The gaudy red ring that helped initially identify the corpse of Iran’s Major Gen. Qassem Soleimani is no Hope Diamond, according to local jewelers.

Dealers believe the distinctive ring worn by Soleimani is either a red carnelian stone — believed by some Middle East Muslims as able to bestow “blessings”– or possibly an inexpensive ruby that would cost a few hundred bucks.

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2020/01/04/its-no-hope-diamond-nyc-jewelers-not-impre...

MEANWHILE:

From Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

January 1 started off well, with a threat from the President of the USA against Iran because the US Embassy is experiencing hostility in... Iraq.

Is it just me or is everyone else also getting tired of bellicose gestures, threats, invasions, arrogance, sabre rattling, hatred, venom and a generalised unpleasantness around the world, centered without fail on the USA and its officials and allies? Perhaps if the USA had not interfered in Iraq in the first place back in 2003, the Middle East would be far more stable, ISIS would not have appeared and Iraq, Syria and the entire region would be more balanced? Nuns would not have been decapitated and raped, not necessarily in that order but also, by western-backed terrorists, Syrian families would not have been destroyed.

01/03: First US terrorist strike of the year

Now already on January 3, the USA has launched a terrorist strike at Baghdad International airport murdering General Qasem Suleimani, head of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and according to early reports, at least five others, in retaliation for what Washington says were plans to attack US forces in the area and for the deaths of what Washington claims are "hundreds" of US casualties. The reply: What were they doing there?  The question: How can such a terrorist strike be justified when identical strikes by other forces are classified as terrorist acts? The second question: How to justify a mass murder like this when the target was General Sumeimani? The third question: Was it not General Suleimani who was one of the leading figures eliminating ISIS? The President of the United States of America is just that, the President of the USA, and his jurisdiction begins and ends on the USA's frontiers. We can therefore conclude that either Donald Trump is a bullshitter and his claims to keep US forces at home are bullshit, or else it is not him pulling the strings.

UK commits suicide with Boris Johnson's Flying Circus

Speaking of the USA, let us take a look and see what its chief yapping chihuahua is going to do this year. Why, at a time when everybody else is coming together in large trading blocks, the United Kingdom is set to go it alone and leave the EU, along with Gibraltar, which voted to remain in the EU, dragging Scotland and Northern Ireland out of the EU when they voted to remain inside, when more people voted for non-Leave parties in the December election than for the Conservative Party of Boris Johnson and his clique of Brexiteers and the Brexit Party combined.

It is obvious that things will not run well for the UK because economic trends rule the way things work, not governments or pie-in-the-sky cloud cuckoo land ideas about pink fairies, unicorns and the UK doing its own trade deals when everyone else is queueing up to do deals with the EU of 450 million people against the UK's 66 million. Watch this space in one year's time and I predict massive unemployment, loss of income, less money available for public services, a decrease in the value of the Pound and a slow slide towards a second-rate, peripherical nobody on the edge of Europe, on the fringe of its deals without any say whatsoever in what happens, back to the middle of nowhere, an island of sheep, shepherds, underqualified imperialist dreamers. Europe has already paved the way for them to come crawling back in five years' time, if indeed anyone will have them back.

Until then, pull up your chairs and get ready for a few years of Boris Johnson's Flying Circus, starting on January 3 when the chief advisor to Number Ten, one Dominic Cummings, de facto the unelected Prime Minister of the UK, called for "wierdos and misfits" to apply for government posts. What, more of them?

Climate Change

The complete lack of direction and agreement on serious policy issues are the two reasons why this immensely and critically important issue refuses to get off the ground because until all nations agree on a direction and implementation of policy, especially the main polluters, such as who else? the USA of course, the task remains at square one, or in this case, zero.

If politicians for once listened to experts, and if these experts spoke their minds and not what they are taught to say, perhaps we would be nearer to success but the fact is that when you talk to experts, they themselves do not agree on fundamental issues, such as the quantity of carbon emissions regarded as a required starting point or the accepted level of increased temperature above which climate change would spiral out of control.

Some say the 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise is far too high, others claim 1.5C is better, others that anything above 1C is too much, others that any of these figures are a shot in the dark and they are merely a political figure to start discussions.

Oceans have risen and fallen over the years - the first inhabitants of the UK walked across, not from Calais but from what is now The Netherlands, and sea shell fossils can be found over a hundred kilometres inland around Europe's coastline. The Milankovic cycles theory (ocean currents and winds affecting climate being directly related to the cyclical changes in the Earth's tilt) is borne out by registers of temperature rise and fall over 400,000 years which appear to fit perfectly into the Serbian mathematician's cycles. This all works very well with those who claim that climate change is cyclical and so, no worries, be happy. However, and here it comes - there is an exponential spike starting at the Industrial Revolution and steepening as time goes on, especially in the last decade. What is alarming is not the cycles of change but the rate of change, in which flows which took place over tens of thousands of years are now happening in a decade. So it is worrying.

Australia's horrific bush fires

Extreme weather events bear out the theory that rising temperatures caused by Greenhouse Effect Gas (GEG) emissions have been rife in the recent years, currently so evident in Australia's horrific forest and bush fires which to date have wiped out half a billion animals, exterminating entire species, quite apart from the human cost in life, injuries and lost possessions. Let us spare a thought for the tremendous heroism of the Australian firefighters, professionals and volunteers, risking life and limb to save humans, their possessions and animals. A forest fire is a terrifying and overwhelming event to behold, as those of us who have been involved in one first-hand will understand.

Planet Earth 2020, where money rules the roost

Once again, money speaks louder than words. It is not the effect on forests and animals and families which dictates policy, it is the bottom line of the accounts. We recall what happened to the Roman billionaire Marcus Licinius Crassus whose dream of conquering Parthia ended at the battle of Carrhae in 53 BC with the defeat of his legions and his own capture, his greed being paid for by pouring liquid gold down his throat, according to the gossip of the time. The human loss was the destruction of seven legions (42,000 infantry, of which 20,000 died and 10,000 were taken prisoner) and the sight of the head of his own son, Publius Crassus, on a spear.

Sometimes people in power only realize the horrors of their policies when it is too late.

Sport: UEFA, Copa America and a lame duck Olympics

On a lighter note, this is the first time the UEFA Soccer Championship is held in cities, not countries, once again while Europe comes together, the UK drifts apart but the final will be at Wembley Stadium on July 12, bringing to an end a month of soccer. Copa America takes place at the same time in Argentina and Colombia. This is followed up in Japan between July 21 and August 9 with the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. This will be a hollow event not worth following because once again the main challenger for medals, the Russian Federation, has been the victim of another blanket ban whether or not athletes were guilty of doping or not, and as if western athletes have never been involved in identical scandals. Politics and sport? No thanks. I have crossed the Olympic off my Summer watch list and frankly I could not care less what happens there. Not interested.

Conclusion: Same old, same old....

Looking back at my piece...same old, same old. It makes me feel sick and tired of the way this planet is managed, I am sick and tired of the insult to nature by the very existence of humankind, I am sick and tired of the impotence of forces of Good against the powers of Evil which appear to have our destruction as their ultimate goal.

Take a look at the world around us. It is a world of symbolic power and control mechanisms, dominated by flags and frontiers and passports, dictating a person's lot before (s)he is born. Is everyone equal as a fundamental birthright? Does every child have the same opportunities? And NATO countries continue to spend one point two trillion dollars each and every year on weapons systems to murder people and the world spends tens of millions of dollars on firework displays each and every year, pointless reiterations of prehistoric rituals to scare away the Devil when it is dark.

Food for thought?

Читайте больше на https://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/144187-new_year/

Opinion: Trump has Europeans caught in a trap

Once again, Europe is suffering under the way Donald Trump makes political decisions on the fly. The only option left is to appeal to Iran's interest in self-preservation, says DW's Barbara Wesel.

It was a dramatic start to a year that threatens to become a wild political rollercoaster ride. The Europeans, whose holiday peace was upset by the news of the unexpected killing of Iran's second-most powerful man, must now suffer the consequences. Uninformed and powerless as usual, they once again face the fallout from the US president's spontaneous unilateral decisions. They are caught in the Trump trap and cannot free themselves on their own.

Read more: Germany split on path forward in US-Iran conflict

 No illusions

 Any illusions about the possibility of an even partially rational cooperation on foreign policy with the government in Washington have long been shattered. Cynical remarks by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who accuses the Europeans of not giving enough support in the Middle East, underline their helplessness. What might he be thinking of after Soleimani's death — troops for a US-led war in the Middle East? It is that hint of madness in his and President Trump's statements that makes the dangerous situation even more disturbing.

The US president had actually promised to end endless wars in the Middle East and bring American soldiers home. Even experienced observers of US Middle East policy have been unable to explain how this fits in with the strike against Soleimani. They fear there is no strategy to follow up on the current blind flurry of activity, including the drone attack at Baghdad airport.

This is not even about "America first," Trump's declared goal when it comes to economic relations. The Europeans find themselves in the trap of a kind of US foreign policy that is marked by the emotional eruptions of an unpredictable president and his power-drunk neocon supporters, who have returned to power in Washington. Basically, their only explanation for killing Suleimani is: "Because we can."

Read more: How the Soleimani assassination was reported in Germany

Europe has nothing but diplomacy

Granted, Europe looks weak and helpless when, in joint statements, Europeans call for de-escalation after their presumed partner, the US, has just done everything it can to escalate the situation. But there may be a window for diplomatic attempts to prevent matters from worsening. What is clear is that Tehran is planning a counterstrike; the nature of that strike will decide whether the situation will escalate even further. Possibly, that decision has not yet been made. EU chief diplomat Josep Borell has contacted the Iranian foreign minister, hoping to influence him at a European crisis meeting.

Tehran has declared an end to its obligations concerning the non-enrichment of fuel rods under the nuclear agreement that Britain, France and Germany had struggled to keep alive last year. But even this door is not closed for good as long as inspectors are still allowed into the country. There are still a few signs that the Iranian government might talk to the Europeans.

What is clear is that no one in Europe has shed a tear for Ghassem Soleimani. He is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, especially in Syria and Yemen; he was the patron of the very wars and militias that aim to cement Iran's dominance in the region. The bloody suppression of all resistance was part of his program. But his unexpected killing caused a shock wave nevertheless.

Read more: US and Iran: Decades of enmity

View of the abyss

The Europeans must now use whatever contacts remain with the Iranian government to appeal to the regime's will to survive. Tehran knows that it would lose any direct military confrontation with the US. The economic situation in the country is already tense, as the latest wave of protests has shown.

Is there still room for a political solution? The European negotiators have virtually no chance but must make use of the little they have. The threat of an open war could boost diplomatic efforts. On the other hand, the new year will quickly show how strong the current tendency to suicide is among all those involved. One would have liked to have waited a few more months before peering into this political abyss.

Read more:

https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-trump-has-europeans-caught-in-a-trap/a-519...

See also:

https://www.dw.com/en/putin-invites-merkel-to-russia-over-iran-crisis/a-...

Am I reading this right?

In 2017, USAID spent $3.7 billions on Iraq... Now, one must consider where the money goes to and how it is used to influence politics, goes to NGOs programmes and is spend on US personnel sent as "advisors" to the said country. This could be a sore point in regard to the 10,000 US "ambassadors" in Baghdad as well as to the US troops withdrawal. Usually the expenditure of the military is not included in the USAID budget, but the CIA operatives are.

In the same year, USAID spent $477,000 in Iran. Am I guessing that this expenditure is going to grow in order to influence the 2020 political opposition in that country through "charitable enterprises"? For example Qatar, one of the richest country on the planet, though in dispute with other Gulf states then, got a $78,000 USAID handout, possibly to account for the lone US CIA employee there, while hosting one of the biggest US military base in the region.

What is remarkable, is that Tuvalu got a minus $222,000 handout in 2017. Does this mean that this one of the poorest country on earth, about to go under the seas, due to global warming, had to fork out some cash back to the USA?... 

Pleas explain...

The visa request was filed several weeks ago, before the latest escalation, and would give the top Iranian diplomat a stage to speak out following last Thursday’s drone strike assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Qassem Soleimani, along with senior Iraqi militia leaders.

“They fear that someone comes to the US and reveals realities,” Zarif said after being denied a visa. He vowed to communicate with the American people from Tehran, noting that “the world is not limited to New York.”

The US State Department has declined to comment on the Iranian diplomat’s visa troubles.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/477610-zarif-denied-visa-un-iran/

The US military has announced by letter to Iraq a future withdrawal of its troops. The Pentagon denied the decision of this process. The letter, authentic, could have been "sent in error"...

The United States announced on Monday "in error" to prepare its withdrawal from Iraq after the Iraqi Parliament called for the expulsion of foreign soldiers in response to the assassination in Baghdad of General Qassem Soleimani, mourned by millions of Iranians in Tehran. The commander of the American forces in Iraq has delivered — by hand, according to a US military official in Baghdad — a letter to the number two of the Iraqi army telling him he would respect the "sovereign decision (of the Iraqi Parliament) which orders (the US ) departure".

Read more:

https://www.sudouest.fr/2020/01/06/l-armee-americaine-annonce-a-l-irak-u...

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Translation by Jules Letambour...

All US military forces are now officially considered by Tehran as a terrorist entity after Washington's elimination of Qassem Soleimani and several other soldiers in an air strike in Baghdad. This January 7, the Iranian Parliament adopted a law officially classifying the whole of the American armed forces under the heading of "terrorist organizations". The emergency adoption of this law after a meeting of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, comes four days after the assassination by an American strike of General Qassem Soleimani, of al-Quds Force, elite unit of the body of the Guardians of the Islamic revolution. Abou Mehdi al-Mouhandis, number two in the Hachd al-Chaabi, a coalition of pro-Iranian paramilitaries and a leading figure in the fight against Daesh in Iraq, also died alongside several other soldiers in the American strike.

Find out more about RT France: https://francais.rt.com/international/69877-iran-declare-armee-americain...

Translation by Jules Letambour

Early on Friday morning, Iraqi time, a U.S. drone strike at the Baghdad airport killed Iran’s top military leader, Qassem Soleimani. For decades, Soleimani has been the mastermind behind Iran’s involvement in armed conflicts and acts of terror across the Middle East, from supplying the terrorist organization Hezbollah, to attacking Saudi oil fields and international shipping, to targeting U. S. forces in the region. In fact, the Pentagon lays the deaths of over 600 U.  S. military personnel directly at Soleimani’s feet.

At the time of his death, Soleimani was just 15 miles away from the U. S. Embassy in Iraq, which, last week, was stormed by militants thanks to Soleimani.

Writing in the New York Times, the Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran asserts, “Taking out the architect of the Islamic Republic’s decades-long active campaign of violence against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, represents a tectonic shift in Middle Eastern politics.”

And, despite not knowing what those tectonic shifts might bring, Doran concludes, “The world to which we wake up today, rid of its most accomplished and deadly terrorist, is a better place.”

Of course, the U. S. attack on Soleimani raises a whole host of questions. How will Iran respond? Will it expand its “proxy war” through Shi’ite militias? Will it dare take on the U. S. military directly? Will it unleash terrorist cells in the Middle East and even here in America? Is this a decisive step toward a wider, bloodier war in the Middle East and maybe even beyond?

It is impossible to see the future, especially in such a volatile region that features such volatile actors. But we can evaluate whether this decision, and any decision leading to hostile action, is justified according to what is called “Just War Theory.” Over the centuries, Christian thinkers from Augustine to Aquinas to the Reformers—seeking to reconcile Christian teaching on the sanctity of human life with the Christian responsibility to love our neighbors by protecting them from evil—have proposed a set of conditions by which a violent act can be considered justified. These conditions deal with both whether war ought to be waged, as well as how war should be waged.

First, the cause for going to war and the intention behind it must be just. Second, the war must be waged by a legitimate authority. Third, force must be used as a last resort. Fourth, force used in war must be proportionate to the threat. Fifth, force must not target non-combatants, and finally, there must be a reasonable chance of success.

Obviously, these conditions deal with very precarious details, including some that we, as the watching public, may or may not have access to or assurances of. If we measure the killing of Soleimani against these conditions, we can conclude that given Soleimani’s long resume of terrorism and evil, and his targeting of America and America’s allies (including civilians), there was just cause.

Whether the act was performed by a legitimate authority is a tougher question, since a formal, declared state of war does not exist between Iran and the U. S. However, our forces are in Iraq legally, with Congressional mandate and the approval of the Iraqi government. Soleimani was instigating hostile acts against the U.S. and the Iraqi government with, according to the Pentagon, plans to do even more. (David French offers a helpful explanation in this Twitter thread).

The attack, a precise drone strike, did not target civilians, which also addresses the questions of proportionality and probability of success. Was the attack a last resort? That’s difficult to know. Clearly, sanctions against the Iranian regime weren’t affecting Soleimani’s activities around the region.

The most difficult question, in my view, is whether the evils prevented are greater than the potential consequences. Will this bold, new posture cause Iran to curtail its activities, or will it ignite a wider war? We’ll only be able to answer this question in hindsight.

Of course, we are dealing with limited information. But, we’ll need to keep these just war conditions in mind in the days and weeks ahead. As Mindy Belz told me in a special episode about Soleimani and Iran available on the BreakPoint Podcast: While America has been focused on impeachment, the Middle East has been exploding all over again.

Most importantly, let’s pray to the God of History, for wisdom for the President and Congress, for the safety of our men and women in uniform as well as the many other lives at stake, and for peace in the Middle East.

Read more:

The god of history? The GoH says what are the USA doing in countries it does not own and has been a terrorist actor for more than 25 years? Nice fuken idiots... See I am getting better at reducing the level of insult... Oh and yes:

Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Baghdad Louis Raphael Sako called on Christians and Muslims in Iraq to pray for their leaders Monday as rumors of war run rampant after a U.S. military strike killed Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

In his homily, Sako described the situation in Iraq and the Middle East as a “volcano about to erupt” as he called on people around the world to pray and push to avoid further escalation of the ongoing tensions surrounding the situation, noting that innocent people will be the fuel for such “fire.”

Soleimani, who was responsible for the killing of 608 American soldiers in Iraq, arming Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, was killed Friday along with several officials from Iraqi militias backed by Tehran in a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that was authorized by President Donald Trump. An American MQ-9 Reaper drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the airport.

Read more:

https://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-leader-in-iraq-worries-volc...

608 US troops in Iraq? My god, they'll believe anything... How many Iraqi, the US killed in the last 17 years? more than half a million?... We don't know because the US did not count the "kills"... but the iraqi people know fathers, mothers and family members, including kids who never made it back from US bombardment and drone attack... US GO HOME... GO HOME... 

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by Tommy Sheridan

The decision to assassinate Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the second most powerful leader in Iran, is a declaration of war against the whole of Iran.

Mealy mouthed mainstream media coverage and official Foreign Office statements like that of Dominic Rabb are pathetic and puerile in the face of an unmistakable war crime, an act of war by one nation against another without United Nations discussion, debate or support. It is yet another example of United States unrestrained lawlessness and brutal bullying on the international stage. Donald Trump has sanctioned a war crime and every bulletin should call out this calculated Drone strike as the illegal act of war it is.

Like the obedient puppet of the US we have become over the last fifty years the UK’s Foreign Office statement was an exercise in smoke and mirrors cover up of yet another US war crime with a limp and lame set of words most probably dictated directly from Washington:

“We have always recognised the aggressive threat posed by the Iranian Quds force led by Qasem Soleimani. Following his death, we urge all parties to de-escalate. Further conflict is in none of our interests.”

US Act of War Should Be Condemned by International Community

Without an iota of international authority, discussion or attempted consensus the US President Trump ordered the killing of a hugely popular Iranian General and an Iraqi military leader in Iraq. While travelling in vehicles near to Baghdad airport these individuals were blown to smithereens by a deadly airstrike and instead of international condemnation of this act of terrorism, a war crime, we have the Western media and their political stooges refusing to condemn the US while calling for restraint from Iran. What utter cowardice and hypocrisy!

No wonder the world is in such a mess when one nation is permitted to act as it pleases and ignore all international rules and conventions regarding the sovereignty of other nations, while other nations are held to account on a wholly different basis.

Imagine the international condemnation if Syria had assassinated an Israeli General on Saudi soil or Iran had eliminated a member of the Saudi royal family during a visit to Qatar? Tensions do exist between Syria and Israel, and Iran and Saudi Arabia but unilateral action by either country to take out representatives of their opponents while on another country’s soil would bring down a cascade of condemnation and calls for international sanctions and coordinated retaliation.

Yet the US carries out just such an act of unilateral warfare and Western governments and the mainstream media shirk from condemnation and instead deflect attention to Iran and their alleged involvement in incidents across the Middle East which remain contentious and subject to fierce debate.

Iraq and Iran Have Been Attacked and Insulted by an Airstrike

The response of the Iraqi military to this airstrike is instructive. They condemned the killing of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Iraqi paramilitary leader who died alongside Qasem Soleimani.

They said it was a clear breach of the US mandate in Iraq, according to a report by Reuters.

“The Joint Operations Command mourns the hero martyr ... who was martyred last night in a cowardly and treacherous attack carried out by American aircraft near Baghdad international airport,” it said in a statement.

“We affirm that what happened is a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty and a clear breach by the American forces of their mandate which is exclusively to fight Islamic State and provide advice and assistance to Iraqi security forces”.

In one deadly strike the US has taken out recognised military figures of two other sovereign nations on the soil of one of those nations. The US is not in a state of war with either of those nations but is supposed to be working alongside the fledgling Iraqi regime to help in a rebuilding exercise after its 2003 led invasion destroyed it and bombed its infrastructure to smithereens.

The US was an aggressor against Iraq in 2003 when it executed an illegal, bloody and brutal “shock and awe” missile assault and ground invasion which claimed in excess of one million civilian lives. Its role seventeen years later is supposed to be in aiding reconstruction. Yet as the Iraqi military statement above says clearly they have acted in a manner which flagrantly violates the sovereignty of Iraq.

If any other country carried out such an action they would be roundly accused of committing war crimes and made an international pariah. But not in the warped, corrupted and distorted world of US hegemony.

US Plan to Take out Seven Countries in Five Years Was Real

This latest act of US aggression should jolt everyone to recall the words of retired 4-star US General, Wesley Clark, who was at the helm as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in 1999 when the West chose to obliterate Yugoslavia under the auspices of humanitarian aims which now stands exposed as a flag of deceit and convenience. Speaking candidly in a 2007 interview with Democracy Now!  the General gave a rare insight into US strategic thinking and exposed the ‘rogue nation’ status which other western nations continually try to cover up. His words are worth quoting at length. Remember this is a former US General speaking, not an easily dismissed conspiracy theorist or academic of history with no hands-on experience of US military actions. This is a guy who sat round the top tables of government in Washington:

About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”.

Confirmation that US are Biggest Rogue Nation in the World

Not only this interview confirms that the decision to invade Iraq had nothing to do with links to Al Qaeda or weapons of mass destruction; it shows that the US does not merely respond to perceived threats to its interests and power across the Middle East and other regions of the world - they strategically plan their actions years in advance and implement those plans ruthlessly with the aid of pliable and billionaire controlled media who can always be counted upon to do the necessary whitewashing of events and create the convenient narratives to justify war crimes that were hatched and construed years in advance.

The US is the single biggest threat to peace and security across the planet. Their insatiable demand for power, control and cheap access to everyone else’s economic resources, primarily oil, explains its consistent military presence in the Middle East and interference in the affairs of other countries. The rogue military strike in Iraq by the US is not an exception to the rule of US engagement across the world - it is the norm, the confirmation of the rule.

Large scale ‘boots on the ground’ type engagements like Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq are conventional wars with official declarations, or at least congressional authorisations for the ‘use of military force,’ but the reality of US imposed hegemony is the undeclared wars which deliver similar results in relation to instilling fear of the US and projecting power to facilitate large scale resource grabs.

A major academic study in 2013 attempted a more realistic definition of war in order to establish the real extent of US involvement across the world. Consider the definition of war put forth by Linda Bilmes (Harvard Kennedy School) and Michael Intriligator (UCLA), who defined war in their 2013 paper as:

"conflicts where the US is launching extensive military incursions, including drone attacks, but that are not officially 'declared.'"

By that definition, the United States is at war in at least six places right now: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Syria.

Then consider the rare and rather clumsy revelation of truth by Trump in relation to US presence and involvement in Syria:

“Donald Trump has insisted that the US military presence in Syria is “only for the oil”, contradicting his own officials who have insisted that the remaining forces were there to fight Isis”.

US Militarily Secretly Active in 134 Countries across the World

The US military involvement in the manner described above is not the only form of involvement. Increasing Special Operations is how the US ensures governments close to their interests or willing to do their bidding get into power or stay in power. Extensive research now reveals that the US is actually militarily involved in 70% of the world’s nations through active and aggressive Special Operations in 134 separate countries:

“In the waning days of the Bush presidency, Special Operations forces were reportedly deployed in about sixty countries around the world. By 2010, that number had swelled to seventy-five, according to Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of The Washington Post. In 2011, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told Tom Dispatch that the total would reach 120. Today, that figure has risen higher still.

In 2013, elite US forces were deployed in 134 countries around the globe, according to Major Matthew Robert Bockholt of SOCOM Public Affairs. This 123 percent increase during the Obama years demonstrates how, in addition to conventional wars and a CIA drone campaign, public diplomacy and extensive electronic spying, the US has engaged in still another significant and growing form of overseas power projection. Conducted largely in the shadows by America’s most elite troops, the vast majority of these missions take place far from prying eyes, media scrutiny, or any type of outside oversight, increasing the chances of unforeseen blowback and catastrophic consequences”.

US Should be blamed for Consequences of their Attack

This illegal, secret, brutal, bloody and deadly deployment of US power across the globe is what should be put into focus by the most recent example of US war crimes in Iraq last night.

Iran and Iraq have been the victims of US attacks on their government officials which constitute acts of war. Iran in particular has been left no option but to retaliate. It is one of the oldest nation states in the Middle East. It is a proud and patriotic nation. Its dignity and prestige has been undermined by the killing of its second in command so retaliation is inevitable. It is a case of when and how not if?

An ugly and bloody conflagration of incidents could now develop into a full scale war. The mainstream media won’t highlight them or expose them but free thinkers across the world must point the finger of blame firmly and without fear at Donald Trump and the US for whatever now ensues in response to their illegal act of war.

The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

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US President Donald Trump has weighed in after a series of Iranian missile strikes on American bases in Iraq, noting that a damage and casualty assessment looks “good” so far.

“All is well! Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq. Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now,” Trump said, adding that he would make a statement to the nation on Wednesday morning.

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https://www.rt.com/usa/477686-trump-tweet-iranian-strike/

If Donald was trying to start WW3, he would not have it other ways... Most likely the Iranian missiles were deliberately aimed to miss, but to be a warning only. 

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From Andre Vltchek

There are obviously some serious linguistic issues and disagreements between the West and the rest of the world. Essential terms like “freedom”, “democracy”, “liberation”, even “terrorism”, are all mixed up and confused; they mean something absolutely different in New York, London, Berlin, and in the rest of the world.

Before we begin analyzing, let us recall that countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States, as well as other Western nations, have been spreading colonialist terror to basically all corners of the world.

And in the process, they developed effective terminology and propaganda, which has been justifying, even glorifying acts such as looting, torture, rape and genocides. Basically, first Europe, and later North America literally “got away with everything, including mass murder”.

The native people of Americas, Africa and Asia have been massacred, their voices silenced. Slaves were imported from Africa. Great Asian nations, such as China, what is now “India” and Indonesia, got occupied, divided and thoroughly plundered.

And all was done in the name of spreading religion, “liberating” people from themselves, as well as “civilizing them”.

Nothing has really changed.

To date, people of great nations with thousands of years of culture, are treated like infants; humiliated, and as if they were still in kindergarten, told how to behave, and how to think.

Sometimes if they “misbehave”, they get slapped. Periodically they get slapped so hard, that it takes them decades, even centuries, to get back to their feet. It took China decades to recover from the period of “humiliation”. India and Indonesia are presently trying to recuperate, from the colonial barbarity, and from, in the case of Indonesia, the 1965 U.S.-administered fascist coup.

But if you go back to the archives in London, Brussels or Berlin, all the monstrous acts of colonialism, are justified by lofty terms. Western powers are always “fighting for justice”; they are “enlightening” and “liberating”. No regrets, no shame and no second thoughts. They are always correct!

Like now; precisely as it is these days.

Presently, the West is trying to overthrow governments in several independent countries, on different continents. From Bolivia (the country has been already destroyed) to Venezuela, from Iraq to Iran, to China and Russia. The more successful these countries get, the better they serve their people, the more vicious the attacks from abroad are, the tougher the embargos and sanctions imposed on them are. The happier the citizens are, the more grotesque the propaganda disseminated from the West gets.

*

In Hong Kong, some young people, out of financial interest, or out of ignorance, keep shouting: “President Trump, Please Liberate Us!” Or similar, but equally treasonous slogans. They are waving U.S., U.K. and German flags. They beat up people who try to argue with them, including their own Police Force.

So, let us see, how the United States really “liberates” countries, in various pockets of the world.

Let us visit Iran, a country which (you’d never guess it if consuming only Western mass media) is, despite the vicious embargos and sanctions, on the verge of the “highest human development index bracket” (UNDP). How is it possible? Simple. Because Iran is a socialist country (socialism with the Iranian characteristics). It is also an internationalist nation which is fighting against Western imperialism. It helps many occupied and attacked states on our planet, including Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia (before), Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, to name just a few.

So, what is the West doing? It is trying to ruin it, by all means; ruin all good will and progress. It is starving Iran through sanctions, it finances and encourages its “opposition”, as it does in China, Russia and Latin America. It is trying to destroy it.

Then, it just bombs their convoy in neighboring Iraq, killing its brave commander, General Soleimani. And, as if it was not horrid enough, it turns the tables around, and starts threatening Teheran with more sanctions, more attacks, and even with the destruction of its cultural sites.

Iran, under attack, confused, shot down, by mistake, a Ukrainian passenger jet. It immediately apologized, in horror, offering compensation. The U.S. straightway began digging into the wound. It started to provoke (like in Hong Kong) young people. The British ambassador, too, got involved!

As if Iran and the rest of the world should suddenly forget that during its attack on Iraq, more than 3 decades ago, Washington actually shot down an Iranian wide-body passenger plane (Iran Air flight 655, an Airbus-300), on a routine flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. In an “accident”, 290 people, among them 66 children, lost their lives. That was considered “war collateral”.

Iranian leaders then did not demand “regime change” in Washington. They were not paying for riots in New York or Chicago.

As China is not doing anything of that nature, now.

The “Liberation” of Iraq (in fact, brutal sanctions, bombing, invasion and occupation) took more than a million Iraqi lives, most of them, those of women and children. Presently, Iraq has been plundered, broken into pieces, and on its knees.

Is this the kind of “liberation” that some of the Hong Kong youngsters really want?

No? But if not, is there any other performed by the West, in modern history?

*

Washington is getting more and more aggressive, in all parts of the world.

It also pays more and more for collaboration.

And it is not shy to inject terrorist tactics into allied troops, organizations and non-governmental organizations. Hong Kong is no exception.

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia, China, Venezuela, but also many other countries, should be carefully watching and analyzing each and every move made by the United States. The West is perfecting tactics on how to liquidate all opposition to its dictates.

It is not called a “war”, yet. But it is. People are dying. The lives of millions are being ruined.

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2020/01/29/how-washington-liberates-free-countr...

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by Scott Ritter

President Trump’s decision to assassinate Qassem Soleimani back in January took the United States to the brink of war with Iran. 

Trump and his advisors contend that Soleimani’s death was necessary to protect American lives, pointing to a continuum of events that began on December 27, when a rocket attack on an American base in Iraq killed a civilian translator. That in turn prompted U.S. airstrikes against a pro-Iranian militia, Khati’ab Hezbollah, which America blamed for the attack. Khati’ab Hezbollah then stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in protest. This reportedly triggered the assassination of Soleimani and a subsequent Iranian retaliatory missile strike on an American base in Iraq. The logic of this continuum appears consistent except for one important fact—it is all predicated on a lie. 

On the night of December 27, a pickup truck modified to carry a launchpad capable of firing 36 107mm Russian-made rockets was used in an attack on a U.S. military compound located at the K-1 Airbase in Iraq’s Kirkuk Province. A total of 20 rockets were loaded onto the vehicle, but only 14 were fired. Some of the rockets struck an ammunition dump on the base, setting off a series of secondary explosions. When the smoke and dust cleared, a civilian interpreter was dead and several other personnel, including four American servicemen and two Iraqi military, were wounded. The attack appeared timed to disrupt a major Iraqi military operation targeting insurgents affiliated with ISIS.

The area around K-1 is populated by Sunni Arabs, and has long been considered a bastion of ISIS ideology, even if the organization itself was declared defeated inside Iraq back in 2017 by then-prime minister Haider al Abadi. The Iraqi counterterrorism forces based at K-1 consider the area around the base an ISIS sanctuary so dangerous that they only enter in large numbers.

For their part, the Iraqis had been warning their U.S. counterparts for more than a month that ISIS was planning attacks on K-1. One such report, delivered on November 6, using intelligence dating back to October, was quite specific: “ISIS terrorists have endeavored to target K-1 base in Kirkuk district by indirect fire (Katyusha rockets).”

Another report, dated December 25, warned that ISIS was attempting to seize territory to the northeast of K-1. The Iraqis were so concerned that on December 27, the day of the attack, they requested that the U.S. keep functional its tethered aerostat-based Persistent Threat Detection System (PTSD)—a high-tech reconnaissance balloon equipped with multi-mission sensors to provide long endurance intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) and communications in support of U.S. and Iraqi forces. 

Instead, the U.S. took the PTSD down for maintenance, allowing the attackers to approach unobserved.

The Iraqi military officials at K-1 immediately suspected ISIS as the culprit behind the attack. Their logic was twofold. First, ISIS had been engaged in nearly daily attacks in the area for over a year, launching rockets, firing small arms, and planting roadside bombs. Second, according to the Iraqis, “The villages near here are Turkmen and Arab. There is sympathy with Daesh [i.e., ISIS] there.”

As transparent as the Iraqis had been with the U.S. about their belief that ISIS was behind the attack, the U.S. was equally opaque with the Iraqis regarding whom it believed was the culprit. The U.S. took custody of the rocket launcher, all surviving ordnance, and all warhead fragments from the scene. 

U.S. intelligence analysts viewed the attack on K-1 as part of a continuum of attacks against U.S. bases in Iraq since early November 2019. The first attack took place on November 9, against the joint U.S.-Iraqi base at Qayarrah, and was very similar to the one that occurred against K-1—some 31 107mm rockets were fired from a pickup truck modified to carry a rocket launchpad. As with K-1, the forces located in Qayarrah were engaged in ongoing operations targeting ISIS, and the territory around the base was considered sympathetic to ISIS. The Iraqi government attributed the attack to unspecified “terrorist” groups.

The U.S., however, attributed the attacks to Khati’ab Hezbollah, a Shia militia incorporated with the Popular Mobilization Organization (PMO), a pro-Iranian umbrella organization that had been incorporated into the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. The PMO blamed the U.S. for a series of drone strikes against its facilities throughout the summer of 2019. The feeling among the American analysts was that the PMO attacked the bases as a form of retaliation. 

The U.S. launched a series of airstrikes against Khati’ab Hezbollah bases and command posts in Iraq and Syria on December 29, near the Iraqi city of al-Qaim. These attacks were carried out unilaterally, without any effort to coordinate with America’s Iraqi counterparts or seek approval from the Iraqi government.

Khati’ab Hezbollah units had seized al-Qaim from ISIS in November 2017, and then crossed into Syria, where they defeated ISIS fighters dug in around the Syrian town of al-Bukamal. They were continuing to secure this strategic border crossing when they were bombed on December 29. 

Left unsaid by the U.S. was the fact that the al-Bukamal-al Qaim border crossing was seen as a crucial “land bridge,” connecting Iran with Syria via Iraq. Throughout the summer of 2019, the U.S. had been watching as Iranian engineers, working with Khati’ab Hezbollah, constructed a sprawling base that straddled both Iraq and Syria. It was this base, and not Khati’ab Hezbollah per se, that was the reason for the American airstrike. The objective in this attack was to degrade Iranian capability in the region; the K-1 attack was just an excuse, one based on the lie that Khati’ab Hezbollah, and not ISIS, had carried it out.

The U.S. had long condemned what it called Iran’s “malign intentions” when it came to its activities in Iraq and Syria. But there is a world of difference between employing tools of diplomacy to counter Iranian regional actions and going kinetic. One of the reasons the U.S. has been able to justify attacking Iranian-affiliated targets, such as the al-Bukamal-al-Qaim complex and Qassem Soleimani, is that the Iranian entity associated with both—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC—has been designated by the U.S. as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and as such military attacks against it are seen as an extension of the ongoing war on terror. Yet the way the IRGC came to be designated as an FTO is itself predicated on a lie.

The person responsible for this lie is President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, who while in that position oversaw National Security Council (NSC) interagency policy coordination meetings at the White House for the purpose of formulating a unified government position on Iran. Bolton had stacked the NSC staff with hardliners who were pushing for a strong stance. But representatives from the Department of Defense often pushed back. During such meetings, the Pentagon officials argued that the IRGC was “a state entity” (albeit a “bad” one), and that if the U.S. were to designate it as a terrorist group, there was nothing to stop Iran from responding by designating U.S. military personnel or CIA officers as terrorists. 

The memoranda on these meetings, consisting of summaries of the various positions put forward, were doctored by the NSC to make it appear as if the Pentagon agreed with its proposed policy. The Defense Department complained to the NSC that the memoranda produced from these meetings were “largely incorrect and inaccurate”—“essentially fiction,” a former Pentagon official claimed.

After the Pentagon “informally” requested that the NSC change the memoranda to accurately reflect its position, and were denied, the issue was bumped up to Undersecretary of Defense John Rood. He then formally requested that the memoranda be corrected. Such a request was unprecedented in recent memory, a former official noted. Regardless, the NSC did not budge, and the original memoranda remained as the official records of the meetings in question.

President Trump designated the IRGC a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in April 2018.

This was a direct result of the bureaucratic dishonesty of John Bolton. Such dishonesty led to a series of policy decisions that gave a green light to use military force against IRGC targets throughout the Middle East. The rocket attack against K-1 was attributed to an Iranian proxy—Khati’ab Hezbollah—even though there was reason to believe the attack was carried out by ISIS. This was a cover so IRGC-affiliated facilities in al-Bakumal and al-Qaim, which had nothing to do with the attack, could be bombed. Everything to do with Iran’s alleged “malign intent.” The U.S. embassy was then attacked. Soleimani killed. The American base at al-Assad was bombarded by Iranian missiles. America and Iran were on the brink of war.

All because of a lie.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, most recently, Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War (2018).

The United States ambassador to Iran wrongly claimed to the Shah that Queen Elizabeth II supported the plan to topple the elected prime minister of the country in 1953, according to a Warwick historian.

According to Richard Aldrich, a professor at the University of Warwick whose research will be featured in a Channel 4 documentary title 'The Queen and the Coup' on Sunday, the US kept to the story that the newly crowned monarch backed the coup even after they were aware of the mistake.

In 1953, the United States would successfully overthrow the democratically elected Iranian leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, who supported the nationalisation of UK-controlled oil in the country.

The British looked to US President Eisenhower, whose interests aligned in his global quest to combat the spread of communism and the Soviet Union.

​Papers released by the US reveal that the intelligence services “stockpiled enough arms and demolition material to support a 10,000-man guerrilla organization for six months” and had paid $5.3 million in bribes and other costs - equivalent to $48 million today.

One CIA document casually acknowledges that “several leading members of these (Iranian) security services are paid agents of this organization".

The coup faced several problems including the Young Reza Shah himself. Diplomats and spies described the soon-to-be absolute monarch as a “weak reed” and “petulant", and the CIA dismissively referred to him as the “Boy Scout,” according to Aldrich.

The British were fuming over Mosaddegh’s high profile humiliation of the British Empire’s claim to Iran’s oil. Mosaddegh would have to be deposed, however, this could not look like a British retaliation.

During Averell Harrimann’s visit to Tehran in July 1951, in an attempt to salvage the broken British-Iranian relationship, Mosaddegh is reported to have said,

You do not know how crafty they are. You do not know how evil they are. You do not know how they sully everything they touch.”

As coup rumours circulated and reports were rife of British contact being sought with Iranian military officers, Mosaddegh severed diplomatic relations with the UK on Oct 16th 1952. The British were further humiliated and had to leave the country taking their agents with them.

It was at this point that Churchill “invited” his lap dog, de facto president Truman, to participate in his vision for regime change in Iran. In November 1952, NSC 136 and 136/I were written into record, Truman had agreed to promote direct intervention in Iran through covert operations and even military force. A detailed plan was approved on Jan 8th 1953 which was 12 days before Eisenhower was inaugurated.

The management of this covert operation was under the treasonous Dulles brothers, who would use the very same technique when JFK first entered office in setting him up with the Bay of Pigs fiasco, however, JFK managed to publicly expose Allan Dulles in this scheme and fired him. Dulles had been the Director of the CIA for 8 years up until that point, and was Deputy Director of the CIA for two years prior. Refer to my paper on this for further details.

A preliminary meeting in Washington saw representatives of the Near East and Africa Division (NEA) with British Intelligence. The key personalities were Christopher Montague Woodhouse who had been station chief for British Intelligence in Tehran and on the American side Kermit Roosevelt (son of Teddy Roosevelt) acting as NEA Division Chief. It was the British who would propose a joint political action to remove Prime Minister Mosaddegh according to CIA documents, which were in part leaked by the New York Times on April 16th 2000. The final plan was codenamed TPAJAX.

Appendix B, aka “London Draft of the TPAJAX Operational Plan” was black propaganda aimed at hammering out these themes 1) Mosaddegh favors the Tudeh Party and the USSR 2) Mosaddegh is an enemy of Islam since he associates with Tudeh.

The aim of such tactics was to drive a wedge between Mosaddegh and his National Front on the one side and his clerical allies, especially Kashani on the other. Demonstrations against Mosaddegh in the streets were to provide the pretext for bought MPs to hold a vote against him, if he refused to step down the plan was to have Fazlollah Zahedi, leader of the opposition, to arrest him. Zahedi, as laid out in Appendix B was selected by the British to replace Mosaddegh as Prime Minister after the coup.

Chief of Staff Gen. Taghi Riahi found out about the coup plans and alerted Mosaddegh in time. When the chief of the Imperial Guards, Col. Nasiri went to Mosaddegh’s house the evening before the planned coup day (Aug 16th) to arrest him, Nasiri himself was taken as prisoner by the pro- Mosaddegh military. Zahedi managed to flee.

The coup attempt had failed and the word spread fast, crowds flooded the streets supporting Mosaddegh and denouncing the Shah. The Shah left the country quickly.

The CIA informed of the fiasco alerted Kermit Roosevelt that he should leave Iran immediately. But Kermit believed the coup could still work and would make a second attempt three days later. British Intelligence and CIA orchestrated demonstrations set to the streets on Aug 19th. The royal decrees signed by the Shah for the deposal of Mosaddegh to be replaced by Zahedi were made public in the press that very day with the radio news announcing: that Zahedi was Prime Minister, that Mosaddegh had been ousted and that the Shah would return soon.

Military units were dispatched to Mosaddegh’s home. As his house was being destroyed by gunfire and tanks, Mosaddegh managed to escape. It is said he later turned himself in to the authorities.

After a ten-week period in a military prison, Mosaddegh was tried on charges of treason, because he had allegedly mobilized for a rebellion and had contradicted the Shah. In fact, the accused treason was a nationalistic response to a foreign-led coup.

Mosaddegh was promptly found guilty and sentenced to death, later lessened to three years in prison, followed by house arrest.

Mosaddegh’s response to the kangaroo court proceedings was:

My only crime is that I nationalized the oil industry and removed from this land the network of colonialism and the political and economic influence of the greatest empire [the British Empire] on Earth.”

Members of his government were also arrested, as were the leading military who remained loyal to him. Six hundred of the 6, 000 of these men were executed.

Even after Mosaddegh had passed away, on March 5th, 1967, his enemies were fearful of his influence. Mosaddegh had requested that upon his death, he be buried in the public graveyard beside the victims of the political violence that occurred on the 21st July 1952 from British-backed Ahmad Qavam who ordered soldiers to shoot at Mosaddegh nationalists during a demonstration, resulting in a blood bath. 

Not wanting his grave to become the site of political manifestations, a public funeral for Mosaddegh was denied and his body was quietly buried underneath the floorboards of a room in his house.

Shortly after ascending to the throne, the Queen inadvertently played a key role in the regime-change op that ousted Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, new research by Richard Aldrich, a professor at the University of Warwick, reveals. His work on the documents and cables will be featured in a Channel 4 documentary in Britain on Sunday.

The Iranian PM was targeted for his move to nationalize Iran’s oil industry which was operated exclusively by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (AIOC), later known as British Petroleum (BP). The then-Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, who was one of the main figures behind the brewing CIA and MI6 operation, was trying to convince Iran’s shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to back the coup. The monarch was very reluctant to do so – as he was actually ready to pack up and live in exile. Eden then called upon US diplomats to press the shah into backing the coup.

While communicating with the Americans, Eden happened to be traveling aboard the RMS ‘Queen Elizabeth’, an ocean liner named after the Queen’s mother. The coincidence apparently confused American officials and ultimately yielded the following telegram, sent in February 1953 by the US Embassy in London to the envoy in Iran, Loy W. Henderson.

Foreign Office this afternoon informed us of receipt message from Eden from Queen Elizabeth expressing concern at latest developments re Shah and strong hope we can find some means of dissuading him from leaving country.

The diplomats promptly realized their mistake, sending a follow up cable that warned “Queen Elizabeth refers, of course to vessel and not ... to monarch.” The embassy also suggested covering the whole thing up, stating that the Embassy “does not (repeat not) propose to inform [the] British of the incident.” Yet, Henderson had already delivered the message to the shah.

“I had just received message indicating that very important personage for whom shah had most friendly feelings had also expressed sincere hope that shah could be dissuaded from leaving country,” Henderson wrote in a diplomatic cable on a later day.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/491668-queen-elizabeth-iran-coup/

From Cynthia Chung

In Part 1, we left off in our story at the SIS-CIA overthrow of Iran’s Nationalist leader Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. At this point the Shah was able to return to Iran from Rome and British-backed Fazlollah Zahedi, who played a leading role in the coup, replaced Mosaddegh as Prime Minister of Iran.

Here we will resume our story.

One important thing to know about Mohammad Reza Shah was that he was no fan of British imperialism and was an advocate for Iran’s independence and industrial growth. That said, the Shah was a deeply flawed man who lacked the steadfastness to secure such a positive fate for Iran. After all, foreign-led coups had become quite common in Iran at that point.

He would become the Shah in 1941 at the age of 22, after the British forced his father Reza Shah into exile. By then, Persia had already experienced 70 years of British imperialism reducing its people to near destitution.

Mohammad Reza Shah had developed very good relations with the U.S. under President FDR, who at the behest of the Shah, formed the Iran Declaration which ended Iran’s foreign occupation by the British and the Soviets after WWII.

His father, Reza Shah came into power after the overthrow of Ahmad Shah in 1921, who was responsible for signing into law the infamous Anglo-Persian Agreement in 1919, which effectively turned Iran into a de facto protectorate run by British “advisors” and ensured the British Empire’s control of Iran’s oil.

Despite Reza Shah’s problems (Mosaddegh was sent into exile during his reign), he had made significant achievements for Iran. Among these included the development of transportation infrastructure, 15 000 miles of road by 1940 and the construction of the Trans-Iranian Railway which opened in 1938.

Mohammad Reza Shah wished to continue this vein of progress, however, he would first have to go through Britain and increasingly the U.S. in order to fulfill Iran’s vision for a better future.

In 1973, Mohammad Reza Shah thought he finally found his chance to turn Iran into the “world’s sixth industrial power” in just one generation…

In 1960, OPEC was founded by five oil producing countries: Venezuela, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait in an attempt to influence and stabilise the market price of oil, which would in turn stabilise their nation’s economic return. The formation of OPEC marked a turning point toward national sovereignty over natural resources.

However, during this period OPEC did not have a strong voice in such affairs, the main reason being the “Seven Sisters” which controlled approximately 86% of the oil produced by OPEC countries. The “Seven Sisters” was the name for the seven transnational oil companies of the “Consortium of Iran” cartel which dominated the global petroleum industry, with British Petroleum owning 40% and Royal Dutch Shell 14%, giving Britain the lead at 54% ownership during this period.

After 1973, with the sudden rise of oil prices, the Shah began to see an opportunity for independent action.

The Shah saw the price increase as a way to pull his country out of backwardness. To the intense irritation of his sponsors, the Shah pledged to bring Iran into the ranks of the world’s top ten industrial nations by the year 2000.

The Shah understood that in order for this vision to become a reality, Iran could not just stay as a crude oil producer but needed to invest in a more stable future through industrial growth. And as it just so happened, France and West Germany were ready to make an offer.

In 1978, France and West Germany led the European community, with the exception of Great Britain, in the formation of the European Monetary System (EMS). The EMS was a response to the controlled disintegration that had been unleashed on the world economy after the fixed exchange rate became a floating exchange rate in 1971.

French foreign minister Jean Francois–Poncet had told a UN press conference, that it was his vision that the EMS eventually replace the IMF and World Bank as the center of world finance.

For those who are unaware of the devastation that the IMF and World Bank have wreaked upon the world, refer to John Perkins’ Confession of an Economic Hit Man…the situation is 10X worst today.

As early as 1977, France and West Germany had begun exploring the possibility of concretizing a deal with oil producing countries in which western Europe would supply high-technology exports, including nuclear technology, to the OPEC countries in exchange for long-term oil supply contracts at a stable price. 

In turn, OPEC countries would deposit their enormous financial surpluses into western European banks which could be used for further loans for development projects… obviously to the detriment of the IMF and World Bank hegemony.

The Carter Administration was not happy with this, sending Vice President Walter Mondale to France and West Germany to “inform” them that the U.S. would henceforth oppose the sale of nuclear energy technology to the Third World…and thus they should do so as well. West Germany’s nuclear deal with Brazil and France’s promise to sell nuclear technology to South Korea had already come under heavy attack.

In addition, the Shah had started a closer partnership with Iraq and Saudi Arabia cemented at OPEC meetings in 1977 and 1978. In a press conference in 1977 the Shah stated he would work for oil price stability. Together Saudi Arabia and Iran at the time produced nearly half of OPEC’s entire output.

If an Iran-Saudi-Iraq axis established a permanent working relationship with the EMS it would have assembled an unstoppable combination against the London world financial center.

Recall that France and West Germany had already ignored British calls to boycott Iranian oil in 1951 under Mosaddegh, and therefore, there was no indication that they were going to follow suit with Britain and the U.S. this time either.

As far as London and Washington were concerned, the Shah’s reign was over.

Were we to select a date for the beginning of the Iranian revolution it would be November 1976, the month that Amnesty International issued its report charging brutality and torture of political prisoners by the Shah of Iran.

Ironically, the SAVAK which was the secret police under the Shah from 1957 to 1979, was established and pretty much run by the SIS (aka MI6), CIA and the Israeli Mossad. This is a well-known fact, and yet, was treated as somehow irrelevant during Amnesty International’s pleas for a humanitarian intervention into Iran.

For those who haven’t already discovered Amnesty International’s true colors from their recent “work” in Syria…it should be known that they work for British Intelligence.

Gruesome accounts of electric shock torture and mutilation were printed in the London Times, the Washington Post and other respected press. Within a few months, President Carter launched his own “human rights” campaign. With this, the international humanitarian outcry got bigger and louder demanding the removal of the Shah.

The Shah was caught between a rock and a hard place, as he was known not to be strong on “security” matters and often left it entirely up to the management of others. Once Amnesty International sounded the war-cry, the Shah made the mistake of not only defending the undefendable SAVAK in the public arena but continued to trust them entirely. It would be his biggest mistake.

With the international foment intensifying, the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Persian language broadcasts into Iran fanned the flames of revolt.

During the entire year of 1978 the BBC stationed dozens of correspondents throughout the country in every remote town and village. BBC correspondents, often in the employ of the British secret service, worked as intelligence operatives for the revolution.

Each day the BBC would report in Iran gory accounts of alleged atrocities committed by the Iranian police, often without checking the veracity of the reports. It is now acknowledged that these news reportshelped to fuel and even organise the political foment towards an Iranian revolution.

In 1978, British Petroleum (BP) was in the process of negotiating with the government of Iran the renewing of the 25 year contract made in 1953 after the Anglo-American coup against Mosaddegh. These negotiations collapsed in Oct 1978, at the height of the revolution. BP rejected the National Iranian Oil Company’s (NIOC) demands, refusing to buy a minimum quantity of barrels of Iranian oil but demanding nonetheless the exclusive right to buy that oil should it wish to in the future!

The Shah and NIOC rejected BP’s final offer. Had the Shah overcome the revolt, it appeared that Iran would have been free in its oil sales policy in 1979 – and would have been able to market its own oil to the state companies of France, Spain, Brazil and many other countries on a state-to-state basis.

In the American press hardly a single line was published about the Iranian fight with BP, the real humanitarian fight for Iranians.

The “Arc of Crisis” is a geopolitical theory focused on American/western politics in regards to the Muslim world. It was first concocted by British historian Bernard Lewis, who was regarded as the leading scholar in the world on oriental studies, especially of Islam, and its implications for today’s western politics.

Bernard Lewis was acting as an advisor to the U.S. State Department from 1977-1981. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor, would announce the U.S.’ adoption of the “Arc of Crisis” theory by the American military and NATO in 1978.

It is widely acknowledged today, that the “Arc of Crisis” was primarily aimed at destabilising the USSR and Iran. This will be discussed further in Part 3 of this series.

Egypt and Israel were expected to act as the initiating countries for the expansion of NATO into the Middle East. Iran was to be the next link.

Iran’s revolution was perfectly timed with the launching of the “Arc of Crisis”, and NATO had its “humanitarian” cause for entering the scene.

However, the fight was not over in Iran.

On Jan 4th, 1979, the Shah named Shapour Bakhtiar, a respected member of the National Front as Prime Minister of Iran. Bakhtiar was held in high regard by not only the French but Iranian nationalists. As soon as his government was ratified, Bakhtiar began pushing through a series of major reform acts: he completely nationalised all British oil interests in Iran, put an end to the martial law, abolished the SAVAK, and pulled Iran out of the Central Treaty Organization, declaring that Iran would no longer be “the gendarme of the Gulf”.

Bakhtiar also announced that he would be removing Ardeshir Zahedi from his position as Iran’s Ambassador to the U.S.

An apple that did not fall far from the tree, Ardeshir is the son of Fazlollah Zahedi, the man who led the coup against Mosaddegh and replaced him as Prime Minister!

Ardeshir was suspected to have been misinforming the Shah about the events surrounding the Iranian revolution and it was typical that he spoke to Brzezinski in Washington from Teheran over the phone at least once a day, often twice a day, as part of his “job” as Ambassador to the U.S. during the peak of the Iranian revolution.

With tensions escalating to a maximum, the Shah agreed to transfer all power to Bakhtiar and left Iran on Jan 16th,1979 for a “long vacation” (aka exile), never to return.

However, despite Bakhtiar’s courageous actions, the damage was too far gone and the hyenas were circling round.

It is known that from Jan 7th to early Feb 1979, the No. 2 in the NATO chain of command, General Robert Huyser, was in Iran and was in frequent contact with Brzezinski during this period. It is thought that Huyser’s job was to avoid any coup attempts to disrupt the take-over by Khomeini’s revolutionary forces by largely misleading the Iranian generals with false intel and U.S. promises. Recently declassified documents on Huyser’s visit to Iran confirm these suspicions.

During the Shah’s “long vacation” his health quickly deteriorated. Unfortunately the Shah was never a good judge of character and kept a close dialogue with Henry Kissinger as to how to go about his health problems. By Oct 1979, the Shah was diagnosed with cancer and the decision was made to send him to the U.S. for medical treatment.

This decision was very much pushed for and supported by Brzezinski and Kissinger, despite almost every intelligence report indicating this would lead to a disastrous outcome.

In Nov 18th 1979, the New York Times reported:

The decision was made despite the fact that Mr. Carter and his senior policy advisers had known for months that to admit the Shah might endanger Americans at the embassy in Teheran. An aide reported that at one staff meeting Mr. Carter had asked, “When the Iranians take our people in Teheran hostage, what will you advise me then?”

On Oct 22, 1979, the Shah arrived in New York to receive medical treatment. Twelve days later, the U.S. Embassy in Teheran was taken over and 52 American hostages would be held captive for 444 days!

With the taking of the hostages, the Carter Administration, as preplanned under the “Arc of Crisis”, set into motion its scenario for global crisis management.

The hostage crisis, a 100% predictable response to the U.S.’ decision to accept the Shah into America, was the external threat the Carter Administration needed to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, authorising the President to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to an extraordinary threat

With this new authority, President Carter announced the freezing of all U.S.-Iranian financial assets, amounting to over $6 billion, including in branches of American banks abroad. Instantly, the world financial markets were thrown into a panic, and big dollar depositors in western Europe and the U.S., particularly the OPEC central banks, began to pull back from further commitments.

The Eurodollar market was paralyzed and most international lending halted until complex legal matters were sorted out.

However, the most serious consequence by far from the Carter Administration’s “emergency actions,” was in scaring other OPEC governments away from long-term lending precisely at a time when West Germany and France were seeking to attract deposits into the financial apparatus associated with the European Monetary System (EMS).

In addition, the Carter Administration’s insistent demands that western Europe and Japan invoke economic sanctions against Iran was like asking them to cut their own throats. Yet, the raised political tensions succeeded in breaking apart the economic alliances and the slow blood-letting of Europe commenced.

Within days of the taking of the hostages, the pretext was given for a vast expansion of U.S. military presence in the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.

The message was not lost on Europe. In a Nov 28, 1979 column in Le Figaro, Paul Marie de la Gorce, who was in close dialogue with the French presidential palace, concluded that U.S. military and economic intervention into Iran would cause “more damages for Europe and Japan than for Iran.” And that those who advocate such solutions are “consciously or not inspired by the lessons given by Henry Kissinger.”

During the 444 day hostage crisis, a full-scale U.S. invasion was always looming overhead. Such an invasion was never about seizing the oil supply for the U.S., but rather to deny it to western Europe and Japan.

If the U.S. were to have seized the oil supply in Iran, the body blow to the western European economies would have knocked out the EMS. Thus, during the 444 day holding of American hostages, this threat was held over the head of Europe like the sword of Damocles.

It is sufficed to say that today’s ongoing sanctions against Iran cannot be understood in their full weight and international ramifications without this historical background.

Read all:

https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/17/the-sword-of-damocles-over-western-e...

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Note: we've alredy tackled the Iranian nuclear issue on this site... Link to come.

Ex-CIA head Brennan wrong to call Iranian scientist killing ‘criminal,’ US also carried out such actions, ex-Mossad chief tells RT

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was gunned down last week in what many, including top Iranian officials, believe to be a clandestine Israeli operation. RT’s Going Underground spoke to Efraim Halevy, the former head of Israeli secret service Mossad, to discuss the high-profile assassination, criticism of the move coming from some senior intelligence figures in the US, and what possible goals may have been behind it.

John Brennan, the head of the CIA under Barack Obama, reacted to the killing with remarkably harsh words calling it a “criminal act,”“highly reckless” and possibly an “act of state-sponsored terrorism” that would be “a flagrant violation of international law.”

The characterization does not seem genuine coming from Brennan, Halevy said, considering that “American organizations and agencies in the past have carried out similar acts when they believed that an individual was endangering the national security of their country.”

I think that name-calling is not a very good idea in this kind of activity.

Brennan was the one official in the Obama administration to formally acknowledge for the first time that the CIA was running the highly controversial program of targeted drone assassinations. He insists that killing “terrorist leaders & operatives” is fundamentally different to what happened to Fakhrizadeh.

Halevy pointed out that Fakhrizadeh was not merely a scientist but also a high-ranking officer in the IRGC, Iran’s powerful military wing. He refused to assess whether targeting him was legitimate or not, saying such judgements don’t belong to retired officials. He also noted that as a political tool such killings were very limited.

“Targeted assassinations have the value of the moment and they are important as such,” he said. “But if you are looking for a strategic change as a result of such an operation you will not find it.”

RT also spoke about the situation with Sam Medhi Torabi, director of the Risalat Strategic Studies Institute in Iran, who said if Israel expected Iran to lash out after Fakhrizadeh’s murder and subject itself to retaliation, people in charge there don’t really know Iran.

The assassination “is not going to take Iran away from its strategic goal,” he said.

“Iran’s strategic goal is to drive out, expel the Americans from West Asia. It’s going to happen, the only issue is how it is going to happen,” he assured.

Watch the episode to learn more.

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https://www.rt.com/news/508788-iran-assassination-mossad-interview/

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See also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/12469

‘Trump & Biden are the same’, US policy toward Iran won’t change, General Soleimani’s daughter tells RT in emotional interview

“There’s no difference between Biden and Trump, they are the same guy. They are following the same policy, there’s no difference between them. Trump ordered the killing of my father, but Biden supported that, so there’s no difference,” Zeinab Soleimani told RT’s Afshin Rattansi on Going Underground in an interview to be aired on Wednesdsay.

READ MORE: Joe Biden has a very short window of opportunity in which America’s return to Iran nuclear deal is possible 

President-elect Biden has signaled that he was ready to reinvigorate the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that was thrown under the bus by Trump in 2018.

Still, Biden’s background leaves a lot of room for doubt, according to Zeinab Soleimani, who said it was Barack Obama’s administration that facilitated the creation of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorist group and sent the whole Middle East into turmoil. Moreover, US policy towards Iran has remained pretty much the same for decades already, she argued, and the change of the figurehead in the White House does not really matter.

The problem we have with America is their policy, this will not change. They are the same people, with the same mind, the same way. And each one is worse that the other one.

Trump’s decision to order the assassination of General Soleimani stemmed from the fact that her father jeopardized US plans in the region, invoking fury in Washington, she said. 

General Soleimani was killed early this year outside Baghdad International Airport by a US air strike as he was traveling in a car alongside high-ranking Iraqi military officials. The killing triggered unprecedented nationwide mourning in Iran, as well as in other countries in the region.

While the US regarded Soleimani as a “monster” – and he certainly was one for Washington –  the slain general has been a true “savior” for the people of his country as well as other nations of the Middle East, Zeinab Soleimani said.

My father did his job so well and made them so angry. You are seeing every plan they are making in the Middle East is destroyed. Everywhere they are trying to enter and hurt Iran they fail. Of course, for them my father is a big monster, but my father is a savior.

The assassination of Soleimani, however, did not constitute a victory for the US, but actually backfired, his daughter believes. It invoked more anger and hatred towards Washington in Iran, as well as in other countries of the region. The killing has made more people want to follow in Soleimani’s steps and fight the US, she warned. 

“After killing my father, America thought that everything will be stopped, because they killed General Soleimani, the power of the Middle East. But they are so wrong,” she said. “They are so wrong in thinking this will be the end of General Soleimani, this is the beginning.”

Zeinab Soleimani also touched upon one of the most recent hostile acts against Iran – the killing of the country’s leading nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated near Tehran late in November. Those behind the murder are certainly “not human”, given how the scientist was slain in cold blood for merely working for his country, she believes

“They’ve killed him so easily in his own country in front of… his wife,” she said. “How dare they come to our country and kill people so easily in the street?”

Watch the full interview on Going Underground on December 16.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/509675-iran-biden-trump-soleimani-daughter/

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Qassem Soleimani [9 Jan, 2020 12:12  / Updated 1 year ago]

The host of Redacted Tonight has listed six things about the highly controversial killing that the media has either ignored completely or under-reported, including the not-so-convenient fact that Soleimani had come to Baghdad to hold de-escalation talks with Saudi Arabia – before being killed by a US drone.

And what about the fact that the US carried out this strike without the permission of its democratic ‘ally’, Iraq, or the completely unsubstantiated accusation that Soleimani’s assassination was justified because he was plotting against the United States?

Camp tears into the media’s uncritical and all-too-familiar narrative, and asks: Do we really want to enter into a war that would likely kill millions of people, only to find out it was all based on lies – again?

Read more/watch video: https://www.rt.com/usa/477812-lee-camp-media-soleimani-lies/