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Washington Has Violated Iran Deal ‘Ever Since the Agreement Was Signed’

Sputnik – 25.04.2018

European leaders are clamoring for US President Donald Trump not to rip up the historic 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Whether or not Trump kills the deal, the US hasn’t been living up to its end of the bargain since the agreement was signed, according to Mohammad Marandi, a professor at Iran’s University of Tehran.

​French President Emmanuel Macron is in Washington to convince Trump to go against the suggestions of new neoconservative National Security Adviser John Bolton and keep the 2015 Iran nuclear deal intact.

While anything is possible between now and May 12 — when Trump must renew the the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — Bolton’s role in the White House has led to increasing conviction among political observers that Trump will pull the US out of the history agreement struck by his predecessor.

“The Iranians have, for a very long time, been sensing that the deal is coming to an end. Ever since the agreement was signed, the United States has been violating it,” Marandi told Sputnik Radio’s Loud & Clear on Tuesday.

“Under [former] President Barack Obama, they passed the nuclear restriction laws. They also passed — again, despite promises to do otherwise — the Iran Sanctions Act. The Treasury Department has constantly added people and institutions to the sanctions list. But also, more importantly, the United States behind the scenes was putting pressure on banks, financial institutions, insurance companies and shipping companies not to work with Iran. That was in direct violation of the agreement, specifically between Articles 26 and 29,” Marandi, a professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran, said.

Earlier in the day, Trump actually hinted that he may have reached an “understanding” with Macron on the Iran deal. “We could have at least an agreement, among ourselves, fairly quickly… I think our meeting, our one-on-one, went very, very well,” Trump said following the meeting in the Oval Office, shortly before the joint news conference.

And during their joint news conference, Macron introduced the idea of building on top of the Iran nuclear arms deal to accomplish mutual goals instead of tearing up the JCPOA.

“We’re going to have a short little meeting and it turned out to be a long meeting, and it could have gone on for another two hours,” Trump said following extended talks with the French president. “We’ve come a long way — just the two of us — as understanding.”

“We talked about Iran. We talked about Syria… I think we really had some substantive talks on Iran, maybe more than anything else. We’re looking forward to doing something, but it has to be done, and it has to be done strongly,” the New York native said Tuesday.

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US building huge drone base in Niger

Press TV – April 24, 2018

The US military has started construction for a huge military base in the African country of Niger, which officials say will be used for airstrikes and intelligence operations by unmanned aircraft in West Africa.

US Air Force personnel have been constructing hangars and runways for drones in central Niger for some time now, The Associated Press reported Monday, stating that the base was being built outside of Agadez upon a request by Niger’s government.

It was not clear how many drones the USAF was going to deploy to the base, which unnamed officials said was going to be the “largest troop labor construction project in US history” with an estimated cost of more than $110 million.

The report did not mention how the base was going to help American military plans in Africa, which for the large part have remained secret.

Niger has been playing a key role in those plans as the Pentagon has doubled the number of its troops in the country to around 800 over the past few years.

Additionally, US Army Green Berets have been training Nigerien military forces near the nascent military base.

“Already the US military presence here is the second largest in Africa, behind the sole permanent US base on the continent, in the tiny nation of Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa,” the AP noted.

More light is expected to be shed on the US military’s missions in Niger once the Pentagon concludes a high-profile investigation into a deadly ambush in October of last year that killed four American soldiers near Niger’s border with Mali.

It was a month after this attack that Nigerien Defense Minister Kalla Mountari said his country was open to allowing US drone strikes against terror outfits such as Daesh.

The growing US presence in Niger has stirred concern among the officials of the poor, former French colony.

“We are afraid of falling back into the same situation as in Afghanistan, with many mistakes made by American soldiers who did not always know the difference between a wedding ceremony and a training of terrorist groups,” Nigerian government official Amadou Roufai told AP.

According to the report, the US will use the base to operate the MQ-9 Reaper drone, arguably the most advanced drone in the Pentagon’s arsenal.

With a range of around 1,150 miles (1850km), the aircraft can provide strike support and intelligence gathering capabilities across West and North Africa.

The aircraft can carry GBU-12 Paveway II bombs and four Hellfire air-to-ground anti-armor and anti-personnel missiles.

Once completed, the base would add to the US military’s inventory of over 800 bases in more than 70 countries.

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

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