Justice at Last? ‘Panic’ in Israel as the ICC Takes ‘Momentous Step’ in the Right Direction
By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | January 8, 2020
At long last, Fatou Bensouda, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has uttered the long-anticipated conclusion that “all the statutory criteria under the Rome statute for the opening of an investigation (into alleged war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories) have been met”.
Bensouda’s verdict has been in the making for a long time and should, frankly, have arrived much earlier. The ICC preliminary investigations into Israeli war crimes began back in 2015. Since then, many more such war crimes have been committed, while the international community persisted in its moral inertia.
The ICC statement, issued on December 20, asserted that the court saw “no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice”.
But can the “interest of justice” be served while the United States government continues to wield a massive stick, using its diplomatic, political and financial clout to ensure Israel emerges unscathed from its latest legal scuffle?
There is little doubt that Michael Lynk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory, is absolutely right: A formal ICC criminal investigation into war crimes in Palestine is a “momentous step forward in the quest for accountability”.
He is also correct in his assessment, published in the United Nations Human Rights Officer of the High Commissioner website, that “accountability has, until now, been largely missing in action throughout the 52-year-old occupation.”
I would go even further and expand the timeline of the missing accountability to include the two decades prior to the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Otherwise, how is one to account for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947-48, the numerous massacres and other wanton killings that accompanied and followed those defining years, or the fact that Israel was never held accountable for its violations of international and humanitarian laws between 1948 and 1967?
That issue notwithstanding, the Palestinian Authority and all political parties in Palestine should exploit this unprecedented opportunity of holding Israel accountable.
As soon as the ICC issued its statement, news reports surfaced conveying a sense of “panic” in Israel. The Times of Israel reported that an Israeli government meeting to discuss the ICC decision was held shortly after, with the aim of considering a proper response, including the possibility of preventing ICC investigators from reaching Israel.
This is eerily familiar. Israel has denied entry to – or refused to cooperate with – international investigators and observers on many occasions in the past.
Following a UN planned investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin in 2002, the Israeli government quickly moved, and, sadly, succeeded in blocking the investigation altogether.
It has done so time and again, often demonizing the very individuals entrusted with the mission of examining the illegality of Israel’s behavior in the context of international law. Well-respected judges and international law experts, such as Richard Goldstone, Richard Falk, and John Dugard, were vehemently attacked by Israeli officials and media and, by extension, by the US government and media as well.
Israel has managed to survive dozens of United Nations Resolutions and countless legal reports and indictments by the UN and all UN-affiliated organizations, largely because of blind and unequivocal American support, which has shielded Israeli war criminals from ever answering to their horrific actions in Palestine.
“Remember, it was (then-Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton who took pride in the fact that she personally killed the Goldstone Report,” said US author, Norman Finkelstein, in a recent interview with the news website Mondoweiss.
The Goldstone report was issued in the wake of the Israeli war on Gaza in 2009, dubbed ‘Operation Cast Lead’. The campaign of intimidation and pressure on Goldstone, personally, has forced the once-respected judge to retract his accusations of Israeli war crimes and the deliberate targeting of civilians.
While Clinton did her part in torpedoing the Goldstone Report, former US President, Barack Obama, according to Finkelstein, went to great lengths to “neutralize international law against settlements and other Israeli crimes in the occupied territories”.
Worse still, on September 14, 2016, Obama handed Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, himself accused of carrying out numerous war crimes against Palestinians, the largest US aid package to a foreign country in modern history, a whopping $38 billion over the course of ten years.
This is not a new phenomenon, where the US enables Israeli crimes and simultaneously shields Tel Aviv from any accountability for these crimes before the international community. All US administrations, whether Republican or Democrat, have honored the same sinister maxim, thus ensuring Israel, literally, gets away with murder.
A particular case in point was in 2001, when 28 Palestinian and Lebanese survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre attempted to try, in a Belgian court, late Israeli leader and accused war criminal, Ariel Sharon. Intense American pressures and a brazen intimidation campaign, targeting the Belgian government and the judicial system, resulted in the dismissal of the case in 2003. To deny Israel’s victims the opportunity to seek justice everywhere in the country, Belgium revised its very law, to the satisfaction of Israel and the United States.
The high level of the ICC investigations places the legal push against Israel at a whole new level. This is uncharted territory for Israel, the United States, Palestine, the ICC and the international community as a whole. There is little doubt that some joint Israeli-American effort is already underway to develop strategies aimed at countering if not altogether dismissing, the ICC investigation.
It is clear that justice for Palestinians in the face of Israeli aggression, itself fueled by unconditional American support, is not at all possible if it is not accompanied by regional and international unity, and a clear and decisive decision by all parties concerned that Israel, once and for all, must pay for its military occupation, racist apartheid laws, protracted siege on Gaza, and the many massacres in between.
Without this kind of international will, the ICC investigation could become another sad case of justice denied, a non-acceptable option for any justice-seeking individual, organization, and government anywhere in the world.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU).
Iran didn’t want to kill US troops with its strike, it wanted to make point to Trump about its missile tech & resolve. It did that.
By Scott Ritter | RT | January 8, 2020
Iran’s anticipated retaliation for the US assassination of Qassem Suleimani sent a clear signal to Donald Trump that while the current round of violence may be over, Iran stands ready to respond to any future US provocation.
Tehran warned Iraq to spare US soldiers
On Tuesday night, the Iranian nation buried the body of Qassem Soleimani, the charismatic senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer assassinated by the US this past week. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, that task completed, Soleimani’s IRGC comrades, acting on the orders of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, launched some 22 ballistic missiles from Iranian territory into neighboring Iraq, targeting the huge US air base Al Asad, in western Iraq, and the US consulate in the city of Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan.
In the hours following the announcement of these attacks, which were broadcast on Iranian television for the Iranian people, the world held its breath, waiting for the results. Shortly after the missiles were launched, Iran signaled its desire for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis through a tweet sent out by its Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, who described the attacks as “proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of UN Charter.” Zarif concluded by noting that “We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression.”
The ultimate decision to deescalate, however, was not Iran’s to make. War is not a one-way street, and the enemy always gets a vote. However, in launching its missile attack on US targets in Iraq, Iran appeared to go out of its way to signal that it considered the matter of retaliation for the assassination of Soleimani closed. First and foremost, Iran communicated its intent to strike US targets in Iraq directly to the Iraqi Prime Minister a full two hours prior to the missiles being launched; Iraq then shared this information with US military commanders, who were able to ensure all US troops were in hardened shelters at the time of the attack.
Showing off its new-gen ballistic missiles
But the most important aspect of Iran’s actions was the way its missiles were targeted. For years now, Iran has made significant strides in terms of the reliability, range and accuracy of its ballistic missile force. Gone are the days when Iran’s arsenal consisted solely of inaccurate Soviet-era SCUD missiles.
The missile attack on the US incorporated new, advanced missiles—the Qaim 1 and Fahad-110—possessing advanced guidance and control capable of pinpoint precision. Iran had used these weapons previously, striking targets inside Syria affiliated with the Islamic State. But this was the first time these weapons had been used against the US. From the US perspective, the results were sobering. The Iranian missile attacks resulted in no casualties among US, Iraqi or coalition forces stationed in either Al Asad or Erbil. But the lack of lethality, however, is actually Tehran’s way of proving the accuracy of its ballistic missiles.
Commercial satellite images of the Al Asad air base taken after the attack show that the Iranian missiles struck buildings containing equipment with a precision previously only thought possible by advanced powers such as the US, NATO, Russia and China. Iran fired 17 missiles at Al Asad, and 15 hit their targets (two missiles failed to detonate).
Iran also fired five additional missiles at the US consulate in Erbil; US commanders on the ground said that it appeared Iran deliberately avoided striking the consulate, but in doing so sent a clear signal that had it wanted, the consulate would have been destroyed.
Trump had to back down
This was the reality that President Trump had to wrestle with when addressing the American people regarding the state of hostilities between the US and Iran.
Trump had previously promised a massive retaliation should Iran attack any US personnel or facilities. Surrounded by his national security team, Trump had to back down from that threat, knowing full well that if he were to attack Iran, the Iranian response would be devastating for both the US and its regional allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The US might be able to inflict unimaginable devastation on Iran, but the cost paid would be unacceptably high.
Trump’s rhetoric was aggressive, however, and his message made it clear that the US still considered Iran to be a rogue state whose pursuit of nuclear technology, ballistic missiles, and regional dominance would be opposed by the US, with force if necessary. But the Iranian missile attack drove home the new reality that, when it came to Iran’s actions in the Persian Gulf, American Presidential rhetoric no longer held sway as it once did.
Ali Khamenei, the Iranian Supreme Leader, drove this point home in a series of tweets claiming to have “slapped” the US in the face for its assassination of Soleimani, emphasizing that the policies pursued by Soleimani seeking the withdrawal of the US from the Persian Gulf region were becoming a reality, citing the recent vote by the Iraqi parliament to evict all foreign troops, including those of the US, from its soil.
President Trump, in his address to the American people, certainly talked the talk when it came to articulating a strong anti-Iranian policy. The real question is whether Trump and the American people are prepared to walk the walk, especially in a world where Iranian missiles are capable of dealing death and destruction on a scope and scale previously unimaginable.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.
Russia Proposes To Secure Iraqi Airspace With S-400 Air Defense
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 01/07/2020
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation has offered Iraq Tuesday the option to purchase the world’s most advanced missile defense system to protect its airspace, reported RIA Novosti.
According to the report, the Iraqi Armed Forces could purchase the Russian S-400 Triumf air defense system, which RIA points out, can “ensure the country’s sovereignty and reliable airspace protection.”
“Iraq is a partner of Russia in the field of military-technical cooperation, and the Russian Federation can supply the necessary funds to ensure the sovereignty of the country and reliable protection of airspace, including the supply of S-400 missiles and other components of the air defense system, such as Buk-M3, Tor -M2 “and so on,” said Igor Korotchenko, Russian Defense Ministry’s Public Council member.
For the last several months, Iraq has considered purchasing Russian air defense and missile systems, including the S-400, however, it has been met with fierce pressure from the US.
But with a political crisis between the US and Iraq underway, thanks partly to the US assassination of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Russia could profit as Iraq attempts to decouple from the US.
A recent U.S. intelligence assessment indicated that at least 13 countries had expressed interest in purchasing the S-400s.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Vietnam, and Iraq have all be in discussions with Russia to purchase the missile defense system in the last several quarters.
Meanwhile, China, India, and Turkey have already signed agreements with Russia.
The S-400s can strike stealth bombers, aircraft, cruise missiles, precision-guided projectiles, and ballistic missiles, some military experts have even said the Russian missile defense system is far superior than the US’ MIM-104 Patriot.
US denies Iran’s FM Zarif visa to address Security Council in violation of UN treaty – reports
RT | January 7, 2020
Washington has reportedly refused to issue a visa to Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, even though, as the host of the United Nations headquarters, the US is obliged to allow foreign officials into the country.
According to multiple diplomatic sources, 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.
The murder of Soleimani, who played a key role in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists in Syria and Iraq, has drawn outrage across Iran and Iraq, with Tehran vowing to avenge the assassination, which it called “an act of international terrorism.” Washington, meanwhile, insists that Soleimani was the mastermind behind a spate of attacks on American personnel, including at the US Embassy, and says he was plotting new assaults.
This wouldn’t be the first time Washington abused its status as the host of the UN headquarters, refusing to issue visas for nearly a dozen members of the Russian delegation to a summit in New York last year.
Enrichment based on technical needs: Iran rolls back on 2015 nuclear deal
RT | January 5, 2020
Tehran has removed the last constraints it agreed to impose on its nuclear program under the 2015 deal but said it is ready to return to fulfilling its obligations under the agreement if the US lifts sanctions.
Iran’s nuclear program “no longer faces any operating restrictions,” a government statement cited by Iranian media said, adding that parameters of enrichment capacity, enrichment level and the amount of enriched material would from now on be determined only by the program’s “technical needs.”
Tehran still vowed to continue its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and said that it could potentially return to fulfilling its obligations under the nuclear deal if sanctions imposed by Washington are lifted and Tehran’s interests are respected.
Mexico orders ambassador in Bolivia to return after she declared non grata
Press TV – December 30, 2019
Mexico has ordered its ambassador in Bolivia to return to the country in order to ensure her safety.
The Mexican Foreign Ministry said on Monday that the order was issued after Bolivia declared Mexico’s Ambassador Maria Teresa Mercado a “persona non grata.”
Bolivia’s interim leader Jeanine Anez announced Monday that the country has decided to expel Mexico’s ambassador and two Spanish diplomats.
“The constitutional government that I preside over has decided to declare persona non grata the ambassador of Mexico in Bolivia, Maria Teresa Mercado, the charge d’affaires of Spain, Cristina Borreguero, and the (Spanish) consul, Alvaro Fernandez,” Anez said.
The announcement came after Bolivia accused Spanish embassy staff of trying to infiltrate the Mexican mission in the Bolivian capital, La Paz, with a group of masked men to take out former Bolivian president Evo Morales’s aide.
Madrid has strongly denied the accusation.
“The ministry wishes to clarify that the charge d’affaires was purely making a courtesy visit and vehemently denies there was any aim to facilitate the exit of people holed up inside the building,” Spain’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Mexican embassy in La Paz has become the center of the diplomatic row after it housed nine officials from Morales’s former government.
On Thursday, Mexico said the Bolivian regime is “harassing” and “intimidating” its diplomatic personnel in La Paz in what seems to be retribution for the granting of asylum by Mexico to Morales.
Mexico City said Bolivia has, among other things, boosted police presence outside the Mexican diplomatic mission in La Paz since Monday, intimidating the diplomats.
Last month, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gave political asylum to Morales, who had been forced to resign under pressure from the country’s military.
Morales has since relocated to Argentina.
Morales, who had already been president since 2006, won his country’s presidential election in October, but the Bolivian military and opposition claimed that the election had been rigged, inciting deadly street protests.
The 60-year-old president, who enjoys a broad popular base both at home and in Latin America, nevertheless decided to step down and go into exile in Mexico amid threats of violence against him and with an apparent intention not to push the country toward further instability.
New Year’s swap: Dozens head home as Ukraine & breakaway Donbass conduct ‘all for all’ prisoner exchange
RT | December 29, 2019
Kiev is exchanging dozens of prisoners with the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics in the first such effort in two years. The swap was given a boost at the recent Normandy Four talks in Paris.
The self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic has handed over 51 people to Kiev, while receiving 61 of their followers. The Lugansk region returned 25 and took in 63 prisoners; nine people held by Kiev refused to partake in the exchange.
The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Kiev had received a total of 76 people from Donetsk and Lugansk.
Donetsk’s authorities said their list could be longer, as some people asked to be repatriated shortly before the exchange.
The swap, carried out under an “all for all” formula, was the first since a similar humanitarian effort in December 2017.
The prisoner exchange was overseen by officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). No ceasefire violations were recorded on the frontier.
It also comes weeks after leaders from France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine agreed at a peace summit in Paris to push for a full ceasefire and a new troop disengagement by March 2020.
The summit was the first of its kind in three years, also marking the first time Russian President Vladimir Putin talked reconciliation with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Before the summit, Kiev and the rebel forces ordered a partial pullback in several areas of the frontline. However, several Ukrainian nationalist organizations stood up against Zelensky’s policies, even deploying their own armed groups to prevent the government from withdrawing their soldiers.
More Holocaust Reparations for 2020: the Gift That Keeps on Giving
Yad Vashem – Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu, Donald Trump and Melania, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, Rabbi Yisrael lau. credit: Amos Ben Gershom GPO/ Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs/ Flickr)
By Philip Giraldi • American Herald Tribune • December 29, 2019
Now that 2019 has ended, it is more than seventy-four years since the end of the Second World War. America’s “Greatest Generation” that actually fought the war and endured it on the home front, is dying off and the remembrance of the conflict is increasingly experienced second hand, if at all. The war has been relegated to the history books, one might think, but that would be to ignore one aspect of it which seems to never fade from sight. That would be the so-called holocaust, which has produced a host of taxpayer funded museums, is regularly featured in the media and also is part of mandatory public education in a growing number of states and school districts.
That the established holocaust narrative lives on in spite of its irrelevancy and obvious contradictions is a reflection of Jewish power in the United States. Since the 1970s, when the regular evocations of the holocaust began in earnest, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade’s corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely two percent of the nation’s population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation’s largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, The New York Times. The role and influence of Jews in American politics has also developed simultaneously, with Jews heavily over-represented in the Democratic Party and in Congress.
The rise to power on the part of American Jews coincided with the trajectory of Israel in the Middle East. Protecting Israel and Jewish privilege became two sides of the same coin, leading to creation of the holocaust narrative, which Professor Norman Finkelstein has aptly described as The Holocaust Industry. And promotion of the sanctity of the holocaust story has enabled the damnation of skeptics as holocaust-deniers while also increasing the exploitation of the charge of anti-Semitism for those who would dare to criticize either the Jewish tribe itself or Israel.
One of the singular manifestations of the Jewish power in both the U.S. and in Europe has been the creation of mechanisms to address the perceived needs of “holocaust survivors.” One might argue reasonably enough that there cannot be actually that many genuine survivors remaining after 74 years, but the term has proven to be extremely elastic. It has come to include not only the actual victims who were allegedly sent to labor or concentration camps but also any Jew who survived 1939 through 1945 in Europe or even in Asia living in ghettos. And it also includes their children, even if born after the war.
Stuart E. Eizenstat, former Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State on Holocaust-Era Issues. Credit: U.S. National Archives/ Flickr
As a result, the so-called holocaust survivors are now well into their second generation, receiving extra Social Security and Medicare benefits in the United States as well as a steady flow of reparations from Germany and other Europeans, to include France, where forty-nine people who made it out of the Holocaust alive are receiving around $400,000 each, helped by the State Department’s expert on holocaust issues Stuart Eizenstat. The U.S. State Department even has a Holocaust Deportation Claims Program which is always staffed by Jews like Eizenstat.
The reparations programs are generally structured in a way that the payments are limited to Jews, even though there were millions more non-Jews who were victims of the German camps and prisons. Recently there have even been claims that the traumatic holocaust experience might have caused genetic damage, meaning that the need to address the issue by extorting money from the German and other governments will conceivably extend into the foreseeable future.
When in doubt about where to find the money, it is only necessary to get in touch with a professional Zionist Zealot like Eizenstat or with one of the commercial firms that is into the holocaust reparations business. The International Center for Holocaust Reparations is one of them, a corporation registered in Israel with offices located in Jerusalem, Berlin and in Pompano Beach Florida. It was founded by Israeli Zachi Porath and the actual incorporation is in his name as Zachi Porath Ltd.
The organization website headlines that it is “Pursuing Rights of Holocaust Survivors.” It is indeed doing so in a manner of speaking, but it is also a business that makes money by taking a cut of what it obtains. Its website asks what it considers to be key screening questions: “Are you a Holocaust survivor who was interned in a Ghetto?” and “Are you a child of a Holocaust survivor who was interned in a Ghetto?” before getting to the crux of the matter, “You may be entitled to a large sum of money! Even if you are already receiving compensation from the Claims Conference or from the German authorities, including the German Pension Insurance you may be eligible to receive additional payments.”
According to the website “The pension is paid even to those who were interned for a short period of time in a Ghetto (including Ghettos in Poland, Romania, Czernowitz, Shanghai, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Transnistria, Amsterdam, Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus and many more). The possibilities are for a one-time retroactive compensation, as well as a monthly payment from the German Social Security… If you are an heir of a ghetto survivor, and the survivor or their spouse was alive on June 27th 2002, you may be entitled to a one-time payment… We will help you to file the claims for all the money you justly deserve… After you have received the restitution payment, we will charge a fee of 15% of the retroactive sum.”
The website also advises that even second-generation survivors whose parents were interned in a ghetto somewhere for even a short time “may be entitled to a one-time compensation payment… We have been aiding Holocaust survivors all over the world in exercising their rights and have successfully helped many survivors attain their rightful money.”
Some might object to the assertion that Jewish suffering in the war was somehow unique given the fact that far more Russians died than Jews. But the difference is one of perception, due to the effective marketing of a preferred narrative by a powerful and wealthy group that has easy access to the media, to the entertainment industry and to policy makers. And one should not be dismissive of the hard work that has gone into making holocaust reparations eternal. It takes a great deal of ingenuity to devise mechanisms that separate German, French and American taxpayers from their money in perpetuity on behalf of numerous people concentrated apparently in Israel and Florida who may not have suffered at all in the Second World War.
Russia says extension of UN arms embargo on Iran out of question
Press TV – December 27, 2019
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has ruled out the possibility of renewing a UN arms embargo against Iran which is to expire in October 2020 in line with the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
Speaking to the Russian news agency Interfax, Ryabkov said restrictions on Iran’s import and export of arms will expire next year as per the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and it is not possible to renew them.
The US officials’ calls for extension of the embargo are considered as a foreign policy move that has no basis and principle, Ryabkov noted, highlighting that the removal of the embargo is based on the JCPOA, signed by several parties including the US and endorsed by the UN Security Council Resolution 2231.
The Russian official said Moscow is not going to bow to the US demands whenever they want. “They may come up with something else next time.”
Under the nuclear deal, from which the US unilaterally withdrew last year, a UN ban on weapons sales to Tehran will end in October 2020.
Last month, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran intends to stay in the nuclear deal despite the US violations, arguing that the accord will be put to good use next year when a long-running arms embargo against Tehran comes to an end.
“By continuing the JCPOA, we will fulfill a major objective in terms of politics, security and defense,” he said.
Noting that for years Iran has been banned by the United Nations from buying and selling any kinds of weapons, Rouhani said the arms embargo will end next year according to the deal and the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorses it.
“This is one of the important effects of this deal. Otherwise, we could leave the deal today but the kind of benefit we stand to reap next year will no longer exist,” he said.
As the expiration date gets closer, the White House is getting more nervous and American authorities are doing their utmost to make the restrictions permanent.
Last October, US special envoy to Iran Brian Hook told a congressional hearing on US-Iran policy that Washington wanted the UN Security Council to renew the Iranian arms embargo.
One of the issues used by the United States to withdraw from the nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries was the time span of the UN arms embargo on Iran. The measure covers all weapons sales and “related material” to Iran.
Earlier in August, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed concern that the resolution restricting weapons sales to Iran is due to end in October 2020.
Iran’s Ambassador to the UN Majid Takht Ravanchi responded to Pompeo’s comments and slammed the United States for causing insecurity and instability with its military presence and “unbridled flow of American weaponry into this region, which has turned it into a powder keg.”
Thousands of Russia immigrants to Israel left again after getting passports
MEMO | December 19, 2019
Thousands of immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union “may have come only to receive an Israeli passport before moving back abroad”, reported JTA, with the total such cases amounting to up to a quarter of all Russian immigrants.
The article, citing reporting done by Israeli weekly newspaper Makor Rishon, described how “a cottage industry of companies promising expedited Israeli citizenship, and the passport that comes with it” emerged in Russia, “since the passage of a law allowing new immigrants to receive the travel document within the first three months of [moving to Israel]”.
According to the report, “for many in the post-Soviet world, an Israeli passport is considered as desirable as a European Union passport is to Israelis.”
Now, Russian “fixers” are advertising that they can help those able to emigrate to Israel to obtain Israeli citizenship “within two days” for “a cost of thousands of euros”.
JTA added that, according to Makor Rishon,
Under certain circumstances… the three-month period can be shortened to as little as a day, and some immigrants have even been able to receive their passports without having to leave Ben Gurion International Airport.
Based on data from Israel’s Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, it is estimated that approximately 8,500 immigrants from the former Soviet Union “have come just for the passport before immediately leaving the country”.
One official from the Jewish Agency suggested that as many as 25 per cent of the immigrants came for a passport and “left the country immediately after receiving it”.
In 2018, roughly 10,500 Russians and 6,400 Ukrainians emigrated to Israel, “which was the first year that the majority of new immigrants were not considered Jewish under…Jewish religious law”.
‘US State Department to cut Iraq-based personnel by third’
Press TV – December 18, 2019
The US State Department reportedly plans to significantly and permanently draw down the number of its personnel in Iraq.
CNN reported Wednesday that it had obtained a memo sent in early December by the State Department to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, outlining the plan to cut the number of its Iraq-based staffers by 28% by the end of May 2020.
The reduction would mean 114 fewer people at the US Embassy in Baghdad, 15 fewer people at the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center, and eight fewer people at Consulate General in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, the report said.
The cuts would also include Defense Department and US Agency for International Development personnel, the report added.
The diplomatic mission, the memo said, would still be able to achieve its “core objectives” despite the drawdown.
The reported plan comes amid ongoing US attempts to accuse Iran of trying to target its interests in the Arab country.
Back in May, the State Department, in a travel advisory, ordered “non-emergency US government employees” to leave the Baghdad embassy and the consulate in Erbil.
The advisory did not mention Iran, but senior State Department officials said at the time that the cautionary note had been issued because of an “imminent threat” from Iranian “proxies.”
Rejecting the claims back then, Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations said that Washington’s measure was “the latest episode in America’s propaganda war against Iran based on fake intelligence reports.”
Most recently, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened Iran with “decisive” action, accusing it of providing “lethal aid and support to third parties in Iraq and throughout the region.”
The claims come as several rocket attacks have been reported on Iraqi bases hosting US troops as well as foreign missions in Baghdad, which has been, along with other Iraqi cities, the scene of street protests over economic woes since October.
Ali Rabiei, spokesman for the Iranian administration, responded to the threat on Monday, noting that Pompeo had failed to substantiate his allegations with any evidence.
He stated that it was only natural for American facilities to come under attack at a time when Iraq is witnessing protests and when the whole Arab country is facing ambiguity caused by the US interference.
Saudi Arabia reads the riot act to Imran Khan
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | December 17, 2019
The Kuala Lumpur Summit 2019 hosted by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on December 18-21 was originally conceived as a landmark event in the politics of the Muslim world. It still is, albeit on a wet wicket struggling to tackle a nasty googly that Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan threw at the event at the last minute.
To recap, the idea of the KL Summit was born out of a trilateral pow-vow between Turkish President Recep Erdogan, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed and Pakistan’s Imran Khan in September on the sidelines of the UN GA session in New York.
The common perception of the three countries was that the Muslim World failed to react forcefully enough to the emergent situation affecting the Kashmiri Muslims. Pakistan actively promoted the perception that the leadership of the ummah was not reacting forcefully enough over Muslim issues such as Kashmir.
On November 23, while announcing his decision to host the KL Summit, Mahathir said that the new platform hoped to bring together Islamic leaders, scholars and clerics who would propose solutions to the many problems facing the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims. He disclosed that dignitaries attending the KL Summit would include Erdogan, the Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, and Imran Khan.
The role of politics in development, food security, preserving national identity, and redistributing wealth were listed as other topics to be discussed, alongside the expulsion of Muslims from their homelands and the categorisation of Islam as the “religion of terrorism”.
In poignant remarks, Mahathir bemoaned that no Muslim country was fully developed, and that some Islamic nations were “failed states”. He said,
“Why is there this problem? There must be a reason behind this. We can only know the reason if we get the thinkers, the scholars, and the leaders to give their observations and viewpoints.
“Perhaps we can take that first step … to help Muslims recover their past glories, or at least to help them avoid the kind of humiliation and oppression that we see around the world today.”
Importantly, Mahathir described the summit as a meeting of minds that had the “same perception of Islam and the problems faced by the Muslims”.
From among the list of invitees, it now turns out that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will be attending tomorrow’s summit, but King Salman of Saudi Arabia has regretted that the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) is being bypassed.
Mahathir disclosed that King Salman conveyed to him in a phone conversation that it was better that the Muslim issues were discussed in a full-fledged OIC meeting. Mahathir said laconically,
“He (King Salman) wanted to tell me the reasons why he couldn’t make it. He’s afraid that something not good will happen to the Muslims. He has a different opinion from us. He feels that matters like these (Muslim issues) shouldn’t just be discussed by two or three countries, and there should be an OIC meeting and I agreed with him.”
The testy exchange signalled that the Saudi regime sees the KL Summit as a calculated challenge to its leadership of the ummah and as an initiative about laying the foundations for an Islamic alliance.
Mahathir is outspoken but what is less noticed is that his positions actually align closely with those of Turkey and Pakistan. These include the Palestinian question, the situation in Jammu & Kashmir and the persecution of the Rohingya community in Myanmar.
According to the Malaysian news agency Bernama, the KL Summit “aims to revive Islamic civilization, deliberate (over) and find new and workable solutions for problems afflicting the Muslim world, contribute (to) the improvement of the state of affairs among Muslims and Muslim nations, and form a global network between Islamic leaders, intellectuals, scholars, and thinkers.”
In sheer brain power, Saudi Arabia cannot match such an agenda. A sense of frustration has been building up over the past decade or so among the Muslim countries that the OIC is reduced to an appendage of the Saudi foreign policies. Saudi Arabia’s rift with Qatar, its rivalries with Iran, the brutal war in Yemen, the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, etc. also seriously dented Riyadh’s image in the most recent years.
Of course, Saudis hold a big purse and that still translates as influence but the new Islamic forum is poised to move in a direction that is progressive and far more inspiring, with plans to pursue joint projects, including, eventually, the introduction of a common currency.
Mahathir is on record that this mini-Islamic conference could turn into a much grander initiative down the road. Such optimism cannot be disregarded since a growing number of Muslim-majority countries harbour great unease over the near-term prospect of the ascendancy of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the Saudi king and the next Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.
Saudi Arabia, anticipating the gambit being thrown down by Mahathir has reacted viciously to undercut the KL Summit. It tore into the summit’s ‘soft underbelly’ by reading the riot act to Imran Khan, which put the fear of god into Imran Khan and how it happened we do not know, but the great cricketer panicked and has since called Mahathir to regret that he cannot attend the KL Summit.
No doubt, it is a big insult to Mahathir’s personal prestige but as the old adage says, beggars cannot be choosers and Imran Khan is left with no choice but to obey the Saudi diktat like a vassal.
With Imran Khan staying away, Mahathir is left to host his counterparts from Turkey, Iran, Qatar and Indonesia. The fizz has gone out of the KL Summit. Nonetheless, Mahathir is not the type of person to forget and forgive. His initial reaction to Imran Khan’s cowardly behaviour shows studied indifference, betraying his sense of hurt.
Pakistan is ultimately the loser here, as its credibility has been seriously dented. Imran Khan was the original promoter of the idea of the three-way axis of Turkey-Pakistan-Malaysia. But to be fair, his modest agenda was to create an exclusive India-baiting regional forum that he can use at will, whereas Mahathir turned it into an unprecedented Islamic forum that is independent of Saudi influence. Perhaps, Mahathir can only blame himself for the overreach.
Featured Video
MIT Professsor Ted Postol: Patriot Missile Capabilties
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Jewish Guilt is the Discourse of The Goyim
By Gilad Atzmon | April 24, 2018
For quite some time the British have accepted that British Jewish organizations have hijacked the political discourse. As has happened in other Western countries, the British political establishment has engaged is a relentless rant against antisemitsm. Sometime the focus drifts for a day or two. An alleged ‘Russian nerve gas attack’ provided a 48 hour pause. Occasionally we bomb Arabs in the name of ‘human intervention’ only to realize a day or two later that we have, once again, followed a premeditated foreign agenda. But, somehow, we always return to the antisemitism debate, as if our media and politicians are a herd of flies gravitating to a pile of poop. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Which Country Is the Big Loser from the Ramadan War?
- Israeli Intel Whistleblower: Israel Ended Clinton Iran Deal With Epstein Blackmail
- MIT Professsor Ted Postol: Patriot Missile Capabilties
- Israel Brings The War Rhetoric Towards Türkiye
- The Swiss summit of imperial humiliation
- Iran to continue IAEA cooperation under existing framework, SNSC decision: Baghaei
- Report highlights US munitions crisis: Missiles cannot be replenished quickly even with al the money in the world
- Iran’s Oil Spigot Could Open Soon But Hurdles Remain
- Trump’s Attempt to End the Iran War Infuriates the Uniparty
- First round of Swiss-hosted Iran-US talks ends with 5 key agreements
- If Americans Knew
- In Gaza, another senseless death on what should have been a joyous day – Daily Update
- The Republican & Democratic Politicians Trying to Scuttle Iran Agreement
- Israel’s continued targeting of civilians in Lebanon renders ceasefire meaningless
- U.S. intelligence warns Israel is likely to undermine Iran peace deal, officials say
- In Gaza, Fathers Can’t Promise Their Children Food, Safety, or Even Survival
- This baby joins thousands of Gazans in need of medical evacuation
- Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist & Beloved Ecologist: 2 Articles
- Promoters of Israel: Leo Terrell, Ghana, Floyd Mayweather, Van Jones
- Gaza Soccer Player Who Dreamed of Competing in World Cup Can Now Barely Watch It
- Gaza baby loses mom and a leg; Palestinian prisoner tortured to death – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- 3 New Studies Find Increasing Trends In Solar Radiation Since The 1980s – Easily Explaining Warming
- THE TRANSCEIVER PARADOX: Why Organoid Intelligence (OI) Could Become Our Ultimate Alien Predator
- German Wind Turbines Face Regulatory Shutdown Due To Excessive Noise
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
Aletho News 