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Iran resets its foreign policy calculus

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | May 25, 2019

The unannounced overnight visit by Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to Pakistan on Thursday can be seen at the very minimum as forming part of a diplomatic campaign in the backdrop of the war clouds building up in the Persian Gulf. This regional tour has already taken Zarif to Russia, China, Turkmenistan, India and Japan.

For Iran, Pakistan is an important neighbour and the two countries have a history of troubled relations. (See my recent blogs Pakistan-Iran ties set for makeover – Part I and Part II.) In the prevailing regional setting, Pakistan’s importance for the Iranian geo-strategies has become crucial.

In immediate terms, King Salman has sent out invitations to two summits he’ll be hosting in Mecca on May 30 — back-to-back summits of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Arab League — where the leitmotif is the rising tensions with Iran. Neither GCC nor Arab League carries credibility, but Saudi Arabia is hoping that the Muslim Middle East will stand up and be counted in the vanguard of the US-led ‘Iran project’.

Enter Pakistan. Pakistan already has stated it will not take sides in the looming confrontation. Pakistan has described the crisis in the Persian Gulf region as “disturbing” and said that Washington’s decision to deploy an aircraft carrier and bombers has fuelled tensions and exacerbated “the existing precarious security situation” in the Middle East.

Just before Zarif’s arrival in Islamabad, Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman said, “We expect all sides to show restraint, as any miscalculated move can transmute into a large-scale conflict. Pakistan always supports dialogue and desires that all issues should be settled peacefully and through engagement by all sides.”

Pakistan’s stance of ‘positive neutrality’ works in favour of Tehran. Importantly, it is in stark contrast with the deafening silence of New Delhi, which has caved in to US diktat and summarily terminated all imports of Iranian oil. Suffice to say, Pakistan has moved to neutral ground at a juncture while India is bonding with the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — the ‘Quad’ group that pioneers the project to force a ‘regime change’ in Iran.

Delhi gave a pro forma reception to Zarif ten days ago when he came on an unannounced visit and Indian government sources went out of the way to prompt the media to see the event as entirely at Iran’s insistance. In comparison, Pakistan graciously received Zarif, who met the Pakistani Prime Minister and Foreign Minister as well as the army chief and the speaker of the national assembly.

Without doubt, the shift in India’s Middle East policies will have registered in the Iranian political establishment at the highest level. Simply put, Delhi has turned its back on Tehran and a  sense of betrayal is only natural in Tehran, which strained every nerve to befriend India. And the fact remains that unlike with Iran’s ties with Pakistan, there are no contradictions in Iran’s bilateral ties with India.

In view of the above, significantly, Zarif made a stopover in Chabahar Port en route to Islamabad on Thursday. No doubt, this development is heavy with symbolism, because Chabahar symbolises not only the unfulfilled Iranian expectations from partnership with India but stands out today as a relic of India’s betrayal. (See my blog India’s Betrayal of Iran Is Only the Beginning.) 

(Iran’s FM Zarif at Chabahar en route to Islamabad on May 23, 2019)

In his first remarks after arrival in Islamabad, Zarif disclosed that he intended to put forward a “proposal” for connecting Pakistan’s Gwadar port to its “complementary” port Chabahar (located just 72 kms away in southeastern Iran.) To quote Zarif,

“We believe that Chabahar and Gwadar can complement each other. We can connect Chabahar and Gwadar, and then through that, connect Gwadar to our entire railroad system, from Iran to the North Corridor, through Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, and also through Azerbaijan, Russia, and Turkey.”

Make no mistake that this is a wholesome proposal. An experienced career diplomat like Zarif is not in the business of kite-flying on such a sensitive issue that holds the potential to realign the geopolitics of the region.

Equally, it stands to reason that Tehran has consulted Beijing beforehand. Gwadar is synonymous with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and, of course, CPEC is the flagship of China’s Belt and Road (BRI) Initiative.

In fact, during what appeared to have been a highly successful visit to Beijing by Zarif a week ago, Iran-China cooperation within the framework of BRI figured prominently in his talks with Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The Xinhua report on the meeting underscored Wang’s remark that ‘China welcomes Iran to actively take part in the joint building of the Belt and Road and hopes to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation.’

Equally, it must be factored in that the week before Zarif met Wang, he had travelled to Moscow and had talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov where they discussed key issues in the international arena, as well as bilateral cooperation. The Russia-Iran consultations in Moscow stand out as a defining moment in regional security, as apparent from the remarks to the media, below, by the two foreign ministers:

(Joint press conference by Russian FM Sergey Lavrov (R) and Iran’s FM Javad Zarif at Moscow on May 8, 2019)

The big question is whether all this signifies a fundamental rethink in Iran’s foreign policy options in an emergent scenario where it must confront the geopolitical reality that a normalisation of relations with the US is to be ruled out for a very long time to come and some fundamental adjustments have become necessary.

Indeed, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently made an unprecedented open criticism of Iran’s foreign policy.

In sum, it is possible to estimate that the proposal that Zarif made to the Pakistani leadership signifies a reorientation of Iran’s foreign policy in the direction of greater integration with the two major Eurasian powers Russia and China.

In an ideal world, Iran would have preferred to pursue independent foreign policies, but life is real and a regional axis with Russia, China, Pakistan and Turkey becomes an imperative need today. Conceivably, this profound shift in Iran’s foreign policy calculus carries the imprimatur of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Read the IRNA report, here, on Zarif’s Pakistan visit.

May 25, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

West-backed think tanks threaten new Ukrainian president with disturbing list of ‘RED LINES’

By Danielle Ryan | RT | May, 2019

When President Volodymyr Zelensky won a landslide victory in the free and undisputed April elections, most accepted that he was given a fairly strong mandate to lead Ukraine. But it seems not everyone is so democratically-minded.

Particularly unmoved by the democratic process are a collection of Ukrainian ‘civil society’ groups, who have just issued a lengthy list of “red lines not to be crossed” by the new president, lest he risk provoking a new wave of political instability – that they would presumably instigate.

Issuing their catalog of demands on Thursday, the groups claim to be “politically neutral” but “deeply concerned” about the first actions taken by the comedian-turned-politician Zelensky, including his decision to appoint members of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s government to positions within his own government.

A scan of the undersigned reveals that many of these “civil society groups” are anything but politically neutral. In fact, quite a few of them are partly funded by the US government, various EU governments (including the UK), the European Commission itself – and, of course, the omnipresent liberal billionaire George Soros.

The list includes the notorious Euromaidan Press, Stop Fake and Ukrainian Crisis Media Center, to name just a few. In their heyday, many of these groups acted as propaganda tools of the Western-backed government of Petro Poroshenko, rather than the watchdogs they claim to be. They now confirm that a pesky election isn’t going to stand in the way of their agenda, reaffirming that their own “principles and positions” on issues remain unchanged and warning:

Should [Zelensky] cross these red lines, such actions will inevitably lead to political instability in our country…

This statement, which precedes the wide-ranging list of red lines, reads like a threat: Do what we say, or there will be trouble. Isn’t that a strange, almost dictatorial approach for groups purporting to be interested in “democracy,” “freedom,” and “dignity”? Did we all miss the part where a group of think tanks were collectively elected president of Ukraine?

Of course, these groups do indeed represent various factions of Ukrainian society and many of them no doubt have worthy aims, and they should continue their work unimpeded. But they do not represent all of Ukrainian society and they certainly do not have the authority to set the political agenda and lay down the law to the incoming government – and that, quite literally, is what they are trying to do.

It’s such a gobsmackingly odd list of demands that even Western journalists who had a broadly friendly relationship with the Poroshenko government are aghast at their audacity. The list is broken down into issues of security, foreign policy, economy, national identity (language, education and culture), media and government functioning.

On security, the groups want to forbid Zelensky from “achieving compromise” with Russia in any manner that would be “to the detriment” of the national interest, presumably as defined by themselves. Inhibiting the implementation of security and defense policies outlined in a 2016 decree signed by Poroshenko is also forbidden, they say.

In the foreign policy realm, these audacious activists warn that democratically-elected Zelensky may not initiate any actions that could lead to the “reduction or lifting” of sanctions on Russia by Western powers. He may not take any action “delaying, sabotaging, or rejecting” the course for EU and NATO membership for Ukraine. Where the economy is concerned, he may not implement any policy that goes against existing agreements with “the IMF and other foreign partners.”

It’s on the national identity front that things get really sketchy, though. The groups would like to forbid any attempt whatsoever to even “review” multiple controversial laws signed by Poroshenko, including an anti-Russia language law (which effectively alienates the 30 percent of Ukrainians who speak Russian as their native tongue) and laws on contentious “de-communization” which banned Soviet symbols in the country.

Ironically, this push for de-communization coincided with a renewed glorification of Nazism that went almost unnoticed by Western media and officials, who have supported Poroshenko’s virulently anti-Russian government as it implemented laws better suited to George Orwell’s 1984 than a modern democracy. The “NGOs” insist that Zelensky may not implement any action to support the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, another ‘red line’ among their national identity demands.

Remember when Russian television channels and social networks like VKontakte were banned in Ukraine simply for the crime of being Russian? Well, Zelensky will also be in big trouble if he tries to restore them, the “civil society groups” say.

The most vague red line of all comes near the end of the list, when the new president is warned against “ignoring dialogue with civil society” – a command so vague that “almost anything” Zelensky does going forward could be interpreted as ignoring their wishes, France 24 correspondent Gulliver Cragg wrote on Twitter.

BBC correspondent Jonah Fisher tweeted that the groups themselves may have crossed a red line –  the red line of “what civil society groups can legitimately demand of a freshly elected government.”

Zelensky was elected to office with 73 percent of the vote – and let’s not forget, he won that election having campaigned against many of the policies these ‘civil society’ groups are aggressively demanding be kept in place.

He has been in office only a matter of days, and these Western-backed groups are threatening to instigate political unrest should he take any action that they don’t find acceptable to their political agenda. So who, exactly, poses the real threat to democracy?

Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer based in Dublin. Follow her on Twitter @DanielleRyanJ

May 24, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

North Korea warns no more talks until US backs off ‘impossible demands’

RT | May 24, 2019

Negotiations between the United States and North Korea over the latter’s nuclear program will not resume until the US administration backs off from what Pyongyang has characterized as a unilateral demand that it disarm.

US President Donald Trump and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un held summits in Singapore in June 2018 and in Hanoi in February of this year, but talks broke off after the two sides were unable to bridge an impasse between their respective positions.

On Friday, North Korea’s state-run Central News Agency published comments by an unnamed Foreign Ministry official who said that the talks have broke down due to “impossible” US demands.

“The underlying cause of setback of the DPRK-US summit talks in Hanoi is the arbitrary and dishonest position taken by the United States, insisting on a method which is totally impossible to get through,” the statement read, accusing the US of having “deliberately pushed the talks to a rupture by merely claiming the unilateral disarmament.”

If it sticks to its current demands, “the United States would not be able to move us even an inch,” the Korean official stressed, barring any future more flexible approaches from US officials, “the prospect for resolving the nuclear issue will be much gloomy.”

The North Korean remarks contrast with statements by Trump, who framed the dissolution of talks between the two nations as resulting from unreasonable Korean demands for significant sanctions reduction, in exchange for only a partial nuclear disarmament on its part.

In April, the North Korean leader gave Trump a deadline until the end of the 2019 calendar year to formulate a deal which would be acceptable to both sides.

May 24, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

India’s Ambassador To The US Strongly Hinted At An Anti-Russian Military Pivot

By Andrew Korybko | EurasiaFuture | 2019-05-24

India’s much-touted and over-hyped policy of “multi-alignment” is seeming more and more like a cover for unconvincingly disguising the country’s strategic alliance the US, especially after its Ambassador to America strongly hinted that Modi will undertake an anti-Russian military pivot during his second term in office.

There’s little doubt that India will ditch Russia like it just recently did Iran after its Ambassador to America strongly hinted as much in an exclusive interview that he gave to CNBC. The South Asian state’s top diplomatic representative to the US told the outlet the following in an article provocatively headlined India, facing sanctions for Russian arms deals, says it wants to pivot spending to the US:

“There has been a tradition of dependence on defense equipment from Russia. But if you go by SIPRI figures, in the block year 2008 to 2013 we imported 76% of our defense items from Russia. In the next five-year block, from 2013 to 2018, this came down 58% and in the same period our imports from the United States increased by 569%. So that itself tells you that, when we have a choice… we are obviously diversifying our purchases.”

This is the clearest signal yet that Modi’s second term in office will be dedicated to prioritizing his country’s strategic alliance with the US, especially in the military sphere and most likely to both Russia and China’s detriment. About the first, India might go back on its deal to purchase the S-400s in order to avoid sanctions and replace them with THAADs, while for the second, its “Indo-Pacific” policy clearly aims to “contain” China.

India’s era of “multi-alignment” appears to be over, though it’s keeping this discredited slogan alive as a cover for unconvincingly disguising its strategic alliance with the US. This game-changing development will certainly complicate the regional geopolitical situation, but it also nevertheless provides the impetus for Russia to strengthen its ties with the global pivot state of Pakistan as the main component of its “Return to South Asia.”

May 24, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Venezuelan Embassy Besiegers Were ‘Elite’, Sought Gains from US Intervention

Sputnik – May 18, 2019

The angry mob of Venezuelan expatriates who laid siege to the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, DC, earlier this month was composed of numerous figures with close ties to the inner structures of the US empire and who stood to benefit financially from a coup d’etat in Venezuela, investigative journalists told Sputnik Friday.

During the nearly three-week-long siege of the Embassy Protection Collective by opposition forces, numerous instances of harassment and violence were documented, including bigoted comments and slurs, physical struggles and the use of tools such as scuba lights, laser pointers and air horns to harass and intimidate the anti-war activists.

As journalists began to look into the footage, they also began to wonder: who are these people that form the Venezuelan opposition?

​The struggle at the embassy, in Washington, DC’s historic Georgetown district, was essentially an extension of the struggle inside Venezuela. Since January 23, Juan Guaido has presumed to be Venezuela’s interim president — an office he’s recognized as occupying by the US and about 50 other nations, but which has no meaning on the ground in Caracas, where Guaido commands relatively few followers. Even internationally, three-quarters of the globe’s countries, as well as key international institutions like the United Nations and International Monetary Fund, continue to recognize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who was re-elected to a second term in May 2018.

Jeb Sprague, a lecturer at the University of Virginia and author of the forthcoming book “Globalizing the Caribbean: Political Economy Social Change and the Transnational Capitalist Class,” teamed up with journalist Alexander Rubinstein of MintPress News, who was embedded with the Embassy Protection Collective inside the embassy for nearly a month, including during the two-week period of the siege, from April 30 to May 13, to probe the internet for the identities of the people in the footage.

Their report, titled “Who’s Behind the Pro-Guaidó Crowd Besieging Venezuela’s DC Embassy?” was published on Thursday, just hours before US police stormed the facility and arrested the activists. Sprague spoke about their findings Friday with Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary.

The Embassy Protection Collective was formed on April 10 by anti-war activists in the United States who objected to Washington’s coup attempt in Venezuela and who saw the imminent delivery of the empty embassy to Guaido’s retinue as a major provocation that could lead to war. With the Maduro government’s permission and armed with international treaties recognizing the embassy’s legally inviolable status, the activists set up shop in the facility, where they soon came under attack by pro-Guaido protesters seeking to either storm the embassy or starve the collective out.

“In the beginning of their siege, their first week or two, they were really, extremely homophobic, racist — I mean, you don’t have to take my word for it, you can look on Twitter and in our article and all the links to all, you know, they are just videotaped, time after time, yelling out all this stuff,” Sprague said.

“But then what we found is they have these sort of like, PR/marketing strategists, people that came in after that initial period and they really tried to alter how people were perceiving that mob… and so you had media outlets like the New York Times, Vice Magazine… they came in. So, when they would come to the siege, there were these people who were put up by the mob for them to be interviewed.”

Sprague said one woman who became a “poster child for the pro-Guaido mob,” Dilianna C. Bustillos, “she’s actually a senior manager at Oracle, which is one of the largest companies in the world, a tech company that works with defense companies and makes like a $40 billion a year annual revenue… she’s a senior manager there. She previously volunteered with Visión Democrática, which is a pro-opposition group which is connected with a lot of the people who are working with Juan Guaido in DC.”

He noted many of the figures they identified were connected to a series of meetings at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a hawkish US think tank in Washington, DC, where pro-Guaido figures and shadow government officials helped plan a US invasion of Venezuela.

“They’ve started this website called ‘Ask a Venezuelan,’ and so, constantly on Twitter there’s like this mantra… they’re saying ‘ask a real Venezuelan,’ ‘ask a Venezuelan.’ And so, we started a thing called ‘Ask an Upper-Class Venezuelan;’ when we researched who they are — like the woman that founded that group, ‘Ask a Venezuelan,’ she has a $4 million a year company, and she had put out tweets supporting the guarimbas, which were these really violent protests, called for the US Marines to land in Venezuela. So one after another,” Sprague told hosts Eugene Puryear and Bob Schlehuber.

“And then we started looking at more of the people that were at the protests, and we found one guy who was a senior architect at Raytheon, the arms company. It was like, every time we looked at a person, their background in DC — two people that worked for CSIS, one that’s been working for the World Bank, another one for the Inter-American Development Bank — that guy actually got caught yelling out a lot of racist, sexist epithets.”

“One of the most interesting guys Cesar Caminero, we documented him as being there, and when I found his LinkedIn page, it said that he works for this tech company, and he does work for the [US Department of Defense], and he brags on his LinkedIn that he has this active secret clearance,” Sprague said. “And there’s this other guy who was doing tech work for US intelligence, so it was just fascinating that we could see just, one after another, people were either working with like, an international financial institution, an arms or military-oriented contractor or a hawkish think tank funded by the Gulf [monarchies] and big arms companies.”

“We figured out there’s this built-in base of these elite members, professional people in the diaspora, that basically advocate for regime change and escalation of conflict where they can really gain or benefit through US intervention,” Sprague said.

Indeed, Guaido himself is an alumnus of The George Washington University, located in Washington, DC’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood.

“Even if the embassy defenders got pushed out, I think it was still a victory in really illuminating the crimes of the Trump government and showing how violent these people are that they work with,” Sprague said.

May 18, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

US warns airlines risk ‘miscalculation or misidentification’ over Persian Gulf

RT | May 18, 2019

In a chilling reminder of the downing of Iran Air flight 655 by a US missile, an FAA notice said civilian aircraft flying over the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman are currently at risk of “miscalculation or misidentification.”

A Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) published by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) late on Thursday said the risk stems from “heightened military activities and increased political tensions” in the area. Airliners operating in the region may also “encounter inadvertent GPS interference and other communications jamming” the warning said.

The tension in the proximity of Iran comes as the US deployed additional military assets in the region, including an aircraft carrier strike group and a battery of Patriot anti-aircraft missiles. Washington said it was a response to an undefined threat posed by Iranian forces. The US also withdrew non-essential personnel from diplomatic missions in Iraq. The show of force was reportedly triggered by intelligence provided by Israel.

For some, the FAA warning may bring back the dark memory of the 1988 incident, in which an American guided missile destroyer shot down an Iranian airliner, killing 290 people on board. It happened two months after the US sunk an Iranian frigate and a gunboat in retaliation for an incident a few days earlier, in which a US warship struck an Iranian mine.

Washington said the crew of the USS Vincennes misidentified Iran Air flight 655 for a warplane trying to attack the warship and acted in self-defense. The government rejected accusations that US military service members had acted recklessly, with President George H.W. Bush infamously declaring: “I will never apologize for the United States – I don’t care what the facts are… I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.”

The US did pay compensation to the families of the victims, but never accepted legal liability or apologized to Tehran.

May 18, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

US orders departure of non-emergency employees from Iraq

Press TV – May 15, 2019

The US State Department has ordered the departure of non-emergency government employees from Iraq, following Washington’s repeated expressions of concern about so-called threats from Iran’s allies in the Arab country.

The State Department ordered the pullout of the employees from both the US Embassy in Baghdad and its consulate in Erbil, the embassy said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Normal visa services at both posts will be temporarily suspended,” it said, recommending that those affected depart as soon as possible.

“The US government has limited ability to provide emergency services to US citizens in Iraq,” it added.

It was unclear how many staff members would leave.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an unannounced trip to Iraq on Tuesday, pressing Iraqi leaders about what he alleged were the increased dangers to Americans there from Iranian forces and their allies.

Despite this, the British general overseeing the so-called US-led coalition forces in Syria and Iraq has asserted that there has been “no increased threat from Iran” amid the US military buildup in the Persian Gulf.

British Major General Chris Ghika said at a Pentagon news briefing Tuesday that the coalition has seen “no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces” in the two countries.

The coalition has observed “no change in their posture since the recent exchange between the United States and Iran and we hope and expect that that will continue… We don’t see an increased threat from them at this stage,” Ghika told reporters.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said on Tuesday he was getting indications from talks with both the United States and Iran that “things will end well” despite the rhetoric.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has been ratcheting up economic and military pressure on Iran.

The US has deployed a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East to confront what the Trump administration claims are “clear indications” of threats from Iran.

May 15, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Zainab Walks On Her Feet, Ivanka Uses Government Money for Secret Services

Image: Hezbollah Flag (L), Ivanka Trump (R). Credit: Public Domain/ Fortune Conferences
By Heba Mourad | American Herald Tribune | May 10, 2019

I entered the hotel apartment where a dozen ladies were sitting together. They were in Tehran for a conference on the status of women in Islam. Among the ladies sitting was a young lady in her 30s. I had seen her before in a public event in Beirut some two years ago. I went to the hotel to see a friend, and then I thought, why not see if I can socialize and get to know her up close. I had to go soon, loads of unfinished work was waiting for me at my office.

The next day, I decided to take some distance from office work and go on a short trip to accompany the ladies who were traveling to another Iranian city. And I did get lucky when I had the seat right next to her on the flight. Well, I forgot to introduce her to you; she is the daughter of the man Israel fears to death. Zainab, the daughter of Hezbollah Chief Sayed Hassan Nasrallah and I spoke all the way during that flight. We later had a long talk as well during the night after dinner.

She told me about her childhood memories, her relationship with her dad, her brother who was martyred while defending Lebanon in face of Israeli occupation, her mother who she thinks highly of, her life as a woman, a mother and a Lebanese citizen, and the list goes on.

Let all the details aside, what is so amazing about this young lady who is 33 years old and a mother of four children is that you totally forget she is the daughter of the Hezbollah chief. She is so humble and friendly. My plan was first to write about her memories with her dad in particular, especially that she does not usually talk to the media. I thought many might be curious to know more about this Nasrallah family member. I stayed with the group for one day at the hotel; we socialized and had food together. And again, I kept forgetting she is the daughter of so and so.

Rumors about this lady and her family have been circulating throughout the years. Some say she is arrogant, others say she and her family enjoy a luxurious life and spend the money of the people. Other times I hear some claiming that she lives somewhere underground and she does not go out without escorts and body guards.

She keeps a smile on her face all the time and she makes sure she is an average person in her society in terms of finances and spending.

“I go out alone, I do my own shopping and I do not have any bodyguards to escort me,” she told me. She likes keeping a simple life style and she says she is not poor, but would say she lives like any other middle-class person in her country. She joined the group of ladies all the time in the lunches and dinners, and shared a room with a couple of ladies. It felt like I had known her forever.

On that day, she was wearing her neat black gown known as the ‘Abaya’ and a pair of Sketchers. Taking pictures with the group here and there, they made jokes on how these should remain out of media’s reach to keep a low profile. She does not like being in the lime light and she likes having a normal and simple life. She told me how she enjoyed moments with her father, and how she looks up to him not only as a father but also as a leader.

She told me that the trait she likes the most about her father is how humble he is, and she tries to be always like him and teach this to her kids as well. Maybe I will not write down what I decide to keep to myself for the time being; a long and colorful discussion with the First daughter of the resistance movement.

For a second, I stopped to think: this young lady who can abuse the power of her father respects people and their feelings so much and practices what her father preaches. Her father, put on the terror list by the US is the one who taught this girl good manner. She said she always listens to his advice. “When it comes to society, I listen to his advice a lot. He knows what is best and always urges us to be respectful of the people and their feelings and that we should always set a good example.”

“I can say we are considered as middle-class. We are not poor and I thank God for providing us a decent life. However, even if we were super rich we would not have use that money to live a luxurious life. We are part of our society and we should share a similar living.”

On the other side of the planet, there exists another daughter of a famous man who has become notorious in the eyes of many, Ivanka Trump. First daughter and US presidential adviser Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, vacationed at a luxury resort in the Dominican Republic over a long weekend in August. The cost to US taxpayers: more than $58,000.

Also, a week-long Aspen ski vacation taken in March 2017 by Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, and their families cost taxpayers at least $330,000 in security costs, plus thousands more in ski equipment rentals for the agents assigned to shadow the family on the slopes, according to records obtained by CBS News.

That other side of the planet is the one that keeps trying to impose “otherness”, wars, supremacy across the globe, and is inconsiderate of its own people. As Ivanka and the American ruling family enjoy luxurious hotel rooms and secret services, the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) said in a new report that about 13 million American children are living in homes with incomes below the poverty line, depriving many of a decent education and proper nutrition, and putting them at risk of homelessness and violence.

The US Secret Service has allocated more than $90,000 for golf cart rentals in South Florida in the winter of 2018, ostensibly to protect President Donald Trump while he hits the links. Critics call the family’s frequent travel exorbitant and wasteful and insist the Trump family can afford their own security. It is okay for a president to use secret services but not to go (cheat) on golf courses, travel for the weekends or even allow his family to use that for personal and business trips.

This is while the head of the Hezbollah resistance movement lives a normal life and does not seek any luxuries, but rather dedicates all his time to protect Lebanon and the Lebanese in face of the US’s number one ally; the Israeli apartheid regime.

And the Israelis seem to fear Hezbollah more than ever. Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s Minister of Energy, saying that “Hezbollah missiles may target all of Israel. Zionists consider Hezbollah a very dangerous and highly experienced enemy.”

The Israeli Defense Forces, referring to the precision of the Lebanese Hezbollah missiles, writes: “Hezbollah is capable of targeting Israel’s critical facilities, and the 2006 Lebanon War seems nothing compared to a conflict with Hezbollah in future.”

Daniel “Danny” Rubinstein, an Israeli journalist, said that “Hassan Nasrallah is a great figure. Gamal Abdel Nasser fought for six days, but Hassan Nasrallah kept Israelis four weeks in their place in 2006.”

Now if you do not read history or keep up with the news, do not mistakenly think that Hezbollah is behind all the trouble in the region as Western mainstream media try to put it. Hezbollah is a Lebanese political party, as legitimate as any other in Lebanon. It was formed only when the Israeli apartheid regime decided to attack Lebanon, what people in the region used to call the ‘bride of the Middle East’.

Hezbollah has been defending the region in face of Israeli attacks and it has been standing firm in the face of terrorist groups like Daesh, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra front.

Back to where this all started; great people enjoy humility. Many say humility is weakness; however, a short but sufficient explanation would be that of Dr. Robert Hogan, founder and president of Hogan Assessments who was quoted by Forbes as explaining “Humility is the psychological opposite of narcissism.”

It is an underrated leadership quality. To be humble is not to think less of oneself, but to think of one-self-less, and this is what I think my story today should be all about.

May 11, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

13 attacks by Israel settlers on Palestinians over two-week period

MEMO | May 10, 2019

Israeli settlers carried out 13 attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank over a two-week period 23 April-6 May, reported United Nations OCHA.

According to the monitoring body, the attacks “resulted in the injury of three Palestinians” as well as in “damage to Palestinian property across the West Bank”.

In one incident, “a group of Israeli settlers, some of whom were armed, physically assaulted and injured three Palestinian men, who were surveying land” in Kafr Ni’ma village near Ramallah.

Meanwhile, “Israeli settlers accompanied by the Israeli army, vandalized Palestinian property in Ein Harrasheh water spring and a public park in Area B of Al Mazra’a Al Qibliya village” near Ramallah on five separate occasions over the two-week reporting period in question.

OCHA added that, “according to local community sources, Israeli settlers threw stones at two houses, harassed Palestinians, and vandalized water pipes and park infrastructure.”

In ‘Urif village near Nabuls, settlers stoned the boys’ school and surrounding houses, leading to confrontations with local residents, the settlers, and “the Israeli forces accompanying them”.

Israeli settlers also vandalised 51 olive trees, punctured the tyres of 12 Palestinian vehicles, sprayed so-called “price tag” graffiti on four Palestinian houses and caused damage to a shop in Burqa (Ramallah), Isla (Qalqiliya), Huwwara (Nablus), Al-Ganoub (Hebron) and in the H2 area of Hebron.

OCHA noted that “since the beginning of 2019, the bi-weekly average of settler attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties or property damage has witnessed a 40 and 133 per cent increase, compared to the biweekly average of 2018 and 2017.”

May 10, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Iran says not doing anything in breach of JCPOA

Press TV – May 7, 2019

Iran says the countermeasures it has vowed to unveil Wednesday are all within the framework of the 2015 nuclear deal, and the country is not leaving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The remarks were made by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif upon his arrival in the Russian capital Moscow, where he plans to hold talks with his Russian counterpart on the Iran nuclear deal, among others.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday night, he said Iran’s “strategic patience” with the US’ violations of the nuclear accord during the past year is over.

“Unfortunately, the European Union and other members of the international community were not capable of standing up to the US’ pressures,” Zarif said.

Therefore, he added, Iran has decided to stop implementing some of the JCPOA commitments it used to fulfill voluntarily “for now”.

The Iranian top diplomat said the right to stop implementing commitments partially or in full in case of violation by other parties has been preserved for Iran in the JCPOA.

So Iran is not doing anything against JCPOA now; rather, it is acting totally within the framework of Articles 26 and 36 of the deal, Zarif noted.

He described the move as “an opportunity for other parties to the deal to take required measures, and not just issue statements.”

Zarif also noted that the decision has been passed by the Supreme National Security Council, and its details will be announced on Wednesday.

Iran said on Monday it seeks to unveil its countermeasures in response to the US’ 2018 withdraw from the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement signed between Tehran and six major world powers.

The plans will be announced on Wednesday, which marks the first anniversary of the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

US President Donald Trump withdrew Washington in May 2018 from the landmark Iran nuclear agreement, reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries — the US, Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany — in July 2015. He also decided to re-impose unilateral sanctions against Tehran.

France threatens to re-impose bans

Sources at the French presidency said on Tuesday international sanctions could be re-imposed on Iran if it reneges on commitments under its nuclear deal.

A French presidential source said the European countries did not yet know precisely what steps Iran was now planning, but they could have to re-impose sanctions on Iran if those steps amount to reneging.

“We do not want Tehran to announce tomorrow actions that would violate the nuclear agreement, because in this case we Europeans would be obliged to re-impose sanctions as per the terms of the agreement,” the source said.

“We sent messages to Tehran to say that we were determined to implement the agreement, that we really wanted them to stay in this agreement even though we took into account the complexity of the situation and passed on the same messages to our American allies.”

A second French official later said that if Tehran failed to comply with the deal, the issue would be treated through a dispute mechanism under the accord itself, which could lead to the re-imposition of UN Security Council sanctions.

Letters to P4+1

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is expected to write letters to the countries still signed up to the deal – Britain, France and Germany as well as Russia and China – on Wednesday to give them details about plans to “diminish its commitments” under the deal, ISNA quoted a source as saying.

The letters would be handed over to the ambassadors of the five countries by Deputy Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araqchi. A separate letter would also be written to EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini.

May 7, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

The Palestinian Authority is No Longer Crying Wolf Over its Imminent Collapse

By Jonathan Cook – The National – May 5, 2019

We have been here many times before. However, on this occasion even the principal actors understand that the Palestinian Authority is not crying wolf as it warns of imminent collapse.

The crisis is entirely of Israel and Washington’s making. Keen to pander to hawkish public opinion in the run-up to last month’s election, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a severe blow against Mahmoud Abbas and his government-in-permanent-waiting.

He announced that Israel would withhold a portion of the taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinians, and which it is obligated under the Oslo accords to pass on to the PA, based in the West Bank.

The money deducted is the sum the PA transfers as stipends to the families of political prisoners and those killed and maimed by the Israeli army.

This is an incendiary issue, as Netanyahu well knows, given that Palestinians view these families as having made the ultimate sacrifice in the struggle to liberate their people from brutal Israeli occupation.

Abbas cannot be seen to back down, and so has refused to accept any of the monthly tax transfers until the full sum is reinstated, amounting to nearly two-thirds of the PA’s revenues.

Given how precarious Palestinian finances are, after decades of resource theft and restrictions on development imposed by Israel, the PA is already on the brink of bankruptcy.

The problem for Netanyahu and Washington is that the PA was established – under the 25-year-old Oslo accords – to take the pressure and costs off Israel of policing the Palestinian population under occupation.

If the PA collapses, so do the Palestinian security forces that have been keeping order in the West Bank as Israel has continued to plunder Palestinian land and resources.

Late last month the United Nations warned that the standoff had left the PA facing “unprecedented financial, security and political challenges”.

Which means that, despite his recent electoral triumph, Netanyahu is in a serious bind.

He cannot be seen by his even more right-wing coalition partners to be climbing down and restoring stipends to people Israelis view simply as “terrorists”.

Equally, he dares not risk a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank. That would be a real possibility if the Palestinian economy implodes and there are no Palestinian security forces to suppress the resulting wave of popular anger.

A preview of the difficulties in store was given at the weekend, when more than 600 rockets were fired out of Gaza, threatening the cancellation of the Eurovision song contest in Israel later this month.

By Sunday evening, four Israelis were reported dead, while 20 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli airstrikes. The Palestinian fatalities included two pregnant women and a toddler.

There is also the danger, from Israel’s point of view, that if Abbas’s PA collapses, the void in the West Bank will be filled by his Hamas rivals, who run Gaza. Israel has been delighted to keep the Palestinian territories divided under feuding Fatah and Hamas leaderships.

A way out – or a change of tack – is urgently required.

Israel has tried twice to quietly make partial tax transfers to the PA’s bank account, in the hope the money would be accepted. The PA returned it.

Then, the European Union stepped in. Ostensibly an “honest broker”, it appears to be occupying a role the Trump administration has formally abandoned. The EU proposed last week that the PA accept the transfers on a “provisional basis”, until the crisis can be resolved.

PA officials were dismissive. “Let the people take to the streets,” one said. “We have our backs to the wall.” The PA line is that in the current climate, if it backtracks, Israel will simply intensify unilateral measures harming the Palestinian cause.

So now, more in desperation than any realistic prospect of achieving peace, attention is turning to Donald Trump’s long-promised “deal of the century”.

After endless delays, the US administration now seems to be preparing for its release next month, soon after the holy month of Ramadan finishes.

The plan’s main architects, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, have issued a spate of statements hinting at the contents.

Greenblatt has sought to reassure neighbouring Egypt and Jordan that they will not shoulder the burden. He discounted rumours either that Gaza’s Palestinians would be encouraged to move to the Sinai, in a land swap that would allow Israel to annex parts of the West Bank, or that Jordan would find itself recast as an alternative Palestinian homeland.

Kushner, meanwhile, has strongly suggested that the goal of a two-state solution, implied by the Oslo process, will finally be jettisoned. “New and different ways to reach peace must be tried,” he has said.

He has also stated that the plan will stress “economic benefits” for the Palestinians and “security” for Israel.

David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel and a stalwart ally of Israel’s most extreme settlers, has recently added that Israel will maintain security control of the West Bank.

According to analysts, these statements suggest the White House is preparing the ground for an offer to the Palestinians of “limited autonomy” – an outcome Arab officials confirmed to The Washington Post.

Sensing the danger, 40 former senior European officials have signed a letter opposing any plan that creates a Palestinian “entity devoid of sovereignty, territorial contiguity and economic viability”.

“Limited autonomy” would be a reformulation of Israel’s long-running ambition to thwart permanently Palestinian hopes of statehood – a policy the late Israeli academic Baruch Kimmerling once termed “politicide”.

Since the late 1970s, the Israeli right has advocated hemming Palestinians into enclaves where they are denied sovereignty.

The model of disparate cantons, effectively operating as glorified municipalities and surrounded by a sea of Israeli settlers, is little different from that of “black homelands”, or Bantustans, established in apartheid-era South Africa.

Now, it seems, the Trump administration is ready to support this racist idea as a way to promote regional peace.

The Americans hope that, with a few sweeteners, the Palestinians can be made to swallow this bitter pill. It is an idea Netanyahu has advanced for some time, with his talk of “economic peace” – or what might be better termed “economic pacification”.

But the current impasse on taxes shows that buying off the Palestinians with bribes, in return for the abandonment of core national goals, may not prove so easy.

With the PA close to collapse, it is hard to see how Trump’s deal of the century can do anything other than speed up the authority’s demise.

May 6, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Russia FM Blasts US Illegal ‘Methods of Blackmail’ Against Cuba

teleSUR | May 4, 2019

Russia’s Foreign Ministry urged the international community to unite in condemning the United States’ new anti-Cuban blockade measure, which came about after President Donald Trump lifted the waiver on Title III of the once-dormant Helms-Burton Act.

“We emphasize again that the methods of blackmail and pressure used by Washington are absolutely illegal. We call on all responsible forces to defend the U.N. Charter and international law in order to jointly put an end to the anti-Cuba blockade,” the Russian ministry said in a statement.

The ministry also pointed out that Washington is threatening more sanctions on Cuba in the vein of the “Monroe Doctrine” in an “overt encroachment” on the sovereignty of the Latin American nation.

The new sanctions were made known when United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the Title II would come into effect on May 2, permitting U.S. nationals to sue Cuban entities or foreign entities operating on the island prior to the Cuban Revolution for damages.

Moscow said the measures are excessive since Cuba has repeatedly expressed readiness to resolve existing contradictions with the United States regarding bilateral issues.

The Helms-Burton Act is a bill passed by former U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1996. However, this is the first time that any U.S. administration has authorized its implementation.

“Through the devaluation of democratic principles and rejection of international legal norms, the U.S. neglects the values it promotes, creating obstacles for all countries leading a separate policy and refusing to follow Washington’s directions,” the Foreign Ministry noted.

Canada, the European Union as well as other countries have rejected the activation of the Helms-Burton Act, explaining that it violates the norms of international law.

May 4, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

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