Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

West totally wrong about Ukraine – Orban

RT | February 4, 2024

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has expressed hope that the newly-approved €50 billion ($54 billion) package of aid will be used to support civilians by preventing the collapse of the bankrupt Ukrainian state, rather than to fund more weapons and bloodshed.

Orban has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Ukraine and peace talks between Moscow and Kiev, arguing that Ukraine cannot possibly hope to defeat Russia on the battlefield. This position, as well as Budapest’s opposition to sanctions on Russia and blocking of EU military aid to Ukraine, has seen Hungary vilified in Kiev and threatened with sanctions by its EU allies.

“The West still thinks that time is on our side. Yet, I think the opposite is true. I think that time is on the side of the Russians, and the longer the war goes on, the more people will die, and the balance of power will not change in Ukraine’s favor,” Orban told Kossuth Radio on Friday.

According to Russia’s estimates, Kiev has lost more than 400,000 service members killed, wounded, and missing since the conflict began in February 2022. Ukraine’s top commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, has repeatedly insisted in recent weeks that the armed forces are critically understaffed, and even President Vladimir Zelensky admitted on Sunday that combat operations on the ground have reached a “stalemate.”

The Hungarian leader went on to insist that “peace will come when there is change in Brussels,” and that after almost two years of failed hopes to defeat Russia militarily “everything in Brussels should revolve around achieving a ceasefire as soon as possible.”

The EU approved the new aid package on Thursday, having pressured Orban into lifting his veto. The Hungarian painted the decision as a victory for Budapest, claiming that otherwise Brussels “would have taken away the funds earmarked for Hungary and sent that to Ukraine as well.”

“We are not sending weapons, we get our money from Brussels, and we will contribute to the civil financing of Ukraine,” Orban said on Friday, reiterating his firm position that the only way to end the Ukrainian crisis was through negotiations.

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

New wave of US, UK strikes target Yemen

The Cradle – February 4, 2024

US and UK warships and fighter jets bombed Yemen on 4 February, in a wave of missile strikes US officials claim hit 36 targets.

The US said in a CENTCOM statement that it hit “36 targets at 13 locations,” striking “underground storage facilities, command and control, missile systems, UAV storage and operations sites, radars, and helicopters.”

According to the statement, the US, UK, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand took part in the attacks.

The strikes were in response to Yemeni efforts to target Israeli-linked commercial ships passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. The Yemeni attacks are in response to Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza.

Rather than press its ally Israel to stop its military campaign, which has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, the US has joined forces with the UK to bomb Yemen.

Saturday’s strikes were launched by US F/A-18 fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, British Typhoon FGR4 fighter aircraft, and the Navy destroyers USS Gravely and the USS Carney firing Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea, according to US officials and the UK Defense Ministry.

The Yemen Armed Forces issued a statement detailing where the attacks took place, reporting 13 raids on Sanaa, 9 on Hodeidah, 11 on Taiz, 7 on Al-Bayda, 7 on Hajjah, and one on Saada.

“These attacks will not deter us from our moral, religious, and humanitarian stance in support of the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and will not go unanswered and punished,” read the statement.

The strikes come one day after the US sent B-1 bombers to target 85 locations affiliated with the Islamic Resistance of Iraq in eastern Syria and western Iraq, killing at least 16. This was in response to an operation by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq that targeted US military outpost Tower 22 in Jordan last week, killing three US soldiers.

US officials reportedly told Al-Jazeera that the strikes on Yemen are “considered a next round of retaliation for the killing of the [US] soldiers in Jordan.”

Like Ansarallah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq coalition, formed after 7 October, has also targeted Israel, as well as US bases in Syria and Iraq. The groups say their attacks are in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which the US has supported militarily and diplomatically.

Ansarallah leaders in Yemen say they have no intention of scaling back their campaign despite pressure from the US and UK bombing.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, an Ansarallah official, said, “military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us.” He wrote on social media that the “American-British aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered, and we will meet escalation with escalation.”

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Possible NATO Corps Deployment to Ukraine May Become ‘Suicide Mission for Those Troops’

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 04.02.2024

The UK has urged its NATO allies to consider sending the alliance’s expeditionary force to Ukraine, an informed source told Sputnik. According to the source, the alleged move came “in connection with the unfavorable developments in the Ukrainian theater of military operations for Kiev”.

The insider added that Britain also called on NATO to consider imposing a no-fly zone over the territory controlled by the Zelensky regime and to increase military aid to Ukraine.

”The UK’s reported plans about deploying NATO’s expeditionary corps to Ukraine is “a fantastical delusion on the part of the Brits and has no foundation in reality,” retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson told Sputnik.

“But just because the Brits are insane does not mean Russia can ignore them. It is a serious proposal,” he added.

Johnson was partly echoed by Matthew Gordon-Banks, an international relations consultant, former member of Parliament and retired senior research fellow at the UK Defence Academy, who said he didn’t think the rumors of a NATO force in Ukraine should be taken seriously.

“The suggestions I have heard are quite unrealistic at present,” Gordon-Banks stated.

Asked to comment on the “unfavorable development of events” for Kiev on the battlefield, he emphasized that “things are collapsing in Kiev quite quickly”.

“[Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky has not been able to fire his top general, and I think he is now very much a ‘lame duck’ president,” Gordon-Banks argued, referring to the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny.

The same tone was struck by Earl Rasmussen, a retired US Army lieutenant colonel turned geopolitical and military affairs consultant, who warned that if the information about London’s plans is true, and “if this is somebody’s dream, it could quickly become a nightmare for British and NATO forces.

“But it is not a realistic solution or proposal. Russia has complete air dominance, escalatory dominance, logistical dominance, ammunition dominance. This would be catastrophic for any UK forces and definitely would show a symbol of direct NATO involvement, which could really be dangerous, as far as escalation goes,” Rasmussen emphasized, noting that “the British forces would probably be wiped out, fairly rapidly.”

The US Army veteran suggested that someone in the UK military might be having “some type of delusional experience” for even suggesting such a scenario. “It’s a suicide mission for those troops. And it definitely would pull NATO into a much more dangerous situation and direct confrontation [with Russia],” Rasmussen concluded.

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Nuland leaves sense of foreboding in Kiev

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | FEBRUARY 4, 2024 

The commencement of political upheavals in world affairs sometimes lies with a seemingly obscure event. This is not to say that the shooting down of a Russian Ilyushin-76 military transport plane carrying dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war over the territory of Belgorod Region by two missiles fired from the area of Liptsy, in Kharkov Region (Ukraine) on January 24 is anything like the spark that set off World War I when a Serbian patriot shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the city of Sarajevo in 1914 and within a month, the Austrian army invaded Serbia.

That said, the downing of the Russian plane would have far-reaching consequences now that Russian investigators found irrefutable proof that the plane was shot down with a US-made Patriot surface-to-air system. President Vladimir Putin disclosed this himself. 

Russia sought an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in the matter but France as the president disallowed the request, which would have cast the West in bad light. The fact of the matter is that the US and Russia are not at war and the Americans would have no hesitation to call such an outrageous incident as an act of war if a Pentagon plane were to be shot down with a Russian missile in the US airspace. 

To be sure, Russia will draw appropriate conclusions and formulate a measured reaction. This is an escalation spiral as Russia’s election approaches.  

Indeed, all indications are that the US strategy through this year is to ‘hold, build and strike’ at Russia, as outlined in an article in the War on the Rocks co-authored by Michael Kofman, a leading American military analyst and the director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for a New American Security.  Basically, the strategy is predicated on the premise that Russia is still far from its official goal of seizing the entire Donbas and therefore, what happens in 2024 is likely to determine the future trajectory of the war. 

Kofman identified three elements as crucial: one, a well- fortified frontline in Ukraine which stalls Russian offensives; two, pressing ahead with reconstituting the battered Ukrainian military; and, three, most important, degrading the Russian advantages and “creating challenges for Russian forces far behind the front lines”, while doubling down on rebuilding capacity to resume offensive operations. In a nutshell, the strategy is to reach a level of capability where Ukraine can absorb Russian offensives while minimising casualties and positioning itself to retake the advantage over time. [Emphasis added.] 

Russia is unlikely to remain passive without a counter-strategy. In fact, there is a perceptible acceleration of Russian operations lately. The factors of advantage largely lie with Russia which holds material,  industrial, and manpower advantages, and therefore, recreating another opportunity to deal Russia a battlefield defeat is virtually impossible. 

Washington should be aware that there is very little realistic chance of the West being able to outlast Russia and force it to accept peace on Ukrainian terms. Time is not on Ukraine’s side, either, militarily or economically. The noted American strategic thinker of the realist school and Harvard academic Prof. Stephen Walt is to the point when he wrote in FT recently, “Both [Biden and Trump] administrations will try to negotiate an end to the war after January 2025, and the resulting deal is likely to be a lot closer to Russia’s stated war aims than Kyiv’s.”

But that is the whole point. The new war strategy — which was outlined in a recent article in the Washington Post — takes into account the  possibility of Ukraine becoming a dysfunctional state. But so long as Ukraine remains a cauldron boiling with nationalism that lends itself as a base for hostile moves to destabilise Russia and lock it in permanently in a confrontation with the West, the purpose is served —from Washington’s viewpoint.  

The final act of the power struggle playing out in Kiev is, therefore, of decisive importance and is being supervised by none other than Biden’s agent in the administration ever since the Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014 — Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State. Nuland’s two-fold mission has been, first, to put in place a calculus of power in Kiev that is firmly under US control and, second, to steer the transition from war to insurgency when the need arises.

The probability being talked about is that President Zelensky who has burnt his bridges with Moscow will remain in power while the army chief Valeri Zaluzhni may be replaced. That said, the outcome of high-stakes power struggles, as the one Kiev is witnessing, is also hard to predict. Gen. Zaluzhni’s nuanced op-ed in the CNN on the day after Nuland left Kiev leaves no one in doubt that the redoubtable general is in a defiant mood.

Chief of Defense Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov’s biggest qualification is that although a man of very limited military experience, his forte is intelligence and covert operations who did brilliantly well to create a network of field operatives within Russia for subversive work — just the man to navigate Ukraine’s transition from attritional war to a full-bodied insurgency against Russia. 

The US agenda to weaken Russia in a long-drawn out insurgency is very much in the cards. This agenda enjoys the support of the transatlantic alliance, is “cost-effective” and allows the US to focus on Asia-Pacific, while keeping Russia down for the foreseeable future. No doubt, Russia’s reaction to the downing of the IL-86 military plane by Patriot missiles in Russian air space was anything but an accident. 

Moscow’s best option would be to create a buffer that keeps Russian territories out of reach of game-changing western medium and long-range missiles that are capable of degrading Russian logistics and command and control nodes and make large swathes of territories in the east and south of Ukraine, including Crimea, untenable for Russian forces. 

But that necessitates a full-fledged Russian offensive to take control of the entire region to the east of Dnieper river. Russia may face the same dilemma that Americans faced in Vietnam stemming from the requirement to expand the theatre of operations into Laos and Cambodia (aside North Vietnam.) For Russia, that involves colossal drain of human and material resources and the erosion of its international standing. 

The only feasible alternative will be to end the war — through negotiations or militarily — in 2024. But Biden’s interest in negotiations is zero. That leaves the military option as the only choice. The strategy to degrade the Ukrainian military in the meat grinder was highly successful, but going forward, in reality, the US-led western alliance, especially key functionaries like Nuland (an ex-ambassador to NATO) with a long record of being Russophobic, are showing no signs of attrition.

Now that the US has broken the glass ceiling by enabling a military attack on Russian territory, Moscow should brace for more incidents like the downing of the IL-76 plane. The authorities will be keeping a beady eye. Nuland’s sudden appearance in Kiev as a psychopomp from Greek mythology at this inflection point needs to be factored in. 

While in Kiev, Nuland forecast Ukrainian military successes in 2024 and that Moscow “is going to get some nice surprises on the battlefield”. The day before Nuland’s arrival in Kiev, Budanov had said that the Ukrainian military is in “active defence” but somewhere in the spring, Russia’s ongoing offensive “will be exhausted completely… and I think ours will start.” The tone of triumphalism is unmistakable, but how far it is rooted in reality time only can tell.

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

No Iranian base or advisors targeted by US strikes in Iraq, Syria: Diplomat

Press TV | February 3, 2024

Iran’s Ambassador to Damascus Hossein Akbari says no Iranian bases or military advisors have been targeted in deadly strikes by the US occupation forces on a number of sites in Iraq and Syria.

Akbari said on Saturday that contrary to claims, the attacks aimed to destroy Syria’s civil infrastructure amid the pro-Palestine actions undertaken by the resistance front.

He said the US government’s terrorist act on Friday night was carried out mainly to make up for Israel’s defeats in the Gaza Strip and strengthening armed Takfiri terrorists based on the borders of Iraq and Syria.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement on Friday that its forces had struck more than 85 targets “with numerous aircraft” during overnight raids on localities in Iraq and Syria.

The Syrian state media reported that the US aggression targeted positions in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr and the city of al-Bukamal near the Iraqi border, falling short of providing details on the extent of damage and the exact number of casualties.

Sixteen people were killed, among them civilians, and 25 injured in the US airstrikes in Iraq, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani’s office said.

February 3, 2024 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

EU Leaders Squander Another €50 Billion on Propping up Kiev Regime… and Self-Destruction

Strategic Culture Foundation | February 2, 2024

Finally, the European Union’s threats, blackmail, and arm-twisting have paid off to push through a giant €50 billion aid package to the hopelessly corrupt Kiev regime. This is while European farmers revolt against the EU leadership over higher energy costs and cheap imports from Ukraine that are putting them out of business and wiping out their livelihoods.

The EU leaders are committing the entire bloc of 500 million people to political suicide. The reckless cavalier attitude is something to behold. Bring on the pitchforks, Merci!

The 27 leaders of the European Union met in an emergency summit this week not to deal with the bloc’s mounting internal political, economic, and social problems but rather to lavish mountains of more aid on non-member Ukraine.

When the leaders held their last summit in December, it was a spectacle of back-biting and sordid wrangling. At that gathering, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed the allocation of more funds to the Ukrainian regime amid bitter recrimination and bickering. This time around, however, Hungary caved in to the intense pressure to agree on the package.

Days before the summit in Brussels this week, it was reported by the Financial Times that the European Council had drawn up plans to sabotage the Hungarian economy if Budapest persisted in not signing up for the massive aid plan. That speaks volumes about the perverse mindset at the apex of the EU bureaucracy. It demonstrates the undemocratic character of the bloc despite pretentious claims to the contrary.

Brussels had already frozen up to €10 billion in central funding for Hungary and there were reported threats to remove Budapest’s voting rights in the bloc’s decision-making which would have been a blatant violation of the EU’s declared principle of unanimity.

The allocation of €50 billion to a non-member state is astounding. Even more bewildering is that the latest largesse is only a fraction of the total aid that the EU leadership has pumped into Ukraine since the proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022. Over the past two years, the European Union has given the Kiev regime an estimated €100 billion.

The United States and other Western allies have also plied Ukraine with another €100 billion. About half of this goes on weapons, while the other half pays for state financing.

As we have noted here previously, the cumulative funding by the West to Ukraine has far exceeded the historic Marshall Fund that the U.S. allocated to all of Europe for reconstruction following World War Two (about €170 billion in today’s money).

There is simply no precedent or justifiable rationale for this mobilization of financial support for Ukraine. This has all been done as a fait accompli by an elite class with no democratic mandate. No referenda have been conducted to consult the public about the inordinate expenditure. Indeed, polls indicate that the European public – like the American public – is opposed to their governments supporting Ukraine.

The Biden administration is vying with growing resistance in Congress to send Ukraine an additional $60 billion.

To boot, the Kiev regime under the puppet president Vladimir Zelensky is a byword for rampant corruption and repression. It is admitted by Pentagon sources that something like $400 million of military spending has been siphoned off by the Kiev junta. The real figure is plausibly even greater.

The grotesque allocation of financial resources to Ukraine has nothing to do with supporting democracy or defending the country from alleged Russian aggression.

EU leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen keep repeating a mantra about defending Ukraine because, they say, if it is defeated then all of Europe is in danger of Russian invasion. This is the most preposterous scaremongering by politicians who are ideologically blinded by Russophobia and slaves to propagating Western hegemony.

The latest €50 billion injection to a war-addicted Ukrainian regime is openly said to be for sustaining its government and paying for salaries and services. In other words, Ukraine is a failed state, and yet European citizens, workers, and farmers – who themselves are subsisting in hard economic times – are expected to bankroll a corrupt cabal.

Furthermore, the hardship that tens of millions of European citizens are enduring is a direct result of their political leaders and the Brussels bureaucratic elite pandering to the United States’ agenda of hostility towards Russia.

That U.S.-led aggression, which can be traced back to the CIA-instigated coup in Kiev in 2014 to bring a NeoNazi regime to power, has sabotaged Europe’s economy. European leaders have treasonously served Washington’s geopolitical interests and not those of ordinary Europeans. The insane imposition of sanctions on Russia has led to huge hikes in energy prices which has decimated European businesses and the living standards of consumers, workers, and farmers.

The higher costs of production are a major factor in the surging protests across Europe by farmers. Another factor is the EU’s undemocratic import of cheaper agricultural produce from Ukraine as a sop to the Kiev regime. Those imports have undermined farmers all across Europe, in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and the Baltic countries.

The scandalous abuse of European funds to prop up a corrupt fascist regime that violently suppresses political opponents, media, and the Orthodox Church, and glorifies Nazi collaborators, has one fundamental purpose – to prolong a proxy war against Russia. That war’s objective is for eventual strategic subjugation.

The Western regimes are so bankrupt and impotent in the face of their broken capitalist economies that they are seeking to exploit Russia’s vast natural wealth. This is the continuation of the Lebensraum policy of Nazi Germany by Western imperialists.

Ukraine has lost the proxy war against Russia. It is a shameful, criminal debacle. Up to 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed over the past two years by superior Russian forces. The vile Kiev regime, of course, wants to keep the war racket going for its insatiable grifting. Washington and its European vassals in high office want to keep the war going out of elitist imperial ambition, an ambition that is ultimately futile in the new emerging multipolar global order.

While European leaders were ensconced in the European Council in Brussels, the parliament was blockaded by angry farmers from all over Europe. Protesters were calling out politicians by name. The contempt is palpable. Paris and other capitals across Europe are being besieged by motorway chokepoints. National economies are on the brink as a result.

One might even perceive that European farmers in France, Germany, Belgium, and elsewhere, are implementing tactics similar to the Yemenis in the Red Sea. Squeeze the chokepoints and watch the empire writhe.

You couldn’t make this farce up. European elitist regimes are waging war in Europe against nuclear-powered Russia by wasting the public’s money to lavish a Neo-Nazi mafia in Kiev and by doing so making the lives of European citizens even harder. The upshot is political and economic suicide for the European Union.

The EU is holding parliamentary elections in June amid the dramatic rise of anti-EU or Eurosceptic parties. Two years of senseless war in Ukraine is fomenting popular disgust with the elite class. The anger out there may not even be contained by voting in elections. The fury seems to be beyond making little Xs in a box. A collapse is coming and heads are going to roll.

February 3, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Pentagon, Raytheon Sign Contract Worth $68.4Mln for Delivery of 50 Missiles to Taiwan

Sputnik – 03.02.2024

The US Department of Defense has signed a contract worth $68.4 million with the Raytheon defense-industrial company for the production and delivery of 50 air-to-ground missiles to Taiwan, the Pentagon said on Saturday.

“Raytheon Missile Systems, Tucson, Arizona, was awarded a $68,420,396 modification (P00001) to a firm-fixed-price order (N0001924F2560) … This modification exercising an option for the production and delivery of 50 Joint Standoff Weapon Air-To-Ground Missiles (AGM-154 Block III C) for the government of Taiwan,” Pentagon said in a statement.

The work under the contract is expected to be completed in March 2028, the statement read.

Taiwan has been governed independently of mainland China since 1949. Beijing views the island as its province, while Taiwan — a territory with its own elected government — maintains that it is an autonomous country but stops short of declaring independence.

Beijing opposes any official contacts of foreign states with Taipei and considers Chinese sovereignty over the island indisputable. In response to visits of high-ranking US delegations to Taiwan in 2022 and 2023, the Chinese military launched large-scale drills near the island, in what it called a warning to Taiwanese separatists and foreign powers.

February 3, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Canada to Hand Over 1980s-Designed CRV7 Missiles to Ukraine

Sputnik – 03.02.2024

The countries of the collective West, led by the United States, have been providing military aid to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special military operation in February 2022 in the amount of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Canada may transfer CRV7 air-to-surface missiles to Ukraine that were developed in the 1980s and taken out of service in the early 2000s, according to Canadian broadcaster CBC, citing a representative of the country’s Defense Ministry.

“The federal Conservatives are demanding that the Liberal government donate to Ukraine tens of thousands of surplus air-to-ground missiles that were scheduled to be scrapped,” the material said.

At the moment, Canada has about 83,300 missiles in its arsenal, part of them already without warheads, according to CBC.

The leader of the opposition Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, also demands that these munitions be sent to Kiev. According to him, it is better to give these weapons to Ukraine than to make Canadians pay millions of dollars to decommission them.

Earlier, on January 1, Volodymyr Zelensky held talks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, thanking him in particular for the delivery of additional NASAMS air defense systems and shells. However, later, on January 9, CTV News reported that Kiev had not received the NASAMS air defense missile system that Canada had promised to purchase from the US for the needs of the Ukrainian military.

The CRV7 air-to-surface missile, an outdated weapon from the past, is no longer in use due to advances in technology and the development of more sophisticated missiles. Designed for use during the Cold War, these missiles have been replaced by more accurate, faster, and more versatile ones with greater range, payload capacity, and precision guidance systems.

February 3, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

US Not Prepared for War Against Iran and ‘Axis of Resistance’

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 02.02.2024

Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for Washington, as the US is too internally weak to wage a new major in the Middle East, University of Tehran professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast.

US officials have reportedly signaled that plans have been approved for a series of strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria.

That would be in response to a recent drone attack on US personnel in the Middle East — which claimed the lives of three soldiers and left 34 wounded.

In the wake of the strike Bloomberg claimed the Biden administration was considering a covert strike on Iran or Iranian officials as possible options.

But University of Tehran Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik that directly targeting Iran would be a major mistake and a major miscalculation by Washington.

He suggested that scenario was very unlikely, given Iran’s missile defense and drone capabilities, as well as the vulnerability of US bases which are scattered across the Middle Eastern region.

“Let’s assume that the United States strikes Iran,” Marandi said. “The United States has bases all across the Persian Gulf. The Iranians will hit out at those bases, and then the Iranians will also punish those countries that host those bases.”

Message for Joe Biden: Don’t Mess with Iran

The professor warned the fallout from the tit-for-tat attacks would send oil and gas prices “through the roof.”

“The Red sea would no longer be safe for oil and gas. The Western economies would collapse if there was a major escalation in our region,” Marandi underlined. “The United States, its assets across Iraq would be crushed. It would be overrun and by extension Syria as well and Lebanon. The world has changed. This is not just Iran, by the way. This is the whole of West Asia.”
Given the latest US media reports, it appears far more plausible that the US would attack targets in Iraq and Syria, Marandi continued.

“[The US] will claim some sort of ‘victory over terrorists’ and that sort of nonsense which they usually say,” the professor said. “But it will be like in Yemen, they will have very little impact because the resistance to the US occupation, the illegal occupation in Iraq and Syria is very well hidden. Their assets are underground, they are spread out. And all the United States would do would be to make people angrier and make the resistance more popular, both at home and abroad. That’s exactly what we saw in Yemen.”

Marandi noted that most recently instead of pushing the Israeli regime to end the slaughter in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the US tried to facilitate the genocide by attacking Yemen. Since early January the US and its allies conducted a series of strikes against the Ansar Allah-led government in the Yemeni capital Sana’a, also known as the Houthis after their leader.

“They launched many missiles, wasted a lot of money, but they were incapable of changing the balance of power. And Yemen continues to easily strike ships. Why?” the professor asked. “Because all of their assets are underground. Their mobile radar is well-protected underground. They are missiles and drones are well protected underground. They come out, strike the target and go back underground. So the Americans failed in Yemen. They made ‘Ansar Allah,’ or what the West likes to call the Houthis, very popular across the region and across the world, and they’ll only do the same in Iraq and Syria.”

In the aftermath of the strikes the Biden administrations came under criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. A bipartisan group of House representatives, comprising such strange bedfellows as Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green and New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, argued that the US’ “unauthorized strikes in Yemen” violate the Constitution and US statute.

They called on Biden “to seek authorization from Congress before involving the US in another conflict in the Middle East,” and warned the White House against provoking Iran and Iran-backed militia in the region which could swiftly spiral out of control and lead to a broader regional conflict.

US legislators’ concerns are justified as the US cannot afford to wage wars on multiple fronts, the academic pointed out.

“The United States cannot win another war,” said Marandi. “I have no doubt that if the Republicans were in charge, they would be… Whoever is in the white House, the people around him would be saying these things in private, and the Democrats in public would be denouncing the president for holding back. But the truth is that the United States is not the United States of the past. They can launch an attack on Iran. But the price would be extremely high and the United States wouldn’t win.”
Marandi questioned when the US had last won an overseas war.

“As the United States ‘won’ in Iraq as it won in Afghanistan. Did it win in Libya? Did it win in the genocide that it supported in Yemen? Did it win in Ukraine? The United States has a very poor record when it comes to launching wars and destroying nations and countries,” the acdemic said.

“They are capable of ruining lives and murdering millions and they don’t care. We see that in Gaza every day, but they simply don’t have the power to win. And Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Yemen. Iran is not Vietnam,” Marandi stressed. “Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for the United States, and something that I don’t think those decision makers in Washington would ever seriously contemplate.”

“The Americans may be foolish enough to do so, but if they do so, then I think you’ll see the demise of the American empire take place much more rapidly than we’re seeing right now,” he concluded.

February 2, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden Makes Clear Case for NATO Complicity – and Russia’s Right to Retaliate – Over IL-76 Shoot-Down

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 1, 2024

Joe Biden is contending that the United States has the right to attack Iran as a result of the deadly strike on a U.S. base in Jordan which killed three American troops.

Biden is throwing rocks in a glass house if we then look at the case of the IL-76 shoot-down over Russia when 74 people were killed.

It is by no means clear if Iran was involved in the Jordan base raid. Tehran strongly denies it and even the Pentagon has admitted there is no evidence showing Iran had a hand in the drone attack.

Nevertheless, Biden has asserted Iran is to blame and that this gives the U.S. a right to respond militarily. If Biden can make that case, then the United States and its NATO allies should be held accountable for the shooting down of the IL-76 transport plane over Russia killing all onboard, according to the reasoning of none other than the US President.

By “accountable” that means Russia has the right to take retaliatory military action against the culprit of the crime in which 74 people were killed. Again, this is according to Biden’s own reasoning.

Biden was not speaking about the fatal IL-76 incident that occurred on January 24 when nine Russian servicemen and 65 Ukrainian prisoners were killed after their cargo plane was hit in mid-air with a warhead.

The president was responding to U.S. journalists questioning him about the deaths of three American military personnel at a base in Jordan that Iraqi militants attacked on January 28.

Biden said he held Iran responsible for the American fatalities and vowed to retaliate. Somewhat contradictorily, the president and his spokesmen have said the United States does not seek to have a wider war with Iran even though Biden said he intends to attack Iranian assets in a “tiered way at a time of his choosing”. If that’s not a wider war, what is?

Iran has vehemently denied any involvement in the drone attack on the U.S. base in Jordan near the border with Syria and Iraq. The strike was claimed by Iraqi militia known as Islamic Resistance which is allied with Iran.

Asked if he blamed Iran, Biden said he did “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”

Iran and the Iraqi militants are affiliated in a similar way to Tehran’s support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen. All are motivated by staunch opposition to U.S. military occupation in the Middle East and Washington’s support for Israel’s genocidal aggression in Gaza. Collectively, Iran and its allies are known as the Axis of Resistance.

There is no evidence that Iran supplied the weapons to the militants who killed the three American troops. Iran contends that each resistance member possesses its own agency and decision-making.

By contrast, however, the supply of American and other NATO weaponry to the Kiev regime is publicly recorded. It is estimated that the West has funded Ukraine with a total of $200 billion since the proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022. About half of that has been spent on weapons that include long-range missiles such as Patriot, Shadow Storm, Scalp and Iris-T systems. British and French cruise missiles have been repeatedly used to hit pre-war Russian territory such as Belgorod resulting in dozens of civilian deaths.

The strike on the IL-76 transport plane is believed to have been carried out with Western-supplied weapons.

Russian crash investigators have this week confirmed earlier claims that the cargo plane was shot down with a NATO weapon, either a U.S.-made Patriot missile system or a German Iris-T surface-to-air missile.

When the IL-76 was blown out of the sky on January 24 over Russia’s Belgorod region, Russian radars detected the launch of two anti-aircraft warheads nearly 100 kilometers away from the target. The missiles were allegedly fired from the location of Liptsy in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkov province. It is believed that only NATO-supplied weapons to the Ukrainian forces could have achieved that extensive range.

At the time of the IL-76 shoot-down, the Kremlin said that if it confirmed that Western weapons were responsible then Russia would deem the West to be complicit in the crime.

On January 26, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said: “According to preliminary investigation, Ukrainian armed forces carried out this terrorist attack using an anti-aircraft missile system. The missiles were launched from the village of Liptsy in Kharkov region.”

He added: “These could have been either American Patriot or German-made Iris-T missiles. If confirmed, this will make the Western suppliers of this ammo complicit in this crime. Just as they are complicit in shelling of peaceful neighborhoods of Russian cities that Ukrainian armed forces carry out with Western weapons.”

Russian crash investigators have now confirmed that Western weapons were the cause of the deadly crash.

The United States or one of its NATO allies supplied those weapons. That makes the U.S. or NATO complicit in an act of deadly aggression against Russia.

And by using the same logic as Joe Biden that culpability makes the U.S. or its allies accountable to Russia… “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”

Biden has made the case for Russia to directly hit American or NATO assets.

February 1, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

US to Begin Shipping Long-Range Bombs to Ukraine

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 31, 2024

Washington plans to ship its first batch of ground-launched long-range bombs to Kiev this week. The arms were designed for the Ukrainian military and will give Kiev another option for deep strikes.

The new weapon was developed by Boeing and Saab. It combines a 250-pound guided bomb intended to be launched by an aircraft and straps it to a rocket motor. Washington believes it has a range of 90 miles.

Boeing and Saab pitched combining the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the M26 rocket motor in November 2022. President Joe Biden approved the transfer of the long-range bomb to Ukraine in February 2023. However, the delivery of the munitions was delayed because it needed to be developed and tested.

Politico spoke with four officials who confirmed the first batch would arrive in Ukraine this week. The officials touted the weapons as giving Ukraine “a significant capability.” “It gives them a deeper strike capability they haven’t had, it complements their long-range fire arsenal,” the US official said. “It’s just an extra arrow in the quiver that’s gonna allow them to do more.”

The officials did not say how many bombs will be sent to Ukraine. At times, Washington has sent an extremely limited number of some types of arms to Kiev. Ukrainian forces recently conducted strikes deep in Russian-held territory on civilian targets. Earlier this month, at least 27 people were killed in a Ukrainian attack on a market on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk in the Russian-controlled portion of the Donetsk Oblast.

While the bombs may give Ukraine another option for deep strikes, it does not fill massive gaps in Kiev’s war needs. Ukraine is running short on manpower. Additionally, front-line troops lack artillery shells to fight back advancing Russian forces, and Kiev is short on air defense interceptors to protect its key infrastructure.

Ukraine’s Western backers are facing multiple hurdles to providing Kiev with more weapons. In Washington, the White House is gridlocked with Republicans in Congress on the supplemental defense spending bill that includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine. However, even if the legislation is passed, Western reserves of 155 mm artillery shells and air defense interceptors are nearly depleted.

February 1, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Transcript released of purported German discussion on attacking Crimean Bridge

RT | March 1, 2024

The full text of what is claimed to be a discussion by senior German military officers on how to attack the Crimean Bridge in Russia was published by RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan on Friday. She reported that Russian security officials had leaked the recording hours earlier and has pledged to release the original audio shortly.

Simonyan identified the officers as General Ingo Gerhartz, the German Air Force commander, and senior leaders responsible for mission planning. The alleged conversation took place on February 19, according to the source of the leak.

The transcript reveals the officials discussed the efficiency of the Franco-British cruise missile called Storm Shadow by the UK and SCALP by France. Both nations donated some of their stockpile to Ukraine.

Kiev has called on Germany to provide some of its Taurus missiles. The officers in the leaked recording debate whether the weapon system was adequate for hitting the Crimean Bridge in Russia, which connects eastern Crimea to Krasnodar Region across the Kerch Strait.

According to the transcript, the officers discussed how a successful attack on a key piece of Russian infrastructure would require additional satellite data, possible deployment of missiles from French Dassault Rafale fighter jets, and at least a month of preparation.

One participant observed that due to the size of the bridge, which is the longest in Europe, even 20 missiles may not be enough to cause significant damage. It is comparable to a runway in that regard, he noted.

“They want to destroy the bridge… because it has not only military strategic importance, but also political significance,” Gerhartz is quoted as saying, apparently referring to officials in Kiev. “It would be concerning if we have direct connection with the Ukrainian armed forces.”

The officers went on to discuss how close the German military should be working on the proposed operation so as not to cross the ‘red line’ of being involved directly. Secretly training Ukrainians in the use of German weapons and helping them plan the operation were deemed acceptable. Concerns about the press learning about such cooperation were also raised, the transcript reveals.

Senior officials in Berlin have repeatedly made public statements explaining their reservations about sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said this week that the Germany’s military cannot do for Ukraine what “was done on the part of the British and French in terms of target-control and target-control assistance.” The remark was rebuked by London and Paris, for allegedly distracting public attention from German unwillingness to donate arms to Kiev.

According to the released text, a large segment of the conversation was about practical aspects of preparing Kiev’s forces for deploying Taurus missiles, from training its military personnel, to adapting hardpoints of Ukrainian military jets for Berlin’s weapons, to providing technical support remotely via a safe link. The officers were concerned that speeding up the proposed handover may result in civilians being killed “again” in a weapons mishap.

When assessing the intelligence necessary for targeting the missiles, Gerhartz allegedly mused that, to provide such information, there are plenty of “people in civilian clothes with American accents” in Kiev that would cover up for the Germans.

Full Transcript of German Top Military Officials’ Leaked Plot to Attack Crimean Bridge

February 1, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »