place before the nuclear deal was agreed upon in 2015. But the stench of such attacks remains.

Iran’s minister of information and communications technology—Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi—said that Iran has built a firewall that protects its facilities from any cyber-weapon thrown at it by the U.S. and Israel. This firewall is built by Iranian computer scientists.

It is this combination of attacks—the sanctions, the information war, the sabotage—that comprises the “hybrid war” against Iran (for more on the concept of “hybrid war,” see the dossier on Venezuela from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research). This hybrid war continues, with the threats of war as part of the arsenal wielded by Washington against Iran. Even Trump’s statement that he withdrew the order to bomb Iran just minutes before the attack began is part of this information war, this attempt to terrify Iranians into the belief that the U.S. is dangerous enough to drop bombs at any time. The hybrid war tightens the noose around Iran.

Group Against Sanctions

It is not easy to untangle the reliance of the world economy to the U.S. dollar and to U.S. financial systems. Even talk of multilateralism is premature. It is one thing to call for it and another to recognize that it will take at least a decade to create the institutions and instruments for multilateralism. Confidence in the Chinese yuan, for instance, will need to be built. So will confidence in alternative systems to transfer money and to reconcile trades. The European Union said openly that it wanted an alternative mechanism to pay Iran for oil, one that would not run through U.S. sanctions. But such an instrument could not be created. It will take time.

Meanwhile, on the political plane, about 25 countries have come together to create a platform against sanctions. These countries, says Iran’s senior parliamentarian Mohammad Ali Pourmokhtar, will stand together against the “inhumane” U.S. sanctions regime. It is not clear what this group will be able to do, but it is certainly the case that they will conduct a political campaign against the kind of harsh sanctions that are currently on Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran.

It is significant that China and Russia will be involved with this club. In Tehran, Russia’s Ambassador Levan Dzhagaryan said that China, Iran and Russia will form a trilateral group to fight against the U.S. unilateral war on Iran.

The group of 25 will struggle against sanctions and the group of three will try to prevent a U.S. war—but whether they can prevail is a serious question. The United States—under Trump—is utterly unreliable, its military arsenal ready to be unleashed, its hybrid war already unfurled. These are dangerous times.

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

iran better at proxy eg hezbollah (and sort of houti in yemen) than saudis

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-june-24-2019/

GOP’s Tom Cotton calls for unauthorized ‘retaliatory strike’ on Iran with ‘the fire and fury of the military’

POMPEO playing gulf of tonkin card hard

no lnx many pix

If there were any lingering hopes that the corporate media learned from its role in perpetuating the lies that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and would never again help start a Middle East war on the basis of false or flimsy evidence, the headlines that blared across the front pages of major U.S. news websites Thursday night indicated that such hopes were badly misplaced.

The U.S. military late Thursday released blurry, black-and-white video footage that it claimed—without any underlying analysis or further details—showed an Iranian patrol boat removing an unexploded limpet mine from the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous, one of the oil tankers damaged in attacks in the Gulf of Oman.

Here’s how CNN presented the U.S. military’s video:

Iran has denied any involvement in the attacks, and Yutaka Katada—the owner of the Kokuka Courageous—contradicted the Trump administration’s account during a press conference on Friday.

“Our crew said that the ship was attacked by a flying object,” Katada said. “I do not think there was a time bomb or an object attached to the side of the ship.”

Independent critics were quick to call for extreme skepticism in the face of U.S. government claims, given the quality of the “evidence” and the warmongering track records of those presenting it.

Trita Parsi

@tparsi

A serial liar is President.

A warmonger and a serial fabricator who helped get us into the disastrous Iraq war and who has sabotaged numerous attempts at diplomacy is the NatSec Advisor.

But go ahead, Media, treat Pompeo's accusations as "evidence"...#OilTanker #GulfOfOman

405

12:33 PM - Jun 13, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

203 people are talking about this

But the media displayed no such caution.

Just taking a random sample of screenshots after the news broke Thursday night, major outlets largely did the Pentagon’s dirty work by posting uncritical headlines that took the claims at face value.

The Washington Post used the word “purported” in its headline, but erroneously reported that the video was taken “before” the explosion on the vessel, not after. The headline was later changed, but was made no more critical of the military’s claim:

The U.K.-based Guardian also offered a simple “U.S. says” headline construction:

In the New York Times rendition—which appeared prominently on their homepage—the claim of what the U.S. military intelligence “believed” the video to show was framed with the more objective-sounding and vague phrase “what analysts believed”:

Like the Guardian, Politico made no attempt to go beyond the “U.S. says” framework:

Fox News, of course, went further than most by characterizing the Pentagon video as a “major clue” to who was behind the alleged attack:

CNN, meanwhile—specifically in the subhead of the headline story that appeared at the top of their page late Thursday night—took the military’s claim of what the video showed as actual fact:

The Hill‘s version, similar to the error made by the Post, reported that the video was taken before the explosion—a detail likely to leave readers much more suspicious of Iran’s involvement than if one of its vessels had approached the ship in the wake of the incident:

Though no single headline could be construed as explicit pro-Pentagon propaganda on its own, the uncritical nature of the coverage and ensuing echo chamber effect—or what is sometimes referred to as “propaganda reinforcement”—is one of the ways that the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies are empowered to turn a flimsy claim into a pervasive and widely-accepted fact.

Media Lens

@medialens

Classic BBC propaganda reinforcement:

'The footage released by the US on Thursday is rather more convincing...'

And ascribe doubts *solely* to the accused 'Bad Guys':

'There will likely be doubts in Tehran as to whether this video is genuine.' https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48633016 …

125

3:51 AM - Jun 14, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Iran's Isna news agency published an unverified image of what it said was a burning tanker in the Gulf of Oman

US footage shows 'Iran removing unexploded mine'

Iran has strongly denied the US allegation that it was behind attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday.

bbc.com

107 people are talking about this

In a blog post on Friday, historian and Middle East expert Juan Cole wrote that the Trump administration’s narrative that Iranians were removing an unexploded mine from the damaged oil tanker “doesn’t make any sense at all” and said the video footage released by the U.S. “needs to be carefully analyzed” before any conclusions are drawn.

“[Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo alleged that only the Iranians had the expertise to deploy these mines,” Cole wrote. “We heard this crock for 8.5 years in Iraq—all shaped charges had to be Iran-backed, even those of al-Qaeda, because Iraqis didn’t have the expertise…. Sure. Had to be Iran, helping those hyper-Sunni al-Qaeda. Very likely story.”

On Twitter, Sina Toossi, research associate at the National Iranian American Council, echoed Cole’s call for skepticism and an investigation.

“What we need is an impartial investigation,” Toossi wrote, “and to be highly skeptical of claims and intel assessments from Bolton/Pompeo.”

Sina Toossi

@SinaToossi

Head of the tanker says two drones caused the damaged, contradicting this “dozen men on a boat” narrative.

What we need is an impartial investigation & to be highly skeptical of claims & intel assessments from Bolton/Pompeo.

Bloomberg

@business

American officials released images they said show that Iran was involved in an attack on an oil tanker near the entrance to the Persian Gulf on Thursday https://bloom.bg/2IdpiIh

Embedded video

361

4:26 AM - Jun 14, 2019

In a column published last month as the U.S. aggressively escalated military tensions with Iran and pushed the two nations to the brink of all-out war, The Intercept‘s Mehdi Hasan asked a straightforward question that remains relevant in the present: “Do U.S. reporters, anchors, and editors really want more Middle Eastern blood on their hands?”

“If not,” Hasan wrote, “they need to fix their rather credulous and increasingly hawkish coverage of Iran and the Trump administration—and fix it fast.”

an 519

no lnx

written by Terry H. Schwadron / DC Report May 27, 2019

With problems mounting at home, Trump rattles his sabre at a long-time foe.

Here we go.

In words that sounded remarkably like the build-up to the war in Iraq, Pentagon officials were finishing plans for presentation to the White House this morning seeking a presidential decision to send up to 10,000 troops to the Middle East to stymie any ill plans by Iran.

As widely reported in the news media, the plans were extremely fuzzy, as has the explanation for what exactly the need is, what has constituted provocation from Iran.

According to The Associated Press, the military will present plans for up to 10,000 more troops to the Middle East, additional Patriot missile batteries, more ships and increased equipment to monitor Iran. No decision has been made, and, of course, with as mercurial a president as Trump, it is unclear whether any or all of the requests will be approved.

As recently as Tuesday, Trump said he did not want war with Iran. Then he told a rally that any provocation would be the “end” of Iran. You decide.

Iran Steamed

Meanwhile, Iran is reportedly pretty steamed over all the war talk, and, diplomats speaking to The Washington Post are telling all they need to abandon a strategy of restraint and start pushing back against the White House.

Apparently, that means that in the face of tightened economic sanctions and military threats, “Iran is now seeking to highlight the costs it could also impose on the United States — for instance, by disrupting the world’s oil supply — without taking actions likely to trigger an all-out war.”

The chances of a misstep, a mischaracterization, a misreading of moves make the Middle East suddenly seem much more a tinderbox than usual.

Congress Confused

Meanwhile, Congress members who were briefed by the administration this week, frankly, left informational meetings confused about what had been old Iranian abuses, older complaints about Iran or fresh signs of war-like provocation.

In light of all of this, here’s what occurs to me:

Trump campaigned against unwanted and unneeded wars in the Middle East. He has taken glee in withdrawing all troops from Iraq, only to then turn around and keep some, and hastening the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. He made belligerent remarks about North Korea, Venezuela and Iran, then withdrew all. As commander-in-chief, he is at best someone interested in the appearance of strength as if boasting can chase away actual military issues. Promises made, promises kept? How about Promises made, love the local strongman unless he is blocking our way to more oil?

Trump’s America First foreign policy has isolated the United States as it approaches the Iranian problem. Even if he deploys an estimated 120,000 troops – to do what, exactly? – the United States needs more troops from its usual coalition partners, the same partners he has criticized and distanced from the United States.

Trump is isolated at home even more than among overseas allies. He lacks real congressional allies outside of Republicans who fear that he will undercut their re-election, by choice, he lacks a full bench of thinkers and strategists in the White House, he will be blocked at every turn by Democrats who think the president is less than fully rational. So, he is relying on gut and on the voices of John Bolton, who has wanted war with Iran for a generation, an acting defense secretary and perhaps Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who may be doing what he thinks Trump wants.

Trump dumped the nuclear weapons agreement with Iran, which he says now he really wants, but only if Iran also stops all other forms of aggression in the region, something for which there is now zero chance.

Under severe political pressure from multiple House investigations; probes by the state of New York, the Southern District of New York and Eastern Virginia; and scrutiny by 24 Democratic presidential candidates, Trump is lashing out like a treed cat.

Trump, who has decried intelligence agencies from his first week in office, now finds that he must rely on exactly those agencies to make a decision about deploying U.S. troops, the exact deployments he campaigned against as a waste of human and financial resources for no real purpose.

Under those combined circumstances, you and I are supposed to accept a decision that may start rolling out today about deploying our sons and daughters to fight a war with no clear guidelines or goals, based on evidence that apparently is funky and flaky.

Is this how we Make America Great?

‘This is big’: 76 retired US generals and diplomats warn Trump against war with Iran

President Donald Trump often says he listens to military generals…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/dont-fall-for-it-arizona-congressman-and-former-marine-who-gets-the-same-intel-as-tom-cotton-warns-some-gopers-are-exaggerating-the-iran-threat/

Before Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona pursued a career in politics, he served in the United States military: Gallego was a Marine infantryman in Iraq in 2005. And the 39-year-old Democratic congressman is warning that the push for a military confrontation with Iran in 2019 is full of misleading assertions.

Gallego, now a member of the House Armed Services Committee, received a classified briefing on May 17—and the following day, he told the Washington Post, “What I saw was a lot of misinterpretation and wanting conflict coming from the administration and intelligence community. Intel doesn’t show existential threats. Even what it shows, it doesn’t show threats to U.S. interests.”

Iran 2 bak

Fox let chief Trump propagandist Hannity lead special coverage of the US strikes on Iran

Iran sentences French academic to 5 years: lawyerAgence france

Iran sentences French academic to 5 years: lawyer Agence france